Chapter 49 – The Vampire’s Kiss
The night pressed heavy over the ravine, its shadows thick as oil, its silence deceptive. The storm had passed, leaving the world raw and dripping, the forest steaming as though the earth itself bled. Seren lay curled by the fire, her breath shallow, her skin still burning with the remnants of the bond. Kaelen and Lyra had fallen into uneasy silence, their bodies close but their gazes far.
But sleep did not come.
Not for Seren.
Not when she felt him.
Lucien.
The presence brushed against her mind like velvet over a wound—soft, deliberate, impossible to ignore. She squeezed her eyes shut, clutching the thread of herself, but it was already fraying. The bond had tethered her to Kaelen and Lyra, but it had not severed the pull of something older, darker.
