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AVAILABLE: Thursday, June 25th
~Editor's Pick~
After escaping a brutal vampire blood ring, Briana is trying to reclaim her life, but healing is messy, and safety is an illusion. Haunted by trauma and hunted for secrets in her blood.
Briana finds solace and unexpected desire in Knox, a Minotaur shifter fighting his own demons.
As they unravel a web of power, cruelty, and forbidden magic, Briana must decide if she can trust herself, and her monstrous protector, not just to survive, but to fight back.
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I don’t sleep after Knox tells me I am his mate.
That would require my brain to be reasonable, and apparently, my brain has resigned from service.
I lie in bed with the blankets pulled to my waist, staring at the same cracked ceiling I have counted every night since Aldron gave me this apartment. Seven cracks. Eight, if I count the small one above the window. I know them too well. They are familiar now, which is both pathetic and comforting.
My mate.
The words sit inside me like something alive. Not a chain, not a collar, and not ownership. At least, that’s what Knox said.
The bond doesn’t give me rights over you. It doesn’t make your body mine. It doesn’t turn ‘no’ into ‘yes’.
I close my eyes, and the roof comes back in pieces. Brooklyn air. Knox sitting because I asked. His face beneath my palm. The way he trembled when I touched him, like I had placed my hand on a wound and a prayer at the same time.
I like touching you. I said that. Out loud. To a Minotaur shifter who looks like he could break doors by frowning at them.
My body should regret it, but it doesn’t, and that might be the strangest part.
My body regrets plenty. It regrets closed rooms, red velvet, sweet smoke, footsteps behind me, and hands moving too fast. It regrets sleep. It regrets mirrors some mornings. It regrets the sound of certain laughter before my mind even knows why.
But Knox’s hand on my wrist? His thumb over my pulse? His forehead against mine? There’s no regret. Fear, yes. Confusion, absolutely. Heat, definitely. But not regret.
I roll onto my side and glare at the dark room.
“Traitor,” I mutter to my body.
A soft knock sounds at the door, and I grab the knife beneath my pillow before thought finishes forming. The knock comes again.
“Briana?” Ari calls. “It’s me. I come bearing snacks, emotional damage, and zero judgment.”
I lower the knife and exhale. “That sounds unlikely.”
“Fine. Light judgment. But lovingly.”
I push out of bed and cross the room. When I open the door, Ari stands in the hallway wearing purple sleep shorts, a yellow sweater, and fuzzy socks with tiny dragons on them. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a pink mess, and she holds a paper bag in one hand.
Behind her, Akasha lifts two cups of tea. Of course, there’s tea.
“There are two of you,” I say.
Ari nods gravely. “We travel in packs when men are being emotionally constipated.”
Akasha smiles. “Also, we heard pacing.”
I look down at my bare feet. “I wasn’t pacing.”
Ari glances past me at the carpet. “Your floor disagrees.”
