I died saving a stranger in a parking lot in Gulfton. Bled out next to a dumpster while Houston didn’t even flinch. Rent was due in three days. Those were my last goddamn thoughts. Real heroic shit.
Then I woke up a vampire.
Not the sexy, tortured kind from the movies. Nah. The kind where you’re chained to a thousand-year-old psychopath who already drained you once, dumped your body in the Ship Channel, and when that didn’t stick, decided to turn you into his personal science project. The kind where you’re starving, caged in a Gothic mansion, and the only person who gives a shit is the woman who stalked your broke ass for two years and hand-delivered your dying body to the monster who made you.
Quinn fucking Ashford.
Cold hands. Smart ass mouth. Hazel eyes that shift colors when she’s about to either kiss you or crack your jaw — and darlin’ does both with equal enthusiasm. She’s been that ancient bastard’s prisoner since 1826. Lost her husband. Lost her daughter. Lost every piece of herself except a tube of dark red lipstick she’s worn every night since the day she died. That lipstick is her war paint. Her middle finger to the universe.
She watched me wash dishes for minimum wage. Watched me fight in underground cages for rent money. Watched me comb my hair every morning like looking presentable still mattered when the world already decided I was invisible.
Seven hundred and thirty nights, darlin’. You watched me for seven hundred and thirty nights.
Now I’m the one watching her. I’m done pretending I don’t want her so bad my blood literally catches fire when she’s in the room. Done pretending I didn’t get hard the first time she punched me in the face.
Yeah. I said what I said.
But something’s wrong with me. I run hot when vampires run cold. I heal faster than I should. And the thing waking up inside me? It ain’t vampire. It’s something older. Meaner. The kind of thing that makes a thousand-year-old monster remember what fear tastes like.
He should be afraid.
Because Quinn is mine. Been mine since she watched me through those shitty apartment windows. Mine since she punched me in the face, and I got hard from the impact. Mine since she wore my shirt to bed and pretended it was the first thing she grabbed. Bullshit, darlin’.
Anyone who touches her they die. Not a threat. Just a fucking promise. And I will burn everything standing between us to ash — starting with the chains that ancient fuck put on her.
BLOODWOKEN. Book One of The Pyretic Bloodline trilogy.
Blood woke him. Hell forged him. Night crowned him.
For fans of: Sons of Anarchy meets Interview with the Vampire Jessica Jones meets The Originals Haunting Adeline meets From Blood and Ash Den of Vipers meets Anne Rice
Tropes: Stalker to lovers. Captivity romance. Touch her and die. Who did this to you. Morally gray everything. He got hard when she punched him. Broke boy to supernatural weapon pipeline.
Dual POV First person Past tense Spicy
Content warnings: Explicit sexual content including blood play. Graphic violence and gore. Captivity. Stalking. Possessive dynamics. On-page character death. Child loss. Memory manipulation. Morally gray protagonists who don’t get redeemed. HEA not guaranteed in Book One. This is dark romance. You’ve been warned, darlin’.
