Forged in Blood

Nineteen years before the story begins, a dying demon named Jadon summons his brother Kameen — the most powerful demon alive — to a scene of carnage.

Nineteen years before the story begins, a dying demon named Jadon summons his brother Kameen — the most powerful demon alive — to a scene of carnage. Jadon's human mate lies dead, killed alongside him by vampire attackers. But their unborn daughter survived by summoning fire from inside the womb, incinerating every assailant. Kameen sets the corpse ablaze to test the child, who emerges unharmed from the flames. A healer witch named Nazeel senses ancient power in the infant and suspects she could fulfill a long-awaited prophecy. Kameen orders Nazeel to bind the baby's magic and insists she be raised among humans, hidden from the supernatural world that already wants her dead.

A trust fund sends a foster kid to a college of monsters

Ophelia Hart arrives at Montridge University — the second-oldest college in the country — carrying nothing but a backpack and the weight of twenty-six foster placements. A mysterious trust fund, supposedly from parents who died before she was born, pays her tuition with one inflexible condition: Montridge or nowhere. She has no friends, no roommate, and pink hair that makes her conspicuous in a place where fitting in means survival. At the activity fair, she glimpses the shirtless commanders of the Ruby Dragon Society — Axl, Xavier, and Malachi — and is warned to stay far away from them. She doesn't yet know that Montridge's prestigious societies are organized by species: vampires, witches, and werewolves, each hiding in plain sight among oblivious human students.

Three vampires seize Ophelia, but their master forbids one taste

Walking home from the library one evening, Ophelia rounds a corner and finds Axl with his fangs buried in a girl's neck while Xavier and Malachi wait their turn. Before she can flee, they seize her and carry her at inhuman speed to a basement cell beneath a private house. They cuff her, taunt her, and bare their teeth. Then Professor Alexandros Drakos — their two-thousand-year-old sire and the dean of the history department — storms in and forbids them from biting her. He insults Ophelia as a friendless nobody whom no one would believe, then sends her away unharmed. That night, he discovers she was the sole survivor of a devastating school fire, walking out without a scratch. He orders the boys to monitor her but never taste her blood.

Alexandros orders his boys to isolate Ophelia and feed her loneliness The boys obey, though they don't understand why. Axl breaks into Ophelia's dorm to intimidate her, lying that she stinks to a vampire's…