Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rocco
Selena hugged the whimpering baby to her chest, one hand cradling its head, her body curved around it like a shield.
I scanned the keep for any sign of Vex, but there was no movement.
The castle was pitch black—nothing but a jagged silhouette against the night sky.
I could barely make out the first turret.
That was where the altar had been. Where Vex had held that blade over an innocent child like it was nothing.
He was still in there. Somewhere in the dark behind those dead windows. Watching. Waiting.
Not pursuing. That bothered me more than if he'd come screaming out the front gate.
I put my hand on Selena's lower back and leaned close to her ear. "Move."
She didn't argue. We slipped into the trees, the others falling in behind us, moving quick and quiet through the undergrowth.
Lucien didn't wait for a plan. He launched himself into the air and swept down the mountainside, disappearing into the dark canopy below. He was back within a minute, barely winded.
"There's a village at the base of the mountain." He landed beside Raven, his breath fogging in the cold air. "Small. Quiet. Looks like there might be a hotel or a bed and breakfast."
Good enough.
I scooped Selena into my arms, careful not to jostle the baby pressed between us.
Then I ran. The forest blurred around me—colors streaking past, branches snapping, my feet barely kissing the ground before launching forward again.
Vampire speed turned the mountainside into a smear of dark green and shadow.
Selena tucked her head against my chest, shielding the baby from the wind.
The trees thinned and the village appeared below us. Quaint. Cobblestone streets. Streetlights casting warm pools of amber light. Cars parked along the curbs. Flower boxes in the windows. The kind of place where nothing bad had ever happened and the residents intended to keep it that way.
We slowed to a walk at the edge of town, adjusting from supernatural to normal in the space of a few steps. Just a group of travelers arriving late. Nothing to see.
Selena looked down at the baby, then up at me. Its cries had faded to soft, exhausted hiccups against her shirt.
"We have to take the baby somewhere," she said. Her voice was quiet but firm. "Somewhere safe. Away from us."
The unspoken truth hung between us. As long as the baby was with us, Vex had a reason to come looking. And wherever Vex looked, people died.
Children died.
An old brick church sat at the edge of the village square, its steeple rising into the night sky like a dark finger pointing toward heaven. A cross perched at its peak, silhouetted against the moon.
Selena and I looked at each other. No words needed. We both knew.
We headed toward the church, our footsteps echoing on the cobblestones. The main doors were locked—heavy oak, iron handles, sealed tight for the night. But around the side, tucked beneath an archway draped in ivy, we found another door. Smaller. A warm glow leaked from beneath it.
I knocked. Three sharp raps against the wood.
The seconds stretched. I kept my back straight, my hands at my sides, but every nerve was firing. We were deep in Costin’s homeland, knocking on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night, covered in blood and carrying a stolen baby. There was no version of this that looked good for us.
Footsteps shuffled inside. A lock turned. The door cracked open, and an elderly nun peered out at us. Her face was lined and weathered, her eyes sharp behind wire-rimmed glasses. She looked at me, then at Selena, then at the baby cradled against Selena's chest.
Her expression softened. She didn't ask where the child came from.
Didn't ask who we were or why two strangers were standing on her doorstep in the middle of the night with a trembling infant.
Maybe she'd seen this before. Maybe in a village at the foot of these mountains, some questions were better left unasked.
Selena pressed her lips to the baby's forehead—one brief, fierce kiss—then placed the infant into the nun's waiting arms.
"Keep the baby safe." Her voice cracked on the last word.
Her hand lingered on the baby’s head before she pulled away. A church wasn’t a fortress. A nun wasn’t a warrior. But the shard was with us, and Vex couldn’t touch it—which meant he couldn’t come near it. The baby was safer here than anywhere else right now. Safer than with us.
The nun nodded once, drawing the child against her chest with practiced ease. The baby let out a soft whimper, then settled.
Without another word, we turned and walked away.
Selena didn't speak. Didn't look back. But I saw her hand come up and swipe quickly across her cheek before she shoved it into her pocket.
She’d held that baby like it was her own—fought a demon for it, shielded it with her body, whispered promises against its tiny head. And now she was walking away from it without a word, because that’s what keeping it safe required.
I reached over and laced my fingers through hers. She squeezed back so hard it hurt.
I kissed her hand. “Are you all right?”
She looked up at me, her eyes glistening in the streetlight. “You think the baby will be safe?”
The tears gutted me. Not because she was crying—Selena was stronger than anyone I’d ever known.
But because I’d been the one who started this.
Two years of making her cry. Two years of being the reason for the sadness behind those eyes.
And now here she was, still crying, still hurting, still carrying weight that should never have been hers.
I cupped her face in my hands and brushed the tears away with my thumbs. “Demons don’t like churches. The consecrated ground, the holy symbols. It burns them. Vex won’t go near it.”
I hesitated. She didn’t need more weight on her shoulders—not tonight. But she deserved the truth. She’d earned that much. “However, he could grab another victim.”
