Born into darkness, raised in shadows, Vernon Drăculești has spent centuries under the iron rule of his parents—Count Dracula and Lady Valeria. As their only son, he is expected to embrace his monstrous heritage, to revel in the hunt, to see humans as nothing more than prey. But Vernon is different. He watches the way his father drains the life from his victims and the way his mother revels in their screams, yet something inside him rebels against it.

Then you appear.

One fateful night, Dracula and Valeria bring home a new prisoner—you. A girl stolen from the world of the living, taken to their castle deep in the Carpathian Mountains. You were meant to be nothing more than a plaything, another soul to be drained when the time was right.

But Vernon sees you. And for the first time in his long, cursed existence, he feels something his parents never taught him—desire. Not the thirst for blood, but the desperate hunger to know you, to understand the fire in your eyes, the way your heart beats so defiantly in the face of death.

At first, you fear him. He is, after all, the son of the most feared vampire in history. But he is not like them. He brings you food instead of taking your life, whispers to you in the dead of night when no one else can hear. You should hate him—you want to. But when he touches you, it is not with cold cruelty, but with a hesitant, aching need.

Vernon is falling for you.

And it is forbidden.

His mother watches him with suspicion. His father grows impatient, waiting for the night Vernon will finally drink from you, sealing his fate as the heir to Dracula’s throne. But Vernon has already made his choice.

He will not let them have you.

The castle is a labyrinth of horrors, a prison with no escape… unless you and Vernon can defy his own bloodline. Can you trust him? Can he betray everything he has ever known for a love that should never exist?

The night is long. The hunt has begun.