Selena pressed her lips to the baby's forehead—one brief, fierce kiss—then placed the infant into the nun's waiting arms.
"Keep the baby safe." Her voice cracked on the last word.
Her hand lingered on the baby’s head before she pulled away. A church wasn’t a fortress. A nun wasn’t a warrior. But the shard was with us, and Vex couldn’t touch it—which meant he couldn’t come near it. The baby was safer here than anywhere else right now. Safer than with us.
The nun nodded once, drawing the child against her chest with practiced ease. The baby let out a soft whimper, then settled.
Without another word, we turned and walked away.
Selena didn't speak. Didn't look back. But I saw her hand come up and swipe quickly across her cheek before she shoved it into her pocket.
She’d held that baby like it was her own—fought a demon for it, shielded it with her body, whispered promises against its tiny head. And now she was walking away from it without a word, because that’s what keeping it safe required.
I reached over and laced my fingers through hers. She squeezed back so hard it hurt.
I kissed her hand. “Are you all right?”
She looked up at me, her eyes glistening in the streetlight. “You think the baby will be safe?”
The tears gutted me. Not because she was crying—Selena was stronger than anyone I’d ever known. But because I’d been the one who started this. Two years of making her cry. Two years of being the reason for the sadness behind those eyes. And now here she was, still crying, still hurting, still carrying weight that should never have been hers.
I cupped her face in my hands and brushed the tears away with my thumbs. “Demons don’t like churches. The consecrated ground, the holy symbols. It burns them. Vex won’t go near it.”
I hesitated. She didn’t need more weight on her shoulders—not tonight. But she deserved the truth. She’d earned that much. “However, he could grab another victim.”
“Without the shard, what would be the purpose of taking another baby?” She frowned as if trying to work through the logic. “He needs the shard for the ritual.”
“He’s evil, Selena.” I met her gaze and didn’t sugarcoat it. “He doesn’t need a reason. He just needs frustration and a target. We took his sacrifice and his shard in the same night. That kind of rage doesn't think. It destroys."
Her face crumpled—just for a second, just a flash of devastation before she pulled it back together. But I’d seen it. And the thought that sat behind my own words, the one I couldn’t say out loud, made me sick. Somewhere out there, another mother could wake up to an empty crib because of what we’d done tonight. We’d saved one baby. And possibly condemned another.
There was no winning against this kind of evil. Only choosing which losses you could live with.
Her jaw was set, that stubborn fire burning in her eyes again. “We need to stop him before he takes another child.”
"We don't know where he is." I kept my voice gentle, even though every word tasted like defeat. "Or what new victim he's planning to take. He could be anywhere in these mountains by now."
"But we have to try." I knew she was seeing that baby on the altar again. The tiny fists. The screaming. The blade coming down.
I lifted her chin, tilting her face up until her eyes met mine. They were red-rimmed and fierce and exhausted and beautiful all at once.
"We're going to stop him. I promise you that." I held her gaze, letting her see that I meant every word. "But not tonight. We're exhausted, Selena. All of us. Alice is unconscious. Rose is drained. If Vex came at us right now, we'd lose."
The words tasted like ash. A prince who couldn’t protect anyone. A mate who couldn’t keep his own woman safe. I’d spent my whole life being told I was powerful, that my blood made me something more—and right now, standing in a freezing Romanian street with nothing but exhaustion and empty promises, I’d never felt more useless.
She opened her mouth to argue, and I pressed my thumb gently against her lips.
"The Solstice is tonight at midnight. Vex can’t perform the ritual without the shard, and we have it. We just need to hold on until the window closes. Once midnight passes, it’s over—at least for now. We feed. We rest. And we stay the hell away from that castle.”
The fight drained out of her slowly—not because she agreed, but because she knew I was right. I watched her wrestle with it, watched her swallow the urgency and the guilt and the image of that baby screaming on cold stone.
“And if he comes for it before midnight,” she asked.
I held her gaze. There was no backup plan. No secret weapon. No clever strategy waiting in my back pocket. Just us—battered, drained, running on fumes and stubbornness.
“Then we fight. All of us. Whatever it takes.”
As if on cue, the door of a tavern down the street swung open, spilling warm light and laughter onto the cobblestones. Two men stumbled out, arms slung around each other's shoulders, their voices loud and slurred. They reeked of beer and plum brandy, weaving down the sidewalk without a care in the world.
