Page 20 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter nineteen

Baird

H e knew Mira had seen right through his excuse for being in Edinburgh—she was far too smart to fall for that.

It felt like Mira saw everything he was trying so hard to hide from her.

It had been so long since he had any use for all these emotions, it almost made him angry to feel them.

Being around her was maddening. It wasn’t just her beauty; the way she moved through the world, seemingly unaware of the way people looked at her—not just men, but everyone.

It ran deeper than that. She felt like disruption, a quiet force sent to challenge all the rules he’d built to keep others at arm’s length, to protect his heart—and protect them from what came with getting close to him.

For the first time in years, he wanted to know someone—but he was fighting every instinct not to.

He had lost everyone who’d ever truly mattered. Some to age, yes—but even then, it wasn’t death that hurt the most. It was the enforced distance, the inability to say goodbye, the aching silence left in place of a held hand at the end.

It was the island itself that had taken Edan from Baird.

He could still see it clearly, as if time hadn’t dulled the edges.

He and his brother had been hunting on the rocky slopes of Caisteal Abhail, just two boys left in their grandmother’s care for the summer.

Baird was thirteen. Edan, only nine. The goat Edan had shot bolted toward the valley, and Edan had followed it, stepping into a narrow gash in the ridge they called the Witch’s Step.

The sediment beneath him moved like a slow wave, then faster—rocks tumbling, larger stones gaining momentum, until the whole slope gave way in a cascade of noise and dust. Baird had watched it all.

Helpless. Edan’s body was gone before he could even call his name.

The guilt etched itself into him like stone.

For years afterward, he stayed away from the island, unable to face what it reminded him of: his failure, his brother’s scream swallowed by the wind, the empty silence after.

But after the greatest loss of his life—one even deeper—he returned.

Not to heal, but to vanish. To build a world where solitude could masquerade as safety.

And into his world, Mira had walked—bold, brash, vibrant.

A storm wrapped in sunlight. Her very presence was on a collision course with something dark and merciless—a monster in human form.

A man without a soul, who hunted women that stirred something in him.

Always the same type: dark hair, dark eyes… just like Mira.

But Mira was more than just a type. She was a mirror image of another—one who had come to a bloody end.

He would do anything to stop history from repeating itself.

The question was: was he strong enough? Strong enough to alter the ending…before it came for her, too?