Chapter 1

"As long as we spray on some perfume, we'll be no different from regular humans. Vampire hunters will never be able to smell us!"

Claire's voice echoed through the living room.

I jerked my eyes open, my vision snapping into focus.

The harsh light from the crystal chandelier stabbed at my eyes.

I wasn't dead?

Just a second ago, I'd been nailed to the spiked cross of a vampire hunter family.

The moment the first ray of dawn touched my skin, my flesh had burned to ash.

The agony of having my soul torn apart alive still lingered at the edges of my nerves.

And the people behind all of it were the very "family" I had once loved like my own—and the man I had once loved, Arthur.

"Avira, what the hell is wrong with you?" Arthur's voice, cold and dripping with disgust, yanked me back to reality.

He shielded Claire behind him and glared at me. "Claire was kind enough to prepare disguises for all of us. She wanted to show us the outside world, and that's the look you give her? Do you have to ruin everything for everyone?"

I looked around the room. Leo, Maya, and all those kids who had once been dying of sickness and starvation on the streets, kneeling before me and begging for the immortal blood I gave them, were now all standing behind Arthur and Claire. They stared at me like I was the monster.

"Claire's right. There are plenty of ancient texts in hunter territory. Why shouldn't we go?"

"Avira's always like this. Figures for some vampire who's lived for centuries—she's nothing but a cold-blooded monster with no heart!"

Cold-blooded monster.

Listening to these accusations from the so-called family I had personally dragged back from death and raised with my own blood and care, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.

This was exactly how it happened in my previous life.

Claire, a human girl emboldened by Arthur's favor, had insisted on dragging the entire clan into vampire hunter territory for an "adventure." I knew perfume could never cover the scent of vampire blood. To protect them, I did everything I could to stop them. I even forced Claire back home. But to prove to Arthur how "evil" I was, she ran into hunter territory alone and ended up dead. And Arthur—the vampire I had personally turned—for the sake of avenging Claire, actually staged his own capture to lure me into hunter headquarters, where he stood there and watched those lunatics skin me alive, hack me apart, and leave me under the sun until I burned into ash. When I died, they even popped champagne beside my ashes.

"Do whatever you want," I said coldly.

Arthur froze for a second, clearly not expecting that response.

"Do you even know what that means? If you want to go get yourselves killed," I said, looking at them with a mocking curl of my lips, "the door's right there. Get the hell out. But I'm not going with you."

Go ahead. Go make your own bed and lie in it. Go find out for yourselves how a hunter's silver blade feels when it opens your throat.

Claire's eyes instantly turned red.

She grabbed Arthur's sleeve, her voice trembling with fake hurt. "Avira, did I do something to upset you? If you don't come, our family won't be whole... Everyone's going to be disappointed."

"Don't listen to her, Claire!" Arthur shot me a disgusted look. "She's a selfish monster. She doesn't know the first thing about what family means!"

I felt nauseous just looking at them, so I turned and headed upstairs, missing the flash of venomous calculation in Claire's eyes.

Late that night.

I was just about to close my eyes when a violent spasm twisted through my stomach. A searing pain exploded through my entire body in an instant.

"Ugh—!" I curled up in agony, cold sweat soaking the sheets at once. Vampires do not get sick. Unless... something had gone wrong with my blood supply.

Before I could even get up, the bedroom door was kicked open.

Arthur stormed in with several others. Without a word, he grabbed me by the hair and dragged my weakened body off the bed and onto the floor.

"Tie her up. Get her in the car!"

"Arthur, what are you doing?!" I fought with everything I had, but the unnatural burning inside me had drained every ounce of strength from my body. Leo and Maya stepped forward and wrapped heavy iron chains soaked in vervain tightly around me. The second my skin touched the vervain, it let out a sharp sizzle.

Even Claire stood in the doorway watching me, a cold smirk on her lips.

They dragged me all the way outside and threw me hard into the back seat of an SUV.

"Arthur! Have you lost your mind?!" I gritted through the pain and kicked him hard in the chest.

"You're the one who's lost it!" Arthur snapped, enraged. He lunged at me, both hands clamping down on my shoulders. A savage red gleam burned in his eyes. "Claire was right. If you won't go, then you're betraying all of us! You damn control freak—whether you want to or not, you're going!"

The moment the words left his mouth, Arthur twisted hard with both hands—

Crack!

"Ahhh!!!"

A shrill scream tore out of me as Arthur snapped both my arms clean in two.

Then he tossed my broken arms out of the car like trash.