Chapter 9
I woke up, my internal clock telling me it was daylight but my eyes-only seeing darkness.
The heavy drapes sealed the sun out completely, the air in the room cool, still.
For a moment, I forgot where I was. There were no chains biting into my wrists, no cold stone floor bruising my back.
No stink of blood and mold filling my lungs.
Just a wide bed, silken sheets tangled around my legs, and Lucien’s arms still clinging to me like iron bands.
He was heavy even in sleep, his body wound tight around mine, his chest a solid wall at my back.
I could feel the steady thrum of something just beneath the surface, like a caged storm muted by the daylight.
He wasn’t dead, not really, but he might as well have been.
His breathing was slow, unnaturally even, his muscles slack in a way I’d never seen while he was awake.
I turned my head slightly, studying him. His face was calmer, stripped of that cold, sharp control he wore like armour. In daylight, he wasn’t the predator who pinned me against walls and kissed me until I couldn’t breathe. He was just a man, vulnerable and unguarded.
The thought made my stomach twist. He trusted me enough to sleep like this beside me, to let me see the truth of what daylight did to him. And part of me wanted to press closer, to steal warmth from him the way he’d stolen every scrap of fear from me in the night.
But another part whispered that this was my chance. That if I wanted freedom, it would be now, when he couldn’t stop me.
My fingers brushed against his arm, the muscles loose but still unyielding, and I realized something that shook me more than the idea of slipping past him: I didn’t want to. Not yet.
Because as terrifying as Lucien was, as overwhelming as his claim felt… lying in his arms in this darkness felt safer than the daylight ever had.
But this was my chance, I couldn’t leave a sixteen-year-old by herself wondering if she would ever see her mother, if she is dead or alive. I had to do something, or I would never be able to live with myself.
I slid out of bed quietly, testing my weight on the bruises that still ached but held. The house was vast, silent except for the muffled sound of someone moving downstairs. I padded through the halls, eyes sharp, searching. A phone. There had to be a phone.
The first place I tried was his office. It was exactly what I’d expect from a man like him, dark wood, books lined like soldiers, maps pinned with markers, a desk that looked like it weighed more than I did. And there, sitting neatly at the edge, his phone.
My heart kicked hard as I grabbed it, thumbed the screen awake…
and froze. Password locked. Not the lazy kind either.
A string of numbers, long, complicated. He was too smart to make this easy.
I tried one guess. Nothing. Second try but still locked.
I dropped it back on the desk before I pushed my luck and locked myself out completely.
No house phone either. I checked the walls, the kitchen, even the hall table by the door. Nothing. Lucien wasn’t careless. He hadn’t left me an easy way to defy him.
But maybe Ivan would.
I found him in the hall by the front door, tall, broad-shouldered, his eyes the strange, shifting silver that marked him different. He inclined his head when he saw me, polite but distant.
“I need to go out,” I said, keeping my voice steady.
His expression didn’t flicker. “Lucien hasn’t given permission.”
“It’s daylight and he’s asleep. He’ll never know.”
“He’ll know,” Ivan said flatly. “And my orders are clear. You don’t leave the house without him, or without his word. No exceptions.”
My jaw clenched. “So, what am I, a prisoner here?”
Ivan’s eyes softened, but not enough to give me what I wanted. “You’re not a prisoner. You’re his mate. That makes you… everything. My job is to keep you safe until he wakes. Nothing more, nothing less. I won’t break my word to him.”
Frustration clawed at me. I wanted to scream, to tell him that safe and caged weren’t the same thing. That there was a girl out there waiting for her mother, and if I didn’t find a way, she’d keep waiting forever.
But Ivan just stood there, immovable as stone, watching me with that changeling stillness, like he could wait out every argument I could throw at him.
“Fine,” I muttered, turning away. But inside, the plan only burned hotter. If Ivan wouldn’t take me out, I’d have to find another way. And when I did, Lucien would never see it coming.
He thought he could cage me with silk sheets and locked doors, with guards who bowed to his every command.
But I’d lived through worse than this. I’d survived the Irish, survived chains and fists and the dark.
Compared to that, slipping past one changeling and a house full of vampires didn’t feel impossible, it felt necessary.
I walked away from Ivan, feeling the weight of his eyes on my back, sharp and knowing, like he could already hear the lies circling in my head. His voice didn’t follow me, but I didn’t need it to. I knew Lucien had picked him for a reason. Ivan was dangerous in ways I hadn’t figured out yet.
The hallways of the mansion were endless, all marble and shadow, hushed like a church, and every step I took reminded me just how far from normal I was. No ringing phones. No neighbours. No one but them. My cage was beautiful now, but it was still a cage.
I tried doors, one after the other, searching. Offices, parlours, even a library, but no phone. No laptop. Nothing that connected this place to the outside world. Lucien hadn’t just locked me inside his home. He’d cut me off completely.
By the time I circled back to the main hall, the frustration was boiling in my chest. I sat on the bottom step of the sweeping staircase, shoving my hands through my hair.
