I couldn’t breathe under the scrutiny of Xandru’s piercing gray gaze as we stood motionless staring at each other. Everything about him was mesmerizing, from his high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes to his square jaw and chin. Beautiful, yet too rugged to be called a pretty boy. The light color of his eyes was a bright contrast to his dark hair, dark brows and lashes, and olive skin tone. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, considering the full beard growing in. And while his body was sculpted and chiseled perfectly, his posture always showed a confidence that could be perceived as threatening. Challenging.

But it wasn’t the intense physicality that had seized me heart and soul.

Because the physical being in front of me was not quite what my heart and soul remembered, deep down, the memories, so faint I could barely grasp them, of a younger, less chiseled version. Except for the eyes. They were the giveaway. Especially now as they delved deep, reaching for those vague memories floating way back in the dark, and touching my soul. Showing me his. One I knew. Better than anyone.

He cleared his throat, breaking the connection. “Okay, then. I have a lot to show you. Come with me.”

Blood flushed my face as I took that last phrase in more than one way, especially as he walked past me. I couldn’t help but follow, if only to watch his powerful gait, the way his shoulders moved, his back muscles rippling under his white dress shirt . . . and that ass. Holy guacamole, what a fine ass. Jeans suited him better, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone make black dress pants look so good.

I followed him up the back steps and through the back doors of the inn. We headed toward the front, but instead of going all the way to the lobby, he opened a door and turned into the offices behind the front desk. We passed by a couple of free-standing desks and into the only closed-off room, in the back. I presumed it to be the owner’s or manager’s office.

“Here you go.” He gestured toward the large, wood desk, which was covered with photos, some quite old and others recent, as well as a slew of papers.

My gaze immediately landed on a photo of me—albeit a younger version, dressed in snow pants and ski boots, goggles pushed up on my head and poles in my hand. There were others of me, as well, including one of a woman who looked like a slightly older version of myself, although that was impossible unless this town’s weirdness also included time travel. I walked around the desk for a better look, picked it up and studied it, feeling an unexpected pang of longing for her.

“This must be Michaela,” I murmured. No wonder people mixed me up with her. Similar names and nearly identical appearances. Only the coloring was a little different—her hair darker, her skin tone much lighter.

“Um, no,” Xandru said. “That’s Irina Petran.”

I lifted my gaze to him, confused. “Why do I look so much like her?”

“She’s your mother.”

My eyes swept around the room, but not really seeing anything at all, my focus inward on the facts of my life. “Um . . . come again?”

“Irina Petran is your mother. That—” He pointed to a picture of a somewhat familiar looking man in another photo. “That’s Mihail Petran, your father.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. These are the people who gave me up? Who left me in a dirty little town in Texas with complete strangers who didn’t want me either?”

Xandru’s brows scrunched together, forming two vertical lines between them. They smoothed out almost immediately. “Ah. I think that was the story they told you.”

“Story? Who?”

“Irina and Mihail. Or, more accurately, whoever in the Luna Coven did the amnesia spell.”

I threw the picture back down and cocked my head. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He gnawed on his bottom lip and for a very brief moment, I was quite jealous of that lip. Or the teeth gnawing on it. I wasn’t sure which. Then I came to my senses. I dropped my hands to my hips and tapped my foot.

“Nobody left you in Texas. You’re not Kaela Peters. You’re Michaela Petran, and you’ve always been here in Havenwood Falls, with your parents who loved you very much. So much that they gave up everything so you could go live a normal life and become the great doctor everyone believed you would be. The town’s memory ward wipes away everyone’s memories of Havenwood Falls once they leave, but they wanted to make sure your loss was thorough, that you forgot everything . . . everyone.” His voice caught, and he paused for a moment. “They gave you a history. A sad one, very far from here, that would keep you from ever wanting or even thinking about coming back here.”

“In other words, they didn’t want me,” I whispered as I dropped into the chair behind the desk, my eyes roaming over all the pictures.

“That’s not—”

I looked up at him. “Then why? Why would they send me away to never return and make me forget about them? I was just a child!”

