Bitten affection

Previously

…She knew, with a chilling certainty, that she had to go. The journal had offered a glimmer of hope, a potential path to freedom. It was a path paved with danger, a gamble of unimaginable stakes, but it was a path nonetheless. And for the first time since Lucian had entered her life, Jillian felt a flicker of something akin to resolve. She would venture into the Whispering Woods, she would seek the serpent’s stone, and she would face the blood moon. She would uncover the hidden key and, perhaps, find a way to break the chains that bound her, to Lucian, and to the secrets of her own forgotten past. The adventure, the true, terrifying adventure, was just beginning.