The liquid heat blazing through me gets encased by an arctic blast of ice that sends a biting chill down into the marrow of my bones. It's a welcoming sensation against the maddening hellfire that Kinley's blood unleashed.

When I open my eyes, the world feels like a new place and yet it hasn't changed at all. I look down at the black veins that now sit stationary on me. They are no longer striving to find their place. They have found their place, their home because I am finally free from the prison where I have been trapped for so long.

The Darkos bloodline, my own bloodline, sought to conceal me, but what they didn't understand is that I have been here all along. The Beast of the Damned and Tristan Darkos are the same person. The only difference is I have clarity of mind and can now access all the power that resides within me. I've been liberated and it feels so damn good.

I stand, flexing the muscles in my hands as I close my eyes feeling the wonderful surge of energy that now runs harmoniously through me as all my cells are now awake. It tingles in the best of ways.

The smell of cinnamon blood and the sounds of a frantically beating heart interrupt the pleasurable sensation I am experiencing. I'm no longer a being with a soul torn in half. After all these years, and even though I could only access the side of me that housed no memories of her, a part of me could never forget whom that sweet, smoldering scent belongs to.

That's the thing that happens when you tear a soul in half. It won't work if one half inexplicably belongs to another. Even the darkest of magic couldn't keep the trapped side of my soul from recognizing Kinley, the human my still heart bleeds for.

Sea-green eyes widen when I turn to face her. She is as beautiful to me as she was when I knew her thousands of years ago.

Looking at her and the way her dark curled tresses tumble down to the small of her back and spill across her shoulders, I know exactly how it is I came to love this human. She didn't give me a choice. She squirmed her way into my cold, black heart and it all started in that field of flowers.

I had never felt for another creature nor had I planned to. This human before me changed that. She changed everything.

"Oh, no. No. No. No. You really are a demon." Panic lines Kinley's voice as she keeps a hand clasped around her neck where I bit her, my true appearance upsetting to her as she has never seen it so clearly before.

Even from over here I can feel my cells reacting to the beat of her heart, pulsing in time with it. It's a feeling she alone generates in me.

When I take a step toward her, Kinley throws a pillow at me and she screams at me to stay away while she dashes for the door.

She doesn't get the knob turned before I have my hand on the door, keeping her from opening it. "Let me out. Let me out!"

Frantically, she tries to pull the door open, her body weakening more with each second that passes in her fright of me and the blood loss. I let it happen because it's what she needs.

"This isn't happening. This can't be happening. I'm trapped in a room with Satan." The tremors in her legs grow so intense she uses the door to keep herself upright as she mumbles to herself about this being a dream and how she needs to wake up or her parents need to pull the plug before "Satan" takes her soul.

I swallow the pain that the last statement inflicts. I've gone through six life cycles with Kinley. It doesn't matter if she starts out admiring me. It always ends the same. With her hating me. There were only two cycles where she didn't. The other cycles she viewed me as nothing more than a monster.

"I need you to calm down." I press myself against her, not to make her feel trapped, but to help stabilize her as her fear is threatening to make her knees buckle. "I must tend to your wound. If I don't, you are going to faint from the blood loss and distress."

"Tristan? Brother? Is everything okay?" Serena knocks at the door.

"Hel-" I cut Kinley's scream for help off by covering her mouth.

"Everything is fine," I answer, making sure to keep the accent out of my voice. Serena will know something is wrong if I sound like my father and not the "Tristan" she grew up with.

"Dorian texted. He and Thron are on their way back. Your father wants us to have the human dressed and ready to go. We are all supposed to be ready to leave in the next forty-five minutes. We are going to Valderanna tonight. A plane has already been booked to take us there."

"I'll make sure she is ready and to have some things packed," I reply tightening my grip over Kinley's mouth as she tries to scream beneath my hand.

"Are you sure everything is okay? I thought I heard a scream?" Serena tries to open the door, yet the lock keeps her from doing so.

"Yes, it is fine. The human is just being temperamental."

"Okay. I don't know when we will be back so make sure you pack a big bag." Serena hesitates for a moment before walking off.

When I hear that she has made it out of the hallway, I can no longer fight the instincts screaming at me. I lap at the blood oozing from the bite mark I left on Kinley's neck. A groan of sheer ecstasy vibrates deep in my chest as her cinnamon honey blood coats my tongue.

The slow, lazy drags of my tongue as I savor what I lost so long ago sends a shiver rocketing down my spine as this is how it all began. With a taste of something forbidden.

Pulling Kinley tighter to me, I continue to caress her neck with my mouth. It's no longer about the blood. It's about her-the Kinley that fell in love with me first.

My eyes thin as the day I'll never forget comes roaring back. It's a day that altered the course of our kinds history. It is the spark that would eventually lead to a fifteen-year bloodshed unlike anything this world had ever seen.

