Chapter 3

I spent two days in hell.

I locked myself in the abandoned servant quarters of the East Wing—a part of the estate so neglected that even the security cameras had died. I told the head maid I had a migraine. No one checked on me. No one ever checked on me.

The withdrawal came in waves.

First, the sweating. My body purged the wolfsbane through every pore. The sheets turned yellow-green with the toxin.

Then, the pain. My bones felt like they were being broken and reset, over and over. My muscles spasmed. My teeth ached as something tried to push through my gums—fangs that were neither vampire nor wolf, but something older.

And then, the visions.

I saw my mother.

She was young, beautiful, standing in a forest clearing under a blood-red moon. Her wolf was enormous—white as bone, with eyes like molten gold. She turned to look at me, and her voice echoed through time.

They will try to cage you, my daughter. They will call you broken. They will drug you, diminish you, and sell you to the highest bidder.

But you are not broken.

You are the last Nightfang. And when you wake, they will remember why they feared us.

I woke on the third morning feeling... different.

I stood in front of the cracked mirror in the servant bathroom. The woman staring back was not the same woman who had walked in.

My eyes had changed. The left was still my natural deep brown. But the right eye was now a blazing, molten gold. Wolf eye.

My senses were on fire. I could hear the guards talking at the front gate, three hundred yards away. I could smell Vivienne's perfume from the west wing. I could taste the iron in the air from the blood vault two floors below.

And I could hear heartbeats.

Two heartbeats coming from Vivienne's room. Hers and the baby's.

Except... something was wrong. The baby's heartbeat was irregular. Fluttering. Weak.

I frowned. That wasn't normal for a three-month vampire fetus.

My medical brain kicked in. I had studied vampire prenatal development extensively. A healthy vampire fetus at twelve weeks should have a heartbeat of 160-180 BPM. This one was barely hitting 90.

Either the baby was sick... or it wasn't what they claimed.

I filed that information away.

I had forty-eight hours until the Blood Summit. Forty-eight hours to gather what I needed and burn their empire to the ground.

I pulled out the burner phone I had bought months ago—back when I first started suspecting Damien was unfaithful, before I convinced myself I was being paranoid.

I dialed the only number saved in it.

"Maren," I said. "It's Sera."

A pause. Then a sharp intake of breath.

"Sera? As in Seraphina Valdris? The girl who vanished into a vampire castle three years ago and stopped returning my calls?"

Maren Blackwood. My college roommate. A wolf-witch hybrid who ran a supernatural legal firm that specialized in inter-species divorce.

"I need you," I said.

"Where and when?"

"The Crossroads Diner. Tonight. Bring the standard dissolution kit and... bring a scrying mirror."

"A scrying mirror? What do you need that for?"

"I need to verify a pregnancy."

Silence.

"Sera," Maren said slowly. "What did they do to you?"

"Everything," I said. "And I'm going to do it back."

I hung up.

I got dressed. Simple black clothes. No jewelry. I left the Ashford wedding ring on the nightstand.

As I walked toward the service exit, I passed the portrait gallery. Twenty generations of Ashford kings and their queens stared down at me from gilded frames.

At the end of the hall was an empty frame. It had a small plaque: Reserved for Lady Seraphina Ashford.

I stopped, looked at the empty canvas, and smiled.

They would never paint my portrait. Because I was about to erase myself from their history.

And replace it with a nightmare.