Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Selena
My eyes fluttered open.
Something was rocking beneath me—a slow, rhythmic sway that made my stomach lurch. Water. I could hear it lapping against something nearby. And there was a smell... murky and green, like wet earth and rotting vegetation.
The bayou?
Sunlight filtered through plantation shutters, casting stripes of gold across an unfamiliar ceiling. But I didn’t have shutters on the inside of my house. They were outside. And I definitely didn’t have wood-paneled walls or the faint creak of a boat shifting on water.
Where the hell was I?
I tried to sit up, but my arms shook violently and I collapsed back onto the bed. My whole body felt drained, hollow, like someone had scooped out my insides and left nothing but the shell.
Fragments drifted back to me like smoke. The party. The toast. Rocco’s empty chair. Then—Julienne’s office. The safe. Rocco’s face, desperate and wild in the moonlight. And then his fangs glistened in the dark, and everything went black.
My trembling hand flew to my throat.
Two small punctures. Already healed, but tender.
Rocco had bitten me.
The memory came flooding back—his fangs sinking into my throat, desire exploding through me like wildfire, overwhelming every sense until the world went dark.
He'd knocked me out. And then he'd taken me... here. Wherever here was.
I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut against the pounding in my skull. I could still feel him beneath my skin, a low vibration I couldn't shake. My blood was in him now.
And I didn’t know whether to be furious or terrified.
Or happy. This was what I always wanted. Or was it?
A shadow passed over me and I flinched.
Rocco emerged from the doorway. He’d taken off his jacket and tie. His shirt was unbuttoned, and sunlight reflected off his abs. He held a glass of Chosen Blood. I could smell it from where I was lying—rich and intoxicating.
“Here.” He crouched beside the bed. “You could use this.”
I wanted to argue. To throw it in his face. To scream at him for biting me, for kidnapping me, for dragging me into this mess.
But my throat was parched and I desperately needed blood. My fangs lengthened as I took the glass with a shaking hand. I drank it down.
“There’s more if you need it,” Rocco said, his arms crossed as he leaned against the wall.
There were bloodstains on his collar and down his shirt. My blood.
“Where am I?”
“Angelo Santi’s houseboat.”
My blood ran cold. Angelo Santi. The vampire mafia king. The man who’d blackmailed Rocco into stealing the shard. The man Rose had warned me about—the one who didn’t do anything without a reason.
And now I was on his property. In the middle of the bayou. With no one knowing where I was.
“You brought me to Angelo’s?”
I sat up too fast—the room swam, my vision blurring at the edges before snapping back into focus.
I pressed a hand to the side of my neck where the bite mark still throbbed, hot and tender beneath my fingers.
“Are you insane? What happens when he decides I’m a loose end, Rocco?
What happens when he decides it’s easier to kill me than let me go? ”
Rocco stood by the window, his silhouette rigid against the pale light filtering through the curtains. His hands curled into fists at his sides. “He’s not going to kill you.”
“How do you know that?”
He turned to face me fully, and the look in his eyes made my breath catch. Not anger. Not defiance. Something fiercer. Something that burned with an intensity that made the air between us feel too thin.
“Because I won’t let him.”
I stared at him, searching his face for any sign he was lying.
Any crack, any tell, any trace of deception.
But all I saw was exhaustion—deep, bone-grinding exhaustion, the kind that sleep couldn’t fix.
And guilt. Guilt that sat in the hollows of his cheeks and the tension around his mouth like it had taken up permanent residence.
And something else I couldn’t quite name.
Something that made my chest ache when I looked at it too long.
“Why am I here?” I asked, my voice quieter now. The fury was still there, simmering beneath my ribs, but it had shifted into something colder. More controlled. More dangerous.
“Because you were threatening to go to Costin.”
I remembered—the argument, the desperation in his voice, me running for the door.
“So you bit me?”
He looked down at his hands. They hung at his sides, perfectly still, but I noticed the faint tremor in his fingers. When he looked back up, he didn’t hide from it. Didn’t try to soften it or dress it up in excuses.
“Yes, I did. It was the only way I could keep you quiet.”
At least he was honest. I’d give him that much, even if the honesty made me want to throw something at his head.
“I thought I told you not to betray me again?” I held his gaze, letting the words settle between us. Letting him feel the full measure of what he’d broken.
He sighed—a heavy, hollow sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside his chest. The kind that carried every bad decision that had led to this moment.
“I know.” He swallowed hard. “But I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t mean to drag you into this. I wanted to keep you out of this.”
Was that even true? I studied his face, searching for the prince I’d once known—the one who’d been reckless and arrogant but never cruel. That Rocco had disappeared two years ago. The man standing in front of me wore his face, but I didn’t know what lived behind it anymore.
“But you did. And now I’m going to be hunted just like you.”
