"WHO ARE YOU?" Mailah whispered, her voice shaking with equal parts fear and disbelief.
Grayson's blue eyes seemed to glow in the darkness as he studied her with an intensity that made her skin burn. The knife turned slowly in his elegant fingers, catching fragments of moonlight like a silver serpent.
"That's an interesting question," he said, his voice a low rumble that sent shivers down her spine despite her fear. "Considering you're not who you claim to be either."
Mailah's blood turned to ice. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you?" He leaned forward slightly, and she caught his scent—something darker, more primal. "Mailah."
The sound of her real name on his lips not in a dream hit her like a physical blow. She pressed herself harder against the headboard, as if she could somehow disappear into the mahogany wood.
"How do you—"
"I've known since the moment you walked into the dining room the first time," Grayson interrupted, his voice still maddeningly calm. "Did you really think you could fool me? That I wouldn't notice the differences?"
Humiliation burned hot in her cheeks. All this time, she'd thought she was successfully playing the role of her dead sister, when in reality, he'd been watching her stumble through the charade like a child playing dress-up.
"If you knew," she managed to say, her voice barely audible, "why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you throw me out?"
Something flickered across his features—so brief she almost missed it. Pain, perhaps. Or regret.
"Because I'm a selfish bastard," he said quietly. "And because by the time I realized the full extent of what my presence was doing to you, it was already too late."
"What are you talking about?"
Grayson set the knife on the nightstand with deliberate care, his movements precise and controlled. When he looked at her again, his eyes held a darkness that had nothing to do with the shadows in the room.
"Tell me, Mailah," he said, her name rolling off his tongue like a caress. "What do you know about incubi?"
The question was so unexpected, so completely out of left field, that she could only stare at him. "What?"
"Incubi," he repeated patiently. "Demons that visit women in their dreams. Feed on their essence, their emotions, their life force."
A laugh escaped her—short and sharp with hysteria. "Are you seriously asking me about mythology right now? I just found physical evidence that my dreams are somehow bleeding into reality, and you want to discuss folklore?"
"Not folklore." His voice was deadly serious. "Fact."
The laughter died in her throat. There was something in his tone, in the way he held himself with predatory stillness, that made her pulse spike with fresh fear.
"You're insane," she whispered.
"Am I?" He tilted his head, studying her like a scientist examining a particularly interesting specimen. "Then how do you explain the dreams, Mailah? How do you explain the way you can feel my touch, taste my kisses, experience pleasure so intense it leaves you aching when you wake? How do you explain the bruise? That cut?"
Each word hit her like a hammer blow. She wanted to deny it, to cling to rational explanations, but the evidence was literally sitting right there on her nightstand. The knife that had cut her in the dream, that had drawn real blood.
"That's impossible," she said, but her voice lacked conviction.
"Is it?" Grayson rose from the bed with fluid grace, and she noticed for the first time how he moved—too graceful, too perfect, as if gravity held less sway over him than it did over ordinary mortals. "Look at me, Mailah. Really look."
Against her better judgment, she did. And for the first time since she'd arrived at the estate, she saw him without the filter of her own desires and assumptions clouding her vision.
His beauty wasn't quite human. It was too perfect, too symmetrical, like a master sculptor's idealized vision of masculine perfection. His eyes held depths that seemed to go on forever, and there was something in them—something ancient and otherworldly that made her very soul shiver with recognition.
"Oh God," she breathed.
"Not quite," he said with bitter amusement. "More like the opposite."
The room seemed to tilt around her as the implications crashed down like an avalanche. Everything she thought she knew, every assumption she'd made about her life, about reality itself, crumbled into dust.
"You're actually..." She couldn't finish the sentence.
"A demon, an incubus, a dream walker, yes." He moved to the window, putting distance between them, and she could see the tension in the line of his shoulders. "A creature designed to seduce and feed on human women. To drain them slowly, night after night, until they waste away from exhaustion and unfulfilled longing."
"And you've been..." Her voice cracked. "In my dreams, you've been..."