My heart was pounding, not from fear but from defiance.
If he thought his bite and his blood meant I belonged to him, he was wrong.
I wasn’t anyone’s property. I had promised that woman, I had promised myself that I’d find a way to help her daughter. And no matter what it cost, I was going to keep that promise.
Even if it meant betraying the only man who had made me feel safe since the nightmare began.
The hours stretched slow, daylight dragging like molasses.
Lucien was still upstairs, dead to the world in a way that made my chest ache when I looked at him.
Too still, too quiet, like sleeping wasn’t the right word for it.
More like gone. Every time my gaze lingered on him, I had to remind myself he would wake. He always would.
Which left me with the day and a lot of time.
I started small by watching. Ivan was never far, his bulk a shadow at the edges of every room I went into.
At first, I thought it was obedience to Lucien, but soon I realized it was instinct.
He wasn’t human, he moved differently, faster, his eyes flicking to every sound like a predator.
I tested him anyway. “I could use some air,” I said casually as I stood by the glass doors that opened into the gardens.
“No.” Just like that, his voice was flat, there was no hesitation.
“It’s just the gardens,” I pressed. “Not like I’m going to scale the walls.”
“You don’t have permission,” he said, arms folded, jaw tight.
Permission. The word made my blood boil. Therefore, later I tried another tactic. While he stood near the doorway of the sitting room, I asked, “Don’t you ever get tired? Watching me all day? Maybe you could… take a break?”
Ivan’s lips twitched like I’d told him a joke. “You’d like that.”
“I mean, you can trust me, right?”
“No,” he said simply. “You’d run.”
So much for subtlety. By midafternoon, I started mapping their routines. Ivan barely blinked, he checked windows and doors like clockwork. He stayed in sight, but never so close that I could use him against himself.
The house was worse than a fortress, it was a chessboard, and Lucien was the strategist. Every move I made had already been anticipated.
Still, I refused to give in. I prowled the halls, noting which windows had alarms, which doors were reinforced.
There had to be a weak point somewhere, some small oversight.
But each time my gaze landed on Ivan, his eyes cut to mine, steady and unyielding. Almost like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
By high noon, my nerves were raw, my frustration eating me alive. If Lucien thought I’d stop trying just because he had guards and rules and blood-bonded promises, he was wrong.
All he’d done was make me more determined to succeed, because no matter what it took, I would find a way to reach that girl’s daughter.
Even if it meant outsmarting the vampire who thought he already owned me.
I waited until late afternoon, when the sun was high and the house was buzzing.
Staff moved through the halls with trays of polished silver, cleaners carrying linens, and the faint rumble of a delivery van rolled up the gravel drive.
Ivan went to the door, his massive frame filling the entryway as he signed for whatever crate had been dropped off and for the first time all day, his eyes weren’t on me.
My pulse surged. I quickly slipped down the hall, heart hammering against my ribs. The heavy doors to the back garden weren’t locked, not during the day when deliveries came and went. I eased them open, every creak of the hinges sounding like thunder in my ears and stepped outside.
Cold air hit me, sharp and bracing. The gardens stretched wide, trimmed hedges and gravel paths leading straight toward the looming black-iron gates. They looked impossibly far away, but they were open enough for me to see through to the road beyond. Freedom.
I ran, the gravel crunched under my shoes, every step echoing like gunfire in my skull. My lungs burned, but I didn’t slow. I could taste the air beyond the gate, the possibility of getting out, of making that call, of proving Lucien wrong.
I was halfway there when a shadow moved across the gravel, faster than it should have been, cutting me off.
Ivan.
He didn’t run. He didn’t even look winded. He just appeared in front of me like the ground had spat him out, his eyes hard, his jaw locked.
I skidded to a stop, breath ragged, panic flaring in my chest. For a second, I thought he might drag me back by force, throw me over his shoulder like Lucien had. But he didn’t.
Instead, he caught my arm, not roughly, but firm, unyielding.
“Don’t,” he said. Just that one word, low and warning, and it carried more weight than a dozen shouted threats.
“I just…” I tried, but he cut me off with a sharp shake of his head.
“You think you’re clever? You’re not the first to try.” His voice was tight, but not cruel. “And you won’t get past us. You’d be dead before you made it two streets out there.”
“I don’t care!” The words ripped out of me before I could stop them. “She has a daughter, Ivan! She deserves to know her mother’s alive. You all sit here, guarding, watching, while those women rot with questions. If Lucien won’t do it, then I will!”
His grip tightened. “And if you died trying, what then? You think that would help her daughter? Or anyone?”
The gate loomed behind him, close enough to make me ache. But I knew that one step, one lunge, and he’d drop me before I even touched the iron.
My chest heaved, my throat burned with rage and helplessness. Ivan exhaled slowly, then tugged me back, not roughly but with the same inevitability as the tide pulling the shore. I didn’t fight, couldn’t fight. He was too strong, too fast, too everything.
By the time we stepped back inside, my hands were shaking with fury, because I hadn’t just failed, I’d proven Lucien right.