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senascoop · 8 months ago

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TIL DEATH DO US PART , S.JY !

PAIRING: husband ! jake × afab reader

SYNOPSIS: In an arranged marriage where sparks never flew, you finally chose divorce as the only path to freedom. But when your husband died in a sudden accident, life took an unexpected turn, binding you to a reality marked by guilt, grief, and the shadows of unfulfilled words. Now, you must navigate a world that holds him forever gone.

GENRE: fluff + angst

WARNING(S): not proofread, kissing, dirty jokes, a little bit suggestive, mentions of suicide and death, insecurities, mentions of pregnancy. lmk if I missed anything.

WORD COUNT: 16.2K

FEAT: JAY from ENHYPEN + some ocs

MASTERLISTS ARCHIVE !!

NOTE FROM SENA ┊ had this idea going from quite a lot of time (two months lol) though i wasn't sure of posting it... but here you go i guess. was supposed to post this a day ago for Jake’s bday (🎂) but I hope this still works. definitely won't claim this as one of my best works but hope it's not too bad. would love to know your opinions <3

DEAR JAKE,

I’m sorry, but I can’t continue living like this. I’m leaving. Our marriage has become a constant battle, and I believe we’re both suffering more by holding on than we would by letting go. I know neither of us wanted it to come to this, and I wish things were different. But deep down, I think we’re better apart. I hope one day you’ll understand.

With regret, Y/N.

TEARS BLURRED YOUR VISION AS YOU STARED AT THE CRUMBLED NOTE IN YOUR HAND—the one you had written to Jake months ago. The one that now felt like a curse. Your hands shook as you traced the familiar words, guilt twisting your insides. I’m leaving. I’m sorry. He had never known the true weight of those words. And now he never would.

The police had found it in his pocket. They said he’d carried it with him, even after everything. Even when he... when he was gone.

You collapsed onto the couch, clutching the note like a lifeline, but it only felt like a reminder of how far you had pushed him. How much you had wanted out, and now, how deeply you regretted it. A year together, two lives constantly at odds, and it had ended in this way. A divorce that never came, an accident that did. You didn’t want this, didn’t want him gone, but now, all you had was this—regret, and a body that was too still in your bed to hold. The anger, the frustration of him being gone—it consumed you, ate at your soul.

Why couldn’t you have waited?

You had hoped time apart would fix things, give you both breathing room. But he hadn’t lived long enough for you to see the good you could have made of it. The guilt ate you alive, deeper than the frustration ever had. You tried to convince yourself it wasn’t your fault, that you couldn’t have known, but deep down, the truth stung. Your note had been his last reminder of your marriage. His last memory. He had carried your rejection right until the end.

Would things have been different if you hadn’t written that letter?

The thought raked at your mind like shards of glass, shredding everything in its path. What if you had kept fighting for him, for the marriage? Would he have been here? Would you have learned to love him? Or would he still have left, still have been gone, no matter what?

Your thoughts flickered back to moments with him—so small, so easy to overlook. The way Jake had rolled his eyes every time you’d scolded his niece Semi for spilling juice, or how he had tried to hide his smirk as he pretended to act innocent. The little things that used to irritate you, that you had never really appreciated until now.

You remembered the way he defended you against his relatives, his words sharp and protective as they made cruel comments about your body. They didn’t understand, but Jake did. He had always been there, not perfect but trying.

“She suits me well enough.”

The memory felt like a slap now, a cruel joke. You had spent so much time pushing him away, not seeing that he cared. You hadn’t seen that he had tried.

“Why couldn’t I have seen it?” you whispered to the empty room, curling up on the bed, pressing your face into the pillow. The tears soaked into the fabric, and the sobs wracked through you like a storm. Why was it only now, when he was gone, that you realized how much he had mattered?

You had never kissed him, never held him the way a wife should. You thought you had the luxury of time, but now you had nothing left but his memory. The memory of a man you barely knew but had somehow been the one constant in your life. How selfish of you to push him away. How stupid to think it was all about the fights, the annoyances, and not about the love you could have had.

“Please... Jake. I’m sorry...”

The words escaped you as your sobs grew louder, choking your breath. Your body trembled with grief, the weight of regret pressing down on you until you couldn’t breathe. If only you could undo it, go back and rewrite the note. If only you hadn’t given up on him, on the marriage, on the chance for something more.

The room felt suffocating now, as though the walls were closing in around you. What now? you thought. There was no future with him anymore. No next step. No reconciliation.

Why had you waited so long to realize how much he meant to you?

You sank deeper into your pillow, tears soaking your face and your hair, wishing for the impossible: for him to walk through the door, to come back, to make everything okay again. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

And all that was left was you. And the note.

YOUR MOTHER IN LAW’S HANDS TREMBLE AS SHE EXTENDS THE ANCESTRAL RING TOWARDS YOU, her eyes glistening with raw grief. The ring's delicate gold band catches the light, an unwanted reminder of everything Jake represented—strength, love, an unfinished story.

“He wanted you to have this… but I never thought I’d give it to you now. Not like this,” she whispers, her voice breaking before dissolving into quiet sobs. The sound is so raw it scrapes at your heart. For a moment, the room feels unbearably small, closing in with the suffocating weight of shared loss.

You stare at the ring, fingers hovering uncertainly. The thought of accepting it feels like admitting he’s really gone. Yet, you know you can’t refuse it; Jake’s wish, even unspoken now, feels sacred. You slip the ring onto your finger, a silent acknowledgment of the man you had once promised yourself to, a man you’ll never get the chance to truly know.

With a hesitant step forward, you place your hand on her shoulder, the touch meant to soothe but feeling fragile, as though it could shatter under the weight of her grief. The older woman leans into you, body racked with tremors as she buries her face in her hands. Her sobs rise and fall in uneven waves, echoing in the otherwise silent room.

“Please… don’t cry,” you whisper, your voice hoarse and cracking at the edges. The night had drained you, leaving your eyes dry yet still burning, poised for more tears that you no longer had the strength to shed.

Her grief pierces deeper. “He wouldn’t want to see you in pain,” you add, voice low, carrying the weight of a plea that even you don’t believe.

“I-I know,” she manages between sobs, her shoulders trembling. “But… he was so young, so full of life. It should’ve been me, not him. He barely started his life, and now…”

The room seems to warp under the heaviness of her words. You know she’s right. The unfairness of it all gnaws at you. But what would Jake want? The question echoes in your mind, clawing for answers you wish you didn’t have to seek.

You close your eyes for a brief second, conjuring his face in your memory—the way his smile would sneak out when he thought you weren’t looking, the stubborn tilt of his chin when he was determined. You imagine him here, telling you what to do, how to be strong for her when he couldn’t be.

Drawing in a shaking breath, you shift, wrapping your arms around your mother-in-law. She stiffens for a heartbeat before collapsing into the embrace, her body convulsing with grief. Her head rests on your shoulder, and you stroke her back, the gesture rhythmic, almost desperate, as if the act itself could soothe the unsoothable.

“My poor boy… he must’ve been so scared, so alone in those final moments,” she chokes out, and it’s as if a knife twists in your chest. The image of him in pain, of his last moments, blurs the edges of your control. A tear slips down your cheek, a singular escape among the multitude waiting behind your lashes.

“I’m so sorry, Jake,” you whisper, barely audible. The guilt is relentless, intertwining with the ache of loneliness that had settled deep within you long before he passed. You were alone when he was alive, and now that emptiness has transformed, sharpened by grief, into something more unbearable.

Her sobs quiet, just enough for her to lift her head and take in your expression, your tears mingling with unsaid words. She studies you, eyes clouded by grief but touched with understanding.

“You must feel so alone too… You and Jake… barely had time,” she murmurs, her voice a weak echo of empathy.

The silence stretches, heavy and uncertain. You meet her gaze and see the exhaustion, the pain mirrored back at you. It anchors you for a moment, before she speaks again.

“You’re still young. You should think of moving forward one day. Remarry, maybe… You’ll always be like a daughter to me, but you have to live, too.”

Your heart clenches, rejecting the thought. You don’t want to. The ache of wanting Jake, even in a marriage that had felt distant, is a raw wound you can’t imagine healing. The loneliness was familiar; life without him is uncharted, unbearable.

“I won’t… I can’t,” you admit, voice shaking as the tears finally spill, unchecked. “I just want him back. Even if it means being lonely again.”

The words break you open, and this time, neither of you tries to stop the crying. You hold each other in the ruins of shared loss, hoping, against hope, that the pieces of your shattered hearts will one day feel less sharp.

YOUR HANDS CHILLED FROM THE BRISK AIR, DIG DEEPER INTO YOUR COAT POCKETS AS YOU GAZE OUT INTO THE SWIRLING SNOW, a faint numbness settling in your bones. Each snowflake that brushes against your cheek feels colder than the last, a physical reminder of the frost that’s taken root in your heart, a void Jake's absence left behind. Life has lost its rhythm, its purpose, and the bustling world seems foreign, moving on a beat you no longer recognize.

Nursing, once a passion that filled your heart, now feels suffocating. The once-simple act of caring for patients, seeing them through their darkest times, now stirs something darker inside you—an envy for their hope, their chances. These creeping, bitter thoughts had scared you enough to step back from the only profession you knew. The faces of crying relatives haunted your dreams, their grief striking chords too familiar, too close. You’d sworn to heal, never harm, yet here you are, carrying shadows of guilt too heavy to bear.

The café’s warmth hits you as you push through the door, a momentary comfort against the gnawing cold. You shuffle forward, fingers fumbling in your pocket for money as your eyes wander the room. Jake had always spoken fondly of this place, a little corner shop with its cozy mismatched chairs and the sweet aroma of cocoa and baked pastries. A small pang clenches your chest, regret whispering its usual 'what ifs.' If only you’d agreed to visit here with him, if only time hadn’t been a cruel master.

The barista, a young woman with weary eyes, glances up as she speaks. “Ma’am, are you ordering?” Her voice, though polite, carries a slight impatience with the growing line behind you.

“Ah, yes… a cold coffee,” you manage, the words falling flat as if they don’t quite belong to you. Her brows lift, a flicker of confusion.

“In this weather?” she asks, a hint of genuine concern lacing her tone.

Realizing the absurdity, you swallow, forcing a small, resigned nod. “Hot chocolate then,” you say, the warmth of Jake’s recommendation tugging at the edges of your memory.

The exchange is brief, the hot drink pressed into your hands a minute later. As you turn to leave, the weight of the ancestral ring around your finger pulls at you, its cool surface grounding and yet suffocating. The bittersweet metal reflects a dull glow, a silent reminder of promises made and broken, of the love lost and the void left behind.

The wind picks up outside, tugging at your coat as you sip the hot chocolate. Its warmth spreads through you, but it’s fleeting, never enough to touch the ache within. You shake your head, Jake’s face vivid in your mind, his teasing smile as he’d planned your future dates. You’d push the thought aside, but every step feels like dragging a part of him behind you.

“Why can’t I let go?” you murmur, voice snatched away by the icy air. Your brother-in-law’s words echo in your mind, urging you to stop living in Jake’s shadow. But how do you tear yourself away from the ghost of a love that never got to finish its story?

Snow clings to your coat as you continue to trudge through the city, each step heavy with an ache that refuses to fade. The glow of the streetlights bathes the snow in a warm, golden hue, contrasting the bitter chill that settles in your chest. Sipping the hot chocolate, you try to focus on the warmth sliding down your throat, but the sweetness only sharpens the emptiness inside. The steam curls from the cup, a fleeting comfort as your breath mingles with it in the frigid air.

You pause near a park bench, eyes darting to couples bundled up, their laughter piercing through the quiet snowfall. One couple stands close, the man adjusting the scarf around his partner’s neck with a smile that makes your heart clench. You bite the inside of your cheek, the taste of copper sharp on your tongue as you fight back the sting in your eyes. The jealousy gnaws at you, sour and uninvited.

The memory of Jake’s voice flits through your mind, warm and teasing: “Good things happen to good people.” You scoff, the bitterness in that statement now a cruel joke. Were you not good enough? The universe seemed to think so, because it had ripped him away, leaving a hollow shell in his place.

Lost in thought, you find yourself on the bridge, fingers trailing over the iron railing that has frosted over, leaving cool streaks on your gloves. This place, once so filled with light and memories, feels haunted now. You trace a path where your and Jake’s hands once met, where laughter and shared secrets once echoed.

A voice, small and familiar, intrudes on your thoughts. Semi’s question echoes, fragile and innocent: “Aunty, when will Uncle come home?” You close your eyes, the lump in your throat thickening as the memory sharpens. You remember her wide, unknowing eyes searching yours for an answer you couldn't give, the guilt of that half-truth searing into you as you whispered, “I’m not sure, sweetie.”

You grip the railing tighter, feeling the cold seep through your gloves as the ache of regret claws at your heart. The river below moves steadily, unaffected by the chaos in your chest. You look down, watching the water catch the light in rippling patterns, your reflection distorted and wavering. The noise of the city fades as you breathe in the freezing air, each exhale a shuddering attempt to steady yourself.

A gust of wind stings your face, and you force yourself to look up, straightening with a resolve that feels fragile. Jake’s brother and his wife were inside your apartment, their watchful eyes filled with concern disguised as casual chatter. You know why they stay—it’s not out of pity, but out of fear, a silent agreement to keep you tethered when your world felt like it was splitting at the seams.

The laughter from the park drifts over again, mingling with the hum of distant traffic. For a moment, you let yourself remember the warmth of Jake’s embrace, the way he’d nudge your shoulder and murmur, “Life doesn’t stop, even when we want it to.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t,” you whisper into the night, the words barely a breath as they dissolve in the chill.

The warmth of the hot chocolate fades as the biting wind grazes your skin, a cruel reminder of the numbing void left behind. You stare at the bridge, eyes tracing the railings where Jake’s laughter once echoed. A memory surfaces, unbidden yet vivid.

“I know this isn't what either of us planned, but... I wish we could work it out,” Jake had said, a touch of hesitation softening his confident voice. His hands, hesitant but steady, hovered near you, respecting the space you held between.

“I wish that too,” you had murmured, the lie sliding off your tongue too easily. You’d convinced yourself you didn't care enough for Jake then, but the pang of that memory now gnawed at your insides. Regret had a way of reshaping the past, twisting even the most indifferent moments into sharp blades.

“Tell me something about yourself,” Jake had prodded gently, eyes bright even as he leaned down to meet your gaze.

Caught off guard, you’d raised an eyebrow. “Like what?” The question felt foreign, untouched by anyone's curiosity until now.

“Your ideal type,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting as though challenging you. His height had always made you tilt your head back to catch his expression—a detail that now felt like a cruel nostalgia.

“Why would you ask that?” You'd played along, teasing but curious.

Jake chuckled, the sound resonant and warm. “Because we're getting married, and maybe knowing each other better will make it feel less... strange. Maybe, just maybe, we'll fall in love.” His hand, finally settling on your shoulder, had felt reassuring, a silent promise in its touch.

The memory cleaves through you like a knife, leaving behind a raw wound that no time or distance can heal. A single tear slips down your cheek as you blink, the reality of the moment washing over you like a wave. The park across the street bustles with couples walking hand-in-hand, laughter and warmth breaking through the cold that wraps around you. A fresh ache takes root, sharp and relentless.

You drop the empty cup into the trash can, the metallic clang breaking your reverie. The grief, heavy and suffocating, presses you to the edge as you turn and begin the long walk home. Your footsteps are heavy, every step an effort against the pull of the past.

“Aunty, you're so late. Did you bring Uncle with you?” Semi’s small voice meets you at the door, eyes bright with innocent hope. The guilt hits you like a punch, stealing the air from your lungs. Your throat tightens as you shake your head, eyes avoiding her searching gaze.

Jieun, seeing your reaction, sighs softly as she pulls Semi closer. “Semi, we talked about this, remember?” Her voice holds the practiced patience of a mother trying to shield her child from the pain.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Semi mumbles, eyes dropping to her tiny hands that fidget nervously. The sight twists your heart, guilt layering over the grief that refuses to ease.

You force a hollow smile. “It’s okay, Jieun. She's just a kid,” you say, your voice low and void of emotion as you shrug off your winter coat and hang it up. The familiar routine feels like a play you no longer wish to act in.

“Still, I just—” Jieun’s words falter as you cut her off, your voice breaking the tension.

“Please,” you murmur, the word sharp and desperate, silencing the room. The stillness that follows is suffocating, your breaths shallow as you fight to keep your composure.

Jieun's eyes search yours, understanding but hesitant. “We just don’t want you to be alone,” she whispers, her voice thick with worry.

“I know,” you reply, sitting on the couch with your head hung low, hands clenched tightly in your lap. After a long pause, you add, “But you need to leave. This is your home too, but you have your own life to get back to. I need time... time to figure out how to grieve.” Your eyes don’t lift to meet theirs; you can’t bear to see the disappointment or concern there.

Semi’s voice pipes up again, the innocence piercing through your defenses. “Are you sending us away, Aunty?”

The weight of guilt deepens, pressing into your chest. You close your eyes, feeling the sting behind your lids before you answer. “No, sweetie, I’m not sending you away. You can come whenever you want. Aunty will always be here.” The words come out flat, and you feel them land like lies in the air between you.

Jieun picks Semi up, nodding at you as if she understands, though her eyes glisten with worry. “We’ll give you some space. But we’ll check in. Don’t forget that, please.”

When the door clicks shut, silence wraps around you, heavy and thick. Your gaze shifts to the note you’d prepared earlier, sitting on the edge of the coffee table. The words, written in your own hand, feel foreign now: apologies to the people who stayed, memories they never knew you held, and the final confession of a heart too weary to go on.

You were battling with the urge to just end it all.

The rational part of your brain told you that you were young and had your whole life ahead and that you'd meet a lot of guys in your life but the stubborn heart won't give up and held onto the memory of the guy you once called your husband.

So, you gave up.

A smile, then another.

The city glows beneath you, lights sprawled like constellations cast on earth. The wind at this height is sharp, tearing through your clothes and chilling your skin, as if trying to pull you back from the edge. Your shoes scrape against the concrete ledge, the slight tremble in your legs betraying the battle waging within. The night air smells faintly of rain, metallic and crisp, mingling with the faint hum of traffic below.

You steady your phone in your trembling hand, its cold surface grounding you momentarily. A notification pings, an ironic reminder that life continues to tick on, indifferent to the turmoil within you. The camera lens reflects the shimmer of unshed tears as you hit record, the small red dot staring back like a silent witness.

A smile forms—hesitant, broken. Then another, and another, each one a mask that crumbles too soon. “To everyone who still cares,” you begin, your voice low and cracking, “Semi, sweet, innocent Semi. Jieun, always so patient. Jongseong... my husband’s shadow in every way. My sister, my friends, all of you who tried.”

The wind picks up, whipping strands of hair across your face as you pause, the weight of the unsaid pressing on your chest. You blink rapidly, tears slipping free, their warmth stinging against your cold cheeks. “Jake wouldn't want this. I know he'd call me stubborn, weak even.” You let out a hollow laugh, the sound swallowed by the wind. “But he wouldn’t understand how loud it is in the silence he left behind.”

Your heart hammers as you shift your weight, the city seeming to inhale with you, holding its breath in anticipation. The edge of the building digs into the soles of your feet, the space between you and the world below both terrifying and liberating.

“I miss the little moments, Jake,” you whisper, voice breaking as you squeeze your eyes shut. “I miss you making me feel lonely, and now... now I’m lonelier without you.” The ache in your chest is unbearable, a cavernous void that steals your breath.

One last deep breath, air burning through your lungs, and you step forward. The world blurs into a rush of sound and sensation—wind roaring in your ears, your body weightless, suspended in a moment between despair and peace.

And then the fall hits.

Pain surges through you, sharp and overwhelming, before darkness takes over. Around you, the chaos erupts into a cacophony—screams, the frantic pounding of feet, and the sharp cry of ambulance sirens slicing through the night. But these sounds are drifting away, becoming faint murmurs from a world slipping out of reach.

Silence wraps around you, one that made you feel like everything would be okay after this. Maybe, just maybe, peace waits on the other side. In death.

YOU WALK THROUGH THE DENSE, MILKY FOG, EACH REVERBERATING IN AN ECHO THAT NEVER QUITE SETTLES. The air is cool, feather-light, whispering like distant memories. Is this heaven? The question circles in your mind, unspoken. If it is, where is Jake? A quiet laugh escapes your lips, hollow. He couldn’t have done enough wrong to land in hell, you think, the hint of humor biting through your longing. Yet, the anticipation twists your heart—an ache that makes you want to see him so desperately.

You try to call out, “Jake?” but the sound stays trapped in your chest, choked by the thick fog. Another step forward and there’s nothing but endless white, stretching out, swallowing you whole. Your breath catches; suddenly, the air thins, compressing your lungs, squeezing out every ounce of oxygen. You gasp, your hands clawing at the invisible force stealing your breath. It feels like drowning in emptiness.

Then—without warning—everything shifts. White light erupts around you, blinding and all-consuming. You brace for oblivion, muscles tensing for an end you’re sure is near. But instead, there’s a softness beneath you—a mattress that cradles you like an embrace you forgot.

Your eyes snap open, pupils adjusting to the familiar pale ceiling. It’s your ceiling. Your shared room. The bed, the faint scent of Jake’s cologne still lingering in the sheets, as if he just left. You sit up, heart thundering, hands brushing over your body frantically. No pain, no bruises, no broken bones—nothing. You’re whole, intact.

Then the realization hits you like cold water, and your fingers tremble as you pull them away.

“What the…?” you murmur, eyes darting around, seeking answers that the silent room won’t give. Your gaze falls to the phone on the bedside table, its screen blank and mocking in its stillness. You grab it, breath hitching as the time blinks to life.

January 29th, 2024. 6:30 a.m.

A shiver races down your spine. The date stares back at you, sharp and impossible. You set the phone down, legs feeling weak as you stand and approach the mirror. Your reflection isn’t that of a woman who has been weeping endlessly. Your eyes, dry and wide, reflect confusion rather than the storm of emotions that you carry.

“Is this one of those flashes they say you see before death?” Your voice trembles as the words escape, and you reach up to touch the cold glass. The girl looking back at you does the same, fingers meeting yours in a silent plea.

Then, your eyes catch it. The blue gel pen resting on the dresser—a pen that has no place outside your drawer. It’s a small thing, but the sight of it makes your breath hitch. Memories slice through you, sharp and unforgiving. That pen was the one you’d used for the note to Jake, the one that demanded space, an end.

“No,” you breathe out, shaking your head, bile rising in your throat. The pen feels like a cruel token, mocking you for what came after. In a swift motion, you snatch it up, the cold plastic biting into your skin as you grip it tight. The weight of your guilt, your regret, turns your stomach, and with a sudden burst of anger, you hurl the pen into the trash, its clatter punctuating the silence like a final plea.

Chest heaving, you close your eyes. If this is some kind of twisted second chance, you don’t know if you should feel terror or relief. But the room, the sheets, the absence on the other side of the bed—everything points to one impossible truth.

You’re back.

But this isn't a romance novel, is it?

Your eyes trail back to the empty bed, where Jake should be. “Jake?” The name falls from your lips, hopeful, trembling, but the silence stretches on, suffocating.

Your heart thuds like a wild drumbeat, erratic and desperate, the rhythm matched only by the single hope that propels you forward: seeing Jake. Alive. Healthy. Breathing.

You practically jog out of the shared bedroom, your bare feet sliding slightly on the hardwood floor as you turn the corner. The guest room door is ajar, a sliver of dim light illuminating the narrow hallway. The pulse in your chest quickens, breaths shallower with each step until you reach the threshold. You pause, drawing in a trembling breath before stepping inside.

There he is. Jake. Lying on his side, dark hair fanned messily over the pillow, the soft rise and fall of his chest hypnotic in its simplicity. Relief washes over you so powerfully that your knees almost buckle. You inch closer, careful not to make a sound. The blanket is snug around his torso, exposing his bare, muscular chest—the way he prefers when he’s alone. Your throat tightens at the sight, familiar yet so foreign now.

Your hand, almost on its own accord, hovers over his face, fingers trembling as you place them under his nose. The soft, warm breath that meets your touch is enough to sting your eyes with unshed tears. Your hand drifts down, resting against his chest, where you can feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat—a rhythm you thought you’d never sense again.

Jake stirs, the sudden shift pulling you out of your trance. His eyelids flutter open, dark eyes glazed with sleep but sharpening as they land on you. He blinks once, then again, brows drawing together.

“What are you doing?” His voice, rough with sleep, carries a note of confusion that makes your hand fall away as though burned.

“I-I…” The words snag in your throat, scrambling to make sense of the madness. How could you possibly explain? Your eyes dart nervously to the floor, heat searing your cheeks as you mutter, “I missed your kisses.”

