Simone's POVAldric doesn’t answer me right away, but I can practically hear his gears turning as he’s scrambling for something to say. “I don’t mind, no, but…I have to ask why? She is your mother. Your family.”“You are my family now,” I say. “You and your brothers, Darrick…Imogen is not a good person.”“No vampire is.”“But she enjoys it, Aldric,” I say. "She enjoys hurting people, killing them...she's a complete psychopath."He shoves his hands in his pockets and kicks at a random rock. “Darling, when you were in the bloodlust, you enjoyed it too.”“And I hated myself for it when I woke up.” The memory of a young slave women screaming, begging me to stop, pops into my head and tears well in my eyes. “I still…think about it and wish I could go back and stop myself.”“If we killed every vampire that enjoys murder, we’d never stop killing.”“Herod told me that back in the day…vampires like her would be beheaded or thrown in the howling pits.”Aldric’s eyes narrow at me. “How bad is sh

Aldric's POV“You were supposed to wait,” Simone says as she follows me down the path that leads to the beach. “Baron was supposed to give back my memories before you killed him.”She’s spitting mad at me, but I seized the opportunity while I had it and killed the old overlord before he caught wind of the plan and went into hiding.He was always very good at sniffing out a plot, and even though I wanted to help my bride to get her memories back, I decided to listen to my new instincts instead, and they were screaming at me to kill Baron right away. “I know, and I’m sorry, but honestly Simone, after everything…do you want those memories in your head? You don't know what happened, what they'll do to you.”“They’re my memories!” she says. “I deserve to know what really happened to me.”“What happened to you?” Imogen asks sarcastically. “What about me? You were treated like a princess, protected from the vampires even from birth. Me, I was a brood mare for them.”“Oh don’t be so fucking d

Simone's POV “This actually explains a lot,” Aldric says. “Why?” “Sargon was an orphan that founded the Akkadian empire. A man that ambitious…sooner or later, he’ll want to get all of that back. Living a life in the shadows, unknown and unseen...that would never be good enough for a man like that. Baron wanted nothing less than absolute rule over everything and everyone.” “What happened to him? Sargon, I mean.” Aldric shrugs. “According to history he died around the age of fifty-five, but he might have been younger. Humans weren’t good at tracking the passage of time back then.” “He didn’t die, he was turned into a vampire,” I state. “Yeah.” “To get more power.” Aldric peers at me through the fringe of hair that flops over his eyes. “Probably…and what he got was a life of darkness and secrecy.” “I created him when he was about twenty-five,” Herod says from nowhere. Aldric and I both look up to stare at the vampire at the foot of the stairs. "In human years, he was sixty-five

Simone's POVI inhale sharply as the world is suddenly ripped out from under me and we’re sucked into nothingness. For a moment, we linger in complete darkness, then the cosmos opens up in front of us.The sight of it almost brings me to tears. All the stars and moons, all the colours of the universe are in full display like a Van Gogh painting. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, and I've never felt so at peace with myself.We fall out of universe and land back on earth. My head spinning a little by how quickly everything happened. “They can’t see or hear us,” Athenia says as we walk up to something that resembles a house.The mud structure has a grass roof, and orange light flickers in the small niches along the wall. Without thinking twice, Athenia pushes the rickety door open and kneels next to a labouring woman lying on a pile of straw covered with rough fabric. Blood streams down the woman's legs, colouring the straw red. The only light is coming from the blocked hearth. The

Aldric’s POVVesper lands first, followed by Lazarus and Hagar who have Ruth between them. “Did you bind her with magic?”“No,” Vesper answers. “She came willingly.”“Did she? And you weren’t afraid that she’d try to escape?”“No,” Vesper lifts and drops one shoulder. “She talks about her destiny and Athenia a lot.”“Yes. Our sister is the one that freed her.”No one looks surprised by this news. I'm guessing Ruth already told them.Simone walks out onto the porch and runs straight to Vesper, launching herself into my brother’s arms. He snatches her out of the air and spins her around in a little circle. “Hello, Poppet,” he says with a grin. “You are growing up way too fast.”I glance at the pair. He’s not wrong. Simone is quickly shedding her neophyte skin – it’s too fast and it bothers me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. All vampires mature at different rates, and Simone chose to express way.Lazarus comes over to say his hellos while Hagar stays next to Ruth just in case she