"You have thirty days," the doctor said. Seraphina Novak heard "thirty chances to feel alive."
At twenty-six, Seraphina should be planning her future. Instead, she's planning her funeral. An inoperable brain tumor has given her one month to live—thirty days to check off a bucket list she wrote in despair: Fall in love. Experience passion. Feel something other than fear.
She never expected the universe to grant her wish in the cruelest way possible.
On the night of the autumn equinox, Seraphina is chosen as the annual sacrificial bride to Prince Lucien Nightshade—the immortal vampire prince of Valthoria, a hidden kingdom where the undead rule and humans are nothing more than blood bags and breeding stock. For five hundred years, the treaty has held: one human bride per year in exchange for the vampires staying hidden from the mortal world.
Lucien Nightshade is everything the legends promised and worse. Devastatingly beautiful with silver eyes that see through every lie, a voice like dark honey that could charm angels into falling, and a smile that promises both pleasure and pain. He's brilliant, ruthless, and notorious for his shameless seduction of anyone who catches his interest.
But Lucien doesn't want Seraphina.
In fact, he hates her with a passion that burns hotter than desire. He refuses to touch her, to consummate their blood bond, to spend even a single night in her chambers. He makes it clear: she's a duty he never wanted, a reminder of a past that destroyed him, and the moment the year is up, she'll be free to leave—if she survives that long.
For Seraphina, it's the ultimate irony. She has one month left to live, and the one man she's bound to would rather see her gone than grant her dying wish for intimacy and connection.
Except... something doesn't add up.
The way Lucien's eyes track her across every room, burning with something that looks like hunger.
The way he appears whenever danger threatens, his body shielding hers before he remembers he's supposed to hate her.
The way his hand trembles that one time he touched her face, before he pulled away like she'd burned him.

Seraphina stands in the ritual chamber, newly vampire, her entire body screaming with power and change. And the first thing she sees is the woman Lucien loved for five hundred years.


"Arianne," Lucien whispers, like the name itself is a prayer and a curse.


Arianne steps forward. She's beautiful in a way that makes Seraphina's new vampire eyes ache. Pale skin. Dark hair. Eyes that glow with ancient power. She looks exactly like the paintings. Exactly like the ghost Lucien has been mourning.


But there's something wrong. Her eyes don't move right. Her movements are stiff. Controlled.


"She's not alive," Seraphina realizes. "She's been turned into something else."


"A thrall," Viktor says from the doorway. He's enjoying this. "Arianne has served me for two hundred years. She's far more useful than she ever was with you, Lucien."


Lucien doesn't respond. He's staring at Arianne with an expression Seraphina can't read.


Chapter 24 - The Preparation