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Plot Summary
This paranormal romance novella duology comprises two connected stories published as a flip book. Bound follows Vero and Viktor; Unbound, its sequel, follows Lilit and Roman. Both center on revenants: immortal beings who were once mortal but crossed into a new existence through a dangerous blood ritual. Revenants possess superhuman strength, speed, extreme longevity, and sensitivity to sunlight that diminishes with age. Drinking blood creates mental pathways between individuals, allowing one to track another or sense stray thoughts. Nine elder Sires, ancient progenitors of revenant lineages, each lead a bloodline. Lilit of Nineveh, nearly five thousand years old, is one of these Sires and has appointed herself the protector of mortals.
Bound
Veronica "Vero" Mercer, a PhD art history student at Rockhaven University in Vermont, grew up with con-artist parents and was partly raised by Grace, an elderly book restorer who taught her restoration techniques. After Grace's death, Vero applied to Rockhaven and began working at McManaman Antique Dealers, where the staff becomes a surrogate family. In her fourth year, she determines that a leaf the store's owner, Mortimer McManaman, acquired is a forgery rather than a genuine page from the Gutenberg Bible. When she learns the store faces financial ruin, she agrees to improve the leaf and sell it to a wealthy collector for ninety thousand dollars, and the two continue producing forgeries targeting morally questionable buyers.
Before her fifth year, Vero attends an estate sale where she meets Dr. Viktor Ashworth, a tall, impeccably dressed British history professor at Rockhaven. Outside, men abduct Vero and Mortimer and drive them to Viktor's mansion. Viktor reveals he purchased every forgery Vero produced, knowing they were fakes, and offers her one million dollars to forge a replica of Ars Moriendi, a ninth-century bound manuscript he owns, but refuses to explain why. Vero accepts.
Working in Viktor's heavily secured house, Vero befriends Pierre, Viktor's French associate, and Samantha, a young woman who helps around the house and seems wistful about the outdoors. One day Vero lends Sam a key to go outside. While Sam is gone, Vero sneaks into the preservation room and discovers forensic photographs documenting murders spanning decades, all victims drained of blood. Sam returns catastrophically burned by sunlight. Viktor bites his own wrist and feeds her his blood, healing her. Vero flees.
Viktor finds Vero on campus and explains they are revenants. He works as an enforcer for a powerful elder Sire, investigating those who harm mortals. The murders belong to Silas, a revenant who has been killing mortals for decades trying to learn the crossing ritual. Vero agrees to return to work, and over the following weeks she and Viktor grow close. Raised in a monastery at the end of the eighth century, Viktor has lived over a thousand years. He admits he wrote the original Ars Moriendi as a young revenant and now considers it dangerous. He also confesses he took Vero's blood without her knowledge before they met, granting him partial access to her thoughts.
Viktor reveals his plan: The forged manuscript, with its last pages altered to contain false ritual instructions, will be sold through Wiegand's auction house. When Silas acquires it, Viktor will ambush him. At an art exhibit hosted by Wiegand's wife, Vero lures the auction-house director to a private area so Viktor can bite him and access his thoughts. After Viktor is called away on business, an intimate moment in the workshop shifts something between them. That evening a revenant attacks Vero; Viktor kills the attacker but is stabbed with a poisoned blade and collapses. Vero stays at his bedside for days. When he wakes, they confess their feelings and sleep together.
Silas moves the auction showing earlier than planned, before Viktor's reinforcements arrive. Vero discovers that her friend Roxanne and Roxanne's young daughter Rorie are at the venue and drives there to warn them. She confronts Silas in the parking lot, holding up the original Ars Moriendi as bait, and Mortimer, hidden nearby with a musket, shoots Silas dead. A second revenant fatally injures Vero. Six weeks later she wakes in Lilit's Irish castle, crossed into a revenant without her explicit permission because she was dying. Lilit confirms Roxanne, Rorie, and Pierre are safe; Mortimer's survival is confirmed later. Viktor enters, and Vero tells him she loves him, forgiving him for crossing her and confirming she had already decided to try immortality for him.
Unbound
Lilit of Nineveh narrates the sequel, acknowledging that her love for a mortal has compromised her self-control. She has maintained a decade-long relationship with Dr. Roman Martin, an overworked pediatric ER physician in Chicago, built on stolen visits and unspoken tensions. Roman does not know Lilit is a revenant. He has noticed she never ages, and they share a running joke in which he calls her a vampire.
