“She returned to her villa,” Sam responded. “We weren’t quite sure what to do with her.”

“She’s no threat. She really just wants a way back to Yuri’s good graces,” Sofia explained.

“Leave her then. It’s about time she realized how much Yuri values her.” I then looked at Aiden. “I will do your daughter no harm, sir.”

He snorted in response. “Sure you won’t. Of course, you and I have very different definitions of the word ‘harm,’ or so it seems.”

I turned to Sam. “Sam, one more thing… See to it that my father is released and escorted to my sister’s chambers. Make sure he is well-guarded by more than one vampire stronger than him. We must also immediately hold a council meeting to address the loss of our chilling chambers… We won’t have enough blood to last us for another week unless we do something about that.”

I didn’t miss the way Aiden’s eyes sparked with interest at that bit of information. I’m sure every perceived vulnerability at The Shade was a point of interest to a man like him.

Finally satisfied that I had all my bases covered, I walked out of the penthouse with Sofia. We were already in an isolated part of the woods when Sofia stopped in her tracks and looked up at me.

“You’re trembling,” she said in what was almost a whisper.

“It’s nothing.” I shook my head. “This cure…do you think it will work?”

“It worked with my mother. I saw it with my own eyes. She’s not happy about it, but Ingrid Maslen is human again… She’s still nothing like my mother was. She’s one angry human…”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But it is.”

I wanted it so much to be true. I wanted to escape my immortality and the weight of being prophesied as some sort of savior to my kind. I was also aware that since Sofia could never be immortal, the only way we could really be together was if I became mortal once again. My head was swimming with everything I wanted to say about Anna possibly being immune too, about Sofia not actually having LLI, but whenever I looked at Sofia, all I could think about was how much I wanted her blood.

“I can’t stand this.” She shook her head. “We can’t keep being this guarded around each other.”

I swallowed hard, wondering what it was that she had in mind. She stepped away from me and to my surprise, she began unbuttoning the top buttons of her red blouse. I knew what she was doing, what she was willing to let me do and I began shaking my head.

“No… Sofia…”

She stepped forward and pushed herself against me, making me stumble backwards until my back hit a tree trunk. I couldn’t remember her ever being so aggressive, but I couldn’t dare complain when her lips began to knead against mine—demanding and passionate, hungry for something that I myself was starving for.

I stopped fighting it and allowed my hands to fall to her waist. I pulled her up so that she didn’t have to strain her neck just to kiss me. I responded with as much passion and hunger as she was dishing out on me.

“You’re mine, are you not?” she whispered breathlessly to me when our lips finally parted.

“You know I am,” I responded, momentarily forgetting my craving for her blood as I tried to wrap my tingling senses around what had just happened.

“And I’m yours, am I not?” she asked.

Already knowing where she was getting at, I gulped before nodding. “I hope so…”

She pulled the sleeve of her blouse down her shoulder to expose her neck to me. “Then stop torturing both yourself and me, Derek. It’s okay.” She stepped forward and tilted her head to the side as she took hold of my both my hands and placed them on her waist. “Satisfy your craving.”

I couldn’t stop even if I had wanted to. I took the bite, a mix of guilt and ecstasy coursing through me when I heard her whimper over the cut my teeth had made on her neck. When I felt the blood flow past my tongue and down my throat, it was pure bliss. Her blood was coursing inside me…restoring me, empowering me, strengthening me, completing me. She overloaded my senses when she once began to hum our song to me. She ran her fingers through my hair, gently caressing it to assure me that she was alright.

Suddenly, I had the desperate urge to look at her lovely face, so I pulled my mouth from her neck and took her wrist instead. I bit into it without bothering to ask her. She bit her lip against the pain and watched as I drank from her wrist.

Every sense I had was filled with Sofia Claremont—the scent of her, the feel, the taste, the sight, the sound of her sweet voice humming our song.

Eventually, I pulled my teeth out of her wrist and then grabbed her waist to pull her against me so I could kiss her again. It wasn’t until our lips parted that the guilt began to sink in.

Sofia was the one who pulled away from the kiss. I didn’t even realize it until she called me out on it. “Derek…are you crying?”

I tried to hold the tears back, but I couldn’t. At the sight of the blood trickling from her neck and from her wrist, I couldn’t help but break down right in front of her. “How can we stay this way, Sofia?”

