It begins before dawn.

  Not with the moon—though the full one hangs outside my window like a pale, unblinking eye. This agony has nothing to do with lunar cycles. It’s ancestral. Primeval. A biological scream that detonates inside me every fifty-nine days with brutal precision.

  I wake on a strangled breath, already drenched in sweat. My skin glistens in the silver light, but there’s no beauty in it. Every cell in my body is starving—not for food, not for blood, but for something more fundamental. Something humans only theorize, never touch.

  Aetherion.

  The word isn’t human. It isn’t even mine.

  The hunger drags at my thoughts until my consciousness thins at the edges. Then the memories come—like a hand in my hair, yanking me backward.

  And it is always the same day.

  … …

  I learned long ago—after my eighth, maybe ninth customer—not to notice the man.

  Focus on the mechanics. The penis. The transaction.

  They blur together: ugly, fat, bellies soft as dough.

  Then he walks in and the air shifts.

  Tall. Handsome. Auburn hair catching the yellow light like mine does.

  But it isn’t his looks.

  It’s the hum beneath his skin. Power with a pulse. It reaches me before he does, prickling along my tongue—metallic, electric. The inner voice in my skull stirs: It’s in his blood.

  He picks me from the lineup. Of course he does. Under these dim lights that flatten every girl into the same honey-toned dream, I still stand apart. Men's eyes snag on my breasts first, then travel down—the flat stomach, the curve of hip to thigh, the legs that go on forever. A body that doesn't require effort, just is.

  A body my stepfather noticed when I was twelve. His gaze made my skin crawl. Made me want to peel it off and run.

  I thought about telling my stepmother, but her fists had already taught me silence.

  She was always busy anyway—running drugs, I'd later learn, before she sold me here after that afternoon.

  I came home from school and he was waiting. Every instinct screamed run. The door was still open behind me. I could have bolted.

  But the inner voice said, soft as a kiss: Take him.

  My legs shook. My heart hammered. Yet I walked toward him anyway, pulled by invisible strings.

  He grinned. Ugly. Wet. "You little slut. You want a piece of this, don't you."

  No. No. NO.

  I tried to scream but my throat had sealed shut.

  The next moment I was on my back, naked, his weight crushing the air from my lungs. His hands kneaded my breasts like meat. Something hard and burning pressed between my thighs—insistent, entitled.

  My legs were curled back. I could have kicked—should have kicked. Even then, my legs were strong enough to launch him across the room, crack his spine against the wall.

  But the voice purred again: Take him.

  My body obeyed.

  Muscles I didn’t know I could command relaxed, opened. I thought every woman could do this—surrender so completely. I didn’t know it was a gift.

  A trap.

  A hunger.

  He pushed in easily, and I clenched around him, too tight, too perfect—like my body had been waiting for this shape.

  He groaned.

  He drove deeper, deeper—until he hit the flower.

  The flower. Everyone thinks “deflowering” is metaphor.

  For me, it’s literal.

  Inside me, something blooms—petals like silk, like tongues, like boneless fingers. They flex and pulse at my command.

  My first instinct was to shove him out.

  But the voice urged, thrilled and greedy: Grab him. Massage him.

  The petals rippled along his length—stroking, sucking. His eyes went wide. Shock melted into ecstasy so fast it made him stupid.

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  “Jesus—” he choked.

  Then he laughed, breathless. “You’re really something. You little cunt.”

  His face twisted with pleasure. His pulse spiked. He swelled larger. The petals stretched him longer.

  And something inside me clicked. Not lust. Deeper than lust. A vacuum seal breaking, a dam cracking. Hunger—vast and ancient and starving.

  He began to glow in my eyes.

  First his brain, lightning-bright.

  Then his spine lit up like a high-voltage wire.

  His heartbeat became visible—not sound, but rhythmic pulses of pure energy. I could see the entropy in his blood. The beautiful chaos of a life burning at its peak.

  And inside me, the Void woke up and ached.

  Cold flooded my bones, deep into the marrow. His body flushed hot and red while mine dropped to freezing. Heat rushed from him into me down an invisible gradient, and I drank it in.

  It felt like swallowing light.

  Not his blood.

  Not his breath.

  His complexity—the intricate architecture of his consciousness, the crackling static of thought and memory.

  With each gasp, my mind expanded. The noise inside me crystallized into sharp, glittering structures, built out of stolen life.

  For a heartbeat, panic flared.

  What if I kill him?

  But his body didn’t wither.

  Didn’t shrink.

  He was oblivious—lost in the collision of sensations: ice meeting fire, agony braided with ecstasy, two heavens grinding against each other.

  Relief washed through me, and I surrendered.

  To the power flooding my veins.

  To the bone-deep satisfaction of feeding.

  Then my stepmother’s key scraped the lock. The door slammed open. She screamed. The spell shattered.

  The next day, I was sold to the brothel.

  I didn’t mind.

  You don’t cage a tiger with prey and expect it to mourn freedom. Here, in this warren of sweat-soaked rooms and hungry men, I’m not a victim.

  I’m a predator.