The lines deepened around his eyes, his shoulders sagged. At least he felt some guilt for dragging me into this mess.
I wanted that to feel like enough. It didn’t.
“You were determined to turn me in to Costin.” He dragged a hand over his face. “This was the only way for me to escape.”
There it was. The truth stripped bare.
I was an obstacle. A problem he'd solved the only way he knew how—by sinking his fangs into my neck and taking the choice away from me.
I was nothing but a burden.
I gritted my teeth. “So you attacked me and drained me until I passed out. You wanted the shard that badly?”
A long pause. His expression didn’t shift—not a twitch, not a flicker. That stillness unnerved me more than any reaction would have. He was holding himself together with nothing but willpower and the thin thread of whatever was left between us.
“Partly. But after I tasted your blood—”
He stopped. His throat worked, like the words had lodged there, and he was fighting to either swallow them or let them out. His hands curled into fists at his sides, knuckles white, as if he was physically restraining himself from something.
I waited, my pulse thudding in my ears. The bite mark on my neck throbbed in time with my heartbeat—a phantom echo of his mouth on my skin.
His eyes found mine, and something in them changed. The guilt was still there, the exhaustion, the shame—but beneath all of it, something darker surfaced. Something raw and hungry that he’d been keeping locked behind that careful mask.
“I wanted you.”
Three words. Low. Rough. Wrecked.
They should have made me feel something good. Vindicated. Triumphant. After two years of being told I was nothing—that the bond between us meant nothing—those words should have been everything I’d been starving to hear.
Instead they twisted inside me like a knife.
Now? Now he wanted me? After I’d spent years feeling the pull of our bond like a hook buried in my chest while he pretended it didn’t exist?
While he chased Rose Allen, looked at her like she was his queen and looked at me like I was dirt beneath his shoes?
He’d called me a disgrace. Walked away. Left me alone with every ache, every longing, every sleepless night spent feeling the hollow space where he should have been.
Now, because he’d tasted my blood, he wanted me?
My eyes burned. I blinked it back. I would not cry in front of him. Not over this. Not again.
“We’ve always been fated mates, Rocco. You knew that. I didn’t need to taste your blood to know what you were to me.”
He flinched like I’d hit him.
Good.
"I felt it every single day." I pressed my hand against my chest, right over the ache that had lived there for two years.
"Every day you ignored me. Every day you pretended I didn't exist. I felt you right here, and you know what the worst part was?
I couldn't make it stop. I couldn't turn it off.
You rejected me, and the bond didn't care. It just kept pulling."
His eyes were glassy. His jaw trembled—barely, just a fraction—but I saw it.
"So don't stand there and tell me you wanted me like it's some kind of revelation." The words came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep. "I've been drowning in this for years while you ran from it. You don't get to discover it now and act like it changes everything."
The silence was suffocating.
He didn't defend himself. Just stood there, absorbing every word like a man who knew he deserved the beating.
When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "I know."
"Do you?" I searched his face. "Do you really?"
He took a step closer. Then another. His hand lifted—slowly, like he was afraid I'd recoil—and his fingers grazed the bite mark on my neck.
The touch was feather-light, barely there, but it sent a shockwave through my entire body.
Every nerve ending lit up. The bond roared to life in my chest like a flame that had been waiting for oxygen.
I hated that. Hated how my body responded to him. Hated that years of rejection couldn't kill what I felt when he touched me.
His fingers lingered on the mark, his expression cracking open into something I'd never seen on his face before. Awe. Wonder. Like he was finally feeling what I'd been carrying alone all this time.
"I'm starting to," he said softly.
I pulled away from his touch before it could undo me completely.
"Starting to isn't good enough." I held his gaze, my voice steady even as everything inside me trembled. "Not yet."
He dropped his hand. The rawness in his eyes shuttered, replaced by something harder. Colder. The mask sliding back into place. “Angelo will be here soon to take the shard.”
The blood drained from my face. The room tilted—just slightly, just enough to make me grip the edge of the bed to keep from swaying. Angelo Santi. Coming here. To wherever here was. And I was in it, neck-deep, with a bite mark still throbbing on my throat and no way out.
"Rocco, you have to let me go."
I had to get off this boat. If I could get back to the Academy, I could talk to Costin before Angelo arrived. Costin would be furious about the shard, but he’d understand—he’d have to. It was the only play that kept Rocco alive.
He held my stare. Didn't move. Didn't blink.
"I can't, Selena. You're threatening to go to Costin."
The words landed like a cell door slamming shut.
So that's what this was. I wasn't his mate. I wasn't the woman he wanted. I was his prisoner. Trapped in his game, locked in by the very bond I'd spent years wishing he'd acknowledge.
He'd finally let me in—just not the way I'd imagined.
Now I was hunted prey.