Nicholas’s POV
The name had escaped my lips before I could stop it. Esther.
But the woman who turned was not her.
Not the stubborn, pale-faced mate who haunted my nights. Not the one whose scent I could never forget, no matter how I tried.
She was just a stranger—another patient, frail and wide-eyed, shrinking under my stare as if my disappointment itself were a blade.
The fire that had surged in me, that mad hope, drained all at once. My chest hollowed, leaving only ashes.
I muttered under my breath, unable to silence the thought clawing through me. “So… she really is dead.”
The words tasted like blood.
For a moment, I let myself imagine it again: her broken body at the bottom of that ravine, her eyes closed, her lips pale. The dream had replayed so many times it felt carved into
