Dawn came gray and thin through the study curtains.

Elena woke on the narrow couch with Marcus’s arm locked around her waist and the thick combined heat of the desperate breeding sessions still heavy inside her. The lower marks under his forearm ached in the deep claimed way that meant they had been properly renewed in the chaos of the night before. Upstairs the master bedroom had stayed quiet. The stack of shirts remained on the bed. Victoria’s devastation remained unfinished. The house felt scraped and hollow and completely changed, as if the full confrontation and the emotional breakdowns and the desperate claiming amid the wreckage had burned through every...