Chapter 24 #2
My jaw locks. I force myself to meet his eyes, and the pain I see there nearly breaks me.
“Then talk, Flynn. No games.”
Please. Please just tell me the truth. Whatever it is, just tell me.
Let me decide for myself if I can live with it.
But he doesn’t even have the time to say a word.
Because that’s when the windows shatter.
The sound is deafening—glass exploding inward in a shower of glittering shards. My hunter instincts kick in immediately, my body moving before my mind can catch up.
Armed men pour through the broken windows like a flood. Dark tactical gear. Crossbows and stakes and guns loaded with God-knows-what.
Hunters.
Everywhere. They’re everywhere. Surrounding us, cutting off every exit, every escape route.
The front door is kicked wide open with a crash that makes me flinch. More hunters stream in, their faces hidden behind masks, their weapons trained on Flynn.
On Flynn.
This is what we were trying to keep out. What we were trying to avoid. And the notes until now were annoying but they didn’t go farther than that.
They were warnings. Threats. Mind games.
But this? This is an execution.
My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my ears, in every pulse point in my body. Adrenaline floods my system, making everything sharp and bright and terrifyingly clear.
They’re going to kill him.
The thought cuts through everything else.
But I thought he gave up.
The thought is almost laughable now. My father, give up? My father, accept defeat?
How could I have been so stupid?
He disowned me and I found a way to live without him. He let me leave. He let Flynn save me.
Was it easy to accept? No, but I did what he ordered. I left the family and didn’t ask for anything in return.
I thought that was enough. I thought if I just walked away, if I just disappeared from his life, he’d let me go.
Too bad my last name can’t be left behind.
Popescu.
The name is a brand, a curse, a chain I’ll never be free of no matter how far I run.
And then he steps inside. Emil Popescu. My father.
He looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him—tall and imposing, his dark hair streaked with silver, his eyes cold and calculating. He’s wearing a dark-gray suit. He doesn’t need tactical gear, he’s already a weapon.
A declaration of war.
And the way he looks at Flynn—there’s no mercy in that look. No hesitation. Just cold, calculated hatred.
Flynn runs in front of me before I can even process what’s happening. He shields me with his body, putting himself between me and my father, between me and the hunters, between me and certain death.
Protecting me.
Even now, even with a dozen weapons trained on him, even knowing he’s about to die—
He’s protecting me.
And then the shot rings out.
The sound is sharp and final, echoing through the room. My vampire hits the ground and I feel paralyzed in place.
No.
Crimson blooms across his dark-gray shirt, spreading fast and wet and terrifying. The smell of blood fills the air—his blood, Flynn’s blood, the blood of the man I love—
“Fuck,” Flynn utters, looking down at his stomach.
And I scream.
I scream or at least I think I do, because the sound that comes out of me doesn’t sound human. It’s raw and primal and full of a terror so deep it feels like it’s tearing me apart from the inside.
Not a regular bullet.
I know immediately. I’ve seen my father’s work before. I’ve watched him experiment, perfecting his weapons, finding new ways to kill vampires more efficiently.
Wooden bullets dipped in silver.
The wood to pierce vampire flesh. The silver to poison from within.
It’s a slow death. Agonizing if the bullets remain in his body for too long.
Flynn could survive it—he’s ancient, powerful—but it would take time. Time we don’t have.
I run to him without thinking, dropping to my knees beside him, my hands hovering over the wound but not touching because I don’t know how to help, don’t know what to do—
I don’t know how to save him.
And that realization is almost worse than watching him get shot.
I’m a hunter. I’m trained to kill vampires, not save them. I know a hundred ways to end their existence, but I don’t know how to keep them alive.
I don’t know how to keep him alive.
I need to get those bullets out. Fast. But running to him only gives them the right opportunity to trap us in.
The hunters close in, forming a tight circle around us. Crossbows aimed at Flynn’s heart. Stakes ready to plunge into his chest. Guns loaded with more of those terrible silver bullets.
We’re trapped.
Completely, utterly trapped.
And my father is smiling.
“I’ll tell you what this means, my naive copil,” he says, and his voice is so calm, so controlled, like he’s explaining something simple to a child.
Copil. Child. The Romanian endearment sounds like poison on his tongue.
He paces in front of me slowly, deliberately, like a predator circling wounded prey. That cold smile is plastered on his face, and I want to rip it off. I want to hurt him the way he’s hurting me.
But I can’t move. I’m frozen, my arms wrapped around Flynn, feeling his blood seep through my fingers.
“Flynn is the first turned vampire.”
The words don’t make sense at first. They’re just sounds, syllables strung together in a pattern that my brain can’t quite process.
The first turned vampire.
My eyes widen as I keep my arms around my vampire, holding him tighter, as if I can somehow keep him here, keep him alive, keep him mine through sheer force of will.
“That’s impossible,” I hear myself say.
But even as the words leave my mouth, pieces start clicking into place.
The way Flynn never talked about his past or never went into detail about the time he was turned. The way he deflected questions about his age, his origins, his connection to the Original.
The way he’s so powerful. So controlled. So ancient.
“Your boy toy here is the Original’s little bitch.”
The crude words make me flinch, but my father continues, relentless.
“He hid your biggest and only real enemy for years so that the Original could continue his slaughter. He was sent here to kidnap and use you as a bargaining chip to regain the Original’s freedom so that he could come out of hiding.”
Each word is a hammer blow.
Hid the Original.
Sent here.
Bargaining chip.
Not real. None of it was real.
If I was standing, I would have dropped to the ground. My legs feel like water. My whole body feels like it’s dissolving.
This makes no sense.
Why would Flynn go through all of this just to give me away? To the Original? To the monster who killed my grandmother?
Why would he go out of his way to get to know me, protect me, make love to me.
Why would he do any of that if I was just a job? Just a means to an end?
Unless my father is lying.
The thought surfaces through the chaos, small but insistent.
Unless this is exactly what he wants me to think.
My father is a master manipulator. He’s spent my entire life twisting reality, making me doubt myself, making me question everything I feel and think and believe.
Why would this be any different?
But the evidence is right there. The letter. The hunters. Flynn bleeding on the floor with a silver bullet in his gut.
How do I know what’s real?
“Please tell me he’s lying,” I whisper, and my voice cracks on every word. Tears spill down my face, hot and fast and unstoppable. “Please, Flynn.”
Flynn looks up at my father, and his jaw locks. He’s in pain—I can see it in the tension of his body, the way his muscles are rigid, the way his breathing is shallow and controlled.
But he still remains in full control.
He could get up. Even wounded, even with silver in his body, he could get up and go on a murdering spree. He could kill every hunter in this room, including my father.
But he’s here on his knees, bleeding, as the silver continues to hurt him from the inside.
Because of me.
He’s staying down because of me.
Because if he fights back, I might get caught in the crossfire.
The realization hits me like a physical blow.
“Vlad hasn’t killed without a reason in at least a hundred years. He just wants to be left alone with his lover—”
His words are cut short by my father’s laugh. It’s a cold, cruel sound that makes my skin crawl.
“Ah yes, like what you’re trying to achieve with my daughter, or so that’s what you’ve been telling her, even if we both know it was a matter of time before you ripped her heart out, figuratively or metaphorically speaking it doesn’t matter.”