Bonus Epilogue
Raleigh
The rain isn’t heavy enough, to be honest.
It’s a misty drizzle, the kind that clings to your lashes and dampens your collar without ever committing to a storm. The streetlights turn it into a silver haze, as though the city wants to pretend it’s gentle at night. That killers don’t roam these streets when they very much do.
Like me.
I stand across from the office building Lucian told me to meet him at, hands in the pockets of my jacket, my sweatshirt’s hood pulled low. Midnight on the dot. He’s precise like that. Always has been. Vampires like Lucian don’t miss appointments, and they don’t waste time.
Which means something’s wrong.
The building rises twenty stories high, all glass and steel and corporate arrogance. Most of the lights are off, but not all of them. A few floors glow dimly, silhouettes moving behind blinds. Maybe some humans but mostly vampires taking the night shift.
I check my phone again.
Lucian
Midnight. Come alone.
No follow-up. Just this address after, a pin dropped like an afterthought.
I’ve been standing here for twelve minutes.
I don’t breathe anymore, but old habits die hard. I inhale out of reflex, the air tasting like wet asphalt and ozone. Somewhere nearby, a car passes too fast and tires hiss over slick pavement. The city hums around me, alive in the way only humans can be—fragile, unaware, temporary.
I shift my weight and glance down the street. No Lucian. No black sedan or limo. No shadow peeling itself off the darkness to greet me with that cool, assessing stare.
Unease crawls up my spine.
Lucian and I have an understanding, an allyship.
Because of the one night Santiago tried to kill us, he granted me new territory and new resources to rebuild the Rogues.
He didn’t have to. He’s old money and older blood, the kind of vampire who treats the world like a chessboard already half won. I’m…not that.
I’m new. Newly turned. New enough that the hunger still sings in my veins some nights, sharp and bright and too loud.
New enough that I remember what it’s like to be afraid of the dark.
It’s why I help guide other vampires in this new life they’ve been given.
For the ones who don’t have a master to teach them, the Rogues will always be there.
But still, I don’t like being stood up.
I cross the street, boots splashing through shallow puddles, and stop beneath the building’s overhang. The rain can’t quite reach me here. The glass doors reflect my silhouette back at me—too pale, with eyes catching the light wrong.
I look like what I am.
When I peer through the glass, I can see a lobby that’s sleek and modern. White marble floors. A security desk off to one side, currently unoccupied. A directory mounted on the wall, names etched in clean, professional lettering.
I hadn’t planned to go inside. Not without Lucian. But curiosity is a nasty thing, and paranoia even worse.
I scan the directory. Most of the companies mean nothing to me—consulting firms, tech startups, shell corporations with names designed to sound important and say nothing at all.
Then I see it.
Sanguine International – Floors 7–20.
My head spins.
For a moment, I’m not standing in a quiet city street with rain whispering down around me.
I’m back in the smoke and screams with the heat so intense it blistered even undead skin.
I smell burning flesh, hear my people shouting, trapped, confused, dying because someone wanted an opportunity to get me and Lucian in the same place and take us out together.
My jaw tightens, teeth grinding together hard enough that I feel it in my skull. Santiago burned my people alive.
I stare at the name until the letters blur. Rage coils low in my gut. I’d sworn I’d get my revenge someday, and Lucian had promised to give that chance to me. One day.
At the time, I’d believed him.
Now, standing in front of Santiago’s building, I wonder if this is where Lucian is going to deliver.
Movement behind me makes me turn, instincts flaring, but it’s just a pair of humans hurrying past under a shared umbrella, laughing about something trivial. They don’t even glance my way.
I look back at the building.
If this is a trap, it’s an elaborate one. If Lucian sold me out to Santiago, bringing me straight to his doorstep would be…efficient. Clean. The kind of thing Lucian might do.
The thought sits heavy in my chest.
I circle the building slowly, keeping to the shadows. The rain thickens slightly, beads of water catching in my hair. There’s a side entrance on the east side, another set of glass doors requiring a keycard. No guards visible, but I can hear many heartbeats inside. Many footsteps.
I could go in. Tear through all of Sanguine’s staff. Find Santiago’s office and leave it painted red.
I could end this myself.
My fingers curl into fists. Maybe—
Then the night explodes.