The room freezes. You can feel the weight of his gaze, heavy with disbelief. He shifts, sitting up, and the blanket slips down to his waist, revealing the sharp lines of his torso. Your eyes betray you, flickering over the familiar planes before darting away in embarrassment.

“But… we never kiss,” he says, voice low and edged with confusion. The statement slices through you, painfully reminding you of the distance you both had grown used to.

“I know... I...” you whisper, fingers clenching into fists at your sides. The silence stretches, heavy, until the sharp trill of his phone alarm shatters it. Jake’s attention shifts, eyes narrowing as he leans to silence it. When he looks up again, the space where you stood is empty.

You rush back to your room, shutting the door behind you with a soft thud, heart hammering in your chest. Sliding down until you sit with your back pressed against the cool wood, you cover your flushed face with shaking hands. Your pulse thunders in your ears, mixing with the replay of his sleepy voice, the fleeting touch of his warmth.

Is this really the past? The question festers, tugging at the edges of logic, but the ache in your chest and the rawness of your emotions tell you it is. And if so, this year holds one horrifying certainty: Jake’s death.

The mere thought twists something deep inside you, bringing back the soul-crushing grief, the endless nights of regret. You glance down at your wrist, breath catching as your eyes lock on the ink-black date that marks it: November 4th. The day Jake dies.

Frantically, you rub at the skin, as if the stubborn mark will simply smudge away under your touch. But it doesn’t. The date remains, stark and immovable, taunting you.

A shiver crawls up your spine, but then a thought—a glimmer of defiance—roots itself.

What if you change it? What if this was given to you, not as a cruel joke, but a chance to rewrite what went so terribly wrong? To love him in a way you never did and save him from the fate that once tore your entire world apart.

“I can do this,” you whisper, determination threading into your voice. The regret may have once paralyzed you, but now it fuels you. If you only have until that date, then every second will be spent fighting fate, no matter how impossible it seems.

THE SOFT MURMUR OF THE COUPLE’S CONVERSATION DRIFTS DOWN THE STERILE HOSPITAL CORRIDOR, brushing against your ears like a whispered secret. The woman lies propped against crisp white pillows, her leg encased in a cast, eyes fixed on her partner with a blend of exhaustion and comfort. He leans forward, fingers interlaced with hers, voice low and tender.

“Can you please see what's wrong?” he asks, eyes glistening with concern. He gently squeezes her hand, words spilling out as quiet reassurances. “You're doing so well, love. It's going to be okay.”

A tight warmth coils in your chest as you approach, a familiar pang of bittersweetness shadowing the sight. The love, the unwavering devotion-it's moments like these that remind you why you cherish your job. The fragility of life, held together by threads of connection, has always moved you, even when those threads unraveled in your own life.

When you started nursing, blood was your greatest fear, the sight once enough to turn your stomach. Time had softened those edges, transforming anxiety into steady resolve. It was also during those early years when you married Jake, the man whose smile was warm enough to banish shadows but whose presence now only haunted your memories. The marriage had lasted five years before everything shattered with the crash.

No. Stop. The thought rushes at you like a wave, cold and suffocating. You grit your teeth, eyes burning as you push it down, push him down, refusing to let the grief claw at you. He's alive here, in this fragile present you've been thrust into. Don't let the past bleed into now.

“Sure,” you say softly, the practiced smile you wear settling on your face. You reach out, fingers moving gently over the girl's cast, checking the edges, ensuring everything is as it should be. She nods in silent gratitude, eyes fluttering shut with relief as her partner exhales.

The end of your shift arrives with the deep hues of twilight stretching across the sky. The drive home is long, punctuated by the soft rumble of the engine and the anxious thrum of your thoughts. Your fingers drum against the steering wheel, tapping out a nervous rhythm. Avoid home, your mind suggests, listing off a million errands you suddenly think of, any excuse to delay the inevitable.

But the excuses run dry when you're standing in front of your door, keys cold against your palm. The air outside is crisp, biting at your cheeks as you draw a deep breath and hold it. The weight of the morning—Jake's sleepy, questioning eyes and the ghost of your impulsive words-hangs between you and the door.

“Is it too late to back down?” The whisper escapes your lips, trembling in the chilly silence. You picture his expression, the puzzled furrow of his brow as he replayed your words. The way his fingers brushed over his phone, gaze lifted just in time to see you flee. He isn't stupid. Jake never was.

With a sigh, you slip the key into the lock, the click loud and final. The door opens, and warmth spills out to meet you, along with the faint scent of his cologne. Your pulse quickens as you step inside, the hum of your heartbeat louder than the quiet creak of the floor under your weight.

Don't run, you tell yourself, even as the urge coils tight in your muscles. You close the door behind you.

As you push open the front door, the faint glow of the television casts flickering shadows across the living room. There he is-your husband, Jake, reclined on the couch, eyes fixed intently on the news. His brows knit slightly as a montage of suited politicians gestures on screen, their voices droning promises as hollow as a whisper in the wind.

He is basically watching those politicians give some weird and untrue promises for the sake of votes.

How romantic. How normal. The bitter thought twists in your chest. But it isn't. Nothing about this is normal. Why would he be watching the news, of all things? Then, a pang of irony hits you like a wave. How hypocritical, you think. You promised Jake your forever in a ceremony that now feels like an echo. The vows shared between you had been spoken out loud but never truly lived.

You shake the memory away, an old wound you refuse to pick at as you step inside, the floor cool under your feet. Jake doesn't notice you at first, his attention locked on the screen, oblivious to the fact that the person who left him a note asking for space now stands in the doorway, wrestling with the tension roiling inside her.

“Hey,” you finally say, the word falling between you like an anchor. It comes out awkward, unsure, a fragile hope that he won't read too much into it. But Jake's eyes flick to yours, a spark of recognition cooling to something unreadable.

“You're back home?” His voice is measured, neither warm nor cold, but there's a tightness to it that you can't ignore. He shifts, the blue glow of the screen catching the sharp line of his jaw as he waits for your response.

The note. You had slipped it into his hand, asking for a break from a marriage four years deep but hollow. Your heart thuds in your chest, fingers clenched at your side as you speak before fear can pull the words back.

“The note-I take it back. I don't want a break from you or this relationship, Jake.”

The silence that follows is heavy, broken only by the low hum of the news anchor's voice. His eyes search yours, a hint of disbelief darkening the warm brown you once memorized. “Why?” The question slices through the quiet, clipped and cautious. You almost flinch at the hardness there, a wall built brick by brick in your absence.

“Because I don't want to stay away from you.” Your voice trembles, raw honesty exposed between you like an open wound. Jake's eyes widen slightly, the stoic mask cracking as a flush creeps across his cheeks.

“Y-You're blushing?” The soft, astonished laugh tumbles out of you, a momentary break in the storm that makes you feel like you're standing on the edge of something new. The corners of his mouth twitch, the faintest sign of a smile, but he shakes his head.

“No, I'm not. I'm just... cold,” he mutters, the lie transparent.

“Sure, sir. You're just cold.” You chuckle, sinking onto the floor beside the couch, knees drawn up as you hug them close. The laughter is sharp, almost giddy, the sound foreign in the room that has held so many silences.

Jake watches you, confusion settling into his features, the red on his cheeks fading as he leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You're acting weird,” he murmurs, the words half swallowed, uncertain.

“How am I acting weird if I'm seeing my husband show some attraction to me, which isn't platonic, for the first time?” The jest slips out, tinged with sincerity, but it brings a hush over both of you. The truth stands stark between you, glaring and painful. For a moment, neither of you speak, each of you weighed down by memories, by the heavy knowledge of what's been lost and what still aches to be found.

But determination flares in your chest, a stubborn warmth. So what if love had been absent before? So what if promises were half-kept and hearts guarded? You could start again. You could relearn how to be two flawed people willing to try. Your gaze meets Jake's, the hope in your eyes unyielding.

Don't let go, you silently plead. Let this be the start of something real.

Jake clears his throat, a subtle attempt to dissolve the tension settling over the living room like a blanket too heavy to lift. His fingers fidget, running nervously over the seam of the couch as he shifts his gaze downward. There you are, still seated on the floor, legs tucked to one side, eyes catching the soft glow from the TV. Cute, he thinks, the word rolling silently through his mind, too heavy with unsaid truths to speak aloud.

“So...” The word escapes him, thin and unfinished, hovering in the air. His eyes flit over your face, searching for a reaction. The awkwardness clings to the silence, but you don't falter.

“So?” you echo, your tone a notch steadier, holding the slight tremor that betrays your effort. You lean forward just slightly, a gesture that feels braver than it is. If courage could rewrite fate, you'd wield it now, not just for yourself, but for him. For Jake, who might not know the sharp edge of reality that's cut you.

He rubs the back of his neck, glancing to the side where the blue light paints his profile in soft, wavering lines. “You know... Semi's birthday is next week.” His words stumble, trailing off as if second-guessing their own existence. But you aren't in the dark. You know exactly what this moment leads to.

“Yes, I'd love to go shopping for gifts for her,” you respond, your voice quick and practiced. His eyes widen, caught off guard, the surprise stark against his usual composed expression. The tension in his jaw slackens, and he blinks, unsure if he heard you right.

“Excuse me?” He stares at you, the faint crease between his brows deepening.

“Isn't that what you were about to ask?” You tilt your head slightly, a small smile playing at your lips, testing him. He hesitates, realizing that denial means trouble, but his face softens into a relieved kind of acceptance.

“No, no... of course. You could... accompany me to shop for Semi's birthday presents.” His voice picks up, the uncertainty lifting as he finds the path back to normalcy. He notices your smile widening, the tension slipping just enough to let him breathe.

“Okay then, see you tomorrow, husband.” The word slips from you, unbidden, laced with a warmth that surprises even you as you turn on your heel. You make your way toward the guest room, feet padding softly against the floor. Jake's brows knit again, eyes following your form until you pause, hand on the frame of the doorway.

“Why are you heading to the guest room?” His question is quick, a thread of confusion laced with something else-something vulnerable.

“Because we sleep apart, and I wouldn't want my husband's back to break on that stiff, rough bed. The sheets aren't even comfortable,” you say, voice light but with an edge that dares him to react. You step into the room, but glance over your shoulder with eyes that glimmer, a playful smirk pulling at your lips. “Besides, I'd rather you break your back or get tired doing me than struggling on a bed.”

His jaw drops, eyes wide with stunned silence as the door closes between you. Jake sits back, eyes fixed on the now-empty hallway, replaying the moment in disbelief. The wife who barely spoke above a whisper at their wedding, who tiptoed through years of silence, had just turned the tables with a single teasing line. His pulse hammers beneath the stillness.

What on earth just happened?

“ARE YOU TELLING ME Y/N JUST TURNED INTO A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON?” Jay's voice, casual yet curious, echoes through the phone. He's speaking to Jake, who shifts from foot to foot, eyes glancing around the boutique as he waits for you to finish picking out a dress for his niece. The sound of soft music drifts around him, mixing with murmurs of other shoppers.

“Exactly that!” Jake's voice comes out louder than intended, drawing looks from the store's staff. A woman in a sleek uniform, brows raised in disapproval, approaches with a pointed glare.

“Sir, please keep your voice down or refrain from talking altogether,” she says, sternly but professional.

Jake's ears burn as embarrassment blooms across his face. “Yeah, I'm sorry” he mutters, running a hand through his hair.

Through the phone, Jay's laughter rings clear and unapologetic. “You seriously got told off by staff? Man, you're killing me!” Jay's chuckles fade into a smirk that Jake can practically hear. Jay's the same as he's always been-playful, relentless, the older brother who teases but listens when it counts.

“Fine, fine, I'll stop. Tell me what you mean by Y/N changing, just... keep it PG, will you?” Jay's tone is teasing, but curiosity laces through.

Jake's jaw tightens, eyes scanning the store for you as if your sudden return would put him on the spot. “There's nothing intimate going on between us,” he blurts, the words a knee-jerk reaction. His chest tightens with the memory of you resting your hand on him in your sleep last week, the way warmth had crept through him then. He clears his throat. “I mean, she's talking to me more, being... sweet. She listens. It's almost... submissive.”

“I told you, no bedroom details!” Jay chimes in, sarcasm sharp enough to make Jake's teeth clench.

“THIS IS NOT A BEDROOM DETAIL!!!” Jake retorts, frustration coloring his tone. It earns him another hard look from the store associate across the room, who pointedly glances over her glasses. Jake sighs and mouths an apology again, shoulders drooping as he lowers his voice.

“What I mean is, she's more... attentive. She's not arguing as much. It's like she's listening to me for the first time.”

Jay's voice softens, just a hint of seriousness slipping through. “Isn't that how she always is with others?”

“Yeah, with everyone else. Just not with me,” Jake admits, the admission heavy with a history neither of them mention.

“Interesting.” Jay's reply is contemplative, but before he can say more, Jake's voice interrupts, distorted through the line. “Oh shoot, she's coming back. I'll call you later.”

As the call ends, Jake pockets his phone, glancing up just in time to see you walking back with a smile. Jay, on the other side of the city, sets his phone down, a smirk playing at his lips as he thinks of sharing this tidbit with his wife later. Whatever was happening between his brother and sister-in-law, it was about to get even more intriguing.

On the other side, Jake stands, a mixture of amusement and curiosity on his face as you hold up a tiny pink dress. It's perfectly frilly, fit for a little girl. But all he can think is how charming it would look in a size for you—a thought that makes him shake his head, realizing how ridiculous it sounds.

“So, what do you think? Should I get this for Semi?” you ask, eyes sparkling with anticipation. There's already a growing collection of clothes for his niece in your arms, a reminder of how you've embraced being part of his family.

“Are you getting all of them?” he asks, more out of shock than judgment. He never imagined children's clothes could come with such hefty price tags.

“Yes, why? Is this too much? I can cover it if—”

Before you can finish, he interrupts, affronted. “I'll pay. It's for my lady, after all.”

The statement hangs in the air, not romantic as he'd intended but awkward, making your brows twitch slightly. You resist the urge to grimace, forcing a polite smile instead.

A staff member, the same one who had shushed Jake earlier, walks over with an unimpressed expression, exchanging a silent, almost comic glare with him. She gave Jake a look that said 'you're weird and I don't want to talk to you'

'what have I ever done to you' was the look that Jake presented back to the staff before she looked away. You glance between them, slightly confused. Then Jake clears his throat, moving the conversation forward.

“Do you have a similar dress in a bigger size?” His voice drops to almost a whisper. He feels self-conscious asking, but the idea has stuck.

The staff member blinks, taken aback. “Excuse me?” She tilts her head, uncertain if she heard right.

“Yeah, do you have something like this,” Jake gestures at the dress in your hands, “but, you know, for an adult?” A flush of red creeps across his cheeks as he points to you. The staff member nods after a moment, walking off to search, while you stand there stunned, watching her go.

“Why are you buying something for me? Semi’s dress is already pricey. A woman's size will be—”

“It's just a dress,” he interrupts with a small sigh, eyes softening. “Think of it as a gift.”

“But today isn't anything special.”

“Maybe not. But I'd like to make it special,” he replies, voice lowering. “I haven't given you anything since our wedding. That was four years ago.” His words carry a quiet vulnerability as he looks at you, taller and more serious than you expect. You hold his gaze before shifting and mumbling a reluctant, “Fine,” looking away to hide the way your cheeks warm.

The staff returns holding a similar dress, but in an adult size. It's pink, short, and undeniably cute-something that looks a little too daring for your style.

“Will this do?” she asks.

“Absolutely not,” “hell yeah,” you and Jake say in unison. The staff's eyebrows raise as she turns to you, sensing you as the more level-headed one.

“We're not buying it,” you insist, giving Jake a look.

He doubles down. “We are.”

“Jake, no.”

“Why not?”

“It's too short!” you argue, exasperated. He shrugs, eyes softening as he counters, “It's knee-length. That's normal.”

With a dramatic sigh, you roll your eyes and give in. But you don't try it on in the store; the idea of wearing it in front of him makes your heart thud with a mix of nerves and embarrassment. After all, you've barely even shared a bed in weeks—how could you possibly show him a dress like that now?

JAKE’S HEART STOPS FOR A MOMENT AS HE TAKES IN THE SIGHT BEFORE HIM. You, standing in the baby pink dress that hugs your figure just right, with its soft fabric brushing just above your knees. The playful, shy smile you wear as you twirl slightly sends a wave of warmth through him. He never expected to see you like this; the reality strikes him so suddenly that it leaves him breathless.

The laughter of Semi fills the room as she runs around in her matching pink dress, giggling and pulling you along by the hand. The soft glow of the post-birthday celebration lights casts a golden hue, warming up the atmosphere in the living room. Jake sits on the edge of the couch, one hand resting on his knee as he watches you and Semi, his gaze softening with an emotion he hasn't felt in what seems like ages.

A gentle nudge breaks his trance, and he turns to see his mother looking at him with raised brows and a hopeful gleam. “When are you two going to have kids?” she asks, her voice light but laced with longing.

The air in the room shifts. You pause mid-spin, eyes darting to Jake with a look of surprise. This isn't part of the script of your past life; this question throws you off balance, the sudden attention making your heart race.

Jake's father, seated across with a glass of wine in his hand, lets out a dramatic sigh. “I think I'll be long gone before I see any grandchildren from this one,” he jokes, though the weight behind it is unmistakable. The statement slices through the room's cheerful mood, leaving an awkward silence in its wake. Jake's jaw tightens, a subtle tension creeping up his spine. He wants kids too, he really does—but not in a house that feels as unstable as theirs has become.

Before he can respond, you surprise everyone, including yourself. “We're trying,” you say, the words slipping out with practiced ease, even as your pulse pounds. The room freezes, all eyes turning toward you in shock.

Jake's eyebrows lift in silent question, but he plays along, shifting to put on an unreadable expression. He nods, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his lips as he covers the uncertainty boiling beneath. The room shifts back into a mixture of excitement and surprise.

“Is that true? You're both trying?” Jake's mother's eyes glisten, her hope rekindled as she looks between you and her son.

“Really?” Jake's father echoes, leaning forward, his earlier sarcasm replaced by genuine interest.

Jay, standing near the fireplace, furrows his brow, lips parting in disbelief. Only last week, Jake had confided in him about how distant and weird things had become between you two.

Jake forces a chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah... we've been trying for a while.” The lie feels heavy in his mouth, and he shoots you a look that says, Why'd you lie about that?

Your sister-in-law, Jieun, raises her hand, pointing at you with wide eyes. “Since when?” she blurts out, unable to contain her shock.

Jake stutters, “It's been a-a month,” the answer sounding rehearsed yet shaky. He glances at you again, his eyes pleading for an explanation that won't come.

The conversation quickly shifts into an excited buzz, with well-meaning wishes from your in-laws filling the air. You catch Jake's gaze, and despite the tight-lipped smile you give the family, there's a flicker of humor in your eyes. The absurdity of it all makes you want to laugh.

You both know the truth: the notion of trying for a child is impossibly far from reality.

Heck, it was funny for you to watch.

You were still a virgin. You two didn't even kiss more than once in those four years and they expect a baby to suddenly pop out of you?

And once the party winds down, you find yourself sitting on the couch with Semi by your side. Her wide, curious eyes shine with excitement as she swings her legs back and forth. At just four years old, she's a bundle of endless questions and innocent wonder.

You smile, reaching over to gently ruffle her soft, dark hair. “Does the birthday girl like her dress?” you ask, voice playful.

Semi beams, glancing down at the pink ruffled dress with pride. “It's so pretty,” she chirps, then looks up at you with a thoughtful expression. “But yours is prettier. You always look pretty, Aunty.”

Your heart melts, and you chuckle softly. “Aww, you learned how to give compliments, huh?” you tease, watching as her cheeks turn rosy and she averts her gaze to fiddle with her fingers.

“Aunty!” she whines, wanting you to stop teasing. Her eyes sparkle with mischief as she leans in closer and motions for you to do the same. With a curious tilt of your head, you move closer, letting her whisper into your ear. “Will you eat a baby to have a baby?” she asks, voice so serious it makes you freeze for a moment.

You stifle a laugh, your eyes crinkling at the edges. Gently cupping her cheek, you whisper back, “No, sweetie. That's not how it works. But that's grown-up stuff, and we don't talk about it now, do we?”

Semi giggles, her little fingers playing with a toy she received from her grandmother. The sight makes your chest tighten in a bittersweet way. You can almost picture your mother-in-law doting on a future child, fussing over toys and tiny clothes. The thought sends a shiver down your spine, making you shake your head lightly as if to dispel the image.

But a small part of you can't help but smile at the idea, a blush rising to your cheeks. The dream is distant, almost unreachable, and not yet yours to claim.

When you and Jake step out into the cold night, the air nips at your exposed legs below your knees. The dress he had picked out for you, delicate and pastel pink, offers little warmth, and the heels are beginning to pinch with every step. You trail behind him, taking careful, aching strides to avoid twisting your ankle.

Jake notices, stopping suddenly to turn toward you, eyes scanning your shivering frame. “What’s wrong?” His gaze softens as he realizes how exposed you are, legs trembling from the chill. Without hesitating, he shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over your shoulders. The sudden warmth is welcome, but your teeth still chatter as you mutter, “Wish I had something covering my legs instead.”

He exhales, half exasperated, half amused, before a wry smile forms. “Should I carry you like a princess? You’d be warm then.”

Surprised, you bite back a retort, matching his teasing tone with confidence. “Maybe you should.”

Jake’s eyebrows shoot up, stunned. “Wait, what?”

“Chill, I was just joking,” you mumble, looking down at the ground. But before you know it, he’s stopped again, this time dropping to one knee. Your eyes widen in shock. “WHAT THE HELL?” you blurt out, stepping back in reflex, heat rising to your cheeks at the unexpected gesture. (more so because you believed he was trying to look up your dress)

Jake looks up, mildly annoyed but patient. “I’m helping you,” he says simply. Before you can argue, he pulls out a pair of slippers from a little carry bag he had brought from home. The realization hits, softening your expression as he glances up. “Lift your leg.”

You comply, feeling foolish for your earlier outburst. He slips the heels off your feet and replaces them with the soft slippers, careful and precise as if proving he has no ulterior motive. The chill in the air suddenly seems less biting.

“You had these the whole time?” you ask, voice softer now, eyes wide with realization. He places the heels into the carry bag, stands up, and meets your gaze with a smirk.

“Yeah. Thought you might need them,” he says, a hint of smugness in his tone. You’re about to thank him when he reminds you with a mock-accusing look, “And you were ready to accuse me of being a pervert.”

The memory makes you feel small, but you muster a sheepish, “Sorry.”

He shakes his head, a touch of amusement in his eyes as the two of you start walking again, your steps now confident and comfortable. His jacket around your shoulders holds a warmth that seems to seep straight to your heart.

“So...” Jake’s voice cuts through the silence, the question you've been dreading finally arriving. “Why did you lie about... us trying for a baby?” His tone is cautious, probing.

You sigh, the answer already clear in your mind. “It was the only way to get them to stop bothering us,” you admit. A pause follows, your gaze flitting up to meet his. You don’t dare to say more, not with your secret burden looming—coming from a future where he is no longer alive and your mission is to keep him safe.

Jake hums in agreement, the tension easing a bit. “I can’t argue with that.” A comfortable silence settles between you, only broken by the sound of your footsteps. He glances at you again and asks, “Are you hungry?”

As if on cue, your stomach grumbles. Relief flashes across his face before he reaches out, taking your hand and leading you forward. The two of you approach a small, tucked-away restaurant, its sign faded but familiar. Jake’s eyes light up. “You have to try the cold coffee from that café across the street,” he points out, the fondness in his voice unmistakable.

You nod, memories flickering back. His odd, endearing preferences were things you never forgot. “Fish curry with plain rice and some shrimp on the side?” you guess, eyes twinkling with recognition.

Jake’s head snaps to you, surprise clear as day. He stares, a laugh escaping him as he shakes his head. “Since when did you start memorizing my favorites?”

You had heard about his fav things to eat from your brother in law, Jay. But Jake never said it to you himself so the boy was pretty much stunned when you literally memorised them, as if you were waiting to flex this whole time.

You offer a small, knowing smile. “I have my ways.”

The waiter arrives promptly with your orders, and the rich aroma fills the space between you and Jake. He takes a bite, but pauses, eyes drifting to you with a soft, contemplative expression. “We’ve never done this before…” he murmurs, his tone a mix of realization and gentle amusement.

You tilt your head, savoring a piece of shrimp. “You mean this date?” you ask, half-smiling.

“Yeah. I guess that’s what I mean,” he replies, taking a moment before continuing, as if gathering the courage. “I like it. I like how we are now.” He takes a sip of water, and the way he watches you is tender, raw. His hand slides across the table to rest over yours, fingers warm against your skin.

“I don’t know what changed, but I…” He hesitates, eyes locking with yours, a profound intensity that silences you. “I like how we’re not avoiding each other anymore, how we talk instead of fighting over every little thing.”

