The Velvet Bride

"Tell me something, Evelyn... did they ever teach you in school how nocturnal predators hunt?"

"No." Evelyn took a step back, there was something unusual about Lucian as he took another stride towards her, she should leave now, but was there any escape at all?
Lucian smirked, something about him gleamed of danger, spiking up the fear and something else deep down to Evelyn's core. A slow, inexplicable shiver went down the length of her spine, he looked down the length of her neck trailing the drop of sweat a mark of her fear, as if that excited him."Then your biology lessons failed you rather miserably," he murmured, his voice little more than a velvet whisper,as he closed the distance she felt the moist trunk of the pine tree against her back. "The most dangerous predators are never the ones that chase."Lucian continued as he took a deep breath, almost fighting something inside him, his tongue sliding down his lower lip involuntarily. " A true predator understands something far more valuable... that fear makes prey flee, curiosity makes it linger, but fascination..." His long fingers hovered beneath her chin without quite touching it, "Fascination draws the prey closer of its own accord." His hypnotic gaze never left hers, "It no longer matters who was hunting whom."

---
Evelyn believed she was nothing more than an ordinary girl growing up in a sleepy countryside where the loudest sound after sunset was the familiar laughter spilling from the little family bar. Until the year Evelyn turned eighteen....
Summoned to a secluded Winter Ball hidden beyond the northern forests of Sylvania, Evelyn is drawn into a world where ancient Houses guard secrets older than history....because some promises are written before a child is born, some destinies cannot be outrun...