Lilit is in Chicago because Wenceslaus, an elder revenant, has summoned the bloodline elders to council. There, Wenceslaus accuses Viktor of murdering Grigori, a young revenant in his bloodline. Lilit denies Viktor's involvement, and the other elders side with her. Afterward, Li Xiu, another elder, warns Lilit to watch her back. That evening, Roman ends their relationship at their usual diner, claiming he has been seeing another woman. Lilit detects no physiological signs of lying.
Shortly after, Roman texts that he found specialized sunglasses on his kitchen counter, the kind revenants require for their light-sensitive eyes. Lilit realizes another revenant was in his house and races there. A young revenant attacks; Lilit fights him off and drinks his blood to track him, finding a necklace pointing to Wenceslaus's bloodline. They drive to Wenceslaus's residence and find him violently killed. Roman reasons that the attacker waited for Lilit, meaning Roman was bait, not the target.
At a secure hotel, Lilit drinks Roman's blood so she can track him if they are separated. The blood reveals Roman is dying: He has a glioblastoma, an inoperable brain tumor, with a prognosis of six months. He refused treatment and told no one but his oncologist. Lilit offers to cross him; Roman refuses. Through thoughts now accessible via their bond, she glimpses his central fear: an eternity in which she might tire of him. She also realizes the girlfriend was a lie Roman fabricated to push her away so she would not watch him die.
At midnight, Lilit meets Atukhos, another elder, who appears injured and claims Imhotep, a fellow elder, attacked him. He asks Lilit to help confront Imhotep at the next council, and she agrees. Back at the hotel, she reconciles with Roman and has a sudden epiphany. Her own jealousy when Roman claimed to be seeing someone else gives her the key: The real culprit is Atukhos, consumed by jealousy after Li Xiu left him for Imhotep. Atukhos killed Grigori and framed Viktor, sent a revenant to attack Lilit, killed Wenceslaus, and inflicted his own injuries to frame Imhotep, all to eliminate everyone Li Xiu ever loved.
At the final council, Lilit reveals the truth. While the elders speak, Imhotep uses his blood bond with Li Xiu to locate her, and Roman retrieves her from Atukhos's residence, where she has been kept drugged and unconscious. Li Xiu enters the room and drives Atukhos's own blade through his body, killing him.
In the aftermath, Lilit tells Roman she will stay and care for him for however long he has. He resists, but she tells him he is one in a million across thousands of years, the only person who feels like home. Roman opens his mind fully so she can see his thoughts: At the center is his fear that she will leave. She tells him she loves him. An epilogue set ten years later reveals Roman has been crossed into a revenant and has adapted with discipline, applying his medical training to study revenant biology. In the final scene, Roman falls asleep in Lilit's lap. She strokes his hair, reflecting on what he told her on the day of his crossing: His happiest moments were the ones when she loved him back.
Bound
Veronica "Vero" Mercer, a PhD art history student at Rockhaven University in Vermont, grew up with con-artist parents and was partly raised by Grace, an elderly book restorer who taught her restoration techniques. After Grace's death, Vero applied to Rockhaven and began working at McManaman Antique Dealers, where the staff becomes a surrogate family. In her fourth year, she determines that a leaf the store's owner, Mortimer McManaman, acquired is a forgery rather than a genuine page from the Gutenberg Bible. When she learns the store faces financial ruin, she agrees to improve the leaf and sell it to a wealthy collector for ninety thousand dollars, and the two continue producing forgeries targeting morally questionable buyers.
Before her fifth year, Vero attends an estate sale where she meets Dr. Viktor Ashworth, a tall, impeccably dressed British history professor at Rockhaven. Outside, men abduct Vero and Mortimer and drive them to Viktor's mansion. Viktor reveals he purchased every forgery Vero produced, knowing they were fakes, and offers her one million dollars to forge a replica of Ars Moriendi, a ninth-century bound manuscript he owns, but refuses to explain why. Vero accepts.
Working in Viktor's heavily secured house, Vero befriends Pierre, Viktor's French associate, and Samantha, a young woman who helps around the house and seems wistful about the outdoors. One day Vero lends Sam a key to go outside. While Sam is gone, Vero sneaks into the preservation room and discovers forensic photographs documenting murders spanning decades, all victims drained of blood. Sam returns catastrophically burned by sunlight. Viktor bites his own wrist and feeds her his blood, healing her. Vero flees.
Viktor finds Vero on campus and explains they are revenants. He works as an enforcer for a powerful elder Sire, investigating those who harm mortals. The murders belong to Silas, a revenant who has been killing mortals for decades trying to learn the crossing ritual. Vero agrees to return to work, and over the following weeks she and Viktor grow close. Raised in a monastery at the end of the eighth century, Viktor has lived over a thousand years. He admits he wrote the original Ars Moriendi as a young revenant and now considers it dangerous. He also confesses he took Vero's blood without her knowledge before they met, granting him partial access to her thoughts.
