Acknowledgments

Thank you to Rad, Sandy, and all the BSB staff for their tireless hard work. Thanks to Ruth for her guidance, patience, and advice. I’m deeply grateful to have you help me make my books the best that they can be.

Thanks to my family for their support and encouragement.

Finally, thanks to Lou and Barney for putting up with my craziness as I approach every deadline. I’ll love you both forever and always.

To Lou

Always and forever

Chapter One

The sounds of laughter and happiness were making Alexis Villiers more down and depressed by the second. She should be happy. It was her best friend and mentor’s wedding day. Byron Debrek had already been bonded by blood to Amelia Honey, but Byron wanted to honour Amelia’s human side, and so they planned a lavish wedding.

The wedding was taking place at the Gothic and picturesque Debrek Castle in the Highlands of Scotland. Byron invited all of their paranormal allies and friends, including the four heads of the UK and Ireland werewolf packs—the Scottish Wulvers, the Irish Filtiaran, the English Ranwulfs, and the Welsh Blaidds—plus the BoaBhan Sith, all-female vampire-fae beings with whom the Debreks had a long alliance, who used the Debreks’ Scottish residence as their home.

There were also representatives of the fae, the shapeshifters, and the witches, with whom they had a much more fragile alliance. And since Byron’s cousin Victorija, the head of the Dred vampire clan, killed the leader of the French coven, relations between the vampires and witches had become even more strained than usual.

The wedding was the event of the century. Nobody, especially Alexis, ever thought that Byron would become bonded by blood, the vampire equivalent of marriage, but when Amelia Honey came along, everything changed. Alexis stood at the back of the banqueting hall watching the wedding guests dancing with a deep sadness and worry in her heart. She had been feeling it for months now and just couldn’t shake it.

Alexis watched Byron pull Amelia closer as they embarked on their first dance, and the guests gave them a round of applause. Alexis could not share this happiness. She wandered over to the bar area and waited for service. Slaine, who ran The Sanctuary in London, had agreed to run the bar for this evening’s special event.

The Sanctuary was a club where all paranormals could come together and have a drink in peace, no matter what grievances they had outside the door, and was the oldest bar in London. Slaine was part shifter, part fae, and it was the shifter part of her genes that gave her the six-foot-eight height and solid, imposing body. Slaine spotted Alexis and left her staff to handle the orders and made her way over to Alexis.

“What can I get you, Alexis?” Slaine said.

“Whisky, please.”

Slaine grinned. “Try this.” She brought out a bottle with a grey wolf on the front of the label from underneath the bar and poured Alexis a large drink. “Kenrick Wulver gave Byron and Amelia ten cases of this special reserve to mark their wedding day. Byron let us use one case behind the bar. It’s a bit special.”