Hi, my name is River, and I don’t have a problem.

Or I didn’t. Humans didn’t know we existed, and we were supposed to keep it that way. So you can imagine the issue when a man wandered into our Tuesday-night meeting and couldn’t be compelled to forget.

Alex was the problem. My problem, seeing as I’d been ordered to deliver him to the council. Which I would do. Any day now.

In the meantime, I was holding him captive.

As it turns out, humans didn’t like being kidnapped. Alex also didn’t approve of being handcuffed to my bed, dragged along on errands (stealing a blood donation van was apparently frowned upon), or me eliminating his boyfriend. I was in recovery, not a saint.

In two and a half centuries, I’d never been so entertained. The feelings, however, were inconvenient.

So was the growing suspicion that Alex was my mate. Wooing him would be difficult, given my aforementioned indiscretions. There was also the small matter of human mates being a vampire’s greatest weakness.

And Alex was already becoming mine.