Chapter 5

On the night before the full moon, I told Adrian in advance that I wasn’t feeling well and needed to sleep alone.

He paused.

Then he gave me a look that clearly said, Ah. I understand.

In the supernatural world, emotional instability in werewolves around the full moon was common knowledge. He probably thought I was going through some kind of lunar reaction—which, in a way, wasn’t completely wrong. Just not for the reason he imagined.

He didn’t press me. He simply got up and dimmed every light in the room to its lowest setting, drawing the curtains so tightly that not a single thread of moonlight could get through.

Then he found a heavy blanket and wrapped it around me.

“If you’re uncomfortable, it might help if I hold you while you sleep,” he said very seriously.

“N-no, that won’t work.” I had to struggle for a reason. “I get… irritable during lunar episodes. I might hurt you.”

It was a reasonable excuse. Werewolves really did get more volatile around the full moon.

Adrian looked at me as if he wanted to say more, but in the end he only reached out and touched my hair.

“Then get some rest. If anything happens, call me. I’ll be in the next room.”

After the door closed, the room fell quiet.

I sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the blanket tighter around me.

It was warm.

Then the poison hit.

Without warning. Like an ice spike driving straight through the center of my heart, cold spreading along my veins into every limb, followed by sharp pain—each wave worse than the last.

It wasn’t the agitation and restlessness of a moon-phase reaction.

It was pure, crushing pain.

My bones felt as if they were being pulled out of me one by one from the inside. My muscles spasmed. My temperature swung violently—burning hot one moment, dropping toward hypothermia the next.

Curled on the bed, I bit my lip and fumbled the syringe out from under the pillow, hands shaking as I drove it into my vein.

The antidote didn’t work instantly.

In the stretch of time before it took effect, the pain came in waves like a rising tide, each harder than the last. I twisted the blanket in my fists and fought with everything I had to keep from making a sound.

Half-delirious, I remembered something from the past.

Once, Dominic had picked up some new trick somewhere and decided he wanted to try it out on me.

I didn’t want to.

He only sneered. “Ella, your life belongs to me. What right do you have to refuse?”

That month, he kept the antidote from me.

He waited until the poison flared, until the pain was at its worst.

Then he came.

He left my body covered in bruises, cut my shoulder open with a knife, then bent down and licked the blood that welled out.

A werewolf licking another wolf’s blood. Not to mark. Purely to torment.

Then he asked, “Ella, does that feel good?”

I wanted to curse him.

I didn’t even have the strength to speak.

Only when I was on the verge of blacking out from pain did he finally inject the antidote.

It was one of the most disgusting things he had ever done to me.

Not the most disgusting. There were too many to rank.

I bit my lip until I tasted blood, curling tighter and tighter into myself, shaking uncontrollably.

My vision was completely blurred.

I had no idea how much time passed before someone’s hand reached toward me.

Cool fingers. Gently prying open the teeth I had clenched together.

The voice was urgent, kept low. “Ella, don’t bite… your lip is already bleeding.”

In my half-conscious state, I clamped down on that finger without mercy.

My fangs were much sharper than a human’s. My teeth sank through skin, right down to bone.

My mouth filled with blood.

His blood.

Vampire blood tasted different from werewolf blood and human blood. Cold, with a strange metallic sweetness—like a silver coin melting on the tongue.

His hand went rigid for a moment.

But he didn’t pull away. He didn’t get angry.

He only used his other hand to stroke my hair, over and over, gently.

That hand seemed to be trembling.

I turned and collided with a body that was slightly cool.

Not warm, not in the human sense.

But safe.

Somewhere in my drifting mind, I thought: why does a vampire’s embrace feel safer than an Alpha’s ever did?

Then I knew nothing at all.

When I woke the next morning, I was in Adrian’s arms.

His arm was looped around my waist.

“Still feeling bad?”

I shook my head.

I started to climb out of bed—then stopped.

And then I saw it.

His right index finger was ringed with a brutal wound.

The flesh was mangled, deep enough to show bone.

And it hadn’t healed.

Vampires healed fast. A normal wound would have closed within hours. But this one was still bleeding, and the edges were darkened, almost burned.

Because a werewolf had bitten him.

Werewolf saliva was mildly toxic to vampires. It slowed healing, sometimes caused additional burn-like damage.

I froze.

“…When did you come in last night?”

“When you made a sound,” he said lightly. “I could hear it from next door.”

“Your hand—”

“It’s nothing.” He got up, picked up the jacket at the bedside, and draped it over himself, naturally tucking that hand into the sleeve.

Then he looked down at me and touched my hair with his other hand.

“All right. Go wash your face.”

As if nothing had happened.

But that wound—one made by wolf fangs, one that might take who knew how long to heal on a vampire—he said not one word about it.

