Chapter 43

Aster:

The nights blended together in a daze of boredom and depression. Declan was there every evening when she woke, throwing a blood bag at her, then disappearing until she fell asleep. On the third night, she asked him to show her where to find the blood herself, and then he just stopped showing up at all. She didn’t see him for days on end.

The brothers and their various brides, even Rowan, tried their best to cheer her up, but with Declan deliberately withholding himself from her, it was a futile attempt. If she were a human girl, her friends would have told her to get over it and move on – but as Lydia explained to her, it wasn’t because she was weak and in need of a man, but rather because of the bond they shared. They were now two halves of the same coin, and one half was missing. She was incomplete.

She had little appetite, only drinking enough blood each night to soothe the worst of the thirst, but other than that, she couldn’t brin