Blood Bound to My Regret

My stepsister, Chloe, wanted to test the loyalty of my childhood sweetheart. So she drugged him with a lust potion.

Then she threw him in my room.

I couldn't watch him suffer. He was spiraling into a bloodlust. For a vampire, that's a death sentence.

So I gave him the only cure. Myself.

When Chloe found us, she fled in a jealous rage. She married a cursed, brutal king—the Lord of Eternal Night. And he killed her.

Julian and I were blood-bound, but he began to hate me.

He ignored me for a century.

Then a rival clan ambushed us. He shielded me with his body. He burned to ash to save my life.

Before he faded, he gave me one last look.

"If I could do it all over again, Elena," he whispered, "I never would have needed saving."

My world shattered. Darkness took me.

I opened my eyes. I was back in Julian's room. On the night it all went wrong.

Julian. The vampire lord I’d loved in secret for centuries. The boy I grew up with. My stepsister drugged him and threw him in my room.

The air was thick with the coppery scent of blood and something sickly sweet.

His eyes were crimson, fangs fully descended as he tore savagely at a sofa cushion. The potion was a fire in his veins, burning away his sanity.

“Elena!” Julian’s breath was hot, his scarlet eyes locked on me.

I knew he was obsessed with Chloe, my human stepsister. But he would never turn her, not before their official bonding ceremony.

He had to feed his lust. He couldn't risk breaking our most sacred law by losing control. He would have to settle for the next best thing.

Me. He’d drink my blood and take me to bed.

Last time, on this very night, I walked straight into his arms. I offered my body without a second thought.

But when my stepsister found us, she saw the marks he’d left on my skin, and her jealousy exploded. She fled.

The next time I heard of her, she’d been forced to marry the cursed Lord of Eternal Night. When the king’s curse flared, he strangled her without mercy.

Julian turned all his hatred on me for Chloe's death. It lasted a hundred years.

He hated that I’d slept with him. Hated that Chloe had caught us. Hated me for her tragic end.

Not this time.

I pulled an ancient scroll from the bookshelf and unrolled it.

“Antilla. Noctis. Vinculum.”

The ancient blood-purification spell flashed with silver light.

Julian howled as an unseen force slammed him to the floor.

I drew the silver whip from my belt.

CRACK!

The whip struck true across his back. The searing burn of silver instantly fought back the potion’s effects.

He died for me once. This was me returning the favor.

“Where’s Chloe?”

The spell and the whip had cleared his head enough. He was no longer panting my name. The first name from