Tanya Bennett dropped to her knees in the mud.

The wet, black slush of the courtyard floor seeped into the delicate lace of her white silk bodice, but she didn't seem to notice.

Her fingers clawed frantically at the stone, snatching the blurred, water-logged sheets of paper back from the floor before the ink could completely wash away into the drains.

Her chest heaved violently.

Each breath came in sharp, desperate rasps that rattled through her throat.

"It’s a lie!" Tanya shrieked.

She scrambled up the first three steps of the ceremonial dais, her slippery leather soles nearly losing their grip on the smooth granite.

She thrust the dripping, mud-stained documents upward toward the council elders.

Her hands shook so hard the wet paper rustled like dead leaves.

"Look at the records!" Tanya yelled, her voice echoing off the high cedar pillars of the Grand Hall.

"Look at them right now!"

"Her parents..."

"Her dead, pathetic parents sold us out to the enemy!"

"They were traitors to the bloodline!"

"They sold our northern border patrol routes to the eastern coven!"

"They took vampire gold, Killian!"

The word *vampire* dropped into the center of the Grand Hall like a block of ice.

The low murmurs of the crowd cut off instantly.

The temperature in the massive room seemed to plummet ten degrees within a single heartbeat.

The glowing golden thread of the fated mate bond still pulsed heavily between Killian and Eva, stretching across the twenty feet of open space.

But the light suddenly flickered.

It wavered, the bright gold dimming into a sickly, unstable amber.

Killian Vance went dead still.

His 195cm frame went rigid on the highest tier of the platform.

His broad shoulders squared, the muscles along his back tightening until the black fabric of his tactical shirt looked ready to rip.

His hands clenched into massive, bloodless fists at his sides.

His knuckles turned a stark, bone white under the skin.

His massive Leo pride slammed into place like an iron portcullis.

A deep, bitter, historical hatred for the vampire race flooded his system, overriding everything else.

The very monsters who had slaughtered his predecessor on the western ridge.

The monsters whose lingering scent still haunted the nightmares of every warrior in his vanguard.

The biological mate instinct inside his veins began to fight a losing war against his deep-seated trauma.

His emotional walls locked up completely.

Stone cold.

Impenetrable.

He stared down at Eva from the top of the dais.

His golden eyes lost their warm, blinding brilliance from a few moments prior.

They hardened into twin chips of frozen, unyielding amber.

Supreme, icy disgust pulled his upper lip back, revealing the sharp, white edges of his upper fangs.

Eva didn't move.

She stood perfectly in the center of the main aisle, her boots still dripping with the slush from the blizzard outside.

The freezing wind from the cracked northern window whipped her wet, dark hair straight across her eyes.

Beneath the wet, frayed collar of her servant tunic, the skin began to prickle.

The crescent birthmark on her neck started to pulse.

It glowed with a faint, iridescent silver light, reacting to the heavy rejection vibrating through the room.

Killian’s eyes tracked the shift in color.

He saw the sacred mark.

He saw the undeniable, flawless proof of the Moon Goddess's alignment right there on her skin.

He ignored it.

He deliberately tore his gaze away from the glowing crescent, his expression twisting into something ugly and distorted.

"Killian..." Eva rasped.

Her voice was low, her throat so dry it felt coated in sand from her time in the storm.

She took half a step forward.

Her bare palm lifted out of the fold of her wet apron.

"It... it wasn't them," she added, her grey eyes locking onto his frozen stare.

"The letters..."

"They’re forged," she said, her voice steadying as her INTJ brain began to parse Tanya's erratic breathing.

"Tanya’s father... he’s the one who—"

Killian raised a brutal, massive hand.

He didn't let her finish the sentence.

He didn't let her breathe the next name.

The sheer pressure of his dominant Alpha aura exploded outward from his extended palm.

It hit Eva like a physical wall of bricks.

The heavy, invisible force slammed directly into her throat, completely silencing her defenses before she could utter another syllable.

She choked, her knees buckling slightly under the sudden weight.

Her jaw locked shut as the oxygen was sucked from her lungs.

"Not another word," Killian growled.

His voice wasn't a roar—it was a low, guttural frequency that made the heavy floorboards beneath her boots vibrate.

"You are the blood of traitors," he whispered, his eyes filled with absolute, unadulterated scorn.

"And I will never let a parasite rule by my side."