Saxson Olaru swept his hand through his hair in an absent gesture, threw back his head, and laughed. “Inquisitorium?” he teased. “That isn’t a word.”

Kyla smiled. “Sure it is.” She tapped the Scrabble board and laughed.

Saxson leaned forward from his lazy perch on the living room rug and stared at his destiny intently—she was quite the spitfire, this female. “I’m really sure it isn’t.”

Kyla snatched a nearby pencil and began to count the points, ready to tally them on her notepad.

“Give me the definition,” Saxson demanded, still chuckling.

Kyla shrugged. “Inquisitorium: a place one goes to ask a lot of questions.” This time, she was the one who laughed.

The sound of her cell phone ringing in Saxson’s pocket brought them both up short. “Are you going to let me check my messages?” she asked in a semi-sheepish voice.

Saxson thought about it…

He could do better…

He would do better.

She had given him no reason not to trust her.

Thus far, since pre-dawn Monday morning, when he had taken her phone away, she had remained completely acquiescent. She hadn’t objected when he had called his brother Santos and given him Kyla’s address, asking him to break into her apartment, pack a suitcase full of her things, and leave them in Saxson’s doorway. She had perused the online catalogue, purchasing everything else she might need, for next-day delivery. And she had allowed him to keep her phone…just as a precaution…until they grew to trust each other more. She had even agreed to leave messages, implicitly dictated by Saxson, with her various friends and family, later in the week, so her absence wouldn’t spark any suspicion.

And as for her job?

Well, that wasn’t going to be an issue.

Apparently, Kyla had some strange sort of arrangement with a private investigation firm in Denver. She was a gopher of sorts, a jack of all trades, conducting research, taking photographs, staking out persons of interest on behalf of lucrative clients—she swore she wouldn’t be missed. Her boss, whom she’d never met in person, paid her a monthly salary as a direct deposit into her bank account, regardless of the amount of work she did or didn’t do. And he issued directives, which she referred to as orders, missions, or spur-of-the-moment assignments, via email or text as various jobs popped up.

It sounded shady as hell, but Saxson wasn’t that concerned.

He could—and would—trace the monthly deposits back to their owner, look into the firm, and eliminate any threat to Kyla, any underhanded dealings (or dealers), once they had moved beyond the Blood Moon. Right now, they had much more pressing issues, and Kyla was safe in Saxson’s care.

He withdrew the phone from his pocket and glanced briefly at the screen. “It’s a text, not a call,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Someone named Owen.”

She licked her bottom lip and waited.

“You can read it, but you can’t reply—not unless you’re willing to show me what you’ve typed before you send…” He cocked one shoulder in a gesture of apology. “I’m sorry, love; I just can’t take that chance right now. We’re not there…yet.”

Kyla swallowed hard, sucking up any possible retort, her throat visibly constricting. “I understand,” she said in a monotone voice, reaching out to take the phone.

Saxson placed it in her palm and waited while she swiped the screen, entered her password, and read the text…a very, very long text…twice. “Everything okay?” he asked, once she had finally finished.

She quickly closed the screen, turned off the phone, and handed it back to Saxson. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”

“You sure?”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m positive.”

Saxson flashed his sexiest smile. “Who’s Owen?” He would be remiss not to ask, especially if Kyla had some sort of…entanglement…before the vampire had claimed her. If so, they would need to address it…discuss it…take care of it.

Kyla shrugged, appearing indifferent. “Oh, Owen? He’s just a colleague of mine, a guy I work with. He’s on vacation in New Zealand, and he was just telling me everywhere he’s been, everything he’s done, everything he’s seen. He tends to be a little wordy.” She smiled sweetly, and then she sighed. “Saxson…”

He raised his brows.

“Considering everything that has happened, everything you have told me, all the…adjustments…we both have to make, this should really be the other way around. You should be reassuring me, trying to win my trust, making every moment easier…for both of us.”

“Kyla—”

“Wait.” She held up her hand. “Let me get this out. If there’s an elephant in the room, we may as well address it. Saxson,” she repeated his name in a no-nonsense tone, “what can I do to earn your trust?”

Saxson rolled lazily from his side to his back, executing an effortless sit-up with the strength of his muscular abs. He grasped Kyla by both hands and fell back into a prone position, bringing her with him, settling her on top of his chest. And then he wrapped his arms around her and met her seeking gaze. Her startled gasp did not escape his attention, but it didn’t deter him, either—he was committed to trying harder, and now was as good a time as any. “You can admit that inquisitorium is not a word,” he whispered huskily, tunneling his hand in her hair, tilting her head forward, and bringing her mouth to his…

And then he kissed her.

Languid.

Hungry.

Deep.

Coaxing her response with his tongue.

Kyla shivered beneath his ministrations, her hands pressing back against his chest, but she didn’t pull away from his embrace. Rather, she deepened the contact and moaned into his mouth, almost as if she couldn’t help it.