The blast hits like a god’s fist slamming into the earth. Heat and pressure ripple outward, throwing me off my feet. The windows on the lower floors shatter all at once and glass rains down in glittering shards. The sound is deafening, an unholy roar that drowns out everything else.
Fire erupts from the building’s core, flames punching through windows and licking up the sides of the structure. The air fills with smoke and screaming and the sharp, acrid stench of burning chemicals.
Car alarms shriek. People run.
I hit the ground hard, rolling instinctively, coming up in a crouch just as another shockwave rattles the street. My ears ring. My vision swims for half a second before snapping back into cruel clarity.
The building is an inferno.
Flames dance behind the shattered glass, orange and hungry. Figures appear in the windows, people thrashing, pounding, screaming for help that won’t come fast enough. The rain turns to steam as it hits the heat, rising in ghostly plumes.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
The sound is absurdly small against the chaos, but I feel it anyway.
I pull it out and check the screen.
Lucian
Now we’re even.
My breath leaves me in a rough laugh that borders on a snarl. Around me, Santiago’s world is burning. Just like mine had that night.
Lucian gave me what I had wanted.
The sirens start in the distance, wailing closer by the second. Red and blue lights will be here soon. Fire trucks. Police. Questions. Blame.
A slow smile curves my mouth as I watch the flames for a moment longer, committing the sight to memory. This is what justice looks like in our world. Not courts or apologies or neat resolutions. Just death answering death.
Tucking my phone away, I turn from the burning building. The rain finally commits, pouring down hard enough to sting. Let Santiago’s men scramble. Let the authorities chase shadows. My only hope is that Santiago was inside to meet the same fate.
If not, I’m sure Lucian won’t let him get far.
I pull my hood back up and melt into the night, leaving the screams and smoke behind me.
Some debts are paid in blood.
Others burn.
Two Months Later
Vittoria
The city of Lyon sleeps like it’s pretending to be innocent.
It stretches beneath me in muted golds and slate blues, roofs slick with recent rain, chimneys breathing smoke into the cold night air.
Two rivers cut through it like old scars.
It’s quiet now even though my skin prickles with awareness.
Of so many slumbering human hearts beating in one central area.
I cling to the stone facade of a six-story flat in Croix-Rousse, fingers dug into mortar seams, heeled boots braced against narrow ledges. The building is old—eighteenth century, maybe earlier. Thick walls. High windows. The kind of place men like Santiago choose when they want to feel untouchable.
I smile to myself.
Untouchable is a lie men tell themselves right before they die.
It’s been two months since Sanguine’s Tenebris headquarters went up in flames and all of Santiago’s business holdings froze, international included, thanks to Elliot’s quick thinking.
For Lucian, that had been enough. He had called it finished.
“Santiago’s gone,” Lucian said, as though Santiago was an annoying mosquito rather than a centuries-old bastard who had been stealing our employees and secrets for years. “He wouldn’t be stupid enough to stay in this country, let alone Tenebris.”
Lucian had been right about that much.
Santiago fled like a coward, vanishing into Europe with whatever money and favors he could scrape together. Lucian hadn’t pursued him. He didn’t want to waste his time. He had VMR. He had Elliot. He had a shiny new eternity wrapped around domestic bliss and corporate dominance.
Disgusting.
Lucian might be content to let Santiago run, but I am not Lucian.
I don’t forgive, and I certainly don’t forget.
Just like I can’t escape certain memories. They threaten to creep up on me whenever I’m alone, like now. My mind—the traitorous bitch—likes to drift to the past.
To an alley in London that smelled like garbage and rain. To rough hands pinning me down. To laughter. To pain so overwhelming it fractured my mind, split me clean in two.
I remember Lucian’s face when he found me. Cold fury, barely contained. I remember the way he carried me like something precious, something already lost.
That was the night he turned me and I was born anew. The part of me that had been the vulnerable one for those sick fucks to rape out in the open like that dissolved into nothingness and left only a thing full of white-hot rage and with a cold, unfeeling heart. A creature built for revenge.
And that was all I was for a long time. Especially the nights after, when Lucian let me hunt each one of those shitheads down and kill them in the most gruesome ways I could imagine. One by one, I picked them off, but instead of my darkened soul healing, it only grew darker still.
I had been corrupted into my full potential. And I loved it.
It was Lucian who gave me immortality; he gave me my chance at revenge and a place by his side at VMR.