Countess Heartbound: A Holy Love Ice-Queen Age-Gap Shapeshifter Romance (Afterbite 14)

Countess Margot De la Croix has worn winter for strangers so long she forgot it was a choice. Three thousand five hundred years old. Last of a murdered line. She keeps a Loire château too large for one woman, and a heart that did not freeze so much as stop—two and a half thousand years ago.
She came to Paris to remain a myth.
Then she pulled a girl out of the opera house and refused to give her back.
Elena de la Troyes is twenty-one, Venezuelan, and the last bright thing in an impoverished noble name. She has a short fuse, an honest mouth, no etiquette, and no language yet for the way she looks at the countess who hid her. Traffickers took her for her beauty and her virginity—to sell the first night to the vampire who would pay the most, drain her after, and strip what was left for parts. They did not plan on Margot.
What begins as a rescue becomes a hiding. What begins as a hiding becomes a wanting Elena cannot name, and Margot will not treat as safe. Hunters keep coming. The Paris underground learns what happens when an ice queen decides she will not live alone.
Fire against ice. Action first. Thaw second.
A woman who meant to stay a legend spends the rest of the book keeping one living girl—and discovers she does not want the château empty.