"Feeding on you, yes." The admission came out flat, matter-of-fact, but she caught the self-loathing beneath the surface. "Though not intentionally."
"Not intentionally?" The words came out as a shriek. "How do you accidentally feed on someone's life force?"
Grayson's hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Because I haven't fed in over three centuries."
The confession hung in the air between them, heavy with implications she was only beginning to understand. Centuries?
"I made a choice," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper. "A long time ago. I decided I would rather starve than continue taking what wasn't freely given. I've been... suppressing that part of my nature for so long that I thought I had it under control."
"But?"
"But starvation makes monsters of us all." He turned to face her, and the anguish in his expression nearly broke her heart. "My incubus side has been acting without my conscious knowledge. Slipping into your dreams while I slept, drawn by your presence in this house, by the scent you carry."
"What scent?"
"A claiming scent. Proof that an incubus has been feeding in your dreams." His muscles tensed visibly. "Vivienne warned you not to sleep because she detected the signs—she understood what was happening before I became aware of it."
Mailah's mind reeled as pieces began falling into place. "Vivienne is she also...?"
"Sorry to disappoint you, but Vivienne is very human," he said with a hint of dry amusement. "Just like you. But she's not really our mother. She's a guardian assigned to watch over my brothers and me. She's been with us for decades, helping us navigate the human world, keeping our secrets safe."
"Your brothers?"
"Another story for another time." He raked a hand through his dark hair, the casual gesture at odds with the gravity of their conversation. "The point is, Vivienne was trying to protect you from something she knew I might not be able to control. She was right to be concerned."
Mailah stared at him, this beautiful, impossible man who had just admitted to being a literal demon. The rational part of her mind insisted this was all some elaborate delusion, but the evidence was overwhelming. The dreams that felt more real than reality. The physical marks.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked finally.
"Because you deserve to know the truth. And because..." He moved closer, and she caught that intoxicating scent again, stronger now. "Because as long as you bear my mark, as long as my essence has mingled with yours through the dreams, you're in danger."
"What kind of danger?"
"Other incubi will be drawn to you." His eyes flashed with something possessive and dangerous. "And unlike me, they won't hesitate to drain you dry."
Terror clawed at her throat. "Then what do I do? How do I make it stop?"
Grayson was quiet for a long moment, his expression unreadable. When he finally spoke, his voice was carefully controlled.
"You leave. Tonight. Go far away from here, change your name, start over somewhere new. Eventually, the scent will fade, and you'll be safe."
"And if I don't want to leave?"
The question surprised them both. Mailah hadn't meant to ask it, but now that the words were out, she realized she meant them. Despite everything—the deception, the danger, the revelation that the man she was falling for was literally a demon—the thought of walking away made her chest tight with panic.
Grayson's eyes darkened with something that looked like hunger. "Then you'll have to trust me to protect you. And pray that my control doesn't slip again."
The air between them suddenly shifted, the tension so thick she could taste it. Despite her fear, despite the impossibility of everything he'd just told her, Mailah found herself leaning forward instead of pulling away.
"What if I told you," she said softly, "that I don't want to leave?"
Grayson went perfectly still, his breathing shallow. "Mailah."
"What if I told you that the dreams don't feel like feeding to me? They feel like the only time I'm truly alive?"
"You don't understand what you're saying."
"Then explain it to me." She pushed back the covers and rose to her knees on the bed, bringing them to eye level. "Show me what you really are."
For a moment, she thought he might actually do it. His control wavered, and she glimpsed something wild and dangerous in the depths of his eyes. But then he stepped back, shaking his head.
"I won't destroy you," he said firmly. "Not ever."
The rejection stung more than it should have. But underneath the hurt, Mailah felt something else stirring—a determination she'd never known she possessed. Perhaps she'd lost her mind, or perhaps the full reality hadn't sunk in yet, but she wanted to stay.
"That's not your choice to make," she said quietly. "It's mine."
And for the first time, Grayson looked genuinely afraid. But as she watched, something shifted in his expression—resignation mixed with desperate hunger.
"Then God help us both," he whispered as he met her unwavering gaze.