The sincerity in his words pierces through you, tugging at memories of a future where his absence left a hollow ache in your chest. The pain you’d carried, the distance, the loss—all of it feels heavy in this moment, but now, something else unfurls within you. An unexpected warmth that swells as his thumb brushes over your knuckles.

He draws in a shaky breath. “I know I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes, maybe too many, and that’s why we kept drifting apart in those four years we were married. But I want us to stay like this. Is that too much to ask for?” His voice cracks, eyes glistening with unshed tears.

The depth of emotion he shows takes your breath away, and your vision blurs as your own tears spill over. The raw honesty in his confession reaches a part of you that had long been buried under grief and guilt. But this isn’t grief—it’s something different, a warmth that wraps around you and fills the spaces that loss once consumed.

“Jake…” you whisper, voice trembling. He blinks rapidly, tears tracing paths down his cheeks as he tries to manage a laugh, a hand lifting to wipe at his face. “Did I go too overboard?” he chuckles, awkwardly, brushing his fingers over yours, an attempt to ease the intensity.

But you can’t answer with words, your heart too full. Instead, you wipe your own tears away, watching him as he takes a deep breath and resumes eating, eyes still red-rimmed, his emotions raw and vivid between you. The silence that follows is... a little satisfying this time around. Your chest tightens, and you realize this feeling—this unexpected, overwhelming tenderness—is the spark you hadn’t felt in what feels like forever.

The confession... It did something to you. It made you feel things or you believed so.

You reach for his hand, this time without hesitation, and hold on as if anchoring both of you to this moment. A shared glance tells him everything you can’t yet put into words: you’re here, with him, and for now, that’s enough.

AS THE DAYS PASSED FOLLOWING THAT UNEXPECTED DINNER, a subtle shift had occurred between you and Jake. It had been a month since then, and despite your hectic lives—you, a dedicated nurse, and him, an ambitious lawyer—something had changed. You continued to sleep separately, a necessity due to your conflicting schedules. Late nights saw you returning home to find Jake already asleep, and early mornings had him leaving before you awoke. This unspoken arrangement was born out of mutual respect for each other’s rest.

However, the reminder of the future haunted you. The date on your wrist, November 4th, hadn’t faded or smudged. It remained stark and vivid, a grim reminder of the fate you knew awaited Jake, filling you with silent dread.

Despite your busy lives, the dinner at that small restaurant had stirred something unspoken between you. A shared tenderness had taken root, and in the brief pauses between work, you found yourself drawn to those moments that whispered of possibilities—moments that spoke of a bond that hadn’t existed before.

The room feels charged with an unspoken tension as you stand there, watching Jake. The question slips from your lips, “Are we sleeping separately again?” masking the tremble in your voice with an attempt at confidence. Jake’s eyes meet yours, an amused smile playing on his lips as he tilts his head. “Do you want to sleep with me?” he asks, casual yet knowing.

You stammer, trying to find an answer that won’t reveal how vulnerable you feel. “No—yes—but—” The uncertainty in your voice makes him chuckle softly, the sound sending warmth through your chest. The realization of your feelings for him washes over you again, clear and inescapable.

“It’s normal to want to sleep with your husband. Don’t worry,” he says reassuringly. His tone is light, yet there’s an edge of tenderness as he turns and walks to the bedroom. He pauses at the doorway, looking back with an expectant eyebrow raise, and you follow.

Inside, the dim light casts soft shadows. The atmosphere feels different tonight, heightened by the realization that, while you’ve shared this space before, this moment feels profoundly intimate. He hesitates for a moment, the usual playful confidence in his manner replaced by a quiet consideration.

Should he lie down first?

Wait for you?

Or speak?

“You don’t need to worry. I won’t touch you unless you want me to. We could even put a pillow between us if you prefer,” he says in a rush, trying to ease the tension. But his words leave you both flushed. You respond, flustered yet honest, “No—you can touch me—I mean...”

Jake’s eyes widen, and a surprised silence falls over you both, broken only by your slightly quickened breaths.

Finally, you break it, murmuring, “So... do we sleep?” You wish the dim light hides your expression, but Jake’s shifting on the bed signals that he’s as unsettled as you are. He lies down first, and you follow, settling into the bed with a space that feels simultaneously too close and too distant.

Minutes pass as the darkness deepens around you. You’re aware of every sound, every breath he takes, and the slight rustle of sheets as you both try to find comfort. The knowledge that he’s staying dressed out of respect doesn’t escape you, and neither does the chill that seeps through the room, despite the blanket. It’s enough to make sleep elusive, even as your heart drums with quiet, unspoken hope.

The air feels thick with tension as neither of you can fall asleep, despite the dim light and the shared silence. Jake gently sits up, his voice breaking the stillness. “I’ll get changed into my night clothes—this is uncomfortable. You should get changed too,” he suggests. His words are practical, but they stir a shyness inside you. The thought of wearing shorts around him makes you feel self-conscious, though the blanket and darkness give you some comfort.

With a deep breath, you agree. You grab your oversized top and shorts, retreating to the bathroom to change. When you return, Jake is already asleep, dressed in a soft T-shirt and shorts. His peaceful expression makes a pang of guilt settle in your chest. You feel both relief and unease at the same time, knowing he’s so close yet so far away.

You lie there, tense in the stillness of the night. Jake’s hand lands instinctively on your stomach, the warmth of his touch sending a jolt through you. You hold your breath, carefully shifting his hand away. Just when you think you're safe, his leg shifts under the blanket, pressing gently between your legs. A rush of heat floods your chest as you gently push his leg away, silently exhaling in relief.

In the quiet, you watch him sleep. His messy hair, a small trail of drool escaping his lips—something inside you stirs. Without thinking, you bring your thumb to wipe away the drool, brushing it lightly against your shirt. You stare at him for a moment, your heart racing in ways you can’t fully understand.

For Jake though,

He wakes to find you so close, your noses nearly touching. A small breath escapes him as he pulls back, but then he notices your body, curled into him—one of your legs and arms wrapped around him, as if clinging to his warmth to escape the cold. You’re nestled so comfortably against his chest, and though a small part of him wants to get up, he finds himself content in the moment.

He stares at you, watching as he slips his fingers through your hair, the quiet intimacy settling around him like a comforting blanket. When you stir, half-awake, he expects you to pull away. But you don’t. Instead, you bury yourself further into his chest, and he smiles, a little amused by your unconscious need for closeness.

“Morning... Baby,” he says softly, though he’s hoping you’ll move just enough for him to slip out of bed.

“Morningg,” you murmur, nuzzling his chest. He notices how you don’t seem to mind the nickname, a small sign that you’re still in that dreamy, sleepy state. He wants to pull away, but he doesn't want to disturb you, so he asks, “Can you move a bit, baby?”

You barely stir, your arms and legs still tangled with his. “Too cold,” you mumble, your voice muffled against his shirt.

“I know, baby. I’ll turn the heater on for you, is that good?” he whispers, his voice tender. He’s careful not to wake you fully, knowing you won’t even remember this when you wake up.

An hour later, you wake up alone in the bed, the soft comforter still wrapped around your legs. You stretch and yawn, rubbing your eyes, only to hear the door creak open. Jake stands there, a plate in hand—an omelette and a fruit salad. You blink, unsure if you’re still dreaming, and pinch your cheek, just to make sure this isn’t some figment of your imagination.

“What's that?” you ask, your voice still thick with sleep.

“Breakfast in bed,” Jake says with a playful grin, setting the plate down in front of you.

“For me?” you ask, surprised and touched.

“Who else?” he replies with a shrug, like it's the most natural thing in the world.

“Why...?” You blink at him, unsure of why he's being so considerate, so affectionate.

“Why not?” he answers, teasing, but there’s a sincerity in his eyes that makes your heart flutter.

You stare at the food in front of you, but the nerves kick in. “Well, uhm... I haven’t brushed.”

“It’s okay,” he reassures, waving off your concerns.

“No, it’s not. It’s gross. I do care about germs,” you argue, a bit embarrassed. Before he can say anything else, you rush off to brush your teeth, feeling a little self-conscious. You quickly freshen up, brushing your teeth with the toothpaste, hoping that’ll help with the lingering awkwardness.

When you return, you take a bite, and the emotion hits you harder than you expect. You don’t quite know why, but the tenderness of his gesture fills you with gratitude, and a soft lump forms in your throat.

“Why?” you ask again, your voice shaky, as you sip some water. The question has been swirling in your mind ever since you saw him standing there, holding that plate.

“Hm?” he hums, genuinely confused, not fully understanding why you're so emotional.

“Why are you being so nice... and romantic?” You wince after speaking, regretting your words, but you can't take them back now.

Jake tilts his head, his smile fading slightly. “Like I said a month ago... I meant those words. I want us to stay like this... And not go back to how it was in those four years.. Are we really that immature to let it happen again? ” The vulnerability in his tone catches you off guard, and for a moment, you can see the hurt in his eyes.

It's raw, honest, and you feel a knot twist in your chest, not having a reply to his genuine question.

THE DAYS AND MONTHS THAT FOLLOW ARE UNEXPECTEDLY TENDER, filled with moments that remind you of what being husband and wife is meant to feel like. The shared smiles, lingering touches, and quiet mornings are sweeter than they have ever been, and for the first time in a long while, peace seems attainable. Yet, there is an undercurrent that stirs beneath it all—the date that looms, casting a shadow over your contentment.

November 4th.

With the month drawing nearer, your heart starts to tighten with an anxious grip. Paranoia seeps into the quiet moments, the fear of what November 4th could mean—what it has meant in the past—makes the days feel more fragile. Your mind races, replaying scenarios and doubts that you can’t shake off. Each sweet gesture, each kind word from him, is tinged with the knowledge that the date approaches, threatening to unravel everything you’ve rebuilt.

Jake’s expression is heavy with exhaustion, dark circles under his eyes hinting at the long day he’s had. You offer, “I’ll heat up the dinner,” and turn toward the kitchen, but he stops you with a gentle grasp around your wrist. Before you can react, he pulls you back, pressing you against the wall. The soft strains of a romantic song drift from the living room, creating an intimate, almost fragile atmosphere.

He’s close—closer than usual—and you feel the warmth radiating from his body as well as the subtle scent of his cologne. The proximity sends your pulse racing.

“Jake?” you say softly, confusion lacing your voice as you look up at him. His face is unreadable, the dim lighting casting a shadow over the tired lines of his features. His eyes meet yours, carrying an unspoken emotion.

“Mm?” he murmurs, his voice hushed, as if not to disturb the moment. His hands find their way around you, holding you securely against him, and he leans his chin on your head. The gesture feels protective, desperate even.

“What are you doing?” you ask, your words barely above a whisper, unsure if you’re seeking clarification or reassurance. His embrace tightens for a moment, and you feel his chest rise and fall against yours as he takes a deep breath.

“Can you stop calling me Jake?” he says quietly, the request landing softly, yet weighted.

Surprise flashes through you. “What do you want me to call you?” you ask, voice muffled against his shirt. The question feels vulnerable, as if shifting something fundamental between you both.

“I don’t know... something like... baby, darling, honey... or anything,” he admits, a subtle flush spreading across his cheeks despite the solemn tone. You catch the shy dip of his eyes, and a faint smile tugs at your lips.

“You’re being quite demanding,” you tease, looking up into his face. His lips part slightly as he considers your words.

“This isn’t being demanding,” he counters, pausing just long enough for the silence to underline his meaning. His eyes search yours, raw and full of an unnamed plea. “I just want to spend my last months with you, thinking we’re just... normal. Like any other couple.”

His words sink in, bringing with them an ache that spreads through your chest. The silence that follows is heavy, laced with all the things unsaid and the truth that’s pressing in on both of you. You lift a hand, letting your fingers brush the hair at the back of his neck. His eyes soften, dark lashes casting shadows against his skin as he watches you.

There’s something fragile in this moment, a bittersweet understanding passing between you that makes your throat tighten. The future looms, uncertain and unkind, but for now, you’re here, held close, suspended in the tender present.

Jake’s voice lowers, a tremor in its depths that betrays the weight of his words. “You might not believe me, but... I come from a reality where I’m dead. So, I hope we can at least be nice to each other in my last moments. Can you do that?”

A stunned silence follows, your breath catching in your throat as his confession hangs in the air. You believe him; how could you not when you come from the same reality? Eyes widening, you step back, raising your wrist to show the dark, unerasable mark: November 4th. The ink-like number seems to pulse, a constant reminder of a fate that binds you both.

Jake’s eyes mirror your shock. He releases you, just enough to reveal his own wrist. There it is, the same haunting date. The mark seems alive, almost mocking, as if counting down with every heartbeat.

Neither of you speaks for a moment, the silence heavy with shared grief and realization. The next second, you’re in his arms again, your face buried in his chest as he pulls you close, his own face pressed into your hair. The world around you blurs, reduced to the rapid thumping of your heart and the warmth of his embrace.

“I... please don’t... leave me this time,” you plead, your voice breaking under the weight of your fear. The memory of finding him lifeless in the world you came from, the coldness of that reality, rushes back with a cruel force.

“I will try,” he whispers, his voice barely steady as he runs a hand down your back in a soothing gesture. “We changed the relationship, right? So maybe... just maybe, we can avoid death too.”

You both stand there, unmoving as the moment stretches out. It feels absurd, two souls transported from a fractured future, now clinging to each other in the present in a fragile hope. Yet the thought of letting go is unbearable, so you don’t. For now, the reality of the present is enough.

JAKE’S FINGERS TREMBLE SLIGHTLY AS HE HOLDS OUT THE SMALL BOX, A HINT OF NERVOUSNESS CREASING HIS BROW. “This is for you.” His voice is softer than usual, his eyes searching yours for a response. The box is familiar, a relic from the present you left behind, steeped in memories. Inside is the ancestral ring, one that Jake’s mother entrusted to you after his death—a token that held more value than any wedding ring could.

“I wasn’t... couldn’t give it to you before, but now... I’d like you to have it.” His voice is almost a whisper as he takes your hand, slipping the cool metal onto your finger. His touch lingers, warm and careful, as if anchoring the moment between you.

You look down at the ring, its delicate design catching the dim light and glistening softly. The weight of it brings back a rush of memories that mix grief with an unexpected warmth. Meeting his gaze, you let a small, genuine smile curve your lips. “Thank you. After you… I mean, after your death, your mother gave it to me,” you say, voice thick with the past, “but I’m glad it’s you giving it to me now.”

The way his eyes widen before softening speaks volumes—acceptance, regret, and hope, all blending seamlessly as he draws you closer.

Jake’s expression shifts, a soft smile forming as he leans in, his body pressing yours gently against the bedroom wall. His breath mingles with yours, warm and scented faintly with his cologne. His eyes trace your features, holding a glimmer of something tender and fragile. You raise a brow in playful defiance, a silent challenge, and a sheepish smile tugs at his lips. Without another word, he cups your face, his thumb grazing your cheek, and leans in until the space between you disappears.

The first touch of his lips is tentative, testing. A shiver races down your spine as his mouth moves with a gentleness that makes your heart stutter. Your eyes flutter open for a second, catching the serene expression on his face before closing again as you respond, deepening the kiss. Your hands find their way to his shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as if anchoring yourself to reality.

When he finally breaks away, his forehead rests against yours, both of you breathing in short, uneven gasps. The room is silent except for the soft crackle of a song playing somewhere in the background. Jake’s eyes open, and in them, you see a question—a hesitation laced with anticipation. “Do you want to go further?” His voice, barely above a whisper, holds a vulnerability that makes your pulse quicken.

You exhale softly, a hint of a smile teasing your lips as you match his boldness. “How far can you go?” The playful edge in your voice makes him chuckle, low and breathy.

“As far as you want to go.” The words are a promise, and before you can respond, his lips capture yours again, more confident this time, as his hand moves to the strap of your dress, gently sliding it off of your shoulders.

THE NEXT FEW WEEKS PASS IN A COMFORTING CALM, the bond between you and Jake strengthening with each passing day. You're no longer weighed down by the regret of the past, but instead, you focus on cherishing the present. Yet, there's still a lingering unease.

Jake driving the car is something that continues to gnaw at you. It's not just a simple fear; it's the haunting memory of the future you came from, where that very action led to his tragic end. As November nears, the pressure builds. You look at the date on your wrist—November 4th—and the thought of losing him again, of it becoming reality, is too much to bear. Your chest tightens, and you feel a mix of helplessness and dread, hoping with every fiber of your being that this time, things will be different.

Jake offers a reassuring smile, the kind that tries to mask his own unease as he softly says, “Chill, I’ll be back in an hour, alright?” His hand moves up to gently smooth your hair, eyes soft with understanding as he takes in the worry etched across your face. You cling tighter to his arm, voice trembling as you ask, “Is it important?”

He nods, and the hopeful part of you crumbles. The instinct to keep him close, to refuse, is almost overwhelming. But before you can protest, he leans forward, placing a tender kiss on your forehead. His hands slip down to rest on your shoulders as he looks at you earnestly.

“I promise I’ll be back. Now, will my pretty wife give me a smile so I can come back even sooner?” The playful plea tugs at your lips, and despite the fear swirling inside, you manage a small, forced smile. He chuckles softly, ruffling your hair before turning to leave.

You trail behind him to the door, eyes glued to the taillights of his car as they fade down the street. The ache in your chest sharpens, and you glance down at the ancestral ring on your finger, tracing its smooth surface as if the touch alone could make your wish come true: Please, come back safely.

The minutes stretch painfully long, and every ten minutes, you can’t resist sending a text, the same anxious message: “If you’re okay, just send a heart emoji.” True to his word, Jake replies with a heart every time—until the fifty-minute mark.

The silence is deafening. Your heart thunders as you stare at your phone, willing the screen to light up. Nothing. The dread coils tighter, stealing the air from your lungs. You take a shaky breath, but it barely settles you. Panic sets in, and you hit the call button. The phone doesn’t connect; the ring tone never plays. Your chest tightens.

In desperation, you call Jay, your brother-in-law. His voice is laced with confusion as he picks up. “Jay, is Jake with you?” The silence that follows your frantic question only amplifies your fear. “No, why? What’s going on?” he asks, suddenly serious. Before you can answer, he cuts the call, sensing the urgency and attempting to help in any way he can.

The next hour drags like an eternity, your anxiety swallowing every rational thought. You pace the room, eyes darting to the clock, phone clenched in your shaking hand. Then, after what feels like a lifetime, you hear the distant purr of an engine. Your pulse stutters as Jake’s car comes into view, whole and unharmed.

But you don’t relax. Not until you see him. The door swings open, and there he is, frustration etched into his features as he steps inside. Your breath catches, relief and anger colliding within you.

Jake's expression softens as he speaks, keeping his voice low despite the frustration. “Why’d you call Jay over something like this? My phone died while I was working. I charged it and got caught up in the case. It’s embarrassing.”

Your eyes well up, the weight of worry turning to a sting of hurt. “So? It’s not important?” Your voice wavers, raw with emotion. “I was terrified, Jake! I didn’t want to lose you again. Sorry for being the clingy wife you’re ashamed of.”

Turning to leave, you barely make a step before he’s there, blocking your path. His eyes search yours, but instead of a defensive remark, he pulls you close, enveloping you in an embrace that tells you more than words could. His arms tighten, anchoring you to him as he murmurs in your ear, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s strange, but I promise I won’t say that again, okay?”

His breath is warm against your hair as he leans his cheek on your head, his heartbeat steady against your own erratic one. Despite the tension, you sense his understanding, a silent acknowledgment of your fear. He’s learning to hold your worry without judgment.

“I was so scared, Jake. I thought I’d lose you all over again.” Your voice cracks, and he feels the tremor in your body. He wants to say the right thing, anything to soothe the tremble in your words, but all he can do is hold you tighter.

Both of you are haunted by that date imprinted on your wrists, “November 4th.” A reminder that looms like an uninvited shadow, a constant whisper of what could happen.

THE DAY ARRIVES, a heavy silence filling the air between you and Jake. His promise lingers like a protective shield around you both: he won’t drive, he won’t leave. His presence is a balm for the fear that pulses in your chest. As the two of you snuggle on the couch, the soft glow of the TV playing a rom-com, you turn to him with a worried look, your voice low and unsure.

“What if something bad happens while we’re in the house?” you whisper, nuzzling into his warmth. The thought of losing him, of the world continuing without him, feels unbearable.

Jake shifts, his arm wrapping tighter around you as he looks down at you, his breath warm against your neck. “Nothing will happen. And if it does, I’ll protect you,” he assures, his tone strong and sure, though his own heart is heavy. He knows how much your fear weighs on you, and he wants to shoulder it for you.

But the thought of you living without him—he can’t imagine it. He brushes your hair from your face gently, his voice a soft promise. “I love you too much for that.” His words come out naturally, like it’s something he’s been holding back but feels right now to say. It’s the first time you hear him say it, and the weight of those words floods your heart with warmth, knowing this is real.

“I get it. I won’t put my life at risk,” he murmurs, though there’s a quiet uncertainty in his words, an unspoken truth that he would never let anything harm you—even at the cost of his own safety.

You glance up at him, your lips pressing together in a worried frown. “You better not,” you mumble, not able to let go of the fear completely. You’ve spent the whole day together, in the safety of your home, trying to ignore the impending dread that the date will pass and nothing will change. Watching TV, cooking together, each small moment a reminder of how much he means to you—and how fragile life can be.

You curl up closer to him, as if physically wrapping yourself around him can keep him safe. Your eyes glance at the clock, the seconds ticking by too slowly. Every moment spent together now feels like a treasure, and you want to hold on to it forever.

The two of you lie in bed, the soft glow of the nightlight casting a gentle warmth over your forms. His hand rests tenderly over yours, fingers interlocking. He watches you as you sleep, your face relaxed, peaceful. A quiet whisper escapes his lips: “I love you.” His eyes linger on your peaceful expression, your other arm still clinging to him as if you’re unwilling to let go even in sleep.

He leans over to turn off the lamp, and then his gaze falls to his wrist—where the date once was. It’s gone. A wave of disbelief washes over him. The tension that has gripped him for so long begins to melt away. Perhaps it wasn’t an omen after all, but a reminder that after November 4th, a new chapter awaited them both.

He takes a deep breath, reaching for your wrist to find the same thing: no date. Relief floods him, and he presses a soft kiss to your forehead, pulling you even closer into his arms, savoring the moment.

But he knows, as much as this moment feels like a new beginning, there will still be challenges ahead. The fear you carry about him driving is not something that will fade overnight. Your worry, rooted in a past he knows you can’t shake, will take time to heal. But for now, he holds you close, understanding, and promises silently that he’ll be patient, allowing you to find peace in your own time.

TWO MONTHS HAVE PASSED SINCE THE FATEFUL DATE, and though life has taken you and Jake through different stages, there’s an undeniable warmth between the two of you. Sitting at the family dinner table, surrounded by loved ones, the air is filled with laughter, conversation, and the quiet hum of joy.

Semi, now a cheerful five-year-old, eats her meal quietly, occasionally looking up with shy glances.

You glance over at Jake, noticing him take a deep breath as he prepares to speak, his hand resting on the table near yours. It’s clear he’s nervous, even though it’s just family. He clears his throat, the words finally tumbling out: “So… We’re having a baby.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Jake’s father scoffs, not giving him an ounce of reaction, while his mother rolls her eyes. “Oh, c’mon, you can fool us one time, not twice,” she says, clearly referencing the last family dinner, where you had tried to casually mention trying for a baby, only for him to play along. He felt the blame was entirely on him, but you knew the truth—it was a team effort.

You chuckle softly to yourself, leaning into Jake’s side, your heart fluttering at the thought of a new life, a new chapter. He meets your gaze, his lips curving into a small smile, even amidst the teasing.

This moment, while filled with playful mockery, marks something deeper. You’re finally here together, stronger and more united than ever before. And this new adventure? It’s the start of a new journey that no one can take from you.

"Really, Y/n’s pregnant. We're having a baby," Jake says, his voice laced with excitement. His mother, skeptical, eyes you closely. "Is that true?"

Without waiting for Jake’s confirmation, you nod, feeling his fingers intertwine with yours beneath the table, his touch calming your nerves.

"I won’t hesitate to beat your ass if this is fake," his dad grumbles, irritation mixing with a hint of hope.

Jay, barely containing his amusement at the scene, watches the family react, while Jake proudly pulls out the ultrasound pictures, revealing the truth. His parents take turns looking at the images, jaws dropping in surprise. Jay, knowing already, can’t help but chuckle.

"Father was starting to question your masculinity. Glad you proved him wrong," Jay teases, earning a gentle nudge from Jieun, urging him to keep it light.

"Wait... So there’s a grandkid on the way?" Jake’s mother recovers first, grinning with hopeful excitement. Jake nods, and your heart swells at the thought of everything that's to come. This moment, this family, it feels like the beginning of something truly special.

