by N.P. Lyman
For eight hundred years, Lucian has served as a Guardian—a vampire bound by blood and duty to protect humanity from the creatures that hunt beyond the walls. When his latest companion dies after forty years at his side, Lucian enters the Hall of Choosing expecting another familiar Bond. Instead, the blood leads him somewhere no Guardian has gone in more than two centuries. Avarra. A city carved into the mountains, protected by its own soldiers and ancient defenses, where the people have survived without Guardians for generations. And then there is Aisling. Her blood called Lucian to Avarra. But she doesn’t understand the Bond. She doesn’t trust the Empire. And she certainly doesn’t want a vampire claiming a place in her life. As tensions rise and creatures begin appearing closer to Avarra’s walls, Lucian is forced to question why the Bond chose a woman who seems determined to reject it—and why it brought him to a city that appears not to need him. What begins as a duty slowly becomes something neither of them expected. Because sometimes the blood knows the road long before the heart does.
