When Valentine’s sire is forced to take a mate by his Clan leader, Valentine is reduced to stoking the castle’s furnaces as nothing more than a cindered servant to the new matriarch. With his sire Libertine incarcerated and Valentine forced to wear a cursed collar, there seems no way to escape Belladonna’s hold on them. When a stranger appears, Valentine is surprised by how quickly he trusts the other vampire. He accepts the request to go to the castle of his Clan Lord, the ancient and powerful Hades, to uncover who is working to overthrow him. His reward is freedom for both him and his sire. No one is meant to know who he really is, and Valentine pretends he’s one of Hades’ favorites while in the castle, adopting the name Cinder and playing his Seductive nature to its full. But his world is shaken to its core when Valentine finds himself falling for the enigmatic Cole. As a Seductive, Valentine never imagined he’d want an Alpha Predator as a mate. Worse yet, it may be that Cole could be the very one he’s been sent to uncover. When the battle for dominance begins, where will Valentine’s loyalty lie?

Cinis

The same rush of strength as usual flowed through Valentine, but there was more, a tingling of power that he’d never previously experienced. As he relinquished his hold, Valentine gazed into Libertine’s eyes.


“I infused you with a little of my own life-force.” Libertine cupped Valentine’s cheek. “If there was more I could do as we move forward with this parody of a marriage, I would.”


“There was no need.” Valentine kissed the palm of Libertine’s hand. “But I’m very honored.”


“There may be. And so I would rather we were prepared.” Libertine shrugged, and elegant shift of his left shoulder. “It gives us a stronger bond. The only one stronger would be that between bonded mates.”


“Bonded mates.” It was a dream long held by Valentine to one day find his own true mate. He now hoped that the situation with Belladonna wasn’t going to interfere with that dream. I have no desire to be forced into a mating as Mandrake has done with Libertine


Chapter 7