Kane doesn’t much like the idea of becoming a member of the King’s Guard through default. He’s much more interested in remaining on the taskforce he’s already on—an elite group of Midnight police who hunt the things that nearly killed him twenty years before. The things that did kill his entire family. And left him as a Halfling vampire. He’s vowed to destroy every vampire in Midnight, eager for vengeance. During one of the taskforce's raids—the one that garnered him his berth as a guardsman—he comes across a man bitten all to hell by the vamps. Kane instantly recognized him as a mate. The king’s uncle, Ralnur, is close to death when Kane carries him from the nest, terrifying an already shaken Halfling. Seeing a mate as a weakness, Kane refuses to make the claim—but he will save the man’s life the only way he knows how. By making Ralnur the very thing he hunts. As he runs from the attraction he feels, fate steps in and hurtles him into a meeting with his second mate. He’s assigned to protect the researcher tasked with finding out who turned the king’s uncle into a vampire.Kane refuses to endanger Ralnur and Caelian by bringing them into his life and the battle he wages against the undead. No matter how much the instinct demands he mark them with his bite.