“Without the shard, what would be the purpose of taking another baby?” She frowned as if trying to work through the logic. “He needs the shard for the ritual.”
“He’s evil, Selena.” I met her gaze and didn’t sugarcoat it. “He doesn’t need a reason. He just needs frustration and a target. We took his sacrifice and his shard in the same night. That kind of rage doesn't think. It destroys."
Her face crumpled—just for a second, just a flash of devastation before she pulled it back together.
But I’d seen it. And the thought that sat behind my own words, the one I couldn’t say out loud, made me sick.
Somewhere out there, another mother could wake up to an empty crib because of what we’d done tonight.
We’d saved one baby. And possibly condemned another.
There was no winning against this kind of evil. Only choosing which losses you could live with.
Her jaw was set, that stubborn fire burning in her eyes again. “We need to stop him before he takes another child.”
"We don't know where he is." I kept my voice gentle, even though every word tasted like defeat. "Or what new victim he's planning to take. He could be anywhere in these mountains by now."
"But we have to try." I knew she was seeing that baby on the altar again. The tiny fists. The screaming. The blade coming down.
I lifted her chin, tilting her face up until her eyes met mine. They were red-rimmed and fierce and exhausted and beautiful all at once.
"We're going to stop him. I promise you that." I held her gaze, letting her see that I meant every word. "But not tonight. We're exhausted, Selena. All of us. Alice is unconscious. Rose is drained. If Vex came at us right now, we'd lose."
The words tasted like ash. A prince who couldn’t protect anyone.
A mate who couldn’t keep his own woman safe.
I’d spent my whole life being told I was powerful, that my blood made me something more—and right now, standing in a freezing Romanian street with nothing but exhaustion and empty promises, I’d never felt more useless.
She opened her mouth to argue, and I pressed my thumb gently against her lips.
"The Solstice is tonight at midnight. Vex can’t perform the ritual without the shard, and we have it. We just need to hold on until the window closes. Once midnight passes, it’s over—at least for now. We feed. We rest. And we stay the hell away from that castle.”
The fight drained out of her slowly—not because she agreed, but because she knew I was right. I watched her wrestle with it, watched her swallow the urgency and the guilt and the image of that baby screaming on cold stone.
“And if he comes for it before midnight,” she asked.
I held her gaze. There was no backup plan. No secret weapon. No clever strategy waiting in my back pocket. Just us—battered, drained, running on fumes and stubbornness.
“Then we fight. All of us. Whatever it takes.”
As if on cue, the door of a tavern down the street swung open, spilling warm light and laughter onto the cobblestones.
Two men stumbled out, arms slung around each other's shoulders, their voices loud and slurred.
They reeked of beer and plum brandy, weaving down the sidewalk without a care in the world.
I didn't hesitate. Neither did Selena.
We moved like shadows—quick, silent, flanking them from either side.
I caught mine by the collar and pulled him into the narrow alley beside the tavern.
His bleary eyes widened for half a second before I locked his gaze with mine and his body went limp.
Compliant. The glamour took hold instantly—his mind fogging over, his resistance dissolving like smoke.
I sank my fangs into his neck. His blood was warm, rich, flooding my mouth with copper and heat.
It wasn't the ancient, intoxicating pull of Sanguis Keep—this was ordinary.
Human. But my starving body didn't care.
I drank deep, feeling my strength return with every swallow, the hollow ache in my veins finally easing.
His heartbeat slowed beneath my lips. His body sagged heavier against the wall. One more pull and he'd cross the line.
I stopped.
Every vampire swore an oath to Dracula. The first law.
The oldest law. We do not kill when we feed.
I'd broken a lot of promises in my life, shattered more oaths than I cared to count.
But not this one. Never this one. It was the only thing that separated us from the monsters humans believed us to be.
I retracted my fangs and pressed my thumb against the puncture wounds, sealing them. Then I held his glazed eyes with mine.
"You had too much to drink. You came outside for air. Nothing happened."
He blinked slowly, nodded, and I propped him against the wall like a man sleeping off one too many.
Beside me, Selena pulled back from her own feed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She murmured something to her man—the same kind of quiet command, rewriting his memory with a few careful words—then stepped away, letting him slide down the wall next to his friend.
Two drunks sleeping it off in an alley. Nothing to see. Nothing to remember.
The color had returned to Selena's cheeks, her eyes brighter, her body steadier. She caught me looking and raised an eyebrow.
"Better?" I asked.
"Better." She glanced at the two slumped men. "They'll have a hell of a hangover tomorrow."
"They were going to have that anyway."
The ghost of a smile crossed her face. The first one I'd seen since the castle.
I needed that smile. Needed it more than the blood I'd just taken. I needed her to forget—even for a few hours—the altar, the blade, the baby's screams echoing off stone walls. Tomorrow we'd deal with the fallout—a furious demon without his shard, and whatever hell was waiting for us.
But tonight, I just needed her.
And I needed to find a damn bed.