VALERIA

I started patting down my clothes—this couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t have lost it during the fight, or worse, when I recklessly chased after those vampires.

I looked around the ground in desperation, and then I saw it, a few feet away from where I stood.

The heart no longer had the shape of a ruby; it had melted into a dark pool, the same color as the lagoon—concentrated, powerful blood.

I pushed myself up with trembling legs, battered and on the brink of collapse, holding on purely through adrenaline and the will to survive.

I knelt before that blood and begged—something I had never done before—watching my mate fight like a beast against our enemy, trying to keep him from reaching us.

"Please, my ancestors, I beg you, Juno, mother, please. Gabrielle, I summon you, powerful Selenia, help me in this moment of need, help me!"

The words poured from my heart as tears and drops of my blood fell onto the small pool forming before me.

The calm surface began to bubble, as if simme