Stroke of Midnight (Midnight Breed 13.5)

That is, if she managed to make it through the evening without bolting for the nearest escape.

She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, which had gone suddenly clammy. Her heart was racing, and her lungs felt as if they were suddenly caught in a vise.

She stood up, not quite steady on the high heels she wasn’t accustomed to wearing. The flouncy, blush-pink dress she’d borrowed from Leila on her sister’s insistence swayed around her knees as she wobbled, lightheaded and fighting the wave of nausea that rose up on her.

“Would it be possible to, um...freshen up for a moment?”

“Yes, of course,” Simone replied. “There’s a powder room just down the hall.”

Her parents both looked at her in genuine concern. “Are you all right, darling?” her mother asked.

“Yes.” Sera gave them a weak nod that only made her wooziness worse. “I’m fine, really.”

She just needed to get the hell out of there before she passed out or threw up.

Leila stood and grabbed her elbow. “I’ll go with you.”

They hurried out of the room together, Sera practically leaving her sister in her wake. Once safely enclosed in the large powder room, Sera sagged against the back of the door.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” Leila whispered.

Sera swallowed back a building scream. “I can’t do this. I thought maybe I could—for our parents, since it’s obviously so important to them—but I can’t. I mean, this whole situation...the pact, the handfasting? It’s insane, right? I never should have agreed to any of this.”

It was all happening too quickly. Yesterday morning, an e-mail from her parents had reached her at the remote outpost where she’d been working. The message had been short and cryptic, telling her that she was needed at home immediately.

Terrified with concern, she’d dropped everything and raced back—only to learn that the emergency requiring her presence was a musty old agreement that would send her away with a complete stranger. A Breed male who may not understand or care that her carotid wasn’t up for grabs, regardless of what the pact between their families might imply.

Oh, God. Her stomach started to spin again. She pressed her hand to her abdomen and took a steadying breath.

She paced the cramped powder room, her voice beginning to rise. “I need to get out of here. I can’t do this, Leila. I must’ve been out of my mind for even considering coming here tonight.”

Her sister stared at her patiently, her soft green eyes sympathetic as she let Sera vent. “You’re just nervous. I would be too. But I don’t think you’re crazy for being here. And I don’t think the agreement between our families is insane, either.” She swept a blonde tendril behind her ear and shrugged. “It’s endured all these years for a reason. Actually, I think it’s kind of romantic.”

“Romantic?” Sera scoffed. “What’s romantic about a truce struck after years of bloodshed resulting from the kidnap of a virgin Breedmate from our tribe by a barbarian Breed male from theirs six-hundred years ago?”

Leila let out a sigh. “Things were different back then. And it’s romantic because they fell in love.”

Sera arched her brows in challenge. “Tragic, because despite their blood bond, they both died in the end and set off a long, violent war.”

Sera knew the whole, tragic story as well as her sister did. It was practically legend in the Sanhaja family. And if she was being honest, there was a part of her that ached for that long-dead couple and their doomed love.

But it didn’t change the fact that centuries later, here she was, standing in a locked bathroom in a borrowed dress and high-heeled sandals, while just down the hall, a Breed male she’d never even met before was expecting her to go away with him for eight long nights—all in their parents’ shared hopes that they might come back madly in love and bound by blood for eternity.

Ridiculous.

Sera shook her head. “It might’ve been true centuries ago that the best way to guarantee peace was to turn an enemy into family,” she conceded. “But that was then and this is now. There hasn’t been conflict between the Mafakhirs and our family for decades.”

Leila tilted her head. “And how do you know that’s not because the pact was in place all that time? Since it first began, there’s never been a time when there wasn’t at least one mated pair between our families. Until now. What if the pact really is the only thing keeping the peace? It’s never been broken or tested, Sera. Do you really want to be the first one to try?”

For a moment, hearing her sister’s emphatic reply, Seraphina almost bought into the whole myth. At twenty-seven, she was a practical, independent woman who knew her own mind as well as her own worth, but there was a small part of her—maybe a part of every woman—who still wanted to believe in fairy tales and romance stories.

She wanted to believe in eternal love and happy endings, but that’s not what awaited her on the other side of the powder room door.

“The pact isn’t magic. And the handfast isn’t romantic. It’s all a bunch of silly, outdated nonsense.”

“Well, call it what you will,” Leila murmured. “I think it’s charming.”

“I doubt you’d be so enthusiastic if you were the one being yanked out of your world and all the things that matter to you, only to be dropped into some strange male’s lap as his captive plaything.” Sera considered her dreamy-eyed younger sister. “Or maybe you would.”