The Varkalak Syndicate

She was the peace offering. He was supposed to be the enemy.

Valentina Sanguinetti has spent her life as a weapon in her father's arsenal. When two centuries of war between vampire crime families demand a political marriage, she's the sacrifice—sent to infiltrate the Varkalak Syndicate, gather intelligence, and wait for the alliance to crumble from within.

She expected a monster. She didn't expect to want him.

Dmitri Varkalak, three hundred years of ice and iron, the perfect heir to the largest vampire empire in the Western hemisphere. He knows his bride is a spy. He knows she's been sent to find cracks in his armor. What he doesn't know is why his blood—dormant for centuries—wakes up screaming the moment she walks through his door.

The blood-pull is supposed to be a myth. A fairy tale vampires tell to excuse their weaknesses.

But when Dmitri tastes Valentina's blood on their wedding night, the bond that forms between them is anything but fiction. Now they're bound together—sensing each other's emotions, unable to hide their growing desire—while a shadowy faction works to tear the alliance apart from within.

Someone helped murder Valentina's brothers. Someone is feeding information to the enemy. And the only way they survive is by trusting each other completely.

The problem? Trust is the one thing neither of them was raised to give.