Viktor reveals his plan: The forged manuscript, with its last pages altered to contain false ritual instructions, will be sold through Wiegand's auction house. When Silas acquires it, Viktor will ambush him. At an art exhibit hosted by Wiegand's wife, Vero lures the auction-house director to a private area so Viktor can bite him and access his thoughts. After Viktor is called away on business, an intimate moment in the workshop shifts something between them. That evening a revenant attacks Vero; Viktor kills the attacker but is stabbed with a poisoned blade and collapses. Vero stays at his bedside for days. When he wakes, they confess their feelings and sleep together.
Silas moves the auction showing earlier than planned, before Viktor's reinforcements arrive. Vero discovers that her friend Roxanne and Roxanne's young daughter Rorie are at the venue and drives there to warn them. She confronts Silas in the parking lot, holding up the original Ars Moriendi as bait, and Mortimer, hidden nearby with a musket, shoots Silas dead. A second revenant fatally injures Vero. Six weeks later she wakes in Lilit's Irish castle, crossed into a revenant without her explicit permission because she was dying. Lilit confirms Roxanne, Rorie, and Pierre are safe; Mortimer's survival is confirmed later. Viktor enters, and Vero tells him she loves him, forgiving him for crossing her and confirming she had already decided to try immortality for him.
Unbound
Lilit of Nineveh narrates the sequel, acknowledging that her love for a mortal has compromised her self-control. She has maintained a decade-long relationship with Dr. Roman Martin, an overworked pediatric ER physician in Chicago, built on stolen visits and unspoken tensions. Roman does not know Lilit is a revenant. He has noticed she never ages, and they share a running joke in which he calls her a vampire.
Lilit is in Chicago because Wenceslaus, an elder revenant, has summoned the bloodline elders to council. There, Wenceslaus accuses Viktor of murdering Grigori, a young revenant in his bloodline. Lilit denies Viktor's involvement, and the other elders side with her. Afterward, Li Xiu, another elder, warns Lilit to watch her back. That evening, Roman ends their relationship at their usual diner, claiming he has been seeing another woman. Lilit detects no physiological signs of lying.
Shortly after, Roman texts that he found specialized sunglasses on his kitchen counter, the kind revenants require for their light-sensitive eyes. Lilit realizes another revenant was in his house and races there. A young revenant attacks; Lilit fights him off and drinks his blood to track him, finding a necklace pointing to Wenceslaus's bloodline. They drive to Wenceslaus's residence and find him violently killed. Roman reasons that the attacker waited for Lilit, meaning Roman was bait, not the target.
At a secure hotel, Lilit drinks Roman's blood so she can track him if they are separated. The blood reveals Roman is dying: He has a glioblastoma, an inoperable brain tumor, with a prognosis of six months. He refused treatment and told no one but his oncologist. Lilit offers to cross him; Roman refuses. Through thoughts now accessible via their bond, she glimpses his central fear: an eternity in which she might tire of him. She also realizes the girlfriend was a lie Roman fabricated to push her away so she would not watch him die.
At midnight, Lilit meets Atukhos, another elder, who appears injured and claims Imhotep, a fellow elder, attacked him. He asks Lilit to help confront Imhotep at the next council, and she agrees. Back at the hotel, she reconciles with Roman and has a sudden epiphany. Her own jealousy when Roman claimed to be seeing someone else gives her the key: The real culprit is Atukhos, consumed by jealousy after Li Xiu left him for Imhotep. Atukhos killed Grigori and framed Viktor, sent a revenant to attack Lilit, killed Wenceslaus, and inflicted his own injuries to frame Imhotep, all to eliminate everyone Li Xiu ever loved.
At the final council, Lilit reveals the truth. While the elders speak, Imhotep uses his blood bond with Li Xiu to locate her, and Roman retrieves her from Atukhos's residence, where she has been kept drugged and unconscious. Li Xiu enters the room and drives Atukhos's own blade through his body, killing him.
In the aftermath, Lilit tells Roman she will stay and care for him for however long he has. He resists, but she tells him he is one in a million across thousands of years, the only person who feels like home. Roman opens his mind fully so she can see his thoughts: At the center is his fear that she will leave. She tells him she loves him. An epilogue set ten years later reveals Roman has been crossed into a revenant and has adapted with discipline, applying his medical training to study revenant biology. In the final scene, Roman falls asleep in Lilit's lap. She strokes his hair, reflecting on what he told her on the day of his crossing: His happiest moments were the ones when she loved him back.
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