Jake’s mother leans forward, still processing, but the excitement is slowly bubbling up. “A grandchild? Really? My little boy having a little one? I’m going to spoil that baby so much.”

Jake chuckles, glancing at you. “Well, you already spoil Semi enough, so I guess it’s fair.”

“Hey, I’m a great grandma-in-training,” she quips, giving Semi an affectionate pat. “But if you two need any advice, I’m here.”

Your heart swells seeing the warmth in her eyes. But then, Jake’s dad, clearly trying to keep his cool, mutters, “I’ll believe it when I see a baby in my arms.”

“You’ll see him,” Jake says, giving you a reassuring squeeze. “Or her, right, Y/n?”

You smile, feeling the weight of the moment. “Definitely,” you whisper, feeling a rush of emotion.

Jay, still grinning, can’t help but poke at his younger brother. “So, what’s the plan, huh? You two gonna have one of those perfect Pinterest-worthy baby showers or just skip the whole thing?”

Jieun smacks his arm lightly. “Don’t make them nervous, Jay. Let them enjoy the moment.”

Jake laughs, looking over at you with that same loving gaze. “Honestly, I think we just need to take it one step at a time. But yeah, we’ll get there.”

“You know, when you have a baby, you’ll see just how much you need each other,” his dad says more seriously now, a rare moment of wisdom breaking through his tough exterior. “It’s not just about being a parent, it’s about being there for each other even more.”

Jake nods, his hand tightening around yours as if to say, “I’ve got you, always.”

The whole family seems to settle into a comfortable silence after that, everyone soaking in the news in their own way, but all of them sharing the same unspoken bond.

“Guess we’ll need one more chair for next time,” Jay jokes, breaking the silence, and everyone bursts out laughing.

You glance at Jake, his eyes full of joy, and your heart feels fuller than it ever has. There’s something about being surrounded by family—being with him—that feels right. “Yeah, we’ll need one more chair,” Jake agrees softly, his gaze drifting to the future, to the family that’s just beginning.

In the end, you and Jake had proven the vows true—til death do us part. Through all the challenges, fears, and moments of doubt, you had always found your way back to each other. The promises made, the trust built, and the love that had endured everything now stood as a testament to what you had together. With every touch, every shared laugh, and every quiet moment, you knew that no matter what, your hearts were bound—for life—and beyond.

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vibelladonna · 1 month ago

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✑ 𝓋𝒶𝓂𝓅𝓈 𝜗𝜚 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝒸𝒽𝑜𝒾𝒸𝑒! 𝓈𝑜𝓁 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒸𝓇𝑜𝓌𝑒

𝓈𝓎𝓃𝑜𝓅𝓈𝒾𝓈: Oh my goodness! Would you look at that—planning to infiltrate not one, but two of the finest, deadliest, and absurdly attractive vampires this side of gothic tragedy?

Vampire!Sol x Reader? and Vampire!Crowe x Reader

You really woke up and chose morally questionable romance and danger kink, huh? Honestly, I can’t even blame you. It’s practically encoded in your family’s bloodline. Truly, a noble tradition.

Sure, there’s a slim chance you’ll end up draped dramatically across a velvet chaise with a love bite that doubles as a blood loss issue. But hey—knowledge requires sacrifice. And if that sacrifice just so happens to involve two devastatingly handsome vampires? Then honestly? You’re just doing your research.

Maybe with a little bit of neck involved~

𝒸𝑜𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔: 18+ NO KIDS (Adults Only) This content contains mature themes unsuitable for children. Please respect the creator's intentions.

So after stumbling across Waza (aka @alyysahh)'s vampire doodles of Sol and Crowe on Twitter—whew. They’re both fine in ways that should honestly be illegal in most supernatural jurisdictions. Anyway, now my brain won't shut up, and my keyboard is demanding a full-on vampire fic with them. So… thanks, Waza!

You’ve unlocked a new level of thirst-laced inspiration.

[ 𝓂𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓉 ]

𝓉𝒶𝑔𝓈: vampire x gn reader! hunter, fluff to smut, predator/prey dynamics, power imbalance, intense emotional bond, dangerous attraction, touch-starved monster, obsession, blood drinking intimacy, feeding scene (vampire), possessive behavior, biting & bruising, “Am I okay for finding this hot?” type of vibes.

You sit alone in the farthest corner of the train car, where the oil lamps flicker just a shade too dimly, and the smell of smoke and old leather hangs thick in the air. The bench beneath you groans with age, as though it resents your presence—one more shadow among many.

Outside, the window is glazed with frost, blurring the wild landscape into smears of grey and white, a watercolor of forgotten hills and bramble-choked trees. This place, this stretch of land veiled in mist and silence, is a ghost’s graveyard—untamed, unwelcoming. The kind of place where old things go to sleep, and where fools like you go to wake them.

The train chugs deeper into the unknown, each rhythmic pulse of the engine echoing like a heartbeat in your throat. Doverhollow. A name scribbled in the margins of your grandfather’s journal, circled twice in a trembling hand. The last known haunt of something that does not die, does not age, does not forgive.

You read those pages as a child, huddled beneath wool blankets with a candle burning low, and you told yourself it was only a story. But the scent of iron has lingered in your lungs ever since.

You wear your deception well.

A traveling scholar, perhaps. A quiet tradesperson seeking land. But every thread of your clothing has been chosen with care—wool dyed in muted tones to avoid reflection, gloves sewn with silver thread along the palms, the stitching fine enough to be overlooked. Beneath your coat lies a reinforced vest lined with ashwood slats, thin as bone.

You carry no obvious weapon, but your boots are weighted, and your left cuff conceals a needle-thin dagger dipped in dried wolfsbane and holy water. Around your neck, a crucifix, tarnished with age.

You are not here to fantasize.

You are here to finish what your bloodline began.

You are not merely a hunter. You are the last heir to a dying archive—a bloodline of seekers, scribes, slayers. Their stories—your stories—fill a satchel at your side, bursting with brittle parchment and ink-blotted pages.

Your family never chased glory.

Only truth.

Every jolt of the rail draws your mind back to the present, to the task at hand—not romance, not curiosity. Execution. And before that? Extraction. The family doctrine is etched into your very marrow: learn everything, then kill. There is no honor in ignorance, no valor in mercy. Vampires are not to be pitied. They are to be understood, documented, and destroyed. Anything less is a failure of legacy.

You’ve spent the last five years living among corpses and folklore, chasing ash trails through forests, interviewing trembling survivors who speak of shadowed lovers and cursed bloodlines. And every page you add to the journal brings you closer to something complete. Something final.

Doverhollow lies just past the next rise.

The last stop on the line.

A village swallowed by trees and time, where light doesn’t linger and roads change when you're not looking. The locals know something ancient lives there. They never say thier names aloud—but your family’s records do.

Two names dominate the text now.

Two figures who could not be more different—and yet, they are woven into the same mythic thread, a duality of horror.

Let’s start with Jericho Ichabod.

The Shadowed Aristocrat. Too elegant to be real. Too calculating to be human. He is not a vampire in the way most are. He does not hunt; he orchestrates. To him, humans are not prey. They are players in a game only he understands.

Some accounts say he was once mortal royalty, undone by vanity. Others insist he is older than the written word. Regardless, his reputation is consistent: he feeds with permission. He seduces with restraint. And when he kills, it’s clinical. Almost kind.

As though death were a favor.

And then there is Solivan Brugmansia.

The Feral Outcast. The other side of the coin. Not elegance, but entropy. Where Jericho whispers, Solivan howls. Born of rot and ruin, Sol is the reason villages go silent. The reason fences go up and prayers return to pagan shapes.

He does not charm. He consumes. A failure, some say—a cursed experiment, abandoned by his kin and left to fester in the woods. But your family knew better. Solivan chooses to be monstrous. He does not hide what he is. He forces you to look.

And then he tears it from you.

They are both here. Somewhere in the dark veins of Doverhollow. And you are not here to flirt with shadows or wax poetic about teeth in your neck. You are here to learn everything—habits, powers, weaknesses, patterns.

Your goal is not just to write their ending in ink. You were never taught to fear vampires.

You were raised to despise them.

Again, the pages of your family’s journals are inked in hatred—centuries of catalogued atrocities, of names struck through with blood and fire, of faces that once wept at altars now worn smooth with time and grief.

Every story your mother whispered into your ear, every scar carved into your kin, was a thread in the tapestry of vengeance. These creatures are not romantic. They are not misunderstood. They are not beautiful. They are disease wearing human skin. They charm to distract, to weaken. And when they feed, they do so with pleasure.

Vampires are parasites, every last one of them. And you’ve made it your life’s work to see them extinct.

That’s the mission. The burden. The vow.

Your goal is to end them.

You’ve sacrificed everything for it. Joy, comfort, safety—gone. You don’t remember what a normal life feels like. You sleep with one eye open, you eat in silence, and you walk through the world like a blade sheathed in flesh.

You’ve crushed your own bones under carriages just to lure a vampire into feeding from what it thought was a dying man.

You’ve buried your heartbeat, learned to still your breath, learned what blood smells like just before the fangs pierce skin. You know how to smile through cracked ribs. You know how to keep screaming when your throat is raw.

Pain is a tool. A language. One you’ve mastered.

And yet, some nights—quiet ones like this, when you’re alone with the rhythm of a train car and the frost creeps across the window—you catch yourself wondering.

Not about death. That doesn’t frighten you.

But about the moment before. The bite...

That liminal instant when your body goes still, the air turns thick, and something monstrous draws near—not as predator, but as executioner. Is it agony? Does it feel like drowning in flame, nerves burning beneath the skin? Or is it worse—is it gentle? Cold lips. A hush. The world dimming like a candle in rain. Some survivors speak of ecstasy, of surrender, of being seen.

You’d rather die a thousand brutal deaths than admit that part of you wants to know. But the thought remains, like a splinter in your mind. You grind your teeth and crush it beneath your heel. That kind of sentiment is what kills hunters.

Curiosity. Temptation. Weakness.

And you are not weak. Because soon, the train will stop. And when your boots strike the frost-bitten earth of Doverhollow, there will be no turning back. No poetry. No mercy. Only war. This cursed village—the last known haunt of two legendary monsters—has been carved into your family’s records for over a hundred years.

Two names. Two beasts.

So ask yourself, hunter—

Will it be Jericho, stepping out of the mist in silk and shadow, his voice like lullabies and knives? Or will it be Solivan, teeth bared, crawling from the forest like a nightmare come to devour you whole?

You may believe you will decide.

However… They always choose you. And when they do?

Make them regret it. Good Luck.

✑ 𝒸𝓇𝑜𝓌𝑒

You’d heard the whispers in Doverhollow—slurred from wine-loosened tongues at the tavern, murmured with trembling lips at the chapel’s altar, always trailing off just before they reached the name.

The Ichabod Crane.

Most villagers wouldn’t say it aloud, as though the very syllables might summon death through the floorboards. You asked gently, and when that failed, you asked firmly. But fear made them quiet.

You had to find the manor yourself, piecing together overheard conversations and reading the terrain like scripture: the fork in the moss-eaten road, the circle of trees that never swayed with the wind, the subtle hush that fell over the birdsong when you passed a certain stretch of forest.

Apparently, there's a legend the townsfolk like to toss around like an old coin—something about a man named Crane. Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster by trade, and a coward by nature, if the tale is to be believed. He was said to be deeply superstitious, a man who clung to ghost stories the way some cling to scripture.

Among his obsessions was the tale of the Headless Horseman—a vengeful spirit of a Hessian soldier who lost his head to a cannonball and now wanders the night seeking a replacement.

As the story goes, one evening Crane was making his way home alone, nerves already frayed from some shadow he likely imagined in the trees. And then, there it was—the Headless Horseman.

Cloaked in black, mounted on a jet-black steed, silent but swift. A chase ensued through the woods, wild and terrifying… and then, just as Crane thought he’d reached safety, the Horseman hurled his "head"—a hollowed-out pumpkin—straight at him.

The next morning, all that remained was the shattered gourd and the faint imprint of hooves in the dirt. Crane had vanished, as though the night had simply swallowed him.

Charming. Ridiculous.

You’d heard the story whispered with wide eyes and held breath, as though it carried weight. As though it had teeth. But to you, it was little more than child's theater. A bedtime scare dressed up as folklore. A coward disappears and the town decides he was spirited away by some galloping ghost?

Please.

They mistook you, of course. The villagers. Mistook your silence for naivety, your polite questions for innocent curiosity. They called you a traveler, a scholar maybe, some city person writing books about old superstitions.

You let them believe that.

It was safer—for them and for you. What they didn’t know was how deep the discipline ran in your bloodline. That you were trained by hands calloused from decades of weaponry and ink, that you had studied the anatomy of a vampire before you learned to tie your own shoes.

You were not here to chase myths.

You were here to record them. And, if necessary, end them.

The night of the ball, you dressed with deliberate care. Not too lavish—never enough to draw the eye—but tailored finely enough to pass as nobility from some obscure coastal province.

A beautiful midnight blue outfit, matte to avoid catching too much light, with a neckline modest enough to hide the scar at your collarbone. A delicate silver chain with a charm that looked decorative, however, was in fact sharpened holy steel. You wore your hair pinned, not flowing. Vampires remembered faces; you made sure yours was one among many.

Your scent had been a concern. Human aroma—warmth, blood, sweat—was a siren’s call to their kind. So you masked it. A concoction brewed from dried vervain, crushed rosemary, and elderflower, burned into your clothes with candle smoke. It didn’t erase your humanity. But it made you difficult to place.

To them, you might’ve smelled foreign.

Interesting, but not edible.

The manor loomed exactly as the stories promised: veiled in perpetual moonlight. Its windows did not flicker, despite the presence of flame. The candles within had never melted. The whole structure felt suspended in time, like a dream sustained by will alone. Every stone too clean. Every corner too precise.

There was no dust. No breeze. Only music.

Inside, it was a ballroom carved from shadow and wealth. Gilded mirrors reflected candlelight from chandeliers shaped like inverted spires. The floor—black marble veined with silver—hummed faintly beneath your boots, as if reacting to your pulse.

The guests were exquisite, yes, but strangely subdued. Less than a hundred, each draped in fashion centuries out of place. Their eyes flicked over one another like knives behind lace. Some had fangs bared in mirthless smiles. Others tilted their heads too far to the side when they laughed, as though they had forgotten the gesture had once been human.

You took a drink from one of the passing servers—tall, androgynous, eyes blank with compulsion. The glass was cool in your hand.

Its contents were… strange.

Not wine. Not pure blood either. Diluted. Thick with something metallic but laced with berries, perhaps. Something meant to imitate luxury and sustain, not overwhelm. A vampire's version of a cocktail, perhaps. It made your stomach clench.

You kept to the perimeter, one hand resting lightly on your waist as you feigned indifference. You nodded when nodded to. Tilted your head as the others did. Studied the language of the room. And though your heart kept rhythm with your training, your eyes scanned for him.

It wasn’t long before the music paused.

The hush was immediate, reverent. Every pale face turned toward the grand staircase that wound up from the ballroom floor. And there he was, above them all, dressed in a suit of dark velvet and satin that shimmered like oil in candlelight.

His navy coat buttoned to the neck, that same familiar bow holding his long brown hair in a low tail. His pale brown skin glowed softly under the chandeliers, and his deep blue eyes scanned the crowd as though already bored by it.

“Welcome, all,” he said, voice a quiet blade of silk through the silence. “You may know me as Jericho Ichabod.”

A ripple. A tension. Reverence and dread mingled in the air.

“Welcome,” he continued, smiling faintly, “to my mother’s party.”

A lie, perhaps? Or a fiction he enjoyed.

But the way they responded—bowing ever so slightly, some without even realizing it—you knew this was his court. His gameboard. And you had stepped onto it willingly.

Your pulse ticked once behind your ears.

You never expected your first sighting of Jericho Ichabod to come so… quietly. No dramatic lightning strikes splitting the sky. No chandeliers crashing to the floor. No bat swarm swirling into the shape of a man.

Honestly, a little disappointing, considering the reputation. After all the myths, the journal entries etched in urgency, the dire warnings passed through bloodlines like cursed heirlooms, you envisioned something apocalyptic. You thought you'd meet him mid-hunt or mid-massacre, with your blade drawn and your heartbeat loud enough to attract notice.

Instead, it came like velvet. Like someone folding time into silence.

So a polite vampire, huh. A cordial bloodsucker.

Honestly? What a letdown.

The moment he finished his welcome—“Thank you all for attending my mother’s party,” spoken with the elegance of a man who definitely sounds like him and his mother aren’t close, the last time they possibly saw each other was three centuries ago—you noted the time.

Well past midnight. Time was thinning.

The music had shifted to something strange and ancient, a waltz from a dead language. The ballroom glittered with vampires dressed like rejected Parisian operetta cast members. You? You were wedged into a noble person’s gown stitched from lies and herb-paste.

Definitely not here to tango.

So you slipped out. Graceful as a mouse. Quiet as guilt.

The manor breathed a different air beyond the party walls. No perfume and powdered guests here—just amber, cedar, and the faint, metallic scent of old blood. Not the messy, butcher-shop kind. No, this was aged. Distilled. Vintaged. Artisanal vampire juice. The halls were maintained with the kind of neurotic precision that suggested either Jericho was a control freak or had an entire staff of undead interior decorators.

The carpets were immaculate. The candles—white, beeswax, hand-poured—trimmed to the same level, like soldiers ready for parade. The mirrors were all veiled in thin lace, suggesting vanity or maybe just an aesthetic choice from someone who doesn’t like seeing himself mid-bite.

Every corner screamed curated. The place didn’t feel lived in—it felt preserved. Like walking into a memory that refused to fade.

A mausoleum.

For someone too elegant to die.

You crept like a thief, journal pressed to your side, senses sharp, each step a prayer. The floor groaned beneath your foot just once and you froze, as though sound itself might betray you. And that silence—sharp, stretched silence—wrapped around you like a noose. The manor listened.

Then a voice. Smooth, amused, inevitable. “And who do we have here? It’s always a pleasure to see a new face.”

Your blood froze. You turned. And there he was. Jericho Ichabod.

In the flesh. And oh, what flesh. He didn’t look at you at first—rude, honestly—but his presence filled the hall like cold perfume. He held a wineglass in one hand, of course, and within it? Not wine. Again, definitely not. The red was too thick, too alive. Like a heartbeat in glass. His skin was pale brown, immaculate, ageless.

And those eyes—when they finally turned toward you—were so deep a blue you nearly stepped back. Eyes like drowned gods. Or like they’d seen gods, and decided they were unimpressive.

He didn’t smile to welcome you.

He smiled because he already knew what you were.

You. Human. Intruder. Target. “Ah,” he said smoothly, as if narrating a thought he’d already memorized, “a human came to visit me, after all.”

Your heart skipped. He figured it out?! That fast?! You were about to move, hands inching toward the concealed weapons stitched into your outfit—dagger in your sleeve, crucifix at your collar, stake tucked along your spine.

However, he didn’t attack.

He didn’t grow fangs or sprout wings or go full feral. Instead…

“I’m so happy to finally meet a human!” he said brightly. Genuinely. With a tone you might use when finding a long-lost cousin at a family reunion.

You blinked. “…What?”

He looked at you like you were a birthday present he wasn’t expecting but was thrilled to receive. You, dumbfounded, slowly lowered your hand from your crucifix. He took a sip from his bloodglass, utterly unbothered.

Oh no. You were not prepared for this level of social horror.

You froze. Not out of sheer terror—though, to be fair, your stomach had performed a flawless somersault—but out of something far stranger: awe.

This was not the slavering, clawed monstrosity that haunted the edges of your family's hunting journals. Not the shadow that gnawed on the edges of childhood bedtime stories, the one your mother always described in tones usually reserved for war crimes and taxes. This was not the thing your grandfather chased across swamps with bloodhounds and a blessed musket.

This was… Jericho Ichabod???

The Shadowed Aristocrat. The End of the Line.

The man who made three generations of your bloodline spontaneously develop trauma-based ulcers.

And he was… sipping. Just sipping. Like a man in a very fancy wine commercial. He didn’t step forward. He didn’t leer or hiss or unravel into bats. He just stood there, like some final boss who had been politely waiting for you to stop monologuing. The red in his glass—thicker than wine, lighter than tar—kissed his lips for a moment, then disappeared like a lie told twice.

He blinked, clueless, lashes long enough to cause emotional damage, and asked in a voice as soft as scandal, “Are you a researcher?”

You barely stopped yourself from blurting, "Researcher-slash-hunter-slash-maybe-kind-of-here-to-kill-you-but-not-yet-thanks!" Instead, you nodded. Smiled. Lied through your very noble teeth.

“Yes,” you said smoothly, adjusting your sleeve to hide the silver knife tucked beneath. “I study… um. Culture.”

The moment the words left your lips, Jericho’s entire demeanor shifted—like the sun breaking through storm clouds, like a candle flaring to life in a darkened room.

His pale brown skin, aristocratic features brightened with an almost childlike wonder, his dark eyes sparkling with genuine, unfiltered joy. It was so startlingly pure that for a heartbeat, you forgot he was supposed to be a monster.

"How fascinating," he breathed, the words soft with reverence. His gaze held yours with an intensity that made your pulse stutter—not in fear, but in something far more dangerous: the unsettling realization that he was happy to see you. Truly happy.

A faint, disbelieving laugh escaped him as he glanced away, as if mentally rifling through centuries of memories. "You’re the first human to visit willingly in… goodness. At least a century." His smile turned wry, tinged with something almost melancholy.

"They usually just run. Or burn things." Then, abruptly, he snapped his attention back to you, tilting his head with sudden, playful suspicion. "You didn’t bring any fire, did you?"

The question was so absurd, so earnest, that a startled laugh burst out of you before you could stop it. You hoped it didn’t sound unhinged.

"Nope. All good. Very fireless," you assured him, waving your hands in what you hoped was a convincingly harmless gesture.

His answering grin was radiant—the kind of smile that made you instinctively want to smile back, despite the silver blade hidden against your wrist.

And then he said the thing that sent your mind reeling:

"You’re welcome to stay here. Ask what you like. Learn. I rather enjoy conversation."

The offer hung between you, heavy with unspoken implications. Declining would be suspicious. Possibly fatal. Definitely stupid. But accepting?

Accepting meant access.

It meant prowling the halls of his ancient estate, rifling through his private notes, learning his weaknesses. It meant proximity—close enough to study him, to watch for the right moment. It was hunter’s gold, wrapped in a pretty, bloodstained bow.

Your stomach twisted. You smiled.

"Yes," you said.

And just like that, the game began.

And, objectively, saying yes might have been the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Because Jericho led you down the hallway like a host in a vampire-themed bed and breakfast, gesturing at portraits with gory backstories and candelabras that may or may not hiss when passed.

The manor around you breathed gothic luxury: velvet drapes the color of drowned roses, hallways that twisted like sentences in old novels, and chandeliers that definitely cost more than your entire village. There were carpets so soft you thought you might vanish in them if you stepped too hard. The walls whispered. The doors murmured. And at least two statues definitely moved when you weren’t looking.

But Jericho was all charm. Eerily enthusiastic about your presence, as though you were not a threat in disguise, but a rare bird that wandered in from the forest and started speaking Latin.

So yes, you were a “researcher.”

And yes, you were staying in a manor with a creature known for turning entire ballrooms into beautifully preserved crime scenes.

But damn it, learning about him was simply amazing!!

You told yourself this was for the mission—for the hunt, for the legacy, for the solemn duty passed down by blood. But honestly? After only a few days under Jericho’s gilded roof, surrounded by velvet-curtained windows, echoing marble halls, and enough ambient mood lighting to make a ghost weep, you’d caught yourself doing the unthinkable.

Smiling. Shocking.

Maybe it was the food. Actual, real food, served on silver platters by ghost-pale servants who never blinked. Jericho made certain you had everything: tea that tasted like sunshine through glass, meals seasoned exactly to your preference, and not a single drop of blood in sight—at least not in your courses, unless it was red meat.

You suspected he had someone researching you, which was a mildly horrifying but honestly flattering thought.

You learned that Jericho’s second-in-command, or perhaps co-equal depending on the day. The leader of the Council of Vampires—though you were starting to think that was a title he wore more like a mildly irritating hat than a responsibility.

He held effortless elegance only centuries of boredom and tailored waistcoats could bestow. His long hair was always immaculately tied back with a silver clasp, and his voice could have convinced you to sign a contract in crayon and blood.

He was also, somehow, the most precious thing you’d ever met.

Jericho, despite ruling a cabal of the undead, was almost... carefree. Not quite clueless—he was far too intelligent for that—but curious. Genuinely fascinated by humans, especially you. He asked you questions like a child dissecting their first frog, except instead of tweezers he used charm, and instead of a scalpel he used smolder.

