Twice.

Mia had seen Damien kill twice before today.

Aside from the night he had brutally claimed her consumption, there was that first sunset two years ago—the evening their orbits first collided.

A massive fire had been orchestrated to topple the Clarke estate. A dozen debt collectors had turned the manor into a funeral pyre. Two men had held Mia's arms, forcing her to watch the family legacy turn to ash, forcing her to witness her mother's lifeless body vanish into the relentless, hungry light.

Her entire world had collapsed in front of her. They had laughed, stroking her face to admire the bone-deep fragility of her grief.

In the exact second her first sob broke, a gunshot rang out.

Dull. Brief. Precise.

It was a strike of absolute freedom, executed with a lawless, predatory grace. Mia had watched as every man in front of her dropped, a single entry wound blooming in the center of each forehead. The vivid crimson spray was impossibly, hauntingly beautiful.

It had taken only seconds. A single man had performed a massacre in the time it took to draw a breath.

Stiff with shock, she had turned and seen him for the first time.

Under the bruised purple of the twilight sky, he was leaning against the door of a silver Spyker C8. His posture was dazzling, his expression so faint it was nearly invisible. He possessed a cold, indifferent poise and a beauty that felt like a physical assault on the senses. A slight curve of his pale lips was enough to tilt the heavens.

He looked as if he were submerged in a vortex of desire. If it hadn't been for the weapon in his hand and the grey veil of gunpowder smoke still drifting from the muzzle, she would have mistaken him for a man who had just emerged from a lover's bed rather than a killing field.

Light and shadow, black and white—everything had been inverted because of him.

And now, it was the third time.

Mia's gaze was locked onto the boy on the floor. The image was a perfect, horrific mirror of the past. From the center of Leonid Graves' forehead, the crimson was flowing fast, taking his body heat with it, cooling him into a corpse.

Witnessing the literal leak of a life was a process she was never meant to endure.

Mia wanted to run to him. She wanted to lift him up, to press her hands against the wound to stop the bleeding, to scream into her phone for an ambulance. She wanted to tell him: I'm taking you to the hospital right now.

She wanted to save him.

But the sound of terrified voices from behind her snapped her back to the present.

"...Sorry, Sir! We... we thought she was allowed..."

Mia's mind cleared instantly. She remembered where she was. In this space, he was the only master.

The apology was hollow and useless. Damien's rage flared with the intensity of a sun going supernova. He cut a lethal gaze toward the enforcers at the door, his voice dropping into a register so dark and cold it felt like a blade against their throats.

"Get out—now!"

They deserved to die. They had allowed his Mia to see this brand of blood.

He saw the depth of the terror on her face. It was the exact expression she had worn the day they met. Time had moved in a circle, and for two years, he had guarded her with every second of his focus, every ounce of his obsessive heart. He would not allow her to return to that point of origin.

Damien suddenly moved, his long legs eating up the distance as he walked straight toward her.

Mia watched him approach. The scent of gunpowder hadn't faded from his skin; the violence hadn't yet receded from his eyes. He was saturated in the heavy, metallic smell of blood. This was a Damien she didn't recognize—a stranger who made her want to turn and flee into the dark.

But her limbs had no strength. Her memory betrayed her. She remembered the night two years ago when he had reached out for her and she had taken a step back to escape. That single act of resistance had snapped his patience. It had cost her twenty-three years of innocence in a single night of agonizing possession.

And now, that stranger was back. Step by step, he closed the gap.

Caught between shock and dread, Mia stood frozen, her eyes darting frantically, unable to find a safe place to land.

In the next heartbeat, her world went black.

Damien raised his left hand. With a hauntingly gentle, cool motion, he covered her eyes, dragging her entire world into a terminal white-out.

Then, he hauled her into his chest.

His right arm snaked around her waist, locking her into the hollow of his body. She was pressed hard against his heart, her hands dangling uselessly, her mind too numb to decide where to put them. She let him coil around her, her entire frame vibrating with a violent tremor.

He held her like that—a display of such profound, seductive devotion that he seemed to transform into a different man instantly.

"Mia..." he cooed, his voice a tender, hypnotic spell. "Be a good girl. Don't look."