Chapter One
The sound of the waves rolling onto the beach was like a lullaby to Melody and the sinking sun on the horizon was warm, buttery, and indulgent. For a few minutes, at least, she didn't have to think about real life.
Here, she was free. She was a beach bum learning to surf with all the other beach bums in Malibu. The room she was renting from some studio exec was well worth the extra expense she paid for the location. She was anonymous. She was alone. She was safe, for now.
She hadn’t talked to her older sister Ember in nearly six weeks. She and her now-husband Kai had been married on the Arkos family island just off Greece two weeks ago, and although Melody was sad to have missed it, she wasn’t ready to come out of hiding just yet. Or ever, maybe.
Her eccentric, simple life back in the mountains had been dumped on its head just about two months ago when that Greek alpha vampire showed up in Devil’s Folly and declared Ember was his mate. Of course, neither sister had believed him at first—either about the whole “mated for eternity” thing or even the vampire thing if Melody were being truthful. But then the New Dawn whackos showed up and bullets and mayhem followed them.
Turned out that Ember and Melody Terzi were descended from a long, royal line of vampires, too. Their father had fallen in love with a mortal and had forgone his right to turn into an immortal and chosen to emigrate to America, open a Podunk bar in a Podunk town and raise his daughters to be somewhat normal.
Ha, Melody thought to herself as the warm water caressed her feet. Normal. What a pipe dream that had been.
Ember had chosen to be with her mate, Kai, and Melody had been supportive. But she wasn’t about to live that sort of life herself and before anyone got any funny ideas about “protecting her for her own good” or some such nonsense, Melody had booked it out of Devil’s Folly before anyone was the wiser.
She was living off the money she’d earned working at the ski lodge as a chef over the winter and it was enough to keep her comfortable for at least a few more months. Then maybe they’d forget about her long enough to get their own lives going so Melody could go back to calling her sister every few weeks when she needed something.
The religious nuts. The vampirism. None of that was nearly as intimidating as that giant Viking-looking lug named Aksel who had been her personal babysitter when the shit hit the fan. Her attraction to him had been swift and strong and when they’d finally spent that night (and a half, well into the next morning), she’d been certain they had both gotten each other and the strange feelings she had out of her system.
So why did she dream about all ten of Aksel’s abs each night when she was trying to drift off to sleep? Why did every tall blonde in a crowd make her heart race? Why did she wonder if he was safe at least three times a day?
Hookup remorse, she’d told herself. Nothing more than good-old-fashioned one-night-stand-shame.
The sun was setting now and Melody knew she’d need to start trekking home to make herself something to eat. She’d been ravenous the week or so and she worried that at this rate, she’d eat herself out of her emergency savings by the weekend.
Chuckling, she pushed herself to her feet and let out a huge yawn. Being on the run was exhausting.
Two days later, after three mornings of not being able to hold down her breakfast, Melody found herself holding a plastic pink stick with a magic, life-altering plastic window in her shaking hands. The box had said to wait at least five minutes after peeing on the test strip before expecting results, but Melody hadn’t been able to put the damn thing down.
She was crazy. It was all in her head. There was no way she’d gotten pregnant from that one single night of amazing sex with Aksel.
Was there?
On the way to the drugstore, she’d played out every possible scenario of what could possibly be going on. She had hoped for food poisoning. Dehydration would have worked and she even stopped in a convenience store and bought water to chug. She even considered the fact that she was having a kundalini awakening.
At the counter, she’d kept her gaze lowered as the teenaged clerk rang up her double pack of pregnancy tests. Sullenly paying for them, she walked slowly out the door and trudged back to her rented room, hoping for some sort of miracle.
A pregnancy was the last thing she needed right now.
Now, standing with the test in her hands, her heart raced as she saw the faint blue lines start to form. When the third line began to solidify, she felt faint. It was really happening. It was really, really telling her that she was pregnant with Aksel’s baby—and she didn’t even know his last name. It’d been something Scandinavian, she had guessed, when she heard her brother-in-law Kai say it once.
Groaning, she leaned against the wall of the bathroom and slowly slid down to the floor in a heap.
This was more than just complicated—this was downright insane.
More than anything right now, Melody wanted to call her big sister and freak out. She needed Ember to tell her that everything was going to be okay.
Instead, Melody curled up around her pillow in a rented house in a brand new town and cried herself to sleep. Alone.