“I bet you’ve brought your journal,” he murmured one evening, leaning over your shoulder. You could feel the heat of him, somehow, though he ran cold. His breath was like the scent of parchment and dusk.

“Do make sure to write this part down.”

You didn’t remember inhaling. You only remembered the way the air curled in your lungs—sweet, lilac, and faintly like rust. And you remembered thinking: I will absolutely write this part down, even if I have to stitch it into my bones.

“Call me Crowe,” he added, voice low enough to lace itself into your spine.

You blinked. Unsure why that felt so intimate. Maybe it was the dropping of formality. Maybe it was the trust implied. Or maybe—just maybe—it was because no one had ever said your name like that before, not like it was a secret worth guarding.

And so you did.

He was noble-blooded, yes, but in a way that almost mocked the idea of aristocracy. He ruled a manor and village below as far as you could tell, bore no crown, and signed no decrees—unless, of course, you counted the blood-pacts he drafted at his desk in a chamber lit by only a dozen blue-flamed candles and what might’ve been moonlight.

But here's the thing: for someone with such a prestigious title, he didn’t… do very much.

Or so you thought.

Until you saw him one night in the war chamber, sleeves rolled to his elbows, sharpening a blade etched with runes so old they hummed in your teeth. His expression was dead calm, focused, and the air in the room pulsed with something that could only be described as violence politely waiting its turn.

Then another time—just yesterday—you caught him reading an entire report upside down while a councilman prattled on. He didn’t even blink. Just nodded thoughtfully, flipped a page, and signed off on something with a flourish so confident you questioned your grasp of gravity.

“Do you even read those?” you asked later, half-joking.

“Of course,” he said. “I read all of them… eventually.”

And he winked. WINKED. Your knees nearly filed for independence.

Despite your better judgment, you were enjoying this—a lot. The manor, the mystery, the intoxicating absurdity of being a human researcher undercover as a guest of the most powerful vampires in known existence. You should have been terrified. You were terrified. But in that way a moth might be, fluttering closer to the flame, knowing it will burn and still daring to dance anyway.

You were here for knowledge.

For duty. For your family’s legacy. That’s your mission.

A sacred duty. A vendetta. A legacy wrapped in silver and regret.

You repeat this every night like a prayer, gripping your journal as if it could anchor your soul. You are not here for flirtation. You are not here for indulgence. And you are absolutely not here for Crowe.

And yet—

He treats immortality like chess, and the world is his ever-expanding board. A bishop move here, a pawn sacrificed there, and every outcome dances right into the palm of his gloved hand. Crowe doesn’t need to win with force. He wins with timing, with elegance, with inevitability.

He’s not gaudy. His presence is refined, curated like a library of forbidden texts. He speaks in sentences you want to underline and annotate. He’ll smile at you like a prince offering a waltz, then say something so cutting your bones will feel it a week later. And somehow? You’ll say thank you.

He manipulates like it’s foreplay. And worse: you like it.

You once asked him about his turning—because, of course, you did. It was late, the air was full of violet smoke from candles that should not have been burning indoors, and he was lounging in that ridiculous armchair like some baroque painting come to life.

“I was born into immortality. At birth, I had no option to accept,” he said coolly, swirling his wineglass of very-much-not-wine. “Anything else is sentiment.”

You had nothing to say to that. Partly because the answer was hollow. Partly because the firelight caught the edge of his profile at the perfect angle and you nearly forgot your own name.

Still, there are cracks. You’ve seen the edge fray.

Just once. One moment. Burned into your memory like scorch marks.

A visiting vampire lord insulted you—openly, for being human, for being weak, for daring to write in your little notebook during a Council session. You didn’t even flinch. But Crowe did.

He didn't raise his voice. He didn’t bare fangs. He just leaned forward and whispered something too quiet for even you to hear. And the lord—an ancient, ivory-eyed monster—apologized. To you. Twice. And then left the room.

You never found out what Crowe said.

And you’re not sure you want to.

He calls you by your name now. Not “human,” not “guest.” And somehow, every time he says it, it sounds like the beginning of a promise you’re not sure he intends to keep.

Crowe’s fashion is a study in danger. Velvet, silk, deep colors layered like smoke. Rings that serve as both decoration and a weapon. Embroidered cuffs laced with language no living tongue speaks anymore. He looks like someone who could sign peace treaties and poison you in the same breath—and you’d thank him for the experience.

Always clean. Always perfect. Always Crowe.

Oh well. That night, everything smelled like lavender and poor decisions.

The manor was unusually quiet. Even the portraits on the wall seemed to be holding their breath as you crept down the candlelit hallway in your nightgown, dagger strapped beneath the folds like some kind of homicidal sleep fairy. Your footsteps made no sound against the plush carpet—Crowe wouldn’t have dared install anything less than absolute silence beneath one’s treacherous feet.

Aesthetic and practical.

You should’ve waited until morning. That’s what the scrolls said. Strike when the vampire sleeps, when the sun hovers just behind the mountains, and his power wanes.

Of course Crowe didn’t sleep. Sleep was for creatures who hadn’t spent the last three centuries buried under an avalanche of immortal bureaucracy.

Instead, he hunched over his desk—a massive, obsidian-carved monstrosity littered with parchment, wax seals, and the faint, lingering scent of ink and old blood. His fingers, usually so elegant and precise, were smudged with the evidence of his toil—dark streaks staining his knuckles where the fountain pen had leaked. Again.

You’d lost count of how many times you’d heard him groan this week alone—not in pain, not in pleasure, but in the kind of bone-deep exasperation only immortal paperwork could inspire.

"Feral outcast," he muttered under his breath, dragging a hand down his face. "Always that feral outcast."

Apparently, some rogue vampire—exiled for reasons Crowe had deemed "so egregiously idiotic I refuse to dignify them with explanation"—had decided to make the nearby human village his personal hunting ground. And now, as the de facto—and deeply unwilling—arbiter of vampire law in the region, Crowe was stuck cleaning up the mess.

You observed with mingled amusement and sympathy as he drove his quill into the inkwell with positively uncivilized vigor, splattering droplets of blackest ink across several carefully penned documents. The poor implement trembled from the violence of its employment, as though protesting such ungentlemanly treatment.

"By all the infernal realms," he hissed through clenched fangs, "should I be compelled to compose yet another dispatch concerning territorial demarcations, I cannot be held accountable for my actions."

His aristocratic features contorted into an expression of such profound vexation that one might think he'd been presented with a bottle of inferior claret rather than yet another bureaucratic imposition.

Clearing your throat delicately, you ventured: "Might not the situation be more... efficiently resolved through direct intervention?"

The glare he leveled upon you possessed such withering potency that it would have reduced a mortal of weaker constitution to a fine ash upon the spot. "And abandon this veritable Alp of unattended treaties? The previous instance in which I absented myself for such 'hands-on resolution' resulted in the Eastern Court attempting to renegotiate the Sanguine Tithe Agreements with the most egregious typographical liberties imaginable."

Your eyebrows ascended toward your hairline. "The Sanguine Tithe Agreements?" you echoed, rather stupidly.

"Precisely so," he snapped, his pallid fingers tightening about the unfortunate quill until it threatened to snap. "They resort to such vulgar provocations precisely because they know it vexes me beyond endurance."

With a most theatrical sigh, he seized another parchment from the teetering pile, his crimson eyes scanning the document with increasing horror before emitting a noise that defied proper classification—something between a gentleman's exasperated sigh and a wolf's snarl of frustration.

"This one," he declared with sepulchral solemnity, "has been rendered in some manner of encrypted hieroglyphics that would shame even the most illiterate medieval scribe."

You pressed your lips together with Herculean effort, recognizing that laughter at this juncture might well constitute a fatal error in judgment.

You, however, need sleep. Because you’re human, dammit. And if you had to stay up one more night pretending not to be charmed by a vampire with better penmanship than your thesis advisor, you were going to scream.

This was your ticket out. Your final act.

The dagger at your side gleamed faintly in the dim light, silver chased with runes only you and three monks in Romania could read. You’d spent weeks collecting notes, sketching his habits, charting weaknesses. The final entry in your journal had been written with shaking hands.

Tonight: End this.

You reached his office door and hesitated. For drama’s sake. The moment was meant to feel weighty and final. But instead, the smell hit you first—ink, parchment, burning candle wax, and exhaustion.

The door creaked upon its ancient hinges, groaning as though in protest of what you intended to do. Candlelight spilled from within, soft and amber, casting long skeletal shadows that twisted across the corridor’s velvet-lined walls. The scent of old ink, scorched wax, and ironed parchment curled out like a ghost, welcoming—or warning—you.

Crowe lay slumped at his desk, an exquisite ruin draped in crushed velvet and weariness. His arms were sprawled across a battalion of unopened ledgers, his noble brow pressed against some particularly offensive document.

An ink pot trembled dangerously close to his sleeve, black blood of bureaucracy threatening to stain the centuries-old fabric. One of his rings—onyx, with a crest you’d once sketched in your journal—had rolled from his finger and lay glinting on the floor like a fallen crown.

He did not rise. He did not stir.

He muttered, hoarsely, in flawless but dispassionate, something along the lines of “Fiscalus damnatio.” Which sounded like a curse, if your translation was correct. Something about tax reforms?

You faltered in the doorway.

The dagger beneath your nightgown weighed heavily at your thigh, its runes humming softly with purpose. This was not the tableau you had imagined—not the dark crescendo of betrayal and blade you had rehearsed in fevered dreams. He did not look monstrous.

He looked... exhausted?

And yet, even in his dishevelment, Crowe was beautiful in that dreadful, unearthly way the dead sometimes are. Hair unbound, curling against his pale collarbone, ink staining one wrist where his sleeve had slipped up.

His skin had the pallor of marble left in moonlight, but his cheeks were faintly flushed—perhaps from effort, or perhaps from the flicker of candle flame that danced across him like a lover’s touch. Shadows gathered at his lashes, too dark, too long, like ink drawn with intent.

He opened one eye, slow as a sunrise over a ruined kingdom. That eye, sharp and violet-black, fixed upon you with neither alarm nor amusement—merely a tired, aristocratic acknowledgment.

“Ah,” he murmured, voice like rust over silk. “A midnight visitation. Should I be flattered... or concerned?”

“...Concerned,” you replied stiffly, caught between dread and incredulity.

Crowe let out a sound that might once have been a laugh, then gestured lazily toward the chair across from him without lifting his head. “So long as you’ve brought either blood or death, I’ll not protest.”

You stared.

The infamous Shadowed Aristocrat of the Undying Court, the terror of southern citadels and warden of bloodbound laws, looked like a burnt-out academic choking on paperwork.

You almost pitied him. Almost.

Then he moved. Slowly—so slowly—he pulled himself upright, spine straightening with the grace of something regal and long accustomed to pain. As he did, the folds of his robe shifted, revealing a palish brown throat marbled with faint silver scars. Veins ran beneath like smoke trails beneath porcelain, fragile and unreal. Your gaze caught on them before you could stop yourself.

Your heart—faithless thing—betrayed you with a lurch.

Crowe noticed. Of course he did. His lips quirked into a wry, half-smile. Not cruel. Not mocking. Merely aware. Infuriatingly aware “You’ve come to kill me,” he said. It was not a question.

You swallowed. “What gave it away?”

He inclined his head slightly. “The dagger under your nightgown. Subtle, but predictable.” His eyes flicked lower for the briefest of seconds—then returned, glinting. “That, and the indecision gnawing behind your eyes.”

You stiffened. Gripped the hilt tighter. “I’ve made up my mind.”

“Have you?” His voice was quiet now, intimate, like velvet drawn over sharpened steel. “Then strike.”

He was not mocking you. He was not afraid. He simply... was. A figure carved from patience and poise. You could smell him now—paper, dust, clove smoke, and something fainter beneath, like the inside of an old cathedral or dried blood sealed behind glass. The scent of memory. Of ritual. Of endings.

You should have done it. Gods help you, you could have.

But you didn’t.

You simply stood, framed in the doorway like a ghost. And Crowe—damn him—reached for the teapot. He poured with the elegance of a centuries-old host, as though your betrayal was merely another diplomatic footnote in his endless schedule. He pushed the cup toward you across the desk with the disinterest of someone who had once shared tea with kings and assassins alike.

Then he sighed.

“If you’re to murder me,” he murmured, brushing parchment aside, “kindly wait until I finish drafting this blood clause. The Southern Clan has no grasp of proper semicolon usage, and I refuse to die with such incompetence unresolved.”

You stared.

Because of course he said that.

And somehow��Gods help you—he was even more devastating like this: untouchable, unshaken, drowning in ink and elegance. The moment unravelled not with the grandeur of vengeance, but with the absurdity of theatre gone wrong.

“Enough of this,” you hissed beneath your breath.

You stormed across the chamber like a tempest in slippers, seizing the back of Crowe’s grand, high-backed chair with enough force to rattle its gilded frame. It scraped against the stone floor in protest as you yanked it backwards, and he—calm, wretched Crowe—merely tilted his head, one brow arching in dry curiosity, as if you were a mildly interesting opera he hadn’t yet decided to walk out of.

You raised the dagger—your silver blade, etched with runes and soaked in resolve—aiming it directly for his unbeating heart.

But he caught your wrist mid-air.

His grip was iron beneath silk. Elegant fingers wrapped around yours like a cage of manners and strength, firm enough to hold, gentle enough to patronize. His expression was maddeningly composed—infuriatingly indulgent—as though you had offered him a biscuit rather than attempted his murder.

“My dear,” he drawled, low and amused, “you are hardly the first human to attempt my demise.”

His gaze searched yours, that dark blue shimmer behind his eyes catching the candlelight. “Though I must say… You might be the first to stay in my manor this long before doing so. Rather devastating, truly. I had such hopes for our rapport.”

He leaned back, still holding your wrist, speaking with the weary grace of someone who’d once debated philosophy with Aristotle and found the experience a bore.

“Now tell me—are you truly a researcher? Or is this all to satisfy some dreary family destiny? A vendetta, perhaps?” He smiled, slow and knowing. “You have the look of someone trying to finish someone else's story.”

That did it.

“Damn your manor. And your infernal questions.” The words left your lips like thunder preceding a storm, and with a final flicker of resolve, you let the dagger fall from your grip. The silver clattered against the marble floor, echoing beneath the vaulted ceiling like the sound of a chapel bell tolling at an unholy hour.

Then—before he could say anything clever, before his aristocratic smirk could form fully—you lunged forward. Your hands gripped the rich velvet of his coat, and with the impulsive defiance of someone long past their limit, you bit him.

Right on the shoulder.

Through fine brocade and centuries of cultivated detachment, your teeth sank in—not deeply, but with intent. A petty rebellion. A scholar’s fury in its most absurd form.

Crowe stilled… then—laughed.

A melodic, honey-warm laugh, rolling from his chest with unguarded amusement. It wasn’t the laugh of a vampire lord. It was something wickedly human. His whole body shuddered with it as he clutched at your waist, entirely too delighted.

“Oh, heavens above,” he gasped between chuckles, “are you truly biting me?”

“You’re damn right I am,” you growled, tightening your grip on his collar.

“Stop—please—it tickles,” he wheezed, head falling back, utterly unbothered. His laughter echoed off the stone like wind through crypts, playful and maddening.

You fixed him with a gaze that burned with righteous indignation, your cheeks aflame with a mortification that curled hot in your chest. How dare he restrain you thus—his hands firm about your waist as though you were some wayward creature in need of correction!

The very insolence of it set your teeth on edge, his grip at once unyielding and... disturbingly tender, as if he feared harming you even as you sought to wound him. The contradiction made your pulse thunder in your ears, a traitorous heat rising beneath your skin.

And so you struck again.

This time, your teeth found the elegant column of his throat—that pale, unguarded expanse where the veneer of his immortal composure lay vulnerable. The skin was warm against your lips, deceptively human save for the ancient blood that flowed beneath.

You bit down with deliberate intent, no half-hearted nip of petulance, but a claiming pressure that spoke of primal challenge. A growl rose unbidden from your chest, something raw and feral that cared nothing for propriety or the centuries of cultivated restraint that separated your kind from his.

Crowe went utterly still.

Not in shock. Not in protest. But in perfect, breathless silence.

Then—slow as honey dripping from a spoon—he released a shuddering exhale. A sound escaped him then, low and velvet-dark, trembling through the scant space between your bodies to resonate along your very bones.

It was neither gasp nor moan, but something far more revealing—a crack in his usual polished demeanor that laid bare a truth more intimate than any touch. The sound hung between you like opium smoke in lamplight, thick with unspoken meaning.

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly at your waist. A silent concession. A wordless surrender. Then his grasp upon your wrist slackened, his fingers trembling ever so slightly as though overcome by some unseen force.

His eyelids grew heavy, those dark brown lashes—like strokes of charcoal upon alabaster casting delicate shadows across his pallid cheeks. For but a fleeting moment, the carefully cultivated veneer of centuries slipped away, revealing something startlingly vulnerable beneath.

You beheld him then—not as the ancient predator, nor the aristocratic puppeteer of shadows, but simply as a man undone by the fire you had so recklessly kindled within him. A most satisfying revelation, you thought. Let him know the disquiet of being cornered. Let him savor the chaos he so often orchestrated from the shadows.

As you withdrew but a fraction, your gaze meeting his with defiant triumph, he moved with the languid grace of smoke curling about a candle's flame. His hand, no longer restraining, but guiding, slid from your wrist to cradle your palm with unexpected tenderness. You felt the whisper of his breath first, then the dreadful, exquisite pressure of his fangs.

"Allow me to demonstrate," he murmured, his voice thick as honeyed sin, "what constitutes a proper bite."

The penetration was sharp yet elegant, a violation executed with such precision it bordered on artistry. Your breath caught most indecorously as warmth blossomed from the wound, spilling into his waiting mouth.

Your knees threatened to betray you as the sensation—at once foreign and strangely intimate—coursed through your veins. The initial sting melted into something far more dangerous, as though he were unraveling your very being thread by silken thread.

Crowe hummed against your flesh—actually hummed—as he drank, the vibration sending peculiar tremors along your nerves.

"How curious," he mused, his lips brushing your skin with each syllable, "that so natural a human would dare bite a creature such as I." His voice, dipped in velvet darkness, curled about you like the finest smoke.

With deliberate slowness, he withdrew, a single crimson droplet glistening at the corner of his mouth. His tongue—that wicked, knowing instrument—captured it with unhurried relish. He regarded you then, his gaze burning with an intensity that set your very soul aquiver—at once fierce and tender, terrifying and wondrous.

"Your blood," he confessed, the words a dark benediction, "is nothing short of extraordinary."

The admission hung between you, thick as the scent of copper and desire in the air, and you realized with startling clarity that this was no longer about retribution, but something far more perilous. A game had been begun from which neither of you could now withdraw.

You found yourself, still astride him, your knees pressing into the damask upholstery on either side of his thighs, your body cradled in his grasp—not with the savage possession of a predator claiming prey, but with the reverent delicacy of an antiquarian handling some precious artifact.

His hand cupped the slender column of your neck, his thumb tracing slow, worshipful circles over the frantic flutter of your pulse. The other ascended the delicate architecture of your spine before stilling, as if overcome by the sacrilege of his own touch.

His face—that alabaster mask of aristocratic composure—dipped forward to rest against the swell of your bosom, just above the pounding rhythm of your heart.

No feral pounce came, no bestial snarl as in the gothic tales of your youth. Instead, a shudder wracked his frame, his breath catching like silk snared on brambles. Those elegant hands—cool as marble and just as finely wrought—settled at your waist once more, drawing you down into his lap with the solemn care of a priest elevating a sacred chalice.

For a suspended moment, he remained thus—his ear pressed to your breast, listening to the vital drumbeat of your mortality as though it might cleanse him of some ancient stain.

"I..." The word emerged ragged, scraped raw from some deep well of restraint. "I must beg your forgiveness. To have taken even that meager taste without your explicit blessing... it was unconscionable." His fingers trembled against your flesh with a vulnerability no artifice could feign. This was no carefully constructed seduction, but raw hunger swaddled in centuries of forced civility.

"You smelled..." He paused, the words a whisper against your décolletage, "like ambrosia given form. Like honeyed histories and sun-warmed sea salt. Like some long-lost vintage meant to be savored across eternity."

You remained silent, the embers of your earlier fury still glowing hot beneath your ribs.

Crowe lifted his gaze then, those blue eyes—usually so composed—blazing with naked yearning. "Might I..." The words seemed to pain him, each syllable a confession. "Might I partake properly?"

There it was—supplication from a creature who had not knelt in centuries. He phrased it as one might a sacred invocation, as though the act of tasting you were not some carnal indulgence, but a holy rite. The very air between you seemed to thicken with the weight of his plea, heavy with the promise of both sacrilege and salvation.

"It has been... decades," he admitted, the admission seeming to pain him, "since I last tasted pure human vitae. What passes for sustenance now is but a pale imitation—diluted with fear and political necessity." His aristocratic nose wrinkled in distaste. "Many of my kind have turned to animal blood, yet..."

A pause, then the quiet blasphemy: "I would sooner drink ink."

Your throat constricted at the revelation, the implications coiling like smoke in your chest.

"My court survives on scraps," he continued, his voice taking on the weary cadence of a ruler bearing ancient burdens, "ever since that wretched exile destroyed our carefully laid plans for coexistence. The system we envisioned—protection exchanged for willing sustenance, a civilized accord between our kinds—lies in ruins."

His fingers at your neck remained gentle, their pressure never crossing into cruelty. "The humans demand peace, and we comply - not for harmony's sake, but survival's. And so we starve... with dignity."

A revelation dawned, sudden and cold. "I have kept them from you," he confessed. "Some of my subjects... they have attempted to approach. Several came dangerously near."

The pieces aligned—the cold receptions, the hissed imprecations, the predatory gazes in shadowed corridors.

"They despise you," Crowe stated plainly, his breath cool against your skin as he rested his brow against your collarbone. "Because they have been forbidden from touching what they most desire." His voice dropped to its softest register yet, the words vibrating through your very bones.

"And I... I detest them for coveting what I myself crave."

Then—with a vulnerability that would have been unthinkable mere moments before—he repeated his plea, the words a velvet-wrapped supplication:

"I entreat you..."

It unmoored something in you. You’d never heard a vampire beg. You’d never heard a man beg for you. Not like this. Not trembling. Not wrapped in centuries of self-control, only to come undone in your lap.

Your family would call this betrayal. A disgrace.

You were supposed to uncover his secrets, not offer your blood like an oath. But… weren’t you already lost? You’d stepped into this manor with a purpose. And now…

You reached up, slowly. Deliberately.

Hands finding the tie at the top of your nightgown. And in the silence between heartbeats, you began to undo it. The fabric slipped from your shoulders with a whisper, baring skin bathed in candlelight. You tilted your head just slightly—exposing the fragile line of your throat and shoulder.

Then you met his eyes, steady and unflinching. “Go ahead,” you said.

Crowe inhaled sharply. Almost reverently.

His hands moved again, but now—gently. One arm curled around your waist, the other resting on your bare back, pulling you closer as if he feared you might vanish.

Then, he pulled back—not to bite, but to look.

His hands, cool and deliberate, slid upward from your waist, fingertips brushing over the soft curve of your ribs, past the dip beneath your sternum, toward the hollow just below your collarbone. He touched as if reading braille on a sacred text—curious, but careful. Possessive, but polite.

His dark blue eyes, like ink dropped into moonlit water, roamed your exposed skin not with hunger, but fascination. He paused at your neckline, his thumb grazing the thudding pulse there, and smiled—not smugly, but with quiet delight. As if you were something rare and delicate. Not prey. Not even a gift. A discovery.

"Every vampire," he murmured, his voice like crushed velvet drawn across polished alabaster, "develops certain... predilections." The words curled about your ear with deliberate slowness.

"The neck, naturally, remains the popular choice. Dramatic. Visceral. Poetic in its vulgarity." His lips brushed the sensitive hollow beneath your ear, the barest suggestion of contact. "But I have always found it rather... gauche. Like shouting one's desires in a cathedral."

His hand rose with the grace of a conductor preparing his orchestra, cradling your cheek with unexpected tenderness as he guided your head to expose that secret place where jaw meets throat.

"I prefer more... discreet geography," he confessed, his breath stirring the fine hairs at your nape. "Places that whisper rather than scream. Places known only to me."

You felt the whisper-soft drag of his nose along that exquisite hidden curve behind your ear—that delicate junction where vulnerability and pleasure intertwine. "Here," he breathed, the word a benediction, "is where the music lies."

Then he struck.

The penetration came not as pain, but as gradual surrender—a firm, insistent pressure yielding to warmth, then to the most extraordinary sensation of being gently unraveled. And oh, the sound he made—that choked, reverent moan vibrating against your skin like a cello's lowest register.

