Prologue
Julian stepped into the doorway of Aida’s room as she lifted a sweater. Tilting her head, she examined it before folding it and placing it in her suitcase. With her back to him, she didn’t realize he was there, so he took the time to appreciate the slender curve of her back and the black hair falling to her waist in curls.
The sunlight streaming through the windows emphasized her ivory skin and curvaceous figure. With her heart-shaped face, she was a striking mix of beauty and innocence. Her fine-boned, delicate hands lifted a pair of jeans from the stack on the twin-sized bed and set them neatly in the suitcase.
She was beautiful, and she was his, she just didn’t know it, and he didn’t know how to tell her. As he watched her pack, he didn’t know if he could ever tell her.
She was leaving this world of vampires she’d been brutally tossed into and going back to her human world. For the past week, she’d talked endlessly about what college would be like, what she planned to do, and how she couldn’t wait to return to normal.
He loved seeing her so happy when she’d had such little happiness since her kidnapping and captivity on the island, but he didn’t know how to let her go. He’d just found her. They’d only had a couple of months together, and he craved an eternity with her.
He couldn’t ask that of her, not when she still bore the scars of what those bastards on the island did to her and not when her nightmares propelled her from bed almost every night. The idea of losing her made him want to tear everyone and everything in his path apart, but the idea of making her unhappy stopped all his destructive impulses.
She was his, and that meant he would do everything in his power to ensure her happiness, even if it destroyed him.
Unable to look at her anymore, he stared at the bare walls. There was something so un-teenager about the barren walls, and it had been like this before she started packing. The only personal thing she had in the room was a framed photo of her, Mollie, and their mom standing on a beach. Aida looked about fourteen or fifteen in the picture, Mollie was maybe twenty, and their mother wore a bandanna around her head.
Their mother died of breast cancer when she was sixteen, and this was their last family photo together. Aida told him it was from the week they took their mom to Cape Cod to walk the beaches, explore the shops, and stuff themselves on seafood. It was the last summer their mother saw.
When Aida told him this story, she had tears in her eyes as she gazed at the picture, but love made her face glow. He’d draped his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him in the way she often did.
He was aware she saw him as more of a friend or brother-like companion. He was happy to be what she needed because, after the island, she needed someone to lean on, and he would be there for her.
Aida didn’t turn to look at Julian, but she knew he was behind her. She hadn’t heard him approach, but the subtle smell of allspice gave him away. Smiling, she folded another sweater and placed it in the suitcase before glancing over her shoulder.
Tall and gangly, he leaned against the door as he watched her pack her suitcase for the thousandth time. For the past week, she’d packed and unpacked as she examined her selection of clothes and accessories over and over again.
She was an East Coast girl; outside of movies and Google, she had no idea what living in Arizona would entail, but she couldn’t wait to find out. When Mollie caught her going through her things for the five hundredth time, she reminded her that she could always buy things later, but Aida couldn’t stop herself from going over the contents multiple times a day.
It was anxiety more than anything. Before the island, she never dealt with anxiety, but it was a constant companion now. She was going back into a world that hadn’t treated her so kindly. Her chances of being kidnapped and hunted for sport by vamps again were pretty slim, but she was returning to the mortal world armed with the knowledge of the immortal one.
Things would never be the same for her again. She loved the Byrnes and that Mollie and Mike were so happy and in love with each other, but she was scared to resume life in a world where vampires existed, and she couldn’t tell if someone was one or not.
If one came after her again, they’d have a rude awakening, as she’d spent a fair amount of her summer learning self-defense from Julian. She’d also packed some pepper spray and knew how to use a weapon against a vamp. She would not go down without a fight.
When Julian shifted and rested his hand against the frame, her eyes were drawn to the muscles in his biceps. Younger than most of his brothers, he wasn’t as thickly muscled as them, but she suspected that would change in a few years.
She wasn’t sure if he was still growing or not; if he was, he would stop soon, and the rest of his body would catch up to his large hands and too big feet. His thin frame would fill out more, and he would start to look more like a man than a boy. Already, the scruff shadowing his jaw was getting thicker.
From their time spent walking the woods, fishing, swimming, and drifting on rafts, the sun had bronzed his skin. Mike said Julian used to spend most of his time with his computers, and he still did spend some time with them, but he also enjoyed being outside with her.
And she needed to be outside. After her captivity, it was difficult to be indoors for long periods. She didn’t know how she would deal with that and her nightmares in Arizona—more things to heap onto her growing anxiety—but she would figure it out because she had to go, even if it meant leaving everyone she cared about behind, including Julian.
She tried not to think about it; otherwise, she might stay. So she focused on the way the sunlight brought out the lapis blue color of his eyes and the coal blackness of his hair. Boyish in so many ways, sometimes it was easy to forget he was technically a man, but he was eighteen like her.
However, whereas she was leaving for college in the morning, he would remain with his family, and she was going to miss him so much. They’d spent a lot of time together since her rescue from the island, and he’d become her best friend, which was something she never had before. She didn’t count Mollie; her sister was family, and they would do anything for each other, but she’d never had close friends outside of her family, until Julian.
She always had plenty of friends, but they were all in the same social circles, the popular girls. Some of them were great people, but some of the others were like sharks searching for the first sign of weakness. And when they saw the first drop of blood, they attacked.
They pretended to like her, but behind her back, they gossiped about her. She knew that, because whenever one of the other girls in their group turned their back, they talked about her too.
She wished she could say she wasn’t one of them, but that was a lie. She’d been as eager to hear about the latest downfall, who was doing who, and cheating on who, and fighting with who.
She’d oohed and ahhed and giggled behind her hand, all while thinking, please don’t let me be next. But she was no longer that silly, stupid teenager who watched her mom die, never really known her father, and had no idea what she was doing with her life.
Her time being held captive on an island and fed on by vampires changed her. She was never purposely cruel, but she’d been selfish. She could chalk it up to the fact most teens were selfish, but she knew the truth. She’d been afraid to go against the others, to stand out, to be different, because they would turn against her.