My tongue flicks over the points of my fangs. Somehow, they fit perfectly in my mouth, no aching, no unnatural shift when I bite down. They belong.
I exhale sharply, gripping the edge of the vanity. And even though I’m still looking at myself, I feel like my brain is slowly detaching. Dissociating. Because my eyes trail downward to my stomach. And I remember exactly what happened.
Giovanni tried to kill me. He sliced me open—left me dying. I should be dead. My own insides had been spilling out of me, and there was no coming back from that. No hospital, no surgeon, nothing could have saved me.
Except Florence.
Florence made a decision that no one else could. She took the risk. She turned me into something entirely new. The first of my kind. An experiment.
I squeeze my eyes shut, the weight of it pressing down.
Fuck. How do I even feel about this? Everything hasn’t stopped moving since I opened my eyes, and I haven’t really had a chance to catch my breath and feel my way through it.
I’m nothumananymore. I’m… I’m the only one of my kind. I was the guinea pig. Things could have gone so damn wrong, but Florence had to just act.
My eyes open, and I stare back at myself.
I’m a total unknown. Am I truly immortal like Florence believes? Florence seems to think I could get staked and still survive; the regeneration of her science is that strong. But what if? I feel like a giantwhat ifright now. What if I change more than Florence expected? What if my body keeps adapting? What if there are more side effects she hasn’t discovered yet?
I blink at myself in the mirror and take in a steady breath.
It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.
And I’m alive.
And more than that—if Florence is correct, I now have something I didn’t before: time.
Ever since I realized that IloveAres, I feared the one thing I could never change. Ares and I were never going to have forever. I was mortal, and he wasn’t. Even if we had a lifetime together, I know it with every damn bone in my body—it would never be enough.
The way I love Ares, the way he’s come to inhabit every inch of my soul, the way he’s rearranged my DNA with my need for him? My mortal days would never be enough, even if I lived to be a hundred years old.
But all that’s changed.
If Florence is right, now I have forever.
I won’t waste a second of it.
I’m going to find Ares, and I’m going to fix him.
A knock at the door breaks my thoughts. On instant alert, I cross the penthouse with quick strides, ready to fight or contain, depending on who it is.
I pull the door open, and about the last person I expect to see is Florence.
“Hi,” she says as she pushes her way into the apartment, ever confident, ever bossy.
She’s carrying a cooler, her expression carefully neutral, but I can see the tension in her shoulders. She sets the cooler down on the kitchen counter, and for a moment, neither of us speak.
“I gave the other scientists in the lab the day off,” she says finally, her eyes flicking up to meet mine. “I was worried at least one of them would show up anyway. We’re all a bunch of workaholics. Thankfully, they stayed away.” There’s something a little uneasy in her eyes, and that’s a rare sight. “It just feels… wrong, off, to have anyone else in that space after everything that happened. But they’ll never know.”
“Good,” I say simply. I can only imagine the implications if anyone found out what she’d done. I’m no scientist, but I imagine doing something as reckless as what Florence did wouldn’t be received well.
Florence watches me carefully. “How do you feel?”
I straighten, testing the weight of my own body, the hunger in my belly. “In control.”
She exhales, nodding. “Good. Because now, we have to figure out how to save Ares. I can’t stay. I’m meeting with a private investigator. I thought they could help find my brother.”
I smirk at that. “Between you, Sysco, and Harry, we’ll have half the city looking for Ares. They’re talking to their own PIs as well. Harry even has two bounty hunters lined up.”