The arm about your waist tightened possessively, while his free hand wandered your contours with astonishing care, kneading the tension from your lower back, tracing idle patterns along the flare of your hip—as if every touch were both apology and worship.

"You taste," he gasped between draws, his usually polished voice fraying at the edges, "like ambrosia undiluted by terror or artifice. Like life itself distilled to its purest essence."

The wound tingled rather than ached, his mouth—warmed now by your vitality—sealing the small breach with surprising tenderness. A final kiss, feather-light, was pressed to the offended flesh—a silent benediction for the gift you'd granted.

"Should you wish me to cease," he murmured against your skin, his fingers interlacing with yours in silent covenant, "you need but squeeze my hand. This privilege is yours to grant or withdraw as you see fit." The words held the weight of sacred vow, his entire being poised in perfect stillness—a predator willingly leashed by your consent.

You nodded slowly. Then, he moved again. Slow. Searching.

His lips traced a slow, deliberate path along the delicate arch of your collarbone, his dark gaze lifting to meet yours with an intensity that seemed to pierce through centuries.

"I shall be most judicious in my indulgence," he vowed, the words a velvet caress against your skin. "Small drinks, taken from varied founts - this is the way to preserve your strength, your clarity." The promise hung between you, weighted with unspoken devotion.

Before you could summon a response, he descended further, his mouth finding that tender juncture where bodice meets flesh.

Not yet claiming, merely... worshiping. His lips brushed the spot with reverence, as though committing every contour to memory, tracing invisible cartography across your being.

"This place," he murmured against your flushed skin, his breath cool as moonlit silk, "might next receive my devotion, should you permit it?"

You found yourself adrift in sensation, your arms wound about his neck as if he were the only anchor in a sea of dizzying pleasure. Your very blood seemed to sing beneath his attentions, and in that moment, you comprehended the exquisite paradox of being undone—not violently shattered, but tenderly unraveled, like some precious tapestry yielding its golden threads one by one.

Between each lingering kiss, between every measured draw of his lips, he whispered praises that coiled about your soul like incense smoke—words that made you question whether this was mere seduction or some ancient rite; whether it constituted sacrament or something far more perilous than either of you dared acknowledge.

Crowe paused, his dark eyes searching yours with unsettling perception. "You tremble still, my dear," he observed, his thumb brushing the delicate skin beneath your eye with heartbreaking gentleness. That aristocratic mouth curved into a knowing smile, faintly wicked at the edges.

"I do so hope it isn't fear that moves you thus."

You parted your lips to respond, but your normally assured voice—that sharp, commanding instrument—failed you utterly. The words lodged in your throat like forgotten verses in some arcane tome.

"I..." A breath, then the quiet confession: "It isn't fear." Your voice wavered, yet held an undeniable strength. "I fear you not, Crowe."

His gaze didn’t waver. His hand rested gently on your cheek now, thumb brushing the warmth there as if trying to soothe something deeper than nerves. “I’m…” You bit your lip, then exhaled, eyes fluttering closed for just a breath. “I’m enjoying it. What you’re doing. More than I should.”

The confession dropped between you like a shattered relic from the altar of your family’s expectations. Generations of warnings and doctrine—of bloodlines and destinies and solemn purpose—faded like old ink in the lamplight.

Crowe’s expression softened into something unreadable, eyes still dark and endless. And you?

You leaned forward—because something in you had shattered, some last fragile thread of resistance snapping under the weight of his presence. The air between you was charged, thick with the scent of him—old books, ink, and something darker, something primal.

Your pulse roared in your ears, drowning out reason, drowning out everything but the magnetic pull of his body, his lips, his hunger.

And then you kissed him.

It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision—a desperate, bruising press of lips that tasted of salt and copper, your own blood still staining his mouth, now smeared between you like a vow.

His response was immediate, a growl vibrating against your lips as he kissed you back with a ferocity that stole your breath. The careful control he’d shown before was gone, replaced by something raw, something more starving.

His hands, once reverent, now gripped you with possessive urgency, fingers digging into your hips as if he could fuse your body to his. You felt him everywhere—the hard line of his chest against yours, the heat of his thighs bracketing you, the unmistakable press of his arousal against your ass as he pinned you to the desk.

The polished wood was cold beneath your fevered skin, a sharp contrast to the fire licking through your veins. The scent of parchment and ink rose around you, mingling with the heady musk of desire, of sweat, of him.

And then—his teeth.

A sharp, delicious sting as he bit your lip, just hard enough to draw blood. You gasped, but he swallowed the sound, his tongue sweeping into your mouth, claiming, devouring. The pain melted into pleasure, a dark thrill racing down your spine. His fangs grazed you again, a teasing threat, a promise of more.

One palm cradled the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair, while the other slid down your spine, pressing you flush against him.

And oh, you could feel him—the hard, insistent ridge of his arousal pressing against your stomach, the way his hips rolled forward just slightly, just enough to make your breath hitch. His lips curved into a smirk against yours, pleased at the reaction he drew from you.

"You feel that?" he murmured, voice rough, each word a slow drag of sound against your kiss-swollen mouth.

"That’s what you do to me, dearset.”

Your fingers clutched at his shirt, nails scraping lightly over the fabric, and he groaned, low and deep, before capturing your lips again. This time, his teeth grazed your bottom lip, not enough to hurt, just enough to tease—a silent promise of what he could do if he wanted to. His tongue soothed the sting, then plunged back in, claiming your mouth with a hunger that left you dizzy.

You could feel the hard line of his body against yours, the way his hips pressed into you with deliberate, tantalizing friction. Every roll of his pelvis sent a jolt of pleasure through you, and before you could stop yourself, you were grinding against him, shameless, desperate for more.

A low, rough laugh escaped him as he felt your need, his hands tightening on your waist. "Impatient, darling?" he murmured against your lips, his voice dark with amusement and something far more dangerous.

You didn’t answer—couldn’t, not when his teeth grazed your bottom lip, not when his tongue swept into your mouth with a possessiveness that made your knees weak. Instead, your fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, trembling as you worked them open one by one, revealing the smooth, heated skin beneath.

His hair, usually tied back with that infuriatingly perfect ribbon, was your next target. You tugged it loose, letting the silken strands slip through your fingers before giving it a gentle, teasing pull.

He groaned, the sound vibrating against your lips, and for a moment, you revelled in the power of it—the way his breath hitched, the way his grip on you tightened almost painfully. "Cheeky," he growled, but there was no real reprimand in it, only heat. Only hunger.

In one fluid motion, he had you turned, your back pressed against the cool, polished surface of his desk. The wood was smooth beneath your palms, the scent of aged parchment and ink wrapping around you like an intoxicating haze. His body followed, caging you in, one knee nudging between your thighs as he leaned down, his lips tracing the line of your jaw, the flutter of your pulse.

"So sweet," he murmured, teeth scraping lightly over your throat. "So fucking perfect for me."

You arched into him, a whimper escaping your lips as his hands slid down your sides, his touch searing even through the thin fabric of your nightgown. And then—

The sharp, unmistakable sound of fabric tearing.

Your nightgown split beneath his hands, the delicate material giving way as he bared you to his gaze, to his touch. A gasp tore from your lips, not in protest, but in stunned pleasure at the way his fingers followed the ruin of silk, skimming over newly exposed skin with agonizing slowness.

His palm settled between your shoulder blades, pressing you down against the desk—not with force, but with an unshakable certainty that made your body arch instinctively toward his.

"You don’t know what you’ve started," he whispered, lips brushing the shell of your ear, his breath hot and uneven. "But I’m going to show you."

And as his mouth traced the curve of your spine, each kiss a slow, worshipful brand, you realized—you didn’t just want him to.

You needed him to.

His hands turned you with effortless dominance, flipping you onto your back so you could see him—really see him. The dim light caught the sharp angles of his face, the dark hunger in his eyes as he drank in the sight of you sprawled across his desk, your chest rising and falling with each ragged breath. His lips curved into a smirk, slow and knowing, as he leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking beneath his weight.

Then, with deliberate intent, he hooked his hands beneath your knees and spread you open, baring you completely to his gaze. The air was cool against your heated skin, making you shiver—or maybe it was the way his eyes darkened, the way his tongue flicked out to wet his lips as he studied the slick evidence of your desire.

He exhaled, slow and controlled, his breath ghosting over your most intimate flesh, teasing before he’d even touched you.

"This," he murmured, voice thick with reverence, "is my favorite place to drink from the bold ones. But you—" His fingers traced idle patterns along your inner thighs, his touch feather-light yet searing.

"You’re the first who’s ever dared to let me." And then his mouth was on you—not where you ached for him most, but close enough to make your hips jerk in helpless anticipation.

His lips brushed the delicate skin of your thigh, his tongue flicking out to taste the salt of your sweat before his fangs sank in, just deep enough to draw a single, crimson bead to the surface. The sharp sting melted into pleasure as he lapped at the wound, his groan vibrating against your flesh.

You whimpered, fingers twisting in his long hair beneath you, but he only chuckled, the sound dark and rich. "Patience," he chided, blowing softly over the wet trail his tongue had left behind. The contrast of cool air against your fevered skin made you gasp, your legs trembling around his shoulders.

His fingers slid between your thighs then, parting you further, and the sound he made—low, almost feral—sent a fresh wave of heat pulsing through your core. "Fuck," he breathed, his voice rough with disbelief and desire.

"You’re dripping for me."

You arched off the desk with a desperate moan, but he pressed you back down with one broad hand splayed across your stomach, his grip firm but not unkind. "No, sweetheart," he murmured, his thumb circling your hipbone in slow, maddening strokes. "Not yet."

His lips returned to your thigh, kissing, nipping, licking—each touch a brand, each flick, each suck of his tongue a promise. He took his time, savoring the way your breath hitched, the way your body trembled beneath his ministrations.

When he finally, finally closed his mouth over your aching core, it was with a groan of pure indulgence, his tongue sweeping through your folds in one long, luxurious stroke.

"I need more of you first," he murmured against your flesh, his words muffled but no less potent. "Trade for a trade. I’ll give you what you want—let me have this, and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of." His teeth grazed your clit, just enough to make you cry out.

"I’ll make you scream my name as you come from my mouth alone."

And then he was true to his word, his tongue circling, flicking, devouring you with a precision that bordered on sinful.

Every stroke was calculated, every suck deliberate, until your back was bowing off the desk, your thighs clamping around his head as pleasure coiled tighter and tighter inside you.

He took his time with you—not because he lacked hunger, but because he savored the way your body yielded beneath his touch, the way every gasp and whimper spilled from your lips like a prayer meant only for him. His mouth was a slow, deliberate torment, tracing paths of fire across your skin before finally—finally—settling between your thighs with the reverence of a man kneeling at an altar.

And then his tongue was on you, in you, a wicked, knowing thing that laved and teased and ruined you with unbearable precision. He knew exactly how to draw out every sensation, every trembling plea—when to flick lightly over that aching bundle of nerves, when to press deep inside you with a groan that vibrated against your flesh.

Your fingers twisted in his hair, not to guide him, but to anchor yourself as pleasure coiled tighter, hotter, until you were shaking apart beneath him, your breath coming in ragged, desperate pants.

"Please—" you begged, the word fracturing into a moan as he sucked gently, his tongue circling in relentless, devastating strokes.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t hurry. He drew out every second of your unraveling, his grip tightening on your hips as your back arched, as your thighs trembled around his head.

And when your climax finally crashed over you, violent and sweet, his name tore from your lips in a broken sob—a sound he swallowed greedily, his mouth never leaving you, drinking down every pulse, every shudder as if you were the only thing that could sate him.

Only when you lay boneless, your body still quivering with aftershocks, did he finally lift his head. His lips glistened with the evidence of your pleasure, his dark eyes burning with possessive satisfaction as he gazed down at you.

"Mine," He whispered, the word a rough.

His tender claim against your fevered skin. And in that moment, you were his—completely, irrevocably. The scholar, the avenger, a hunter who had walked into this room with a plan—she was gone, melted away under the heat of his touch, the weight of his desire.

There was only this: the way his lips traced the curve of your spine in slow, worshipful kisses, the way his hands gentled over your trembling flesh, as if memorizing every inch of you.

You didn’t want to be anything else.

You didn’t need to be.

My godddddd. Writing this? Crowe as a vampire is devastatingly beautiful—not in a cruel way, but in that aching, slow-burn kind of charm that ruins you politely. He carries himself like a gentleman carved from dusk and candlelight, voice dipped in honeyed silk, eyes warm enough to forget they’ve watched centuries pass.

There’s a sweetness to him—dangerous, deliberate, the kind that lures you in with kindness before you even realize you're falling.

He doesn’t need to seduce; he simply exists, and suddenly you’re wondering what it would be like to taste forever at his side. Like, He’s such temptation wrapped in good manners.

Such lethalness, yes, but oh so soft when he smiles.

✑ 𝓈𝑜𝓁

The train clattered along the aging rails like a dying heartbeat, steady but strained, echoing through the hollow hills that ushered in the edge of forgotten lands.

You sat still as stone, shoulders cloaked in a threadbare coat, the brim of your hat tilted just enough to veil your face from any inquisitive glances.

Your gaze was fixed upon the fog-brushed window, watching as the world turned slowly grey. Trees blurred by like sentinels in mourning, each one older than the rails that cut through them.

You were bound for Doverhollow.

A name that settled in the bones like cold iron. Not many spoke of it with ease. And those who did, whispered—as if the village itself had ears buried in the soil. You had heard of the sickness running through it: not of body, but of spirit.

A corruption that threaded through the bloodline of monsters too old to rot. Vampires. But not just the usual breed of noble parasites. No, among them was said to be one worse. A fallen one. An outcast even among predators. And you had come to see him for yourself.

Not out of curiosity.

But judgment.

Still, there was one place in particular that drew your thoughts more than the looming specter of the manor you were fated to infiltrate. A place not carved of stone and candlelight, but of wild soil and whispers. The forest.

They called it Brugmansia Grove, though the villagers themselves seemed reluctant to speak the name aloud. Foreign on their tongues, as if borrowed from a language meant only for medical texts and old botanical poison books. It lacked the softness of folk speech—it was not something they named, but something they endured.

But you knew the name.

You knew it in ink and pressed leaves, in the brittle pages of your family's hunting manuals. Brugmansia—the Angel’s Trumpet. A flower shaped like a bell tolling for the dead. Beautiful, pendulous, and gleaming with quiet threat. A plant of dreams, hallucinations, and gentle deaths that mimicked sleep. Its scent alone, in the right concentration, could lull the lungs into forgetting to breathe.

You were not frightened.

Hardly.

The world of plants had always been a thing of logic and precision to you. The nightshade family was like a roster of old friends and deadlier enemies—Belladonna, with her ink-dark berries; Datura, that bold-flowered liar; Mandragora, moaning beneath the soil like a buried sin. You knew where to touch, what to taste, when to retreat. You respected poison—but you did not fear it.

And yet the forest itself…

It called to you.

Not merely as a hunter, not even as a scholar, but as something more primal. The way ruin calls to fire. There was a challenge in its quietude, in the layered silences between rustling branches and ghost stories. They said the trees remembered what men forgot. That spirits lingered long after the screams faded. Some said it was cursed. Others claimed those who entered the Grove came out changed. If they came out at all.

You leaned into your thoughts with a wry smile.

If you were to carry the burden of your family’s legacy—these endless hunts, the bloodlines measured in stakes and sorrow—then you would at least choose your path within it. Not all duties had to be dreary.

Killing the outcast would be your offering.

Your reckoning. Your intellectual pursuit. A necessary violence, perhaps—but one you intended to savour.

Where your ancestors treated monsters as mere blots on family honor, you found them…fascinating. Terrifying, yes. But fascinating. The old men of your bloodline sat in ancestral manors and counted their victories by fangs preserved in jars and journals scrawled in the margins with trembling ink. You had read them all—by candlelight, beside glass cases of faded relics and ruined bones.

And in all those pages, the words bled the same: Kill. Contain. Cleanse.

But not you.

You would do this your way.

There was a seduction in danger. And if you were going to be burdened with a legacy written in silver and blood, you might as well carve your own legend from it. No prayers. No permission.

If the rumors held even a grain of truth, then the creature that now skulked in the shadows was no ordinary vampire. He was something worse. An exile. A deviation. Even among the nightkind—who bowed to no mortal order, he was whispered of with contempt. Not merely a rogue, but an error. A mistake they had tried to forget.

Which made him all the more perfect.

For your research. For your reputation. For your amusement.

You imagined his death as something intimate. Surgical. Not a frenzied stake through the heart, but a dissection of the soul. You would learn what made him different—what made even his own kind cast him out—and then you would end him. Precisely. Methodically. Beautifully.

And if you had to walk into a cursed forest to do it, so be it.

The Gove, A name the villagers spoke with bitten tongues and lowered eyes. A place swathed in poison and perfume, where the Angel’s Trumpets drooped from twisted branches like a thousand listening ears. They warned you that people vanished there. That the trees hummed with voices not quite human. Those who entered the Grove either lost their way or, worse, forgot they ever had one.

But you were not afraid.

The Grove would not break you. It would reveal him to you.

And when it did, you would watch the fear rise in his inhuman eyes as he realized: he was being hunted. Not by torch-bearing villagers. Not by trembling priests. But by someone colder. Smarter. Hungrier.

You laced your gloves tighter, checked the weight of your blade once more, and turned your face toward the trees ahead.

Let him be as strange as they claimed. Let him be strong. Twisted. Terrifying. You only smiled at the thought.

It would make the kill worth remembering.

The path began as little more than a suggestion. A deer trail, perhaps. Or the outline of something older—something man-made long ago, now half-swallowed by moss and memory. You followed it with your coat drawn close and your senses keening, your boots whispering across roots and damp leaves as the forest narrowed in on you like the mouth of a beast.

The deeper you walked, the stranger the world became.

Every tree here leaned at odd angles, as though ashamed of their own growth. The air was heavy with the ghost-sweet scent of Angel’s Trumpets, blooming from twisted boughs in reckless abandon. Their pale, drooping bells swayed like warning signs, like a thousand little nooses. You knew the poison well—tropane alkaloids, delirium-inducing, deathly—and yet here they were, growing wild, unchecked, an entire forest intoxicated.

And then the decay began.

Old fences emerged from the brush like skeletons, half-swallowed by ivy. Rusted iron gates hung crookedly from hinges that no longer served their purpose. Further in, you passed what might have once been cottages—stone husks choked in vines, their windows glassless, their doors bowed inward. No life stirred here. Not animal, not bird. Even the insects seemed to avoid the place.

And there it was.

The manor.

Or something attempting to be one. It rose before you in the clearing like a half-finished thought—less a house, more a ruin that had been forced to keep breathing. The stone was weather-stained, the structure leaning slightly, like it was tired of pretending. It wasn’t large. Smaller than the average manor, if such a thing could exist.

Still, there was something deliberate in its lines. The shutters, though broken, had once been elegant. The façade had detail beneath the grime. A past life. A forgotten purpose.

So this is where the outcasts dwell, you thought. In haunted groves and collapsing dreamscapes.

Not castles. Not crypts. Not even homes. Just… remnants.

You circled it, scanning for entry. The front door was warped and bolted from the inside, clearly unused. But the eastern wing was thinner, slighter, and a gnarled birch tree had grown up close to its flank. Closer inspection revealed a second-story window, just above the overgrown eaves. Unlocked, if you were lucky.

You climbed.

The bark bit your palms. The branches creaked under your weight. But you moved with quiet precision, and luck—for once—was kind. The window gave with a groan, and you slipped inside like breath into a crypt. And landed… not in a bedroom. Not a hallway.

But a gallery??

You stilled, crouched, heart thudding not in fear—but in confusion. The room was long, narrow, wood-paneled. Dust-laden beams curved like ribs above your head. And all around you—on the walls, from floor to ceiling—were paintings.

Not the sort you’d expect in a decrepit manor. These weren’t portraits of sullen ancestors or landscape studies from the surrounding village. No, these were... strange. Familiar in style, unfamiliar in subject.

One painting showed a woman with no eyes, her face serene, surrounded by white moths in a black void. Another depicted a cathedral submerged in water, fish swimming through its shattered stained glass. Another—a skeletal figure cradling a sleeping child, their heads identical.

You stepped forward slowly, awe overtaking calculation. The brushwork was stunning. Meticulous. There was pain in it. Love. Obsession. This was no random collection—this was a compulsion, a gallery curated by something ancient and deeply lonely.

You exhaled.

Was this the outcast’s doing? Or his madness made manifest?

Either way… You had found something precious. And you were inside it now.

You moved deeper into the gallery, each step muffled by a thick layer of dust that blanketed the wooden floorboards. The air was heavy with the scent of aged oil paint and something more elusive—a metallic tang that stirred memories of old wounds and forgotten battles. The paintings on the walls grew increasingly surreal, depicting scenes that seemed to shift and writhe at the edge of your vision.

A narrow hallway beckoned, its walls lined with more of the unsettling artwork. You proceeded cautiously, the silence pressing in around you like a shroud. Then, from a partially open door at the end of the corridor, a soft, rhythmic sound reached your ears—the gentle swish of a brush against canvas.

Peering through the doorway, you saw him.

You had nearly forgotten how to breathe.

There, hunched high on a ladder, man—slight and pale, absorbed utterly in the art blooming beneath his fingers. His back was to you, focused intently on a large canvas. But the moonlight from the tall, grime-smeared window cast his silhouette in ghostly silver. It clung to his edges like frost.

His black hair, streaked with green, cascaded over his shoulders, partially obscuring his face. He wore a white tunic and black trousers, the simplicity of his attire contrasting sharply with the vivid chaos of the paintings that surrounded him.

The painting he worked on was unlike any you had seen before—a swirling maelstrom of color and form that seemed to defy logic and perspective. It drew you in, compelling you to step closer, your earlier caution momentarily forgotten.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. Just… painted. In long, obsessive strokes that held a devotion so intense, it bordered on sacramental.

You tilted your head.

The scene on the canvas was striking—an unfinished portrait, awash in muted tones. The subject: a man sinking underwater, mouth open in a silent scream. Red ribbons of blood curled from his fingers like ink in water. And within the water? Reflections of faces. Watching.

Jesus.

You’d read vampire profiles that were less disturbing than this.

And just as you debated whether to interrupt or let him continue to paint his existential crisis in peace, the brush slipped. “Ah—shit,” he muttered, snapping from his trance and nearly toppling backward on the ladder.

You barely had time to blink before he lost balance completely. The ladder tipped. His coat flared like wings. And the elegant, tortured artist came crashing down in an undignified tangle of limbs and groaned curses.

Reflexes kicked in. You stepped aside, and he hit the ground with a thud that echoed through the gallery.

You peered down at him, blinking slowly.

“...Are you a vampire?”

He groaned, flopping like a dying spider on the hardwood. “Depends who’s asking.”

Without waiting for a proper answer, you dropped a knee onto his chest and pinned him in place. He wasn’t exactly fighting back. In fact, he looked more annoyed than alarmed, and maybe a little embarrassed—though it was hard to tell with his mess of paint-streaked black hair covering half his face.

That’s when your eyes met. And stopped.

Central heterochromia.

The kind of rare detail most people would miss. But you didn’t miss much. His eyes were rings within rings—burnt orange at the center, bright and crackling like fire behind glass, ringed in a deeper crimson that caught the light like blood in water. A predator’s eyes. And yet...

They blinked up at you with the distinct expression of someone who’d just been caught napping during a lecture and now regretted all life choices.

“I was going to offer you tea,” he said eventually, voice dry. “But now I’m reconsidering.”

You arched a brow. “I climb through a second-story window like a thief and your first instinct is to make tea?”

“Well, I didn’t know you were a thief,” he said, lips twitching into the beginnings of a smirk. “Could’ve been a hallucination. Wouldn’t be the first time the fumes from oil paint brought me visitors.”

You narrowed your eyes, trying very hard not to be charmed. It wasn’t working. “Name,” you demanded, pressing just a little more of your weight down.

“Solivan Brugmansia,” he said, with the dramatic flair of someone announcing a stage name. “Please call me Sol, like Solitude, possibly Sorrow. Not Solidarity—I’m a terrible conversationalist.”

You stared at him.

He blinked back. “You’re not one of the guards from the fancy manor, are you? Because if you are, tell them leave me be.”

“I’m here to kill you.”

He grinned. “That’s fair. Want to do it before or after I finish this painting?”

And God’s help you, you actually hesitated. This wasn’t how hunts were supposed to go. Sol looked very comfortable for a man pinned to the floor.

“Before you kill me,” he said, voice airy as he lay there like a martyr in a painting, “could I request not to be smothered? I have delicate lungs.”

You squinted. “Shame. I was thinking of crushing your ribs next.”

“Oof. Also, that’s fair.”

