Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
He shakes his head, his unruly hair falling into his eyes. “But I would have sensed something.”
“Perhaps,” I say, my heart pounding. “But you were attracted to her on a primal level, Rogan. You said so yourself. It was part of your wolf nature. Your senses were clouded.”
“Like they were with you…except that was different,” he says, more to himself than to me. His gaze hardens, his eyes reflecting a storm of emotions—confusion, disbelief, anger. But beneath it all lies the undeniable truth. His wolf chose Eris. But he—Rogan, the man who controls the wolf—chose me.
“If she’s half demon,” he growls, his voice barely above a whisper, “it means…”
“It means you may have been manipulated again.”
He shakes his head once more. “No. This was real. Like you said, it was primal. When I saw you, smelled you, I knew you were mine. With Eris, it was deeper but less intimate. Forced, almost, as if I was drawn to her against my will. Which, in fact, I was, because I love you, princess. Not her.”
I draw in a breath.
So the bond between Rogan and Eris is real.
Not that I ever doubted it. He wouldn’t have left me otherwise.
My stepfather’s treachery knows no bounds. He knew Eris was half demon, found out she was fated to mate with Rogan, an alpha lycan, and capitalized on her inherent evil to have her carve out those two vampires’ hearts and make sure Rogan got blamed for it. That would send my father after Rogan, and Richard knew my father would use his best weapon.
Me.
Like I said to Rogan. Cunning.
Shrewd, cunning, and devilishly clever. The perfect trap.
But Richard underestimated my father.
He underestimated me.
And he underestimated Rogan.
It would never have occurred to Richard that Rogan could truly love me. In the demon king’s mind, I’m the evil one. Completely unlovable.
“Guess the game is up.” Rogan’s voice pulls me back from my thoughts, his words heavy with bitter acceptance and simmering rage. “We confront Eris.”
“No.” I shake my head, locking my gaze with his. “Not we. You heard Alara. I must fight Eris. Me.”
“Princess…”
“I’ve trained for it, Rogan. Alara prepared me well. I’m not a wolf or a demon. But I’m vampire. I’m human. And most importantly, I’m a mother protecting her child. That’s a beast few can best.”
He grabs me then, crushes our lips together.
I respond instantly, my flesh tingling, all feeling arrowing right between my legs.
How easy it would be to fall back into bed with Rogan. To let him love me, fuck me into oblivion as only he can.
But I break the kiss, his lips already swollen from the punishment of the embrace.
“I won’t let you go,” he says through gritted teeth.
I cup his cheek, scrape my fingers over his dark stubble. “You have to,” I say. “There’s no other choice.”
Then—
A gust of heavy wind, and the shutters in my bedroom crash open. I inhale the scent of impending rain and a far-off sharp tang of danger.
But it’s not a storm.
The only storm in this room is me.
And I’m ready to unleash my power.
Alara, I say in my mind.
Her words come to me swiftly.
It’s time.
57
It happens in a flash—one second, I exist in the world I know, and the next, reality folds in on itself like an implosion. No transition, no warning, just a sudden shift, as if the air around me has been ripped away and replaced with something thicker. The fabric of space itself bends, warping around me, pulling me through an unseen thread that stretches beyond time, beyond logic.
For an instant, I am nothing and everything, weightless and infinite. My mind strains against the sensation as I’m unable to grasp the enormity of it, the way existence splits apart and reweaves itself in the same moment. No sound, no movement, no breath—only the feeling of being rewritten, of stepping between the cracks of what was and what will be.
Then it’s over.
The ether. It was different this time.
Or perhaps I’m what is different.
I have no weapons, which means I won’t need any. Alara would have made sure I had them otherwise.
The sky above me is overcast, and the dirt is hard under my boots. Trees sway around me, and wind drifts over me. I inhale the scent of earth, of impending rain.
Of storm.
The same fragrance from my place, right before I emerged here, in the ether.
Yes, the ether.
Alara’s words echo in my mind.
To move through the ether, you must understand the ether. The ether is not just a place, but a state of being, an existence beyond the tangible constraints of our physical realm. It is akin to the air around us—invisible yet ever-present, a fabric interwoven with the very essence of life and death.
What I thought was another plane of existence is in fact a current—an endless, shifting tide that flows among worlds, among time, among thought itself. It’s not a place to be reached, but a force to be understood. It is neither light nor darkness, neither here nor there.