  And I’m irresistible.

  I give men pleasure beyond their imagination. They never suspect. They become addicted. My reputation spreads like wildfire, and men fly in like moths.

  Their energy weaves itself into me—bone-deep, cellular.

  I feel my body remaking itself from the inside out. Muscle hardening into something denser than steel, yet fluid as water. Skin turning luminous, untouchable—razors skittering off like insults.

  Everything I touch starts to feel brittle.

  I learn control the hard way: chairs that crack under me, spoons that bend in my grip, combs that turn to powder if I’m careless.

  Compared to me, men become delicate. Not hurting them during sex becomes an art form.

  But it isn’t just raw strength.

  Through siphoning, I steal pieces of their selves—fractured memories, half-articulated thoughts, the acrid residue of shame.

  And most of them? Christ, most of them are empty. Hollow. Their secrets are small and sad. Their desires grotesque and predictable.

  Not this one.

  He looks young, but he feels ancient.

  He looks pale, but power vibrates in his blood.

  Not merely strong.

  Transcendent.

  Princely, confident beyond measure—yet there’s something in him like weathered grief, a melancholy he wears the way other men wear cologne.

  Most men want my mouth first. He doesn’t. He pushes me onto the bed like he’s already decided what I am, spreads my thighs with hands that do not hesitate, and goes straight where he wants.

  On the first thrust, he shudders.

  Not with lust.

  With relief.

  “A succubus,” he breathes, almost laughing. “Thank God.”

  His eyes meet mine. They’re too clear. Too present.

  He’s grateful. But not for what other men are grateful for.

  Something else.

  Something urgent.

  I don’t care what it is.

  I just—

  I just enjoy the sex.

  It’s amazing.

  For the first time, energy isn’t the whole feast. My body responds like a struck match. Pleasure climbs me in hot waves, and when I come, it isn’t small.

  It breaks. And it doesn’t stop.

  I spasm, shake, cry out, my nails biting into his shoulders. He holds me down, mouth at my ear, murmuring something I can’t catch over my own ragged breathing.

  And he doesn’t glow.

  He shines.

  He pours out ten times the energy of any man I’ve fed on—and I can’t siphon a drop.

  It’s like trying to lap up lightning with a cracked tongue. I meet more than my match.

  The night turns feral.

  We tear through sheets. Through hours.

  By morning, my legs tremble when I stand.

  As we exit the room, the madam is waiting, lips tight, eyes flicking over him like she’s calculating.

  “Double,” she demands.

  Kael doesn’t even look at her. He takes my hand and runs. Two bouncers step into our path. Kael moves once. They hit the floor like sacks of wet sand, wailing.

  Outside, dawn is a thin bruise on the horizon—and the full moon still hangs there, stubborn and bright, like it refuses to let go of the night.

  He throws me into a Porsche. The engine answers with a feral roar. He slams the pedal to the floor, and the city unspools into streaks of sodium light.

  Avenida after avenida flashes past—shuttered storefronts, graffiti-scarred walls, the occasional bakery already breathing out warm yeast and sugar into the cold air.

  The streets are almost empty: delivery trucks, a few night-shift taxis drifting like ghosts. We cut between them as if the asphalt belongs to us.

  Is he abducting me?

  Does he know this brothel belongs to a drug dealer who will no doubt chase us down and kill us?

  I don’t care what the answer is.

  I shriek with excitement and crank the window down.

  Wind knifes through and whips my hair straight back like a flag. The city’s breath—exhaust, damp concrete, distant river—rushes in cold and real, tangled with his cologne and that faint metallic tang that always clings to him.

  He takes a curve too fast. Tires shriek. The rear end fishtails for half a heartbeat.

  My stomach flips. A laugh bursts out of me anyway.

  I grab the door handle on instinct and feel the metal give a little under my grip. I force myself to loosen—because I refuse to look scared.

  I’m not.

  I’m alive.

  Kael glances at me, like I’m a rare weapon he’s finally found.

  “Thank God,” he says softly, almost to himself. Then louder: “You’re a pure breed.”

  I angle my head. “Pure breed of what?”

  His mouth tugs, amused.

  “You really have no clue, do you?” His eyes cut back to the road, then back to me—trying to read me like a page. “You’re a succubus.”

  Second time I’ve heard the word. Still no idea what it means.

  I frown. “Is that an ethnicity? Because I thought I was Celtic.”

  A short sound leaves him—half laugh, half disbelief.

  “No.” He leans closer for a second, voice dropping, intent. “You’re not human.”

  He watches for shock. For panic. For grief. For denial.

  None comes.

  If anything, something inside me unclenches. As if a lock has finally clicked open.

  Confirmed.

  Liberated.

  Superior.

  I don’t know why I believe him so easily. Maybe because the inner voice hums in agreement. Maybe because I’ve always had a low opinion of the human race.

  I tilt my chin. “Neither are you, I suppose.”

  His jaw tightens, and for a moment that melancholy surfaces again like a shadow crossing the sun.

  “No,” he says. “I’m a vampire. Most likely the last one.”