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 great furnaces provided the energy to generate light, heat, and hot water, all essential for the human minions and more than desirable for vampires who liked to indulge in luxuries, like Belladonna and her daughters.


“You’re my only help, Buttons, and you’re an ancient automaton.” If I wasn’t talented in tinkering, it would be impossible to keep him going.


Neither the heat nor the hard, physical toil would normally be bothersome to Valentine but, like his father, he was kept limited by Belladonna as to how frequently he could feed, leaving him weak.


“I can’t even leave the grounds or get word to Arsen. Even approaching the gates is enough to activate this golden collar, and the gorgon curse Belladonna imbued in it.”


Chapter 9