“The cure will work.” She nodded, sounding like she was wishing it instead of actually believing it to be true. “When it does, you won’t have to do this anymore.”

Suddenly, it felt like everything I had, everything I wanted, everything I was and could be, hung on this cure—a cure created by the hunters, whom I neither believed in nor trusted. A cure that I doubted could be true, much less possible.

Still, seeing the hopeful expression on my lovely girl’s face, I couldn’t help but adopt her hope. “I pray the cure works.”

“It will, Derek. It will.”

Neither of us missed the lack of conviction in her words. I wanted to believe in the cure as much as she seemed to, but I was afraid to hang my hopes on what could most likely be just some ploy for the hunters to discover The Shade.

“I hope you’re right, Sofia, because if you’re not… I honestly think it will be the end of…” I hesitated, not wanting to hurt her any more than I already had.

“Of what, Derek?” She stepped backward, away from me, so that she could see the expression on my face. She was hurt and I knew it. “You? Us?”

“Everything.”

CHAPTER 38: AIDEN

What the hell is wrong with you, Claremont? You just let your daughter run loose with the most powerful vampire alive—the same vampire you know is craving her blood, the same vampire you just saw attack her.

I glared at the guards standing by the doorway to the caves they brought me to—apparently my daughter’s quarters.

It’s not like I have any choice.

I leaned against the backrest of the recliner situated in her living room. I could hear the clinking of utensils as the girl named Rosa kept herself busy preparing food in the kitchen. She was accompanied by Lily, a widow with two children—who all seemed to have lived at The Shade their whole lives. They’d already prepared a meal earlier that day, one I barely ate due to my anxiety over what was happening to Sofia. I kept pacing the floor, tormented by worst case scenarios regarding what the vampire could possibly be doing to my daughter. At some point, I took a nap, only to wake up and find the place still as dim as night, with Rosa and Lily cooking another meal—dinner she said.

One of Lily’s children approached me. She was introduced to me as Madeline, five years old. She had red hair that reminded me of Sofia’s when she was just about the same age.

Madeline sat on the couch across from mine and stared at me. She was making me highly uncomfortable. “Does the sun ever rise here?” I asked her in a serious tone, hoping to scare her away.

She tilted her head to the side. “What’s the sun?” she asked.

“You know… That big, shining light up in the sky…”

“You mean the moon?” She tilted her head to the side in thought. “Well, Mama rarely ever lets Rob and me out of The Catacombs, but when she does, I get to see the moon and the stars. I love it when the moon smiles.” She gave me one big grin, showing me how she was missing one of her front teeth. “I’ve only seen the moon. No one ever told me about the sun—not even Gavin and he’s out of The Catacombs a lot. The vampires like him.”

“And they don’t like you?” I raised a brow.

“Well, I don’t know. Mama tells me to stay away from them. Ashley seems to like me though and so do Kyle and Sam, but Mama scolds me whenever I play with them. Gavin’s my older brother and he gets to hang out with the vampires all the time—especially after he became friends with Sofia.”

“Madeline, don’t bother our visitor…” Lily reprimanded, trying to pull the little girl away from me. She eyed me warily and smiled. “I’m so sorry, sir. She’s normally not so comfortable around strangers, but she seems to like you a lot.”

“He’s Sofia’s father, Mama. And he’s human…he won’t bite me.”

My heart went out to the five year old and the young mother trying to keep her in check. “How long have you been here, Lily?”

The dark-haired beauty bowed my way. “All my life, sir. I’m a Natural. We were born here. So were my parents and their parents before them.”

“You have a lovely daughter.”

Sadness traced her eyes. “Aye. It’s why I fear for her so much. Loveliness is a dangerous thing to have here, especially for a young girl like her.”

My heart broke. I wanted to offer the young woman consolation, but I knew that I couldn’t offer her salvation even if I had wanted to. Those captured by vampires as slaves were considered dead to us. We annihilated them right along with the coven. If a hunter wanted to bother saving loved ones taken by vampires, they had to find a way to do it on their own accord, at their own risk.

“It’s been a lot better since Sofia came. We never thought she would survive after being caught up in the rebellion, but she did…” Lily smiled at me. “Your daughter saved a lot of lives. That day at the town square when Derek’s father—he used to be our king…”