The gnawing hunger was churning painfully inside her and driving her mad. Victorija flashed across the room and grasped Drasas’s neck, pushing her up against the wall.

“I told you I want to stay up here,” Victorija shouted. “Now get someone to clear up these bodies and send me vampires to feed from, from now on.”

“Yes, Principe.” Victorija walked back to the window. Drasas added, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, now send me some food.”

Drasas bowed her head and walked out of the room. Victorija grasped her stomach and steadied herself against the castle wall. Then the cramps hit hard, and she doubled over in pain. Why was this happening? It had started after they returned to France.

She remained in her bedroom because she wanted to be alone with her thoughts, and not show any weakness to her clan. Her thoughts were almost as debilitating as her hunger for blood. Lucia hadn’t just unlocked memories of Victorija with the family—the memories brought forth all the thoughts she had kept locked up tight behind her icy walls.

Victorija once told Amelia that she had experienced every shade of pain. Whatever Lucia had done to her mind, everything was melting, and facing those memories was terrifying. Between that and her unquenchable hunger, Victorija Dred feared she was going mad, just as her father Gilbert had done when he killed her mother, his blood bond.

The Debreks were vampire royalty. They were the oldest and most powerful vampires in the world because of one special ability—they could reproduce. Born vampires, as the Debreks were known, grew stronger with each new generation.

Victorija, Byron’s cousin, was a born vampire, but when her father was banished from the clan, he and his descendants lost the ability to reproduce. It made the newly formed Dred clan weaker than the Debreks.

Victorija, like her father before her, wanted this ability back, not for the joy of bringing a new life into the world, but for building a powerbase of super vampires to rival the Debreks. She sought to find out what magic Lucia had stripped them of, but it wasn’t until Victorija confronted her grandmother at the Debrek castle in Scotland that she found out the awful truth.

There was no secret magic or incantation that was taken from them—the secret was love. A pure unselfish love for another vampire or human would allow them to reproduce like the Debreks.

It was a shocking revelation, because Victorija knew she would never want or be capable of loving anyone.

Gilbert had fallen out of love with Victorija’s mother after Victorija was born. He wanted to be rid of her, and a witch had promised him she could break his need for the blood of his bond, but the spell had never worked, and he began to lose his mind to the insanity of blood withdrawal.

Victorija wasn’t bonded or ever likely to be, so why was she feeling like this? She recognized the symptoms of the same blood withdrawal Gilbert had gone through. Something was deeply wrong, and she was terrified of finding out the reason.