Saxson swept his hands along the curve of her hips, up along the narrow of her waist, and just below her breasts, where his thumbs rested, erotically, beneath the natural swell. Her chest heaved with increasingly ragged breaths, and more than a little trepidation. He didn’t raise his hand any further; he just allowed the moment to linger. When she finally pulled away, he brushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled. “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, Kyla. You are my destiny, and I want this to work—I need this to work—more than you will ever know.”

* * *

Kyla Sparrow struggled to get a grip.

To stop the room from spinning, her knees from quaking, and her libido from taking off and leaping.

The vampire’s hands were pure magic.

His voice was unadulterated silk.

And his kiss—that kiss—holy shit.

She had never experienced anything like it.

But she wasn’t there to play Scrabble or to make out on the living room floor. She had told Saxson the truth, at least partially, about Owen texting—mostly, because he had already seen Owen’s first name. Although the vampire-hunter’s contact information was not in her database, Saxson’s question had given her a moment’s pause.

A girl couldn’t be too careful.

In fact, the moment he had mentioned his brother Santos retrieving her personal items from her Denver apartment, she had immediately taken a mental inventory in her head:

Any pictures of herself and Kiera, together, in the living room or bedroom?

Nope.

Check that off the list.

Any vampire-hunting materials lying around, any books on Romania, ancient civilizations, or articles on Dark Moon Vale?

Not a one.

She was safe.

And now…

Now she had to keep her head about her.

She had to control her emotions as well as her libido.

“I have to use the restroom,” she whispered, wincing in feigned apology. “But I’ll be right back.”

Saxson nodded and turned her loose, watching as she walked away, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking: A vampire’s instincts were powerful, and she knew there had to be a war raging inside his brain. Centuries of indoctrination, a lifetime awaiting one woman, pledging his soul to his destiny, waiting for that singular fate. And the reality of Kyla, an imposter, someone he didn’t quite trust—something he couldn’t quite name—had to be causing an internal conflict between his conditioning and those heightened instincts.

Meanwhile, Kyla was trying to navigate it all, stay one step ahead of Saxson’s angst.

The deep, blood-level connection wasn’t there, and he knew it—or he felt it—but every bone in his vampiric body was committed to claiming their love, to fulfilling his Blood Moon and the ancient Curse, to surviving beyond the month.

Kyla shut the bathroom door behind her, sat down on the closed porcelain lid, and tried to catch her breath. This was so much harder than she had anticipated—every moment was like Russian roulette, dodging a possible bullet she might never see coming.

She pressed her fingers to her temples and tried to concentrate on what mattered most.

What mattered next.

Owen’s text.

He had figured out that there was something going on with her phone when she no longer messaged him, and he had fallen back on their years of training, just as they had both been taught: The text was, in fact, about a vacation in New Zealand, replete with meaningless facts and descriptions, thick with a make-believe, getaway itinerary, yet it was all done with precise deliberation.

Every third word was a clue.

Every randomized CAP was a letter in a name.

Every semi-colon, where a comma would do just fine, meant to take the word as a whole and construct it with the next, sequential semi-colon in order to form a sentence.

There were half a dozen codes embedded in that message.

Did Kyla possess a photographic memory?

No, she did not.

But she possessed something even more important: hundreds of hours of practice, developing speed and proficiency over many years. Reading—and decoding—similar messages, until she could do it as a knee-jerk reaction.

The first time she’d read Owen’s text, she had lifted a list of random names, denoting various vampires’ children: Nathaniel’s son, Storm; Marquis’s son, Nikolai; Nachari’s son, Sebastian; Kagen’s son, Ryder; and their corresponding mothers: Jocelyn, Ciopori, Deanna, and Arielle. The Silivasi children were Kyla’s primary targets, along with a vampire named Braden; any of their deaths would be a great honor. Whereas, Saxson’s death would take care of itself—it would be a forgone conclusion—as long as Owen and Travis kept Kiera.

Kyla trembled, almost uncontrollably, keenly aware of the dangerous, lethal being no more than two hundred yards away, waiting for her to return to the living room.

She was playing such a dangerous game…

But it didn’t matter.

Nothing else mattered.

This was the moment, the situation she had been born for.

Somehow—some way—she needed to find out who these vampires were; she needed to get the women and the children together in one room; and—she recoiled as she acknowledged the revelation—she had to prepare for her own inevitable death.

There was no way she was getting out of Dark Moon Vale alive.

The objective, alone, told her everything Owen didn’t say: Xavier Matista had decided to sacrifice Kyla’s life for the cause, and she had entered the den of lions of her own volition. She hadn’t even given it a second thought.

She bit down on her tongue until the flesh began to bleed.

Could she really go through with such a sacrifice?

A suicide mission?

Jumping up from the toilet, she turned on the cold water and splashed it over her face. Saxson would be growing suspicious if she lingered much longer. Her best bet—her only option—was to take the mission one step at a time.

The next step?

She needed to get a pen and a piece of paper: write down the vampires’ names, and the names of their children, before she forgot. And she needed to hide it somewhere foolproof.

And then…

She needed to convince Saxson Olaru to help her meet a handful of specific destinies, however she pulled it off.