“Because you’re so fucking special.” The sarcasm and anger dripped on the girl’s last word as Aurelia showed herself in the doorway, her dark hair pulled up in a formal twist to go along with the black dress, sheer stockings, and heels she wore, making her look older than her behavior showed. Her brown eyes shot daggers at me. “And you weren’t a child. You were a grown-ass adult.”

“Aurelia,” Xandru said as a warning.

She huffed out an annoyed breath with the expertise of a teenager and shifted her glare to him. “What is she even doing here, Xan? She shouldn’t be here, and neither should you!”

“Someone has to do it,” Xandru said. “And who else would it be? The coven’s all tied up. My parents have no interest, and it’s probably best to keep them away anyway. And you and Gabe are just kids. You can’t take care of this.”

“I’m not a kid!” she said petulantly as she crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her bottom lip out. I wondered if she’d stomp her foot next. “Everyone needs to stop treating me like one!”

Xandru turned, giving her the full force of his glare and that powerful stance. “We will when you stop acting like one. But you’re sixteen, Aurelia. Don’t rush it. Trust me. Being an adult isn’t all that.” He lifted his chin. “Now, if you care at all about your family, you’ll stop acting like a brat and do what needs to be done. Otherwise, go back to the wake.”

“Mingling with a bunch of adults giving me looks of pity and asking me how I’m holding up got old in the first five minutes.”

“Get lost, Aurelia,” Xandru said, in almost a growl.

She narrowed her dark eyes at him as her nostrils flared with each heavy breath she took. This girl had balls. I couldn’t imagine standing up to Xandru at her age. Her eyes finally broke away and slipped to me before she spun on her heel.

“Fuck off, Xandru,” she said under her breath, but I’d heard her. Xandru chuffed, clearly hearing her, too.

As he began to turn around, I had to brace myself, inhaling a slow breath, preparing for the inevitable shock-and-awe that always hit me when I saw his face. His eyes. They still pierced into me with the force of a laser—right to all my girl parts. I tried not to moan on my exhale.

“What did she mean?” I asked once I refocused.

His gaze found mine, and he immediately glanced away again as he pushed a hand through his hair, then rubbed it over his face. As though I unnerved him as much as he did me. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

“You had just turned eighteen and graduated from high school,” he said. “You’d been accepted to Emory University, which you’d been dreaming about attending since you were ten and read about one of their medical research studies. Considering who—what—you are, your parents had two choices: force you to give up the dream and stay here as part of the family and community, or allow you to go, reach your full potential, and live a normal life, but with no memory of them, of anything about your past.”

“What do you mean, what I am? I wasn’t this until a couple of years ago.”

His stunning eyes slammed into me, nailed me to my seat. “Michaela, you’ve always been this.”

“Uh, no. Regardless of what you say about my previous memories, I know the exact day I became a vampire. That is something I will never forget.”

He nodded. “Trust me, I know. But you’ve always been moroi. At least, you’ve always had it in your blood.”

My brows pulled together. “Moroi?”

“You really don’t know any of this? Nobody told you about the moroi?” He blew out a breath when I shook my head. “It’s the type of vampire we are—a mortal vampire. Have you ever met other vamps? You’ve noticed you’re different?”

I hesitated before nodding.

“There are various kinds of what the mundane society, hell, even the covert world, refer to as vampires. We share similarities, but we also have differences. We, for example, are mortal. We’re born human, but with a dominant vampire gene. If our gene is triggered and we turn, we live for hundreds of years, but we’re not immortal. We can die of old age. Our hearts still beat, and if they stop, we die. And we can have children.” He paused for effect. “The human way.”

I flushed at his implication. He smirked.

“And you can still do that,” he murmured with appreciation, and I felt like there was more meaning than I knew in that statement.

“Wait,” I said. “Hold on. You’re saying we and us. You’re a moroi, too?”

He nodded. “A mature one, which means I’ve been turned.”

My gaze dropped to the pictures. “And my parents?”

“They gave you the gene. It has to be triggered before age twenty-one.”

“How?”

“You don’t know how you were turned?” I shook my head again. “You don’t know who turned you?”

“I know nothing. I didn’t even know I was turned until I woke up with a killer thirst and almost killed my fiancé.”

