"You have to say something," I said to Damian. "You can't just sit there and glare at me all night."

When he didn't respond, I went to his bed and sat down, cross-legged, watching him as he paced the room.

His eyes grew dark and his mouth opened into a small o of surprise.

Or maybe it was disgust. Hell if I knew.

"Fuck, Aimee. Tell me you didn't. Please tell me you didn't go off and get bonded to the bloodsucker?"

"Well, if you must know, it was a life-or-death situation. Now can you tell me how to get rid of it?"

"You--you don't. At least not any way that I know of." He stuttered as he ran a hand over the length of his face and took a deep breath.

"Fucking hell. What else did that bastard do to you?"

"Jeez, Dai, chill," I said, frowning as I wrapped my arms around myself. Because the way he was looking at me just now made me feel dirty. "Nothing else." I lied. "And please, don't pretend like I'm some helpless girl that any man can take advantage of. You know me better than that."

"I just don't understand what could possibly make you think it was okay to..." He turned away from me again. "To let him drink your blood. To drink his, for that matter. I know how the bonding ceremony works." His blue t-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

Slowly, he glanced at me over his shoulder, his voice small.

"Do you...do you love him?"

It would have been easier not to respond. Not only did it hurt to admit it out loud but something told me it wasn't what Damian wanted to hear either.

"Yeah." I finally responded after a long pause.

"Jeez." He breathed.

He paced the length of the room, pausing a few times. In those moments, when he said nothing and only looked at me, mouth floundering, he reminded me of a fish. One I was trying really hard not to lose my patience with.

"Dai..."

"Hold on. I'm just...I'm trying to make sense of this. Is it a bad case of Stockholm syndrome? Do you need some help? Because Aimee, that's the only thing that would make sense right now."

"Alright," I snapped, rising from my perch on the bed, patience depleted. "That's it. I'm not going to sit here and let you talk to me this way. The hell if I know the why to anything anymore but what I do know is that the last thing I need is for my best friend to be judging me."

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm just having a hard time understanding, Aimee. For fucks sake, he killed your father."

"Do you think, for one second, if I'd known that, I would have ever fallen in love with him? How little do you think of me?"

He turned away again and stared at the bathroom door.

"Damian!" I snapped, growing more upset by his silence by the second. "Talk to me. Do you know someone who can help me get unbonded from him? Yes, or no?"

"Talk to you? Aimee, I can't even look at you right now."

My mouth opened into an o of surprise while he continued to give me the courtesy of his back.

"Wow, Dai, tell me how you really feel. Is this even about Luke anymore?"

"What sort of question is that?" He scoffed. "Of course it's about Luke. But I'm not gonna lie. It's also about him. This man you love is an abomination that drinks blood for goodness sake."

"What about me, Damian? What about me?"

"What about you?"

"I'm part Soulsucker. The worst of the worst, in case you'd forgotten. Does that make me an abomination too?"

"Aimee," He said, sighing as he turned to look at me, finally. "I didn't mean--"

"Save it," I said. "It's pretty clear to me what you meant. Don't worry, I'll figure it out of my own."

The letter arrived on a Friday afternoon, wrapped in a satin crimson bow.

I ignored it at first because who could possibly be taking the time to write me a letter? And why would I even care to read it?

After all, anyone I wanted to hear from either hated me, was missing or was dead.

And so, I'd thrown the envelope on the nightstand to collect dust.

That same day I decided to pack my bag.

I rummaged through the room, collecting what little belongings I had left to my name. As I packed, my fingers brushed something cool and metallic. I pulled it out of the bag, my old, broken I Phone, and something about seeing it there, so plain and mundane made me upset.

I realized this was my last true keepsake of my life in Oregon and what a shitty keepsake it was, with absolutely no sentimental value.

I looked at my now full bag, with everything I owned in this world neatly tucked into it.

As the ugliness of my loneliness washed over me, I wished I had a picture of mom and Taylor, at the very least.

But no, I had nothing but my memories and already their faces were becoming a distant blur in my mind. Their features were a puzzle of almond-shaped eyes and thin lips that my brain somehow couldn't get quite right.

I threw my phone at the wall, frustrated.

As it fell, it rustled the letter, causing it to fall on the floor.

What I really needed was a game plan to save mom and Taylor.

I bent down, scoping the unimportant letter from the ground when the seal of a lion holding a double-edged sword caught my attention.

The Dannek seal, is what it was.

I sat at the edge of the bed as I opened it, a part of me, which I wish I'd listened to, begging me not.

But open it, I did. The parchment was smooth and ridged under my fingertips, covered in intricate cursive handwriting.

The honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of:

King Christian Dannek

And

Lady Katerina Georgescu

The letter said.

Each word those golden letters created sent a stabbing pain through my heart.

As the words sank in, I didn't know whether to be hurt or offended. After everything he'd done, after all he'd put me through, he still had the audacity to rub salt in the wound?

I took a deep breath and tried to rise above—tried, and failed.

Tossing the confetti-ed invitation into the waste basket should have made me feel better but it didn't

What I really wanted, what I'd give anything for in that moment, was to hurt someone, preferably that Katerina woman who was set to marry Christian.

But no, that was ridiculous.

Of course, this wasn't her fault.

It was his.

Actually, no, it was mine. For letting myself get derailed and distracted in my search for my family. For falling in love with someone I hardly even knew.

I stood and paced the room, trying hard to ignore the stabbing pain in my chest.

How had it come to this?

How had I fallen so hard for a man that the very thought of him marrying another woman, the thought of him kissing her awake each morning, the thought of him touching her the way he'd once touched me make me want to burn the world to the ground?

I could, in fact, burn the world to the ground if I wanted to. I could feel it, this bottomless power, this insatiable thirst for blood. I felt the darkness rising in me, that familiar sting of cold in my bones that left me both breathless and paralyzed with anticipation.

"Yes," A lilting voice echoed across my room. "Just give in to it, Aimee. Join us."

"W-what?" I responded, turning in a circle in search of the voice.

"Just let go. What fun ever came from being good, anyway?"

"Ally, stop." I whispered. The darkness clawed its way up my arms, like a second skin, a burning film of evil that would surely seep into my bones if I let it.

"He's marrying another woman. You couldn't have been that important."

Anger flashed in my veins. For a brief moment, I saw red. The smoke rose around me now and mesmerized by it, I allowed the darkness to ebb into me.

As if it were a tangible thing, I felt it seep into my heart, make it heavy with its presence.

"Do you think he'll tell her she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen?"

"I'll kill her," I said slowly, in a voice not like my own. In a low and dangerous voice. In the voice of a killer.

"How?" Ally purred. "How would you do it?"

"Slowly," A smiled crept across my face at the thought. I pictured a faceless fair-skinned woman on her knees. Her mouth twisted in agony as I drenched her in holy water. The way her skin sizzled was so satisfying but not nearly as much as the way she screamed for mercy.

Wait...this--something about this wasn't quite right.

I shook my head, trying to clear the anger, noticing for the first time how black smoke clung to my skin, a separate, parasitic entity.

I slapped at my arms, trying to chase the smoke away.

It fought back, a hellish fire rippling across my skin that made me drop to my knees and gasp for air.

"Soon," Ally whispered. "Soon you'll join us."