You didn’t budge. Instead, you narrowed your eyes, letting silence drag like a blade across the room. Moonlight spilled through the cracked glass, pooling in silver puddles over the dusty floorboards. Paint-scent and turpentine hung thick in the air, mingling with something fainter. Not rot. Not blood. But something old. Animal. Forgotten.

Slowly, reluctantly, you eased off of him.

He sat up with a groan and a flourish, brushing dust from his coat and checking his limbs like a man who’d done this before. Too many times. “So,” he said, peering up at you with that maddening half-smile, “what’s your name, mysterious window invader?”

“I ask the questions.”

“Oh, of course you do,” he said, sighing with theatrical sadness. “The dynamic is very clear. You: strong, silent, and scowly. Me: misunderstood artist who may or may not eat people.”

You crossed your arms. “So you admit it.”

He blinked. “Eat people? I didn’t say that.”

“But you might?”

“Well, you might kill people for sport.”

You stared.

He smiled wider. “See? It’s rude when someone jumps to conclusions.”

You took a slow breath, knuckles itching around the dagger still strapped at your thigh. “Are you the outcast I’ve been hearing about?”

His head tilted. Just slightly. The way a fox tilts its head at the rustling in the brush—half amusement, half assessment. “Depends who’s asking,” he said again, but quieter this time.

You stepped forward. “Don’t play riddles. Vampires aren’t supposed to be here. You’re off the map. And yet you’ve got a whole forest, a half-rotten gallery, and a painting habit that looks like a journal entry from a madman.”

Sol stood slowly, the light catching again in his strange fire-and-wine eyes. He was taller than you expected. Lean. Pale as bone, and barefoot—because of course he was. One of his sleeves had ripped in the fall, and he didn’t seem to care.

“Is that what they call me now?” he asked softly. “The Outcast?”

“It fits,” you replied coldly. “You’re alone. You’re eccentric. And according to a few surviving locals, something in the woods likes to rip the memories out of people’s heads and leave them wandering blind.”

“Oh, that,” he said, waving a hand. “Those were accidents.”

You raised a brow.

“...Mostly.”

You took a step closer. “So it was you.”

He looked at you. Really looked. Eyes narrowed, but not cruelly. He was reading something behind your face. Most people didn’t even try.

“No,” he said at last, voice too calm. “It wasn’t me. But I know what it was.”

“And?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, smiling with all the misplaced confidence of a man holding a teacup in a burning house. “But only if you stop looming like a tax auditor. Or at least have the decency to pretend you’re here for something romantic.”

You stared at him. You’d come to the Grove expecting to find a monster. A real one. Claws, blood-stained mouth, maybe a shrine made of bones and teeth. Something that looked like it crawled out of the kind of story children weren’t supposed to hear.

Instead, you got him.

Sol. The so-called Feral Outcast.

The creature feared by villagers and whispered about by candlelight.

And he looked like the kind of man who could barely win a fistfight with a clothesline.

When he fell from the ladder after spotting you—a dramatic crash of limbs, paintbrush, and what appeared to be an entire apron covered in dried acrylic—you had your knife at his throat before he could even finish a sentence. But the moment he blinked up at you with mismatched eyes—amber inside, red on the rim—you found yourself hesitating. Not from fear. From confusion. Because honestly… this? This was the guy?

You stared. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, or maybe a decade. His hair was mussed like he’d rolled out of bed and into an explosion of linen and dust. His shirt was inside out. His socks didn’t match.

This was your monster?

“Are you the outcast?” you asked him, still looming with calculated menace.

He gave you a half-hearted shrug from the floor, still blinking. “Depends. Am I in trouble?”

“I came to kill you.”

“People say that to me a lot.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he said, voice painfully dry. “You’ve got the glare of a person with trust issues and a sharp object. And I love that for you.”

You stared at him, expression flat as slate.

Sol blinked. “Fine. No jokes. Just... one thing first.”

Your muscles coiled as he reached slowly behind a canvas, one hand raised in some mockery of peace. You were ready for a blade. A blood vial. A wand, even. Anything remotely threatening.

What you got was… A fucking teacup.

Porcelain. Chipped. Painted with tiny roses like something out of a grandmother’s estate sale. Still warm.

“I did make tea,” he said, tone far too smug for a man currently at the mercy of someone considering various methods of decapitation. “You’re welcome.”

You didn’t know if you wanted to stab him or sigh. Maybe both.

Honestly, probably both.

Still, out of sheer anthropological curiosity—and perhaps a dash of disbelief—you allowed him to shuffle awkwardly into what appeared to be a lopsided sitting room. If one could call it that. It looked like an opium den and an antique shop had been dropped into the middle of a tornado. Broken mirrors, misshapen chairs, a couch that was more spring than cushion. And in the middle of it all, a dainty porcelain set… with actual tea.

You sat.

Reluctantly.

Across from a vampire who looked like he once considered macaroni art a legitimate career path.

He poured you a cup with the solemnity of a priest offering confession. You didn’t drink it at first. You just watched him, silently, taking note of his posture, his tone, the strange calm that blanketed his every movement.

No madness. No fangs. No snarling.

Just tired. Slightly twitchy. And weirdly polite.

“Well?” he asked eventually, sipping his own cup with pinky raised, the sheer audacity of it nearly causing an aneurysm. “Aren’t you going to interrogate me? Judge me? Accuse me of crimes I probably committed in a fugue state?”

You narrowed your eyes. “You’re a pathetic-looking vampire for someone nicknamed The Feral Outcast.”

He looked genuinely offended. “Rude.”

“It’s not an insult,” you said. “It’s an observation. You look like you sleep in your own grave for fashion reasons.”

“I do! It’s very grounding.”

Your fingers twitched. “You’re seriously not going to try to kill me?”

He tilted his head. “Are you serious about killing me?”

You said nothing.

“Fair,” he said. “In the spirit of transparency, I’ve had worse dates.”

“This isn’t a date.”

“You’re in my house. Drinking my tea. With a weapon between your thighs. It feels like a date.”

You slammed your teacup down. He didn’t flinch. “You’re insane.”

“I am an artist.”

You didn’t know whether he was faking the eccentricity or if it was somehow real—and if it was, what kind of creature survived the wrath of both man and vampire by being this absurd?

Still, you decided to remain.

Not because he wasn’t a threat.

But because you weren’t convinced either way.

And frankly, if you were going to kill someone, you might as well know what flavor of strange you were erasing from the world. Plus, the tea really wasn’t bad. Disturbingly floral. Lightly sweet. With a hint of something you suspected was stolen from the herb garden outside. (Sol insisted it was “just a touch of dried angelica” and not, as you originally accused, powdered grave moss.)

So again—reluctantly—you stayed.

The manor, if you could even call it that, wasn’t exactly in peak condition. Most rooms looked like they'd been furnished during a single, half-hearted attempt at being civilised… then promptly forgotten. Mismatched chairs, moth-bitten curtains, walls with peeling paint and suspicious claw marks. The plumbing made unsettling noises that resembled moaning whales or distant death rattles. You learned not to question it.

But you didn’t want to risk leaving either. Doverhollow’s villagers were already side-eyeing you like a walking plague, and checking in and out of an inn would only invite more attention. Not to mention, Sol had made it oddly comfortable.

He’d offered you a room without a hint of hesitation. It smelled faintly of turpentine and something… nostalgic, like old paper and lavender. There were books stacked on the floor, some still bookmarked mid-paragraph. A forgotten shawl hanging from a chair. And a closet full of clothes that didn’t match Sol’s aesthetic at all.

Which, of course, led you to wonder: who the hell had lived here before?

Old owners? Guests? Ghosts?

You didn’t ask. Yet.

Sol had wandered off after tea that night, muttering something about “needing to finish a piece before it lost its teeth,” which sounded either deeply poetic or mildly concerning.

You’d given up trying to parse his metaphors. He was one of those people who probably journaled in riddles and cried while watching candle flames.

Still, when you found him later—alone in what he referred to as his “studio of emotional decomposition”—you caught him perched on a stool, brush in hand, face slack with serene focus. His usual energy, that chaotic whirl of eccentric quips and inappropriate tea etiquette, was replaced by something quieter. He painted like he was unraveling something buried in his chest.

You didn’t disturb him. Much.

“So…” you began, leaning against the dusty doorframe. “You actually do art. I thought it was a performance thing.”

He didn’t glance up. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“Honestly, I haven’t decided yet.”

His brush moved in slow, purposeful strokes. “Give it five more minutes. It gets impressive right before I ruin it.”

You stepped closer. “You're quiet when you're alone.”

“I am alone,” he said dryly, though there was the faintest upward twitch at the corner of his lips.

You stood there watching, arms crossed. “You paint a lot of ruined churches.”

“They’re metaphorical.”

“For what?”

“My soul.”

You snorted. “God, you’re insufferable.”

“Only in the mornings and when someone’s judging my symbolism.”

Still, you kept studying him, filing observations away like puzzle pieces. He was colder when alone, not cruel, but clearly the kind of person who lived more in his own head than in the world around him. But when he talked to you—when he let himself talk—he became almost… alive. Animated.

Smart. Sharper than expected. The kind of clever that didn't just answer questions, but quietly twisted them back on you.

“You read, don’t you?” you asked.

“Religiously,” he replied, wiping his brush on a paint-stained rag. “Mostly Poe. The man understood the importance of emotional mess.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess: you cry to The Raven and pretend it's about your tax situation.”

“Only on Wednesdays.”

You couldn’t help it—you laughed. Briefly. Silently. You hated it. Then, because you were still a hunter, and still you, you stepped closer and asked more questions. Quiet ones. Calculated ones. You watched how he reacted to every inquiry—about his past, his exile, the rumors surrounding him. You studied the twitch of his fingers, the flick of his eyes.

Not because you trusted him.

But because you were researching him.

This was fieldwork. Observation. Dissection of personality through shared air and shadowed silences. And you had to admit: for someone nicknamed The Feral Outcast, he was... surprisingly tolerable. Weird. But tolerable.

Later that night, you found yourself lying in bed with a notebook on your stomach and a half-sharpened pencil tucked between your fingers. The room was dimly lit—just enough moonlight leaking through the warped window to give everything a pale silver wash. The walls creaked as if the manor itself was muttering to you. Or sighing. Or dying slowly.

You didn’t care.

Your boots were off. The sword was still in reach. The tea, long gone cold.

And on the page in front of you?

Sol’s face. Well—most of it.

You weren’t a professional artist, but you weren’t completely without skill either. You’d spent enough time studying people from behind books and barrels to know how to render a decent likeness. And yet... his features were proving annoyingly complicated.

You’d only drawn one of his eyes so far. The other you left blank, almost intentionally. Central heterochromia was a pain in the ass to get right. The orange inner ring was easy enough to sketch. It was the outer ring—the deep, blood-crimson red—that made you pause. It looked like it should be threatening. But on him? It just looked… exhausted. And slightly irritated. Like a tired cat that hadn’t slept in eighty years.

You sighed.

Added some under-eye lines. Then added more. The man had the kind of eye bags that could carry groceries. Or guilt. Or both.

You sketched the line of his mouth next. Slightly too wide for his face. Subtle downturn when he wasn’t smirking. And, of course, you didn’t forget the lip rings—two small, black metal hoops resting at the corner of his lower lip like punctuation marks on a particularly smug sentence. You stared at the drawing for a long moment.

Then scribbled “why is he like this” in the corner.

Still, you’d learned more about him over the last couple days than you expected. Sol, as it turned out, was only turned a few decades ago—young, by vampire standards. Barely out of the coffin, metaphorically speaking. His turning had been messy, quiet, and unsanctioned. He was, as he said, “an artistic casualty of someone else's immortality crisis.”

That sounded like nonsense until you realized it probably wasn’t.

He'd shown you the gallery again in daylight. Well, daylight filtered through thick curtains and dust-choked air. Each painting he walked you through like a docent in a museum made for the clinically unstable. But it was fascinating, hearing the stories from his perspective.

One canvas was a swirl of reds and blacks—unintelligible from a distance, but up close it showed a woman screaming in silence. “That one,” Sol had said, pointing with a brush, “was about my first heartbreak. Or maybe a plumbing issue. Honestly, could be either.”

Another showed a forest burning in reverse—flames curling back into trees, ash turning green again. “That one’s just for drama. Gets me attention. Real crowd-pleaser.”

You'd expected all of it to be melodramatic.

You hadn’t expected it to be so… beautiful.

Still, you noted something darker, quieter, beneath all the color and flair. Most of his pieces—gorgeous as they were—had some unsettling, gruesome undertone. Like beauty and horror were two threads sewn from the same needle. You got the impression he wasn’t painting what he wanted to see—but what he couldn’t stop seeing.

You also discovered that holy relics actually burn him. You'd confirmed this during a brief “oops I dropped this conveniently near your hand” test with a silver cross. He’d yelped like a kicked cat and then tried to pretend it didn’t hurt, brushing it off with a scoff and a mutter of “how very traditional.”

You watched him later, rubbing the burn through his sleeve when he thought you weren’t looking.

He said he didn’t care. But you had the suspicion he missed warmth—sunlight, fire, the casual, unthinking kind of touch humans exchanged without flinching. You never saw him reach for a blanket or bask in the sun. He simply... sat. As if comfort was something remembered, not expected.

And then there were the horses.

Oh, the damn horses.

You had not expected that. It started when Sol insisted—insisted—on taking you to the village edge. Said it was for “an extremely serious errand.” You’d prepared for anything: blood rituals, secret meetings, maybe a hidden cache of weapons.

Instead, you found yourself standing at a rickety fence, watching Sol practically vibrate with joy at the sight of a large, mildly confused brown mare.

He pressed his cheek against the post like a love-struck teenager. “Look at her. Just look at her. Do you see that mane? That’s a mane of dignity.”

You stared. Then stared harder. “You’re serious.”

“I’m always serious about horses,” he said, eyes wide with religious devotion. “They are majestic, noble creatures. Unlike people. Or Crowes. Crowes are little shits.”

You couldn’t argue with that.

Still, you documented the whole thing in your notes that night, right under “possible weaknesses: holy relics, sunlight, excessive emotional damage… also, equine fixation?”

You underlined that part twice. Then, as you stared at the page, at the half-finished sketch of his face, you found yourself wondering:

Was he a threat? Maybe. Was he dangerous? Possibly. Was he, at the very least, absolutely out of his mind? Unquestionably. And yet—somewhere between the tea, the burnt skin, and the rambling monologues about Gothic literature and “emotional rot”—you’d stopped seeing him as a target. And started seeing him as a question you wanted to solve.

With maybe just a little affection.

…Or an exorcism. You hadn’t decided.

Understand, from two weeks ago, give or take a dramatic moment or two, you had seen another side of Sol.

You’d just returned from the village, arms full of human necessities—bread, salt, soap, and tea boxes. You were exhausted, sore, and slightly damp from a freak drizzle that smelled like mold and regret.

You only wanted to drop the bags, maybe nap, and not have to remind yourself for the fiftieth time that you were technically cohabiting with a literal vampire.

But, as was becoming alarmingly common, peace had a tendency to trip over itself and die on the porch steps. You heard the shouting before you reached the path back to the manor.

It was coming from the outer edge of the manor grounds—angry, fearful voices flung into the wind like rocks through glass. Villagers. You ducked low, instinctively going quiet, your pack rustling like a traitor with every movement. You made your way forward with caution, slipping between brush and shadow.

And there he was. Sol.

Standing at the edge of the rotting garden path, teeth bared, hands twitching like claws, looking positively feral in the twilight glow. His shirt rumpled, hair a windswept mess of midnight tangles.

The villagers had come in a group—pitchforks and torches included, because apparently clichés were alive and well—and they were yelling about you. Your name. Your disappearance. Your proximity to the “monster in the woods.”

One of them actually screamed, “You’re under his spell!”

Which would have been flattering if it wasn’t so stupid.

And Sol? Sol was not amused.

His voice had dipped into something low and horrible, rolling like thunder under his skin. His fangs were longer than usual—exaggerated, beastly, like some instinct had slipped free of its leash. And the sound—a growl, wet and sharp—came from deep in his throat. You swore you saw the foam.

Realization clicked into place like a lock snapping shut.

He was starving.

You’d never thought about it before. He didn’t eat around you. Didn’t ask. Didn’t even mention hunger. You’d assumed he fed on animals or—worse—wanderers. But now that you were looking, really looking, you realized how pale his skin had grown. How his hands trembled sometimes. How his eyes lingered just a moment too long when you rubbed your neck or rolled up your sleeves.

So, of course, you did what any sensible, level-headed hunter would do in the face of a semi-rabid, half-starved vampire glaring down a mob.

You yelled at him. “Hey! Sol!”

He twitched.

You stomped forward like an irate cat owner confronting their pet about the shredded curtains. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

The grove had gone silent in the aftermath, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath. The scent of smoke and damp leaves clung to the air, mingling with something older—ash, rot, maybe a hint of regret. The villagers stood frozen along the winding dirt path, torches sputtering uncertainly in their trembling hands.

Their eyes were still wide, caught between the horror they thought they were prepared for and the reality they’d just witnessed: a vampire foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog... and you, very calmly, yelling at him like an overworked babysitter at the end of their rope.

Sol blinked, visibly disoriented, the snarl frozen on his face as if even he wasn’t sure how it got there. His hands trembled—not from rage anymore, but like a man surfacing too quickly from drowning. The wild look in his mismatched eyes faltered the moment your voice cut through the fog.

"Am I going to have to throw holy water at you?" you snapped, stepping forward with the unmistakable energy of someone done.

Sol recoiled slightly, as though the words themselves had the power of exorcism. He let out a wheezing noise that might’ve been a laugh if it wasn’t so strangled, caught somewhere between mortified and mildly offended. He stumbled a step back, shoulders sagging under the weight of self-awareness.

Meanwhile, the villagers—armed with their shaky pitchforks, crooked lanterns, and far too many accusations—suddenly looked like schoolchildren caught misbehaving in front of a substitute teacher.

They glanced from you to Sol, and back again, slowly lowering their torches as the scene rapidly devolved from horror movie to uncomfortable farce. No one really knew what to do when the monster got scolded like a misbehaving cat.

They began to shuffle away, awkward and whispering, their righteous fury unraveling with each reluctant step. One of them actually muttered, “Well, they seems fine,” as though that made any of this normal.

You watched them disappear down the path with narrowed eyes, arms folded across your chest, radiating the kind of exasperated authority that could scare a demon into doing the dishes.

Once they were gone, you turned back to Sol.

He was still standing there, arms limp at his sides, looking like someone who had just realized they’d screamed at a houseplant for three hours straight. His hair was a wild mess, and there were faint smears of dried paint on his sleeves. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar and hanging off one shoulder like he’d either gotten into a fight or simply forgot how clothes work halfway through an artistic spiral.

“You okay?” you asked, deadpan.

“Define ‘okay,’” he replied, scrubbing both hands over his face like he could physically wipe the embarrassment away. “Because I am emotionally compromised and mildly ashamed.”

You raised an eyebrow. “You were foaming.”

“I was not—” He paused mid-protest, poked the corner of his mouth with a finger, then sighed. “Okay. A little. Maybe. Minor foaming. Barely noticeable. Artistic foaming.”

“Sol.”

“I’m trying to have dignity, please.”

You narrowed your eyes. “When’s the last time you fed?”

He grumbled something low and vaguely ominous in a language you strongly suspected was dead and buried for good reason. Probably Latin.

He sighed again, with all the melodrama of a poet being told to get a job.

“It’s been... a while.”

“You don’t say.” You crossed your arms tighter. “Sol, you absolute cryptid. You have to eat. Preferably not me.”

He gave you a look that was far too amused for someone who had just been publicly humiliated. “That’s very considerate of you.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m serious. This isn’t some tragic vampire novella where I hold your hand and cry about your internal conflict while you starve. I’m not going to nurse you back to health.”

“That’s a shame,” he muttered under his breath, eyes glinting with mischief even through the lingering haze of bloodlust.

You were already grabbing him by the arm, dragging him away from the scene before he said something even more ridiculous. “Come on. Before you start biting rocks.”

He let himself be led without resistance, mumbling something about how “biting rocks” used to be a metaphor until now. His steps were unsteady, like the adrenaline hadn’t fully faded yet, but the feral glint in his eyes had dulled—for now.

You couldn’t believe this was your life.

You—descendant of a renowned lineage of vampire hunters, trained in the art of elimination since you could walk, raised on tomes thicker than your wrists and lessons whispered over the clink of silver blades—were here. Living in a haunted fixer-upper with warped floorboards, faded wallpaper, a suspiciously squeaky third stair, and one artistically foaming vampire who once nearly bit a villager for yelling at a goose.

What had your ancestors died for again?

You flopped back on the creaky mattress, exhaling a sigh sharp enough to cut glass. The ceiling above you bore faint water stains shaped vaguely like screaming faces, which felt a little too symbolic. You tried not to read into it.

This wasn’t what you’d come here for. You were supposed to find the vampire outcast. Kill him. Study the corpse. Write down notes. Collect samples. Behead something for science.

And yet... here you were. Journaling at midnight. Drinking lukewarm tea. Drawing the outcast’s stupid pretty face because you claimed it was “for documentation purposes” even though you shaded his lips a little too carefully.

You told yourself it was still a mission. That maybe Sol was a threat, hiding behind sarcasm and horse trivia. That you were still gathering intel. But when you closed your eyes and let your mind wander...

You wondered. Was this mercy? Or was it just madness?

Maybe Sol was a project. A weird, semi-feral, poetry-quoting, eyeliner-smudged art cryptid of a project. A riddle in oil paint and broken windows. And the longer you stayed, the more the lines blurred between hunter and... something else. Confessor. Companion. Confused housemate.

Gods help you, but you weren’t entirely mad about it.

Then—tap.

Your thoughts snapped like a twig underfoot. You froze.

There it was again—faint, deliberate. A sound so soft most would miss it. But you were a hunter, trained to hear a needle drop through blood-soaked snow. Your senses sharpened instantly, a slow burn of tension sliding down your spine.

You slipped from bed in silence, sock-covered feet brushing across the dusty floorboards like a shadow. The manor was sleeping. Or at least, Sol was. Probably.

The hallway stretched before you like a throat waiting to swallow. Moonlight filtered through cracked windows in thin, bony beams. The wallpaper here was peeling, revealing older patterns beneath like a fossilized second skin. You kept to the edges of the walls as you moved, slow and steady.

The noise had come from below.

The wine cellar.

Of course it was the wine cellar. Because that was the obvious choice for mysterious noises in an already-cursed house.

You descended the steps without a sound, each one creaking like a guilty conscience. The air grew colder as you moved downward, damp and still and clinging to your skin like a warning. The scent of old cork and earth hit your nose, mingled faintly with something else—sharper. Iron.

Nothing.

The door creaked open only slightly—just enough to let you peek through the narrow sliver into the cold, stone-lined wine cellar. And what you saw next, well...

The first thing you noticed wasn’t the smell of dust or the stale, metallic tang of spilled blood on old stone. No. It was him—Sol—standing under the flickering light of a hanging bulb, shoulders drawn taut, his back to you like a statue carved in fury. His silhouette looked larger than usual, haloed by the faint fog of his breath in the cold cellar air. And in front of him—

Another vampire.

But not like Sol.

The creature slumped against a support pillar, long brown hair matted with blood, one eye swelling shut. Blue eyes glared out with defiance even as his body sagged, beaten, twitching. Blood pooled beneath him—thick, dark, and glistening like tar. You could see broken wine bottles on the ground, their contents mixing with gore. The place reeked of it.

Your breath caught in your throat.

Sol’s hand was dripping red, knuckles split and raw from repeated contact with bone. You watched as he stepped forward again—slow, deliberate. His boots crunched on shards of glass. Every movement screamed violence restrained by the thinnest leash.

You had never seen Sol like this.

You didn’t have to guess what had happened. The scene was a painting in brutality, and Sol had signed it in blood. And the way Sol looked at the other vampire… it wasn’t just anger.

It was disappointment. Loathing. Familiarity. He tilted his head, like he pitied him. “Don’t go out like this now… Jericho.”

His voice was low, nearly gentle. The softness made it worse.

You barely breathed. Jericho. The name had appeared once in your journal—scrawled in a rushed script beside a faded quote about vampire reformers. If you recalled correctly, he was one of the loudest voices pushing to rebuild relations between vampires and humans. A public figure among the remaining nobility.

And he had just called Sol the one who ruined it all.

Sol took a slow step forward, wiping his bloody knuckles against his shirt without urgency. “You always did like pretending you were some holy messenger,” he said, voice flat, not even amused.

“All bark. No bite.”

Jericho let out an ugly, wet cough and spat blood on the floor between them. “You’ve broken the laws, Sol. Again,” he hissed, trying and failing to straighten up. “You have a human here. I heard it from the villagers.”

He bared his fangs with weak defiance, eyes glinting through the bruises. “They say the Outcast took a human for himself. Keeping them like some sick little pet. Do you even hear yourself?”