Something flickered in his eyes, but I couldn’t determine what. A darkness. Perhaps a sadness or regret. He scratched his cheek before answering my question. “A moroi is turned by drinking the blood of another, mature moroi. Usually the parents provide their blood in a family ceremony because it strengthens the bond of the bloodline. The blood also passes extra powers and abilities from the source to the recipient.”

“Powers and abilities?” I glanced back up at him and was immediately distracted, so I returned my gaze to the photos.

“The Romanian moroi originated from a sorcerer whose black magic backfired into him and his family. Ever since, the magic manifests in different ways when the gene is triggered. Usually something with the elements. It’s basically a family trait, although there are stories of parents sometimes allowing another’s blood to be given to their child if the source of that blood had a unique power or extra strong ability.”

My brows dipped down as I studied one photo in particular, of the man and woman who were supposedly my parents. Who noticeably hadn’t been around here. The question came out in barely more than a whisper. “And if it’s not triggered by twenty-one?”

“The child goes on to live a completely normal, human life, able to marry a human, have children whose genes are dormant and don’t need to be triggered, and grow old with their mates. And the moroi parents and the entire bloodline behind them . . . they die. As though their bodies slowly return to human, and their true age catches up, eventually killing them over time.”

Unexpected tears blurred my vision, and I blinked several times to keep them at bay. “They’re . . . gone?”

He didn’t answer at first. He strode around the side of the desk, turned my chair, and dropped into a squat in front of me so he could look me in the eye. Trepidation filled his expression. “Your father passed a few years ago. Your mother a little over a year ago. And Mammie . . .”

“Madame Luiza?” I gasped.

“Your aunt.”

My hand clamped over my mouth as my head shook. “No. This can’t be true. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t even remember them!”

“Are you sure?”

My eyes closed as I inhaled a jagged breath. The visions I’d been trying so hard to repress since arriving in this town started pushing through. The sob escaped me.

“I wasn’t turned in time! Why? Why would they do that?”

“They all wanted the best life for you, even knowing it would kill them.”

I choked on another repressed sob. “Why couldn’t I have that here? With them?”

He paused, and when I looked up at him, the trepidation was gone, now filled with sadness. “They believed Havenwood Falls, and the people here, were not the best life for you.”

“I don’t understand. This was our life. My life. Right? How could they think sending me away, forcing me to go off completely on my own, embedded with memories of a false past . . . how was that the best life for me? No family, no friends. If they wanted me to stay human, why couldn’t I do that here? Or at least be able to come back, memories intact? Life intact?”

His eyes darkened, and he looked away. “They said it was too risky. You were more likely to be turned here. You’d want to be turned.”

I didn’t understand the problem. I mean, I wished I wasn’t a vampire, but being a moroi sounded not quite as horrible—I could still have children, a dream I’d given up—especially if this really was my heritage. My family. And, more importantly, they’d still be alive. On the other hand, I knew too well that I’d never choose this life and the insatiable, murderous thirst that came with it, no matter how well controlled.

“Why would I do that?” I asked. “I mean, besides to save them, but obviously that was never a choice given to me. So why else would I choose to turn and give up the normal life they wanted for me? That I must have wanted so badly?”

His gaze came back to me, and our eyes collided. “For me.”

I had no response. I could hardly think, especially the more intense his stare became. Capturing me. Swallowing me. Claiming me. My lungs began to burn and scream for air because I couldn’t breathe, so lost in his gaze and his words and their meaning.

I gasped and broke the connection, turning away, looking everywhere but at him. A wave of emotions began to build—emotions I wasn’t ready to take on yet. This was too much. All of it too much.

“I . . . I can’t,” I finally said on a soft breath as I stared at the desk in front of me. But the rest of the words, of what I wanted to say, failed to form, to come out. I can’t applied to just about everything at the moment. I couldn’t think, speak, and while I could probably feel, I really didn’t want to.

Xandru blew out a harsh breath and stood. He walked back around the desk and turned. “Well, then, I can’t either.”

And with that, he strode out and away.

Finally able to breathe again, I sagged over with my elbows on the desk and my head in my hands. What just happened?

“Xandru?” Addie’s voice came from the door that led back out to the lobby.

