WRONG LOVE 3: HEIR

Chapter Nine: Curse or Blessing

Seraphina heard it three days before the beach trip.

She hadn't been looking for anything troubling — she'd simply been at the coven meeting she attended out of obligation more than interest, standing near the edges of a conversation happening in low voices between two older vampires who hadn't noticed her proximity or hadn't cared.

"—a hybrid," one of them was saying. "Something that shouldn't exist at all. Do you understand what that means for the balance? For four thousand years there have been rules—"

"Rules that have already been broken," the other said. "The marriage happened. The bond exists. Now this."

"It's not a blessing," the first one said. Quiet. Certain. "It's a curse. A child that belongs to neither side and could, in time, belong to both in ways neither side can control. Do you think Malachar's court will remain united once word spreads? Do you think the wolf packs will accept something that isn't fully theirs either?"

"Something has to be done," the second said.

"You think it should be stopped," the first said. Not quite a question.

A pause.

"Before it's born," the second said quietly. "While there's still time to prevent it."

Seraphina had gone very still.

She'd left the meeting shortly after, driven straight home, and sat with what she'd heard for two full days trying to decide what to do with it — whether it was idle paranoid talk from vampires who feared change, or something with weight and intent behind it.

She still hadn't decided by the time the beach trip arrived.

But she knew she couldn't hold it any longer.

The beach was warm and golden and entirely too perfect for what Seraphina was carrying.

Jace and Elara had claimed a stretch of sand near the water, a large umbrella providing shade Elara needed more of these days, her growing stomach visible now beneath a loose sundress that Nova had insisted was the correct maternity aesthetic.

Mason had brought an entire cooler of food nobody had requested. Max had immediately started building something in the sand that he insisted was a castle and everyone else insisted was structurally concerning. Cole sat nearby with a book he wasn't reading, watching the water.

Orion sat a short distance away, arms crossed, wearing sunglasses and radiating the specific dry disapproval of someone who found beaches philosophically unnecessary but had come anyway because Elara asked.

"You two," Elara said, looking between Cole and Orion, "are the only people here without girlfriends."

"I've noticed," Jace said, grinning.

"I don't need a girlfriend," Cole said mildly.

"He definitely needs a girlfriend," Max called from his sandcastle. "He hasn't had one since before I was born, and I'm two thousand years old."

"I've had relationships," Cole said.

"Name one," Elara said.

Cole opened his mouth. Closed it.

"See," Jace said. "He's stalling."

"I'm choosing not to dignify this conversation," Cole said.

"And you," Elara said, turning to Orion. "Four centuries. FOUR CENTURIES, Orion, and you've never once brought anyone home."

"I have standards," Orion said, not looking up from behind his sunglasses.

"Nobody has standards THAT high," Elara said.

"Clearly I do," Orion said. "I'm still single."

"That's not proof of standards," Jace said. "That's proof of the opposite."

"I don't need your commentary, dragon," Orion said.

Jace looked at him.

"The kids at the orphanage told him," Elara explained, laughing. "He hasn't stopped calling him that."

"It's an accurate nickname," Orion said.

"You two should get married," Max called from the sandcastle. "Save everyone the trouble."

"Absolutely not," Cole and Orion said simultaneously, with identical horror, which produced enough laughter from everyone else that neither of them fully recovered their dignity for several minutes.

Seraphina found Elara alone near the water's edge an hour later — Jace briefly gone to help Mason retrieve something that had washed too far out, the rest of the group scattered across the sand behind them.

"Elara," she said quietly. "I need to tell you something."

Elara looked at her sister.

At the specific careful tension in Seraphina's face, the kind she rarely wore, the kind that meant whatever she was about to say had been sitting heavy for a while.

"What's wrong," Elara said.

Seraphina told her.

The coven meeting. The two vampires. The word curse. The word stopped. The specific chilling clarity of before it's born, while there's still time to prevent it.

Elara went very still.

"They said that," she said. Her voice had gone quiet. "About my daughter."

"I don't know who they were talking to," Seraphina said. "I don't know if it was just fear or if there's an actual plan forming. But Elara, I couldn't not tell you—"

"They want to kill her," Elara said.

The words landed in the air between them, flat and terrible.

"They think she's a curse," Seraphina said. "Not a blessing. They think—"

The world tilted.

Elara didn't remember deciding to sit down.

One moment she was standing at the water's edge, the ocean moving gently against her feet, and the next the ground was rushing toward her — not slowly, not with warning, the specific sudden collapse of a body that had absorbed one shock too many while already weakened by everything the pregnancy had been taking from her.

"ELARA—"

Seraphina caught her before she hit the sand, both arms coming around her sister, the specific panicked strength of centuries suddenly focused entirely on keeping one person upright.

"JACE—" Seraphina's voice tore across the beach. "JACE, SOMETHING'S WRONG—"

He was there before the words finished leaving her mouth.

Dropped to his knees in the sand, taking Elara from Seraphina's arms, his hands moving over her face, her neck, checking for the pulse that mattered most while his own heart hammered against his ribs.

"Elara. Elara, look at me. Can you hear me—"

Her eyes fluttered.

Opened partially.

"Jace," she managed. Faint.

"I'm here," he said. "What happened. Seraphina, what did you tell her—"

"I heard vampires talking," Seraphina said, voice shaking now that the crisis had fully registered. "About the baby. They called her a curse. They said something needs to be done before she's born—"

Jace's jaw went to stone.

"They said WHAT," he said.

"Jace," Elara whispered. "They want to hurt her. Before she's even—"

"Nobody is hurting anyone," Jace said. Fierce. Absolute. His hands cradling her face like she was the only fixed point in a world that had just tilted violently sideways. "Do you hear me? Nobody touches her. Nobody touches either of you. I will burn down every court and every pack before that happens."

Mason and Cole had reached them by now, Max close behind, the sandcastle abandoned entirely.

"Is she okay," Mason said, kneeling beside them.

"She fainted," Jace said. "From shock. I need—" His voice cracked slightly. "I need to get her somewhere safe. Now."

Cole was already pulling out his phone.

"I'll call Malachar," he said.

"And Aaron," Jace said. "We need to know exactly who's talking about this and how far it's gone."

Elara's eyes had closed again, her breathing steady but shallow, Jace's arms locked around her like letting go wasn't a possibility his body would allow.

"I've got you," he said quietly, to her, to the child she carried, to the family gathered around them on a beach that had gone from golden and easy to something far more serious in the space of a single sentence. "I've got both of you. Whatever comes for you, it goes through me first."

The tide moved gently against the sand.

The umbrella cast its shade over an empty stretch of towel.

And somewhere in the city, two vampires who had spoken quietly at a coven meeting had no idea that the words they'd exchanged had just changed the shape of everything ahead.