CHAPTER 2

The castle’s lower level felt less like a home and more like a laboratory dressed in antique stone. The “blood therapy room” was all clinical lights and stainless steel—except for the velvet chaise where Hale reclined like an expensive illness.

She looked delicate on purpose: pale lips, damp lashes, a wrist wrapped in gauze. The gauze was clean. Too clean.

The vampire prince stood at the foot of her bed with his sleeves rolled up, forearms bare. Hunger lived under his skin like a bruise that never healed. He didn’t look at Hale when he spoke.

“Twice a week,” he said. “Eight hundred milliliters.”

“That’s not therapy,” I replied. “That’s a slow execution.”

“It’s survival,” he said, as if the difference didn’t matter.

Graham appeared in the doorway, smiling like a man at a press conference. “You’ll do it,” he insisted. “You’ve always been the strong one.”

Behind him, Selene Hale tilted her head sympathetically. “Family takes care of family.”

I let the words hang in the air until they sounded as vile as they were.

“I’ll do it,” I said, “under terms.”

Lucien’s gaze sharpened.

“Unfreeze Sterling Biotech’s accounts today,” I said. “Also—” I pointed at Hale, “—I want her full medical file. ”

Graham’s smile twitched. “Why? Are you accusing her of lying?”

“I’m accusing everyone of lying,” I said. “It saves time.”

Nurse Elise Harper—human, eyes down—placed a tablet in my hands. “Records,” she murmured.

I scrolled.

Values. Notes. Schedules.

Too perfect. No fluctuation, no mess, no signatures that belonged to real doctors. I’d built a biotech empire; I knew what actual sickness looked like on paper. This was performance.

“You scrubbed it,” I said quietly.

Hale’s breath hitched, perfectly timed. “Please,” she whispered, “don’t make this ugly.”

“Ugly already happened,” I replied. “You’ve just been decorating it.”

Lucien stepped closer, voice low. “Read,” he said. “And bleed.”

The needle went in. Stainless steel this time, not silver. Blood slid down the tubing toward Hale’s waiting IV. She sighed softly—too softly—like relief that didn’t belong to a patient.

Thirty seconds in, color returned to her cheeks. Her trembling stopped. Her eyes brightened with something that wasn’t recovery.

It was appetite.

I glanced at Lucien. For the first time, his expression tightened—one flicker of surprise he couldn’t fully hide.

“You didn’t know,” I murmured.

His jaw flexed. “You don’t know what I know.”

“Then show me the raw logs,” I said. “Server-side.”

He held my gaze for a long beat, then took the tablet and tapped a sequence that wasn’t on any normal interface. A hidden screen flashed open: timestamps, deletions, access trails.

And there it was—gaps. Whole nights removed. A second patient ID nested under Hale’s file like a parasite.

My blood went cold.

“Who is ECHO-2?” I asked.

Lucien didn’t answer. His eyes locked on the name field as if it could bite.

The lights flickered.

A small, precise click sounded behind me. My instincts—honed in boardrooms and back alleys—recognized it instantly.

Trigger.

“Down!” I jerked sideways.

A silver bolt hissed through the air where my throat had been. It struck the wall and smoked, the metal eating into stone like poison.

Guards drew weapons. Nurse Harper screamed. Hale gasped theatrically, clutching her chest as if she’d been hit.

Lucien vanished.

He reappeared at the ventilation grate, one hand already inside. He yanked a masked human out and slammed him to the floor. Evan Cross’s sleeve held another bolt.

Lucien crushed the man’s wrist with a single twist.

“Who sent you?” he asked, voice almost gentle.

Cross spat blood. “Council,” he rasped. “If the bride is a key… she can’t be allowed to choose the lock.”

Lucien’s gaze flicked to me—one sharp glance, warning and apology tangled together.

Cross laughed wetly. “You can’t keep her,” he wheezed. “You can’t even touch her.”

The room went still.

I met Lucien’s eyes. “What does that mean?”

Something dark passed through his face—anger, yes, but also something like trapped despair.

He lifted his wrist. Under his skin, faint and old, a gold scar of binding—like mine, but deeper. “There’s a curse on my line,” he said. “If I seal the bond fully, I die.”

“Convenient,” I said, even as my pulse betrayed me.

“It’s not convenient,” he snapped. “It’s a leash. One the Council holds.”

Then he turned and keyed open a steel door at the back of the room.

A vault waited inside—relics, silver chains, ancient books.

And on the top shelf, unmistakable even in the dim:

my mother’s silver casket.

The one Graham swore had been destroyed.

Lucien looked back at me. “You want truth?” he asked.

My throat tightened around rage. “Yes.”

He nodded once.

“Then come closer,” he said, “and be careful what you wake.”