"We have to go." I pull my face from the nape of Kinley's neck and uncover Kinley's mouth before spinning her around to face me. "We have to go right now."

"Let go of me. Stop. I don't want to go anywhere with you." She tries to put the breaks on while I pull her behind me by her wrist.

"We don't have a lot of time." I can't keep the darkness out of my voice this time. I won't let him have her. Not this time. Not ever.

"Please, you're hurting me," Kinley cries out which causes me to automatically release her wrist.

My jaw clenches tight against the memory that comes back to me of the first time I ever hurt her. I crushed that same wrist in my hunger to have her. It was in her second life cycle as an immortal.

The Dark Prince enjoyed those times because it meant he was one step closer to having what he's always wanted.

All the other massarra can be compelled, but Kinley can't. Her path to immortality wasn't like the rest of theirs. She's the ultimate creation. She's the only being he has raised from the dead which makes him feel like a god.

"I'm sorry." In an instant, I have my hands tangled in Kinley's hair and am bringing our foreheads together. The soft tones of my voice seem to startle Kinley as much as the gentleness in my touch.

"Did I break it?" I let one of my hands fall from her hair and tenderly grab her hand. My brow scrunches as I see there is no swelling and can feel there are no broken bones.

"Someone help!" I clamp my hand back over Kinley's mouth.

I never hurt her. She used it as a distraction to get me to slow down so she could call out to my sisters. Thron must have told her, if I turned, she needed to alert the others.

"Don't do that. I know you are scared of me but, I promise you, I am not who you need to be afraid of right now. We have to go before he-" I stop talking when I feel Thron's and Dorian's presence. I pull Kinley behind me and square myself with the door as I know I am going to have to fight if I want to leave here with Kinley.

My father must have told Serena to lie because he knew I would surface and there was nothing he could do to stop me.

An icy cold snakes its way around every part of me, dropping my already cold body temperature into a sub-freezing level that burns like dry ice as it infiltrates me.

No, he can't be here.

He is not supposed to be here.

The power force wrapping around me intensifies and, before I can stop it, I am pulled down to my knees. I'm powerless to fight it. I haven't been myself long enough to defy him and he knows it. I'm at his mercy for half the blood in me is his to command.

Kinley whirls around when the doors to my bedroom open. I have to fight with everything I have to lift my head against the energy that is keeping me kneeled in submission.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" The Dark Prince steps over the threshold of my bedroom, Thron and Dorian at his side. "Tristan, it feels like it has been ages since I have seen you. I don't remember you ever being so obedient." His thick accent is laced with a hissing chuckle of amusement.

"It appears your father was right. You have turned. Not the ideal time, but I can work with it. You will be much more agreeable for the time being until you get a feel for your true powers again." He stops in front of me, doubling down on his power so that my head bows to him.

He smirks when he sees me fighting him as I lift my gaze to his, not bothering to hide the intention that lies behind the devil black eyes I now have.

This makes the Prince laugh. "Now, Tristan. I do believe we are going to have to work on that. I can't have one of my subjects wanting to rip my head off. It dampens the moral and sense of community. And as vampires, a sense of community is of the utmost importance, is it not?" He pats my head like I'm a damn dog as he walks by me.

I grit my teeth and attempt to push to my feet as I know exactly where he is headed.

"If it isn't my little Kinaley all grown up?" His words roll from his tongue with a velvet silkiness that is warm and inviting.

It is generally eerie to humans when all that charm is paired with the evil aura and darkness that radiates from him. Kinley is no exception.

"K...K...Kinaley?" She walks backward as he advances toward her, the two of them circling around me as she elects to stay close to me.

The circling of me gets broken when the Dark Prince heads Kinley off, pushing her out away from me.

Kinley's gaze darts from where the Prince was to me, her eyes widening as he is suddenly gone.

Her shriek as she feels a rush of air behind her gets silenced when he greedily claims her mouth. A detonation happens inside me.

I get one leg underneath me before the Prince triples down on his control of me. This is why I needed Kinley to leave with me. It will take me a while before I can defy him. It's a skill I can only harness with enough of her blood in me. The half of me that belongs to my mother can defy him, but the part that belongs to my father can't.

The blood that flows through Kinley can override the warrior part of my blood, but it takes time. I'm still uncertain how it works. I just know that it has once. I've tried to replicate it since then and haven't been able to.

To drive his point home about who Kinley belongs to, he snakes his tongue into her mouth.

Every part of me curses him. This is all just a game to him. That's all Kinley has ever been to him. A toy he can play with.

He finally breaks away when Kinley is nearly to the point of suffocating from the lack of air he allowed into her lungs from his overzealous capture of her lips.

