Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Trapped in a gilded cage, Wren begins to unravel secrets buried for centuries about her own bloodline, the Order’s dark bargains, and the Malus family’s true intentions…especially Xavier Malus, the oldest and most powerful vampire in the Malus family. Xavier takes an unexpected interest in Wren, demanding she marry him in a political move to appease the Vampire Council. The more time she spends with him, the more she risks her hatred turning into passion. Will she see him as anything other than the monster he is?
Because in a game where bloodlines are currency and love can be the deadliest weakness of all, one wrong choice could mean the end—not just for Wren, but for everyone she’s ever sworn to protect
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
This is, by far, the most boring funeral I’ve ever been to. And as a member of the Order of the Mystic Realm, I’ve been to my fair share. This is no demon hunter’s funeral, as evidenced by the middle-aged women sitting in the front row, shoulders shaking as they silently cry.
There’s no crying at a hunter’s funeral. Instead, there are at least two drunken fights, tales of fighting monsters with someone trying to top whatever story was just told. Usually, some sort of knife-throwing competition starts followed by another drunken fight before the mood turns somber and we gather around our fallen comrade in a silent reverie, remembering the good times while trying not to process the fact that it could very easily be us lying there in a wooden coffin, about to be set ablaze.
But no, this is just a boring, run of the mill Christian service taking place in an outdated funeral home with one too many Febreze scented plug-ins trying to cover up the smell of water-damaged carpet and the sewage-leaking toilet in the reception area.
Yawning, I roll my neck and look around at the crowd gathered to honor Robert Henderson, who died “too soon” at the young age of fifty-four, leaving behind his wife and two kids. Part of me wants to put my hand over my stomach, go up to the casket and cry about how Bobby will never get to meet his unborn child or leave his wife like he promised, just to add some excitement to this joint.
Deciding that I’d rather just get through this service as fast as I can with no distractions, I let out a bored sigh, earning a glare from an elderly woman in the row in front of me. She quickly darts her gaze from my face to my body, no doubt taking in the fact that I’m wearing workout clothes to a funeral. But hey, my pants and matching crop top are black at least, a very respectable color if you ask me.
My expression changes from one of someone watching paint dry to that of someone sad to have lost such a good running buddy as Bobby. Which is my cover story for how I know him. It’s ironic, really, that Robert Henderson—known as Bobby to his friends—joined a running club three months ago only to drop dead of a heart attack in the middle of his office on a random Tuesday. The cleaning lady found him three hours after the office closed for the night, slumped over his desk.
I wonder if his wife thought he was having an affair. Did she have his location shared on her phone? Was she cursing his name and sending him nasty text messages, accusing him of doing something wrong when really he was face down in a puddle of dried drool, dead as a doornail? She probably wished it was an affair when she got the news he was dead. Though if he were my husband, a heart attack would be better than cheating on me. No man hurts me and gets away unscathed.
And I also wonder if the demon residing in Bobby’s body is as bored as I am, listening to the sermon droning on and on for what feels like forever. I have to suppress a laugh as I imagine the stiff, embalmed body suddenly sitting up. Normally, the most startling part about a person possessed by a demon is how their eyes are inked over from demonic energy. But if Bobby was properly embalmed, then eyelid caps would be over whatever is left of his eyeballs. Would the demon flick them off? Maybe they’d just fall off on their own.
I’ve encountered demons who have possessed dead bodies—which is lazy, if you ask me—but not a body that’s been laid out for a viewing like this. It was smart, perhaps, for the demon to slip into a body as it was being wheeled to the morgue. And it was smarter to lay low, waiting through the whole embalming process, laying still inside the empty body as it was washed and dressed for today. Smart, but not smart enough to evade my locator spell.
My phone dings with a text, and I make a face, silently apologizing to the same woman who judged me for wearing workout clothes. Really, they’re practical and comfortable, which is a winning combination in my book. And talk about unassuming. Did I just come back from a Pilates class and now I’m on my way to meet the other housewives for organic, gluten-free, non GMO, sugar-free, low carb smoothies or did I just cut the heart out of a forest hag who’s been terrorizing a small village in the Appalachian backwoods, where everyone knows the myths but not how to kill the monsters that lurk in the dark?