Nikki Mikaelson is a thousand-year-old vampire-witch, the half-sister of the Originals. She is half-French and half-American, born from a secret affair between Esther Mikaelson and a powerful French witchâher father. Despite the circumstances of her birth, Nikki has always been nothing less than a true Mikaelson. Her siblings have never seen her as a half-sister, only as family, and their bond with her is unbreakable.
Set within the world of 1923, Across the Rift follows Alexandra, a young British aristocrat engaged to Prince Arthur, whose life has been carefully constructed by duty, expectation, and social obligation. During a journey to Nairobi, she becomes increasingly disillusioned with the future she is meant to accept. In Nairobi, Alexandra meets Spencer Dutton, a hardened American hunter living on the edge of civilization between expeditions. Their first encounter begins as a brief, curiosity-driven exchange but quickly develops into a charged connection shaped by contrastâorder versus freedom, expectation versus instinct, and duty versus survival. As Alexandra is pulled deeper into Spencerâs world, she begins to question the life she has been promised. The tension between her engagement to Arthur and her growing attachment to Spencer forces her into an irreversible choice: remain within the safety of her inherited future, or abandon everything for a life defined by uncertainty, danger, and self-determination. At its core, Across the Rift is a story of collisionâbetween two people from entirely different worlds, and between the life Alexandra was given and the life she chooses for herself.