"My vampire husband had a secret no one knew about.
The blood slaves he kept in private all had faces strikingly similar to my cousin Sophia.
I was born into the Valerie family, with the noble blood that could give a vampire a powerful hybrid heir.
I was meant to marry Ethan, heir to the Prince.
But the night before the engagement, his younger brother Adrian knelt in the rain in front of me.
“Elena, I’d give up everything.”
“I love you. You’re all I want.”
So I broke the engagement, let my family disown me, and married him without a backward glance.
Then I got pregnant.
He started keeping me at arm’s length, finding reasons not to touch me, not even willing to stay in the same room as me.
Until the night I heard him tell his men:
“Once Elena has the baby, we’ll hand it over to Ethan and Sophia.”
“Sophia’s health is fragile. I can’t bear to put her through a pregnancy.”
That was when I finally understood. Adrian had never loved me.
He’d married me only to free up the place beside Ethan for my cousin Sophia.
Even the child I’d struggled so hard to carry had already been promised away to the woman he truly loved.
I rested a hand on my belly and called my father.
“Dad, I was wrong about him.”
Two months from now, I would vanish from his world for good.
But when I really left Adrian, he went crazy searching for me everywhere.
"