Lustling (Hellbound Hearts #1)

Prologue

The baby doesn’t cry.

She is warm and soft in my mate’s arms, her tiny fingers curled against his chest, completely unaware that this is the last time we will ever hold her.

I should be grateful for the silence. Instead, it breaks me.

My heart clenches as I reach for her, pressing a trembling kiss to her forehead. Her skin is impossibly smooth. Still slightly damp with birth. She smells like me. Like us. Like something old and sacred and wrong.

A mother’s final act of love.

My mate leans down, his lips brushing her delicate skin, lingering far too long—like he could anchor her soul to memory, burn her shape into the sinew of his grief. His breath stutters when he pulls back. I feel him unraveling.

But neither of us speaks. There are no words for this kind of sorrow. Only the hollow scream I keep locked in my chest.

I turn to the bassinet beside us. Another child sleeps inside, swaddled in sterile linens. Clean. Quiet. Innocent.

Human. The wrong baby.

My stomach knots. My arms tighten around our true daughter as instinct wars with reason. My body—my blood—knows her. It roars to keep her. To run. To burn the world down if anyone dares come for her.

This isn’t right. This isn’t fair. But life rarely is.

My fingers tremble as I shift her from my mate’s arms, placing her in the bassinet like a corpse into a grave. She barely stirs. Her breathing is steady.

Peaceful. Too peaceful.

She will never know us.

My mate exhales, low and raw. Then he turns—quick, brutal, like if he moves fast enough, it won’t hurt. Like if he looks back, he’ll shatter.

I should follow. But I don’t. I can’t. Not yet.

My hands linger on her small form as if love could undo fate. As if I could rewrite what has already been decided. A thousand visions scream behind my eyes—keeping her. Fleeing with her. Tearing limb from limb anyone who dared stop me.

She is mine. And I am leaving her.

The sound that tears from my throat isn’t human. It’s grief made flesh. The kind of sound a mother should never be forced to make.

“Now,” my mate urges, voice tight with grief. “Before it’s too late.”

I don’t want to. But I do. Because I have to.

I reach down and lift the human baby in her place, and bile rises in my throat. She’s warm. Breathing. Helpless.

But not mine.

The weight of her is wrong. Her scent is wrong. Everything about her—too soft, too human—rakes against my instincts.

She nestles into me. I almost drop her.

We slip through the hospital’s rear exit, swallowed by the night.

The alley is damp and silent, mist curling like ghost fingers around our feet. Somewhere nearby, a trash bin leaks rot and chemical waste. The human baby shifts in my arms. I realize I’m holding her too tightly, her tiny ribs pressed too hard beneath my palm.

“We waited too long,” I whisper. The weight of her keeps growing. Too warm. Too real.

My mate doesn’t look back. “We had no choice.”

I stare down at the baby. Her eyes are open now, unfocused. She blinks. Her mouth parts like she’s trying to speak. Trying to cry.

But no sound comes.

“What do we do with her?” I ask, though I already know.

He straightens slowly. Rolls his shoulders. His face hardens into stone. “We feed it to the hound.”

Something in me recoils. Not from the act. From the ease of his answer.

I have bathed in blood. Carved my name into the flesh of kings. I’ve slaughtered children who bled like lambs and didn’t blink.

But this… this is different. This baby did nothing wrong. And yet, I am her executioner.

My hand trembles as I lower her slightly, gaze locked on her soft, unaware face.

Then, my mate lifts his hand. A flick of the wrist. A breath of power.

And the shadows shift.

They thicken, liquefy, crackle with ice and rot. A growl rolls out like thunder across a battlefield. And then—it comes.

The hellhound steps into the world like it’s tearing through a veil. Charred bone. Black sinew. Smoke coils from between its ribs, frost seeping into the concrete with every footfall.

Four glowing eyes lock on the child in my arms. She whimpers.

And the hound crouches. Waiting.

A holy thing would plead. A merciful one would look away.

I do neither.

My mate speaks the final command. “Take it.”

The hound lunges.

Its jaws snap shut with a wet crunch. Flesh tears. Bone cracks. A single breathy cry escapes—then vanishes beneath blood and heat and ruin.

The scent of it fills the air. Copper. Milk. Innocence.

It clings to me. It will never come off.

“It's done,” my mate says, already gripping my wrist, pulling me from the carnage. “Let’s go.”

But we barely make it one step before the air shifts. The shadows stir. A second presence.

Not one. Many…

Then, a voice like steel dragged across bone. “Where is the child?”

We freeze.

Figures emerge from the mist like ghosts from a war long lost—armor blackened and seared, their helmets etched with sigils that pulse like dying stars. Their molten gold eyes burn into me. Into us.

The Zepharion’s hunters.

They see no child in my arms. Not yet.

But they will. And when they do…

They will burn the world to find her.