With candles burning all around her, and the lights turned off, Ruby felt like she was about to be sacrificed in some weird cult ritual, which wasn’t exactly that far off the mark. She was standing in the middle of her new living room, in a house she had shared with Harlan for the past six months.

He was smiling down at her, brushing her hair to one side, green eyes sparkling in the flickering candlelight.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, as Ruby’s heart started beating faster.

“I’m not. I’m excited,” she insisted.

Harlan arched a brow at her, his silent way of saying he knew her better than that by now.

“Alright, I’m a little scared. Just because I don’t know what to expect,” Ruby admitted. “I know what you’ve told me, but there’s no way you could actually describe what it feels like.”

“It will be a little overwhelming at first. Your senses will heighten extremely fast, hence the candlelight. We don’t want to overstimulate you right off the bat,” Harlan replied, the calmness of his voice already taking some of the edge off for Ruby. “It can be uncomfortable, but there will be no pain. And I’ll be here, every step of the way.”

Ruby took in a deep breath. This was what she wanted, after all, and she wasn’t going to turn back now. The last months with Harlan had been amazing as they’d gotten to know each other, and she had gotten to know more about how the vampire world worked.

It turned out, most of the vampires she met at the clubs and bars in New York weren’t jerks at all. Actually, they were nice, ordinary people who just happened to be immortal and feed off human blood.

So, Lucinda was a bitch because she just is a bitch, not because she’s a vampire, Ruby thought to herself.

There were the occasional troublemakers, of course, but as a former cop, that wasn’t anything new or anything she couldn’t handle. In fact, after she and Harlan took down Grant together, Julius had brought up something very interesting.

Since Harlan already had experience in tracking down rogue vampires from his days of working with Julius, and Ruby had law enforcement experience, Julius had hinted at the possibility of the two of them making a job out of keeping the peace between vampires and humans.

Ruby had thought the idea farfetched at first, but then she had started to wonder. She was looking to do something new after her injury ended her police career, and protecting people was something that was in her blood. Could it be that fate had plopped a whole new opportunity to do that in her lap?

And then there was the fact that it didn’t take her and Harlan long to realize they were madly in love with each other. She was sure she wanted to spend her life with him, and suddenly, her human lifespan was starting to look very short and inadequate.

With all those things combined, the decision to have Harlan turn her had ended up being a simple one. She wanted to spend an eternity with him while also being an equal partner with him as they strove to make sure humans weren’t mistreated at the hands of vampires.

After that realization, the fact that the nerve damage in her arm would instantly heal after she was turned was just a bonus.

Things had been moving so fast between her and Harlan, but nothing ever felt rushed. The bond between them was just too strong to even think about taking things slow. Even the fact that she would eventually have to distance herself from her current life didn’t deter her.

Since aging would no longer be an issue after being turned, Ruby would have to break away from her friends so as not to make them suspicious when they started getting gray hairs and wrinkles and she stayed the same.

Leaving Mark behind after all he had done for her stung, but she knew a life with Harlan would outweigh any of the sacrifices she would have to make. At least Mark hadn’t gotten into trouble for taking that silver net out of evidence, as Julius had returned it to lock-up without anyone even being the wiser.

Harlan’s Maker had stayed in contact with them over these past months, after taking Grant into custody and shipping the man back to Romania. The royal families wanted to get everything they could out of Grant, since there was the possibility even more of Greene’s former goons were roaming around New York as newly minted vampires, with no idea about what the rules were.

From what Julius had told them, Grant had been pumped for all the information he had before being publicly decapitated as a warning to anyone else looking to go down the same path.

To say that Ruby felt no sympathy for Grant would be an understatement. She was just glad that chapter of her life was over, and that she was now free to start a new one.

“I’m ready,” Ruby said, taking a deep breath.

“Then just relax,” Harlan whispered, leaning closer to her, and making her heart beat faster for an entirely different reason.

His hands trailed up and down her arms as he started gently kissing along her jawline, and Ruby couldn’t help but tremble. Harlan always knew just the right buttons to push with her, and she loved every second of it.

Wrapping his arms around her, he carefully kissed her neck, tracing the scars there with his lips until Ruby felt more like a pile of jelly than a person. So when Harlan finally sank his teeth into her neck, she barely even felt it.

A familiar warmth spread all throughout her body as he drank from her, deeper than he ever had before. Her knees buckled as she let him hold her upright, feeling safe and loved in his arms.

Just when her vision was starting to grow blurry and her head lolled back, Harlan pulled away and sat her down on the floor, pulling her into his lap. He bit into his own wrist next, before pressing the bloody wound to her lips.

Ruby knew what she had to do as she latched on, drawing Harlan’s blood into her mouth. It tasted bad, at first, metallic and bitter. But as time went on, it became sweet, tantalizing, life-giving, to the point she was hanging off his harm, desperate for more.

“Shh, shh,” he cooed, gently disentangling her from his wrist and holding her tight. “Let it ride out.”

Ruby felt her muscles stiffen as her head started to spin. For a brief moment, her whole body was on fire, before a cool sensation swept over her. Her eyes fluttered shut and then open, with everything around her in sharper focus than she had ever seen before.

There was a power flowing through her now, the dizziness gone, replaced by a feeling of invincibility. When she looked up at Harlan, he looked even more handsome than before, with every detail of his face so clear, it almost made her feel like crying.

Reaching up, she ran a hand down the side of her neck, used to feeling raised, scarred skin there, but finding smooth skin instead. And when she effortlessly clenched her right hand into a fist, she knew she was changed forever.

“Harlan,” she whispered, running a hand down the side of his face. “This is amazing.”

“My little gem,” he smiled at her. “This is just the beginning.”