"How I have missed your sweetness." He rubs his thumb over her trembling bottom lip. "That is right. I forgot. Thron told me you go my Kinley now. I guess somewhere along the line someone messed up your name. You used to be Kinaley. I like Kinley though. It feels more...with the times." He spins Kinley around to face me, locking her against him.

"What do you think Tristan? Do you like Kinley as much as you liked Kinaley?" A sadistic grin forms on his face as he sweeps Kinley's hair away from the left side of her neck. "Ah, that anger. Something tells me you do. You are such a bad beast. Always lusting after what isn't yours." He bends down and places a kiss on the nape of Kinley's neck.

That internal power surge from within me hits me again and, right as it does, I'm forced to catch myself on my hands. I'd have my face smashed into the floor if the Prince had it his way.

"I am afraid this is going to hurt my sweet, Kinley."

Kinley's scream slices through me like a sword straight to the heart. His teeth sink deeper into her neck without tenderness. I can hear her ribs fracture. They are no match for his steel frame as he pulls her harder against him. He is succumbing to the intoxicating powers of her potent blood. With each cycle she goes through, her blood gets sweeter.

I can't focus on her heartbeat. Her screams of agony feel like mini titanium tipped stakes being pushed through my ear canals and into my brain.

He pulls his fangs from Kinley and lets her drop right there at his feet. "That was most unexpected," he wipes at his mouth, closing his eyes against the pleasure that is to be had from how sweet her blood truly is.

Kinley tries to push herself up only to cry out. The pain of her crushed ribs is too much for her human body to bear.

"Don't touch her," I growl in my fury as he bends down next to her.

"Don't give me that look. I am doing her a favor. I've just shortened her suffering. We both know how painful the end can be for her when it is near. She will pass much quicker if she stays in a weakened state. Don't you want that? For her to suffer less?" He bites into his wrist.

"I am so sorry my little Kinley. I did not mean to break you. It has been some time. I will be much more gentle the next time." Kinley turns her face at the wrist of his he offers her.

"Drink," he commands.

She turns her face the other way, refusing to take what will allow her to heal.

"I said drink." He fists his hand in Kinley's hair and shoves his torn-open wrist up against her lips. She clenches her teeth together in defiance.

"Fine, have it your way." He lets go of her and releases me at the same time.

I'm right beside her in a blink, tenderly pulling her into my lap so that she can rest against me. It hurts her for me to move her, but I need her in this position if I want to have any hope of getting my blood down her.

"That's right, beast, go to your precious Kinley. It must be so hard on you to have found her after all this time and find she still hates you. Hurry up and heal her. We have a plane to catch." He walks out of the room, signaling Dorian and Thron to follow behind him.

Kinley is so weak from the blood I stole and the blood the Prince took, she can't do anything but lay against me as I cradle her. Her breathing is shallow while she struggles to stay conscious. He did this to her because of me. He knew I had fed on her and he is punishing me for it.

There is no point in me trying to get Kinley to drink from my wrist because I know she won't. This Kinley is grossed out by the mere thought of drinking blood.

Biting into my wrist, I suck in a mouthful of crimson. I force it down her throat the same way I did in the alleyway near the bookstore. I keep my mouth over hers when she starts to gag, aware of what the thick, cold liquid is that is running down her throat.

I distract her by moving my lips against hers the second mouthful I transfer. This works a little better as it causes Kinley's throat to open quicker. I have her chin tilted high as I am behind her. My taller stature makes it easier for me to force-feed her as gravity is working in my favor.

Her ribs hurt her too much for her to squirm or try to fight me. By the third mouthful, Kinley's stomach is causing her to start to cough up the blood I am pushing down her. I release her chin, letting it drop to a normal position because her coughing is only going to hurt her crushed ribs more.

She stays slumped against me: no energy, no strength, and broken.

"You may not love me today, Kinley, however, you loved me once," I whisper in her ear knowing her mind is already inducing sleep. The exhaustion of being drained of most of her life force too great a battle for her to win.

"You loved me once, and that is all I need to know," I continue, lifting my chin as I rest my cheek on the top of her head. "Somewhere inside you is the human who asked if I wanted a taste, a human who asked me to kiss her in the courtyard in the dead of night when I couldn't stay away. I was stupid." My vocal cords tense, my chest tightening while I think back to the stolen moments I'd feed from her when no one was around.

"I thought it was your blood I thirsted for. It was so pure, rich, and unlike anything I had ever tasted. I didn't realize it was about more until it was too late."

The pressure building in my chest silences me. I couldn't continue to speak if I tried. I'm lost to the emotions surfacing as an injured Kinley goes completely limp, sleep finally granting her relief from the harsh realities of what it means to be the Dark Prince's massarra.

The first time I lost Kinley was the same day I found out the truth. What good is the truth if I can't find the human who had a heart big enough to love a monster like me?