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It takes me a minute to realize Eloise is studying me again—but not with judgment. With something more like quiet consideration or maybe worry.

When I speak, I keep my voice low. I can’t bring myself to look until the words are out. “Earlier today, he said he wanted to mark me.”

Eloise’s eyes brighten with something soft but unmistakably thrilled. “Oh my gods,” she says, her voice pitching higher with excitement, not mockery. “That’s huge, Blake. I’m so happy for you. About damn time. What do you think about it?”

I huff something like a laugh before it turns bitter at the edges. “I was excited at first, but now it’s like another thing added to my brain to freak out about. We hardly know each other.”

Her hand slides toward me now, hesitation falling away as she tucks a blanket-cushioned palm over my wrist. She’s warm, steadier than anyone has the right to be after a fight she’s probably still recovering from. Her grip is light, but anchoring in a way I didn’t know I needed.

“I understand,” she says simply. “I felt the same about Ambrose. And if you’re worried you’re moving too fast—” Eloise gives me half a shrug, “—being with a vampire isn’t like human dating. When they know who their mate is, they know.”

“What’s it like?” I can’t help but ask. “You’re a human, so...”

Eloise resettles herself into a more comfortable position, tucking one of her feet under her on the couch. I realize she’s wearing mismatched silly socks and, for some reason, despite my world burning down around me, I find myself smiling.

“I told Ambrose I want to wait for a while before being turned,” she explains. “Vampires age, just really crazy slow. We’re talking our centuries are their months. But the mate bite still works between us.”

I hadn’t even thought that far ahead. Would Malachi want to turn me into a vampire? What about Charlie? There’s no way I’d let her be turned until she was an adult. Even then, I don’t know. It’s strange to think about, especially because I’m so used to thinking only a couple months in advance. To think years, centuries, in advance? I mentally shake my head; crazy.

Eloise is still talking, letting her voice wrap around the silence like gauze. “Ambrose and I haven’t fully figured out a long-term plan yet. I mean, I know I want to be turned, but how do you know when it’s the right time? Usually, most people don’t get the chance to plan for it from what I hear.”

“I never even thought that far ahead,” I say, combing my fingers through the edge of the blanket. “I mean, I’m used to planning things like my work schedule around Charlie’s school conferences or doctor’s appointments. The farthest I’ve thought ahead is starting a college savings for her to go to college somewhere in Europe like she wants.”

Eloise hesitates, her fingers drumming the mug now cradled between her palms, and there’s something knotted in her jaw that doesn’t quite soften even when she smiles. “I never thought I’d have to think that far ahead either… until suddenly I did. It’s like one day you’re drowning in the logistics of paying bills, working, doing laundry—and the next, someone hands you the possibility of forever.”

Her voice hushes when she says that last word. Not with fear, but with reverence. A bone-deep awe that makes my lungs shrink. Because I think I understand what she means now. For the first time, forever doesn’t sound hypothetical or metaphorical—it sounds personal. Tethered to one face.

Malachi.

Was it really only a few hours ago when his fingers traced the soft skin above my heart, dragging heat through my veins, when he said he wanted to mark me? I thought that moment meant something solid, something permanent. And it does. It has to. Because a man like him doesn’t say something like that unless he knows the gravity of it. But now I’m sitting in his clan’s house on furniture that has outlasted monarchies while my child, my Charlie, is out there with someone who looks at the world and sees only what he can take.

And Malachi is gone, hunting him down.

Eloise must sense the tilt in my thoughts, the spin beneath my skin, because her palm slips back over mine and squeezes. No words. Just pressure and patience and that impossible steadiness again.

“You don’t have to know everything right now,” she says. “You only need to hold on to one thing.”

I lift my gaze. “What’s that?”

“That Malachi won’t stop until he brings her back.”

My breath shudders. “I know,” I whisper. “But that terrifies me too. What if something happens to him?”

Because the truth underneath the truth—the kind I don’t want to say aloud in case it builds a shape permanent enough to become real—is that if Malachi fails, I don’t know how I come back from that. And worse, if he succeeds but it costs him pieces of himself? Then, what about the next time something awful happens? There’s always a next time in the Barrows. Always someone looking to find the edge of your skin and tear it just enough to see how pretty you bleed.

The low hum of my phone startles me. It vibrates against the cushion beside me like something alive and coiled. For one suspended second, I can’t place the feeling that grips me. Hope? Dread? I reach for it with fumbling fingers, dread rising like bile when I see the screen:

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I hesitate. It’s a video call.

Eloise sees the name—or lack thereof—and her body tightens beside me.

I answer, the words catching on my tongue. “Hello?”

The screen flickers. And then his face fills it.

Kit.