“I can’t do this,” he growled before the sound of his heavy footsteps carried across the wood floor of the lobby and out the door.

My fingers curled into my hair and rubbed into my temples as I drew in several breaths. Addie entered the room, but I didn’t look up. Instead I stared at the contents of the desk under my elbows. A piece of bank stationery caught my eye, and my focus narrowed in on the letter.

“What the hell?” I straightened up and pulled the piece of paper out from under the photos, then read the full letter. Addie silently took off her coat, seeming not to mind that I hadn’t acknowledged her yet. When I finished, I looked up as she tugged at her black miniskirt before sitting in the chair in front of me. She was sans glasses today, and her light brown hair was down, spread out over the shoulders of her gray blouse. I held the piece of paper up. “Do you know anything about this? Particularly this part right here?”

I pointed to the name Michaela Petran, which supposedly was mine. Which part of me had already come to accept was mine—the part that dared to acknowledge the visions that had been floating around my head for days as actual memories. My memories. Buried but returning from the grave.

“Hello to you, too.” Addie gave the letter a quick read and shrugged. “It’s a transfer of ownership of the inn to you.”

“Obviously. But why?

Her caramel brows lifted. “Because it’s been in your family forever. You’re the next in line. Why do you think Mammie worked so hard to get you back here? Aurelia and Gabe are certainly too young.”

“Wait. What?”

“How much did Xan tell you?”

I blinked, then shook my head and waved a hand in the air, as though I could shoo away those last few minutes between him and me. “Obviously not everything. He told me who my parents were. That they’re gone. That Madame Luiza was my aunt. That they didn’t want to trigger my gene, even when it meant they’d die.”

She nodded. “Your parents owned the inn. Mammie’s been taking caring of it since they passed. As best as she could, anyway. Aurelia and Gabe, too . . . as best as she could. I think she’d been hanging on to wait for your return.”

My chest tightened at the thought of Madame Luiza trying to do so much. Then Addie’s meaning really sunk in. And the hits keep on comin’.

“Aurelia and Gabe . . . ?”

“Your sister and brother.”

I sat back in my chair and blew out a long breath. That bratty little bitch was my sister? But I began to understand. “She hates me. And I can’t blame her.”

“She’s a teenager. Remember when we were that age—oh, no, I guess you don’t.” She smiled sadly. “You will soon. For some people, the memories return as soon as they’re back within the town’s ward. For others, it takes time. And the spell they put on you was so strong. It may be a while.”

“We were friends,” I blurted. Although no memories of that had surfaced, I knew we had some kind of connection.

Her smile brightened a little. “Practically sisters. Besties forever.” She sighed. “Until your parents decided forever was over for us. For you. And—” She looked over her shoulder, toward the door, and she didn’t have to finish her thought.

“I’m not ready for that. For him.” My eyes once again traveled over the desk. “There’s just . . . so much.”

I began sorting the photos into piles and the papers into a stack. Another letter from the bank caught my attention. And seriously. The shocks really wouldn’t stop.

“Foreclosure?” I read the letter again, then let out a sad laugh. “Well, I guess I don’t have to worry so much about the inn being mine. It won’t be much longer.”

My fingers released their hold on the letter and let it drift back to the desk. Addie snatched it up.

“This isn’t right,” she said as she read it. “We’ll take care of this, Kales. They can’t take this place from you, from your family. Something’s going on here . . .”

I barely paid attention to the rest as the nickname made the tips of my ears tingle. Nobody in my recent past had ever called me that. It had always been Kae for short, or Sindi’s occasional Kaekae. But I remembered that nickname. I remembered standing by the fountain in the square, gold flakes sparkling in the sun as Addie gave me a hug, and said, “Besties forever, Kales. Try not to forget me, okay?” And Xandru stood next to us, his hand on my lower back. And—

The sound of heavy and purposeful footsteps coming up the walk to the front door knifed into my recollection, severing it. I blinked and cocked my head.

“Oh, right. I came over to warn you,” Addie said. “The wolves are descending.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sheriff Kasun and his deputies were on their way over to question you.”

“For what?”

The front door opened.

“Um . . . for murder?”