I opened my mouth and found I couldn’t say anything.

When I came out of the bathroom, a voice practically bounced into the doorway.

“Ella! I heard you weren’t feeling well last night. Perfect timing—I brought back all sorts of things from Milan—”

The voice was bright, lively, overflowing with energy.

I looked up. A young woman stood there with vivid red hair, wearing a pale yellow leather jacket, her smile dazzling as sunlight.

Her skin was as pale as Adrian’s—the mark of a pureblood vampire—but her eyes were bright amber, glowing in the dim hallway like gemstones.

She bounded toward me, grabbed my hand, looked me over, and nodded.

“Pretty. Brother, your taste is excellent.”

Her nostrils flared once, but her expression never changed. No disgust. No scrutiny.

Just frank, open curiosity.

“A werewolf who married a vampire? That has to be interesting.” She winked at me.

The next second, a hand hooked the back of her collar and tugged her away.

“Lilith, stay away from my mate.”

At some point Adrian had already gotten dressed. His face was still pale as paper.

I hurried to grab a coat for him and draped it over his shoulders. “Careful, you’ll catch cold.”

Vampires didn’t actually fear the cold, but he did have old injuries, and by now I had fallen into the habit.

As he gathered the coat around himself one-handed, I saw that ruined finger again. The flesh was torn and the wound edges were still blackened by the burn of werewolf venom.

I went still, throat tightening.

Behind me, Lilith’s voice floated over.

“Do you two have no shame? I just got home and you’re already showing off in front of me? I brought so much stuff—”

But I only looked at Adrian.

His eyes were as calm and gentle as ever.

He raised a hand and touched my hair again.

“Come on,” he said. “Breakfast.”

Lilith was Adrian’s younger sister. Pureblood vampire, but nothing like the stereotype. She loved human culture, liked sunlight, and didn’t have the instinctive hostility toward werewolves that most vampires did.

At first, I carried a lot of psychological baggage around her.

Because of Vivian, the very category of younger sisters had become traumatic to me.

So I asked her outright, “Are you and Adrian actually related by blood?”

She stared at me for a second, then answered in a loud, hearty voice, “One hundred percent biological siblings. If you need it, I can print out the family bloodline records for you.”

I quickly discovered Lilith and Vivian belonged to entirely different species.

The day after she came back, she dragged me to a concept boutique she had invested in, took my measurements for more clothes, and hauled out boxes of jewelry for me to choose from. She never once minded the werewolf scent on me, whereas most vampires would wrinkle their noses after ten minutes at my side.

Through Lilith, I met Rowan.

He was a half-wolf, half-human hybrid. His mother had been a werewolf, his father human. Because of his mixed blood, neither side fully accepted him, and he ended up becoming an independent apothecary and healer.

Lilith said he was an excellent physician, especially when it came to supernatural poisonings and species-specific conditions.

“But his personality kind of sucks,” Lilith added, her tone shifting, touched with a strange chill.

My mind immediately went elsewhere.

A pharmacist who understood both werewolf and vampire physiology—could he help me undo the poison Dominic put in me?

Lilith said she could take me to see him. I didn’t refuse.

Rowan’s clinic was hidden in an unremarkable building in Lower Manhattan.

Lilith tried to chat with him in a lowered voice, but he stayed expressionless from beginning to end, barely responding.

Eventually she gave up. “Fine. I didn’t come here for you anyway. Ella’s not feeling well.”

Then, perhaps afraid I’d feel awkward, she stepped outside to wait.

Rowan told me to extend my wrist.

His examination was professional. He used a portable blood-analysis kit, drew a vial, and ran several tests.

The advantage of being mixed blood was that he understood both werewolf and human physiology, and the medicines he compounded worked for both.

Then he looked up, his gaze dark and serious.

“There’s a specially tailored chronic toxin in your system,” he said. “Not immediately fatal, but it causes violent periodic flare-ups, synced to the lunar cycle and triggered around the full moon. This isn’t a natural moon-phase reaction. It’s man-made.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s not lunar. I was poisoned.”

I took out the spent syringe and set it on the table in front of him.

Rowan studied it for a while, then ran additional analyses.

At last he told me the poison had been derived from a mutated compound extracted from Alpha blood, then altered into a slow-acting toxin. The complete antidote formula existed only in the hands of the one who created it. He could make a substitute drug that might ease the flare-ups temporarily, but—

“The substitute is still another chemical suppressant,” he said evenly. “Use it too often, and the two drugs will clash inside your body. Your organs won’t last forever.”

“That’s fine. Make it anyway.”

I took a stack of cash from my pocket and placed it on the desk.

Then I added, “Don’t tell Lilith.”

He looked at me once and asked no more questions.