That’s when Sol moved—fast, sharp, with a snarl that barely made it past his teeth. His hand shot out, grabbing Jericho by the collar and slamming him back into the support beam hard enough to crack the stone. You flinched despite yourself, pulse thudding in your ears. His voice changed—lower, guttural, something wild pushed too long into the dark.

“They’re not a pet,” he snarled. “They’re smarter than you. Stronger than you. And ten times more valuable than the entire dusty little cabal you suck up to.”

You stared, frozen behind the door.

He was defending you.

But there was something else in his voice—familiarity. Regret. Resentment. The rhythm of old wounds being reopened. Old friends? Perhaps worse… That thought churned your stomach.

Jericho let out a wheeze that could’ve been laughter if it wasn’t soaked in pain. “You killed a human who used to own this manor, didn’t you?” he rasped, voice like broken glass. “Lost control. It’s what we do.”

Sol went still. Deadly still.

His eyes darkened, and when he spoke again, there was no humanity in his voice. Just a quiet kind of ruin. “Yes,” he whispered. “I lost control. Once. And I’ve paid for it every second since.”

His posture shifted slightly, like a weight pressed into his spine. “But I didn’t lure them here. I didn’t hunt them. I didn’t lie. I gave them a choice. Shockingly, they stayed.”

Jericho bared his bloodstained teeth.

“That makes them yours. You’ll burn for it, Outcast. You’ll die like the rest of your kind. It’s only a matter of time.”

Your breath hitched. Every instinct screamed at you to move, to back away, to pretend you hadn’t seen what was about to happen.

But you didn’t. You watched.

Sol was silent, his gaze locked onto Jericho with a stormlike intensity—dark, electric, dangerous. His hand still cradled Jericho’s bruised jaw, his thumb dragging slow, deliberate circles over the blood-slicked skin in a cruel parody of tenderness.

You could almost believe it was gentle—if not for the tension coiled through Sol’s body, wire-tight, every muscle rigid with restraint. His mouth was a hard line, his eyes hollowed out by something far deeper than hunger. Something ravenous. Something primal.

Then he leaned in.

Jericho flinched—just barely—as Sol’s lips brushed the column of his throat. Not biting. Not yet. Just… lingering. Breathing him in. Savoring the heat of his skin, the pulse thrumming beneath it.

A low sound rumbled in Sol’s chest, something between a growl and a sigh, before his tongue flicked out—slow, deliberate—dragging a wet, searing stripe along the curve of Jericho’s neck.

The air in the cellar grew thick, suffocating.

Then he bit.

Not with the careful precision of some romanticized vampire myth, but with brutal, animalistic force. His teeth sank in deep, a guttural snarl tearing from his throat as he claimed, as he took.

Jericho arched against him, a choked moan spilling from his lips—more pain than pleasure, but laced with something darker, something hungry between them.

His fingers scrabbled weakly against Sol’s arms, nails digging in as blood welled up in thick, crimson rivulets, spilling over his collarbone, staining his shirt. Sol held him down with one hand, the other braced against the stone wall, his muscles taut with the effort of control—or the lack of it. There was no finesse here, no ceremony.

Just need. Raw, relentless, consuming.

And the sounds—God, the sounds.

The wet, desperate drag of Sol’s mouth against Jericho’s skin. The ragged hitch of Jericho’s breath as Sol swallowed, as he fed, each pull drawing another broken noise from the man beneath him. The slick, obscene sound of blood being drawn, of lips sealing over the wound, of Sol’s low, shuddering groan as he drank deeper.

You stood frozen, your spine pressed to the wall behind the door, your pulse hammering in your own throat. You’d seen vampires feed before. You’d been trained for it—diagrams, studies, clinical detachment.

But nothing could have prepared you for this.

The heat of their bodies, too close, too intimate. The way Sol’s free hand slid into Jericho’s hair, fisting tight, yanking his head back to expose more of his throat.

The way Jericho’s breath came in ragged gasps, his lashes fluttering, his body trembling between resistance and surrender. And worst of all—the shameful, molten heat coiling low in your stomach.

Why did it have to look like this? Why did it have to sound like this?

When Sol finally ripped his mouth away, it was with a vicious snarl, lips glistening—not just with spit, but with blood. Jericho’s blood. The metallic tang hung thick in the air, mixing with the sweat and the raw, primal energy radiating off Sol’s heaving body.

Jericho collapsed beneath him, boneless, his once-smug face now slack, his breath shallow.

Unconscious—or maybe something worse.

Sol loomed over him, his chest rising and falling in ragged, uneven bursts, his knuckles white where they clenched at his sides. The blood on his mouth wasn’t just smeared—it was art. A dark, violent masterpiece painted in strokes of crimson, stark against the pale fury of his skin.

And god, it was hot.

The way his tongue flicked out, just once, tasting the remnants of the fight. The way his jaw tightened, muscles flexing as he swallowed hard, like he was forcing down something far hungrier than blood.

Then he spat—a sharp, dismissive motion—right beside Jericho’s ruined face. The sound of it hitting the stone echoed in the damp cellar, a punctuation mark to the violence.

“Still not the same,” he growled, his voice rough, edged with something wild. Something untamed.

His fingers trembled slightly as he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood in a way that only made him look more dangerous. More feral.

The hunger wasn’t gone—no, you could still see it lurking in the depths of his darkened gaze, a bottomless pit of need that refused to be sated. But there was more now. Something deeper. Something worse.

Rage. Grief.

A storm of emotions that twisted his beautiful, brutal face into something unrecognizable. Your pulse hammered in your throat, your skin prickling with a dangerous mix of fear and something far more reckless.

You weren’t supposed to see this. You weren’t supposed to want to see this. But here you were, standing in the dim, flickering light of the cellar, the scent of iron and sweat wrapping around you like a second skin.

One thing was crystal fucking clear:

Sol was dangerous.

And you?

You were in way too deep. You needed to run. Now.

Boots barely made a sound against the cold stone as you bolted up the cellar steps, heart slamming against your ribs like it wanted out. The stale, iron-scented air chased you all the way through the narrow corridors of the manor.

Shadows flinched and twisted in your periphery, hallways stretching like old bones, groaning beneath your frantic footsteps. You moved fast, half-tripping on the warped floorboards, hands scraping along the chipped wallpaper like it might steady you.

You had to get away.

Not from the manor. Not even from Sol—not yet.

From what you saw. That hadn’t been just hunger.

That was a vampire unrepentant.

You reached your room in a storm of panic, slamming the door shut behind you with a breathless gasp and throwing the bolt. The quiet that followed was deafening. Only your pulse filled your ears as you fumbled toward your bedside table, pulling open the drawer where your dagger should’ve been.

Gone.

No. No no no no—

It was always there. Always. Silver-inlaid, blessed, sharpened just this morning. A blade passed down through generations. You were never without it.

You spun around, scanning the room like maybe it would materialize out of the air, maybe you were too panicked to see—

The air in the room turned thick, charged with something electric—something dangerous—the moment you heard his voice.

"Looking for this?"

Low. Calm. A velvet whisper curling against the back of your neck like a lover’s touch.

You froze. Every muscle in your body locked tight, your breath hitching in your chest as the realization crashed over you: He was here. Inside your locked room. Behind you. Close enough that you could feel the heat of him, the predatory stillness of a creature who had all the time in the world.

Slowly—agonizingly slowly—you turned.

Sol stood there, your dagger dangling carelessly from his fingers, the blade catching the dim candlelight in lazy, mocking flickers. The door was still bolted behind him, untouched, as if the lock had never existed. As if the rules of the world bent to his will.

Your pulse roared in your ears.

You took a step back without thinking, your body moving on instinct, your spine pressing into the cold wall behind you.

He looked different now. The blood was gone from his mouth, wiped clean, but his shirt was still damp with it, clinging to the hard lines of his chest in dark, rust-colored stains.

His hair was tousled, wild, as if he’d run his hands through it in frustration—or maybe just hadn’t cared enough to smooth it back into place after the violence in the cellar.

But his eyes—those ancient, fathomless eyes—held you in place.

They weren’t angry. They weren’t cruel. They were knowing.

"You shouldn’t run in old houses," he murmured, his voice a dark caress. "You’ll wake the ghosts."

You tried to speak—tried to summon fury, fear, anything—but the words withered in your throat. Your body trembled, not just from the cold, but from the horrifying understanding settling deep in your bones: He knew.

He’d known you were watching. Maybe from the very beginning.

Maybe he always knew when you were near.

"You..." Your voice was a broken thing, barely audible. "You knew they were trying to change. Jericho... he wanted peace. I read it. I wrote about it—"

Sol didn’t flinch. Didn’t interrupt. He just let you speak—or stammer, your words faltering under the weight of his gaze.

"And you..." Your jaw clenched. "You killed the one chance vampires had to change how the world sees them."

"No," he said, the word a blade of ice. "They killed it. Years ago. When they cast me out. When they made me a monster and left me in the dark to rot." His fingers flexed around the dagger, his knuckles whitening. "This world doesn’t want redemption. It wants a myth to fear."

Another step forward.

Another step back—until the wall met your spine, unyielding.

"And you stayed," he mused, tilting his head slightly, studying you like a puzzle he was unraveling. "You stayed in my manor. Slept in the bed of the dead. Ate the food of the damned. You laughed with me. Drank my tea."

"Because I thought you were different," you snapped, your voice gaining strength—or maybe just desperation.

"I am." Another step. Now he was close enough that you could feel the heat rolling off him, could smell the lingering copper on his skin, the faint, intoxicating trace of Jericho’s blood still clinging to his breath. "I didn’t hurt you. I never lied to you. Everything I am, you’ve seen. And yet here you are, daggerless, terrified, and still here."

The wall was cold against your back.

His body was a furnace in front of you.

"You don’t get to play the victim, hunter," he murmured, his voice dropping to something intimate, something dangerous. "Not when you walked into the crypt willingly." He lifted the dagger between you, the edge glinting near your throat—not a threat, but a question.

"I’m not going to hurt you," he said, so softly it was almost a whisper. "But I need to know something..."

Then he leaned in.

Close enough that his breath ghosted over your lips. Close enough that you could taste the danger on him. His voice was a dark, velvet rasp against your skin. "Are you still here because you want to kill me... or because you don’t know what you’d do if I was gone?"

You didn’t answer.

Because the truth was a living, breathing thing between you—and you weren’t sure you wanted to know anymore. You didn’t breathe. You’d seen death before—dealt it yourself, even. But this was different. This was Sol not as a cryptid or a misfit... but as a predator. Cold. Calculated. And utterly furious.

And something about it…

You hated that you noticed it—but it was hot.

In a terrifying, morally questionable, “am I okay?” sort of way.

Sol exhaled slowly, like dragging the air into his lungs cost him. He finally pulled away, taking a step back, and for a moment, the space he left behind felt too empty. His chest rose and fell like a war drum had just gone quiet. He wiped the side of his temple with the back of his hand, smearing blood across his pale skin like war paint, and dragged shaky fingers through his hair—still matted, still wild.

His eyes, however, were crystal clear.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he muttered, almost to himself.

There it was—guilt, flickering like a dying ember in his expression. But not regret. He didn’t regret what he did to Jericho. He regretted that you saw it. That your illusion, whatever you had told yourself about him, had fractured like glass.

“I didn’t kill him,” Sol added after a beat. “If that helps. He’s not dead.”

You didn’t respond. You weren’t sure you could yet. Your hand ached to reach for your missing blade even as your body leaned just a little—too much—toward him. Conflicted didn’t even begin to cover it.

Sol watched you with an unreadable expression. His voice, when he spoke again, was quieter. Tired. Like an old record warped by heat and time.

“This manor... wasn’t mine. I didn’t inherit it. I took it. After its owner tried to feed me to a group of nobles for fun. I killed him in that cellar. I didn’t lie about that either.”

You blinked.

“You stayed anyway,” he continued, voice rough. “You stayed after the gallery. After I told you sunlight burns. After I told you about the horses, for gods’ sake. You stayed even when the villagers whispered. Even when you knew what I was.”

His eyes met yours again, and for a heartbeat, you saw the predator slip back behind the curtain. He looked… vulnerable. Just a little.

“But if you’ve changed your mind,” Sol said, voice barely audible now, “then go. No one’s stopping you. I won’t.” The dagger lay between you, abandoned on the table like it meant nothing.

You weren’t sure if it still meant anything to you, either.

Yet, your fingers curled around the dagger before your brain even caught up with your body.

It wasn’t dramatic. No sudden lunge, no clash of steel. Just a slow, deliberate grasp as if reclaiming something that had always been yours. Cold metal kissed your palm, grounding you in a way nothing else could. Sol watched you take it, and to your surprise—he let you.

For a moment.

“I’m not going to fight you,” he said again, but this time there was something different in his tone. Less calm. Less patient. His eyes never left yours, but his hand moved—not for the dagger, but for you. His fingers curled lightly around your wrist, just enough pressure to still your next movement.

“I just need…” His gaze dropped for the first time, and his voice frayed like a thread pulled too tight. “I need something from you.”

You frowned. “Let go.” He didn’t.

Instead, he stepped closer. Just enough for your shoulders to tense against the edge of the wall behind you. His other hand moved with practiced ease—curling around your arm, guiding the dagger hand downward, not to disarm you exactly, but to… reposition you.

A sleight of hand hidden behind honesty. And before you could process the shift, he had your sleeve pushed back—exposing the pale stretch of your wrist under the flickering candlelight.

“Sol.” Your voice was sharp. A warning. A question.

But he wasn’t listening anymore.

“I haven’t fed properly in weeks, like you asked those days ago,” he whispered, staring down at your pulse like it was a thing made of starlight and sin. “You saw what I did to him. You think I’m fine, but I’m not. I’m sick. And starving. I tried to wait. I really did.”

You were about to pull back—to shove him away, to scream, to do something—but he moved first.

Fast. Desperate.

His mouth pressed to your wrist with a strange reverence, as though he were kissing it first. The cold brush of his lips sent a shiver jolting through your spine. You didn’t breathe. Couldn’t.

You weren’t sure if it was fear or adrenaline or both. But then his fangs sank in—sharper, deeper than expected—and pain flared bright and white behind your eyes.

You gasped.

The sound that escaped you wasn’t what you expected. It wasn’t a scream. It wasn’t even fully a cry. It was something darker. Something shameful and involuntary. A sound you immediately regretted making.

Sol’s grip tightened around your wrist—not to hurt, just to hold you steady—as he drank, slow at first. Controlled. But then it changed. Like the hunger had finally caught up to him and overpowered restraint.

You pressed your free hand against his shoulder, nails digging in, trying to stay grounded through the burn in your veins. The sensation wasn’t just pain—it was overwhelming. Heat flooding your chest. Dizzy, electric wrongness that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. You hated that your knees buckled slightly.

You hated that he noticed.

Sol made a low noise in his throat—half growl, half sigh—and pulled back just enough for the air to touch the bite. Blood welled up slow and sticky along your skin, and he stared at it with wild eyes. Guilt, desire, hunger. Everything crashing together in that one unspoken moment.

Then he looked at you.

And everything in his expression screamed apology even though his mouth never moved. “I didn’t mean to—” he started, voice ragged.

You stepped back. Quickly. Clutching your arm.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” you whispered.

“I didn’t mean to. I—gods, I didn’t mean to.” His voice cracked. “But you smell like warmth. Like life. I thought I could take just enough.”

Silence stretched between you like the tightrope it always had been. The bite throbbed like a second heartbeat. And suddenly, everything felt too small. The room. The candlelight. Him.

You needed air.

You needed to figure out if you were going to run—or stay?

Your fingers twitched around the dagger’s hilt—barely. A weak, instinctual movement. Your body didn’t have the strength to finish.

Everything began to slip sideways—like the walls were melting or the floor had been pulled out beneath you. The candlelight dimmed, blurred, twisted into strange shapes. You blinked slowly, trying to fight it, trying to hold on to something—the desk, the dagger, his name in your throat—but it all crumbled at once.

And then you fell.

Or you would have—had Sol not already been there.

His arms wrapped around you with startling ease, catching your body against his chest like you were nothing more than a breath being exhaled. You didn’t even feel the impact.

One moment you were standing, breathless… the next, you were weightless in his hold, your head tucked against the warm line of his collarbone, eyes fluttering closed against your will.

Sol froze.

Not because you passed out—no, he’d expected you to be weak after feeding. But this? This? The total collapse? The way your pulse slowed to a vulnerable crawl beneath your skin? It hit him differently. It hit him hard.

“…Damn it,” he breathed, his voice a low rasp, dark and unreadable.

He shifted his grip, careful not to jostle you as he lifted your wrist again. The bite wound gleamed red and angry in the light, the skin already starting to bruise with that distinct violet hue—fragile and raw. He turned your arm slightly, examining it with the cold eye of someone both fascinated and horrified.

“You really are different,” he murmured. A smirk touched his lips, slow and sharp like a blade unsheathed. But it wasn’t cruel. It was curious.

“I barely touched you,” he muttered, more to himself than you. “One bite and you’re out cold? Either I was hungrier than I thought… or you were far too generous.”

He leaned down slowly. Dangerously. Letting his breath wash over the curve of your throat—just like before, but this time there was no pretense. No restraint. Just hunger tinged with something unspoken. Not lust. Not quite. But need. Something deeper. Primal. Inhuman.

He inhaled deeply.

You didn’t stir. Not a twitch. Not even a protest.

“You smell like survival,” Sol whispered against your skin. “Like firewood and old blood and silver. Like you shouldn’t trust anything that breathes.”

And then his lips brushed your neck—not to bite, not this time—but as if tasting the ghost of what he’d taken. A pause. An indulgence. Reverent, almost.

But the moment didn’t last.

He pulled back, jaw tight, nostrils flaring. Still holding you close, Sol moved toward the bed with purpose, laying you down gently, though his eyes never left your face.

He hovered over you for a moment longer, watching the soft rise and fall of your chest, checking to be sure your heartbeat hadn’t dropped too far. Steady. Warm. Alive. Relief twisted through him like a slow knife. And yet… he couldn’t stop staring.

He needed you.

God help him—he was done pretending.

The moment his hands found you, there was no hesitation, no carefully constructed restraint—only raw, unfiltered hunger. Sol moved with the lethal grace of a predator staking its claim, his body pinning yours to the mattress with delicious inevitability.

His fingers worked with devastating efficiency, stripping away your clothes like a man unwrapping something sacred, something his. The fabric whispered against your overheated skin—the brush of silk, the drag of cotton—before being carelessly discarded, pooling on the floor beside the bed like fallen petals.

His touch was a study in contrasts—fire and ice, reverence and ruin. Every graze of his fingertips left invisible brands in their wake, as if he needed to map every dip and curve of your body beneath his hands. His palms skimmed up your ribs, thumbs brushing the undersides of your breasts in a slow, maddening circle before his mouth finally—finally—found you.

And oh, his mouth.

Sol kissed his way up your body like a man starved, his lips trailing a path of searing devotion along your trembling flesh. You could feel the cool metal of his tongue piercing—a wicked contrast to the heat of his mouth—as he laved attention over your pulse point, his teeth scraping lightly, teasingly, just enough to make your breath hitch.

He lingered at the hollow of your throat, his tongue flicking over the sensitive skin there, the subtle click of metal against flesh sending a shiver down your spine.

But he wasn’t done.

His mouth moved lower, lower—each kiss a brand, each nip a promise. When his breath ghosted over the swell of your chest, hot and damp, you arched into him with a whimper.

His tongue flicked out, the piercing dragging in a slow, torturous circle around one peaked nipple before he sealed his lips over it, sucking gently. The dual sensation of soft warmth and hard metal had your fingers twisting in his hair, your hips lifting off the bed in silent plea.

Sol chuckled against your skin, the vibration rippling through you like liquid heat. “So sweet…” he murmured, the word a rough caress as he switched his attention to your other breast, his tongue piercing tracing lazy, maddening patterns until you were gasping, writhing, utterly at his mercy.

And God help you—did you even want him to stop?

You gasped when his fangs found you.

A sharp, sweet sting—just above your nipple, where the skin was softest. The pain melted instantly into pleasure, your back arching as he groaned against you, his tongue lapping at the tiny wounds in slow, deliberate strokes.

He kissed around the sensitive peak, his lips brushing feather-light, maddening circles until you were shuddering, your fingers twisting in his hair, pulling him closer.

When he finally lifted his head, his lips were stained crimson, his eyes black with want. You were moaning softly, conscious, your body still thrumming with the aftershocks of his bite.

"You shouldn’t have stayed," he whispered, his voice rough, raw—more to the shadows than to you. "You knew what I was. You knew what I’d done. But you stayed."

His expression was a storm of contradictions—guilt and hunger, awe and something darker, something he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—name. He dragged his gaze over you, drinking in the sight of your flushed skin, your heaving chest, the way your pulse fluttered wildly at your throat.

Sol’s fingers traced idle, teasing circles over your skin, his touch light enough to make you shiver, deliberate enough to make your breath hitch. His thumb flicked over your nipple, once, twice—just to watch it stiffen beneath his touch, just to hear the soft, involuntary gasp that escaped your lips.

It wasn’t long before he moved, his body shifting with predatory grace as he climbed onto the bed behind you. His hands were firm as he adjusted your position, turning you so your back pressed flush against his chest. You could feel the heat of him, the hard planes of his body molding against yours, his skin searing where it met yours.

And then—the slow, deliberate slide of fabric as he rid himself of his pants, his cock springing free, heavy and hot against the curve of your ass. The sensation sent a jolt through you, your pulse stuttering as he let out a low, satisfied hum against the nape of your neck.

His thumb brushed your jaw, tilting your face up to his. The movement was gentle, almost tender, but there was no mistaking the command in it.

"Tell me to stop," he murmured, his voice rough with restraint, his breath warm against your lips. "Tell me to walk away, and I will."

His words were a challenge—a test. And yet, you didn’t answer.

You couldn’t.

Not when his other hand was drifting lower, tracing the dip of your waist, the curve of your hip, before sliding between your thighs with a possessiveness. Not when his cock pressed insistently against you, a silent promise of what was to come.

Sol chuckled darkly at your silence, the sound vibrating through his chest and into yours.

"That’s what I thought," he murmured, before his teeth grazed your earlobe—sharp, teasing, claiming.

A half-ragged moan tore from your lips as he rocked against you, the friction maddening, perfect. His hands were everywhere—tangling in your hair, gripping your waist, dragging you harder against him like he couldn’t stand even an inch of space between you.

Then his teeth grazed your shoulder—sharp, teasing—before he bit down.

You cried out softly, arching into him as pain and pleasure collided in a white-hot burst. His mouth was searing, his tongue lapping at the blood welling from the wound, drinking you in with a low, possessive groan. Every pull of his lips sent fire racing through your veins, your body trembling, your fingers clawing at his shoulders, desperate for more.

He rutted against you, his cock hard and insistent through the fabric of his pants, grinding against your hip in rough, relentless strokes. You could feel the hunger in every movement—the way his breath hitched, the way his fingers dug into your flesh like he wanted to consume you.

“Fuck,” he snarled, tearing his mouth from your skin, his lips stained crimson. “You smell and taste even better than I imagined.”

You woke to the slow, searing drag of fangs along the nape of your neck—a claiming, a warning, a promise. Sol’s arms were locked around you, his body a cage of heat and hunger, pressing you into the mattress with the weight of centuries. His breath was a dark chuckle against your skin as he ground his cock against your ass, already hard, already needing.

"Pathetic," he murmured, the word a velvet scrape of amusement as he bit down—not enough to break skin, not yet, but enough to make you gasp. "Look at you. Still here. Forever mine."

You should have fought. Should have screamed. But your body was already arching into him, already begging for more, even as your mind reeled. His hand slid down your stomach, fingers splaying possessively over your hip before dipping lower, teasing, taunting.

The moment his teeth sank into your shoulder—sharp, sudden, punishing—you knew there would be no mercy tonight.

"You thought you could run?" Sol’s voice was a dark growl against your skin, his breath hot as he bit down again, harder this time, drawing a whimper from your throat.

Your fingers twisted in the sheets, knuckles white, body arching beneath him as he held you down with nothing but the weight of his body and the unrelenting press of his hips. "You thought I’d let you go after what you saw tonight?"

He didn’t wait for an answer.

Because he wasn’t here for words.

He was here to ruin you.

Sol moved with a frenzied, almost desperate rhythm, his cock driving into you with a pace that left no room for thought, no space to breathe. Every thrust was a claim, every snap of his hips a reminder—you were his. The wet, filthy sound of skin against skin filled the room, mingling with your choked gasps and his low, satisfied growls.

He didn’t give you time to adjust, didn’t let you catch up. He just took, fucking you with a brutality that bordered on reverence, as if he could carve his name into your bones with sheer force alone.

His fangs dragged down your spine, slow and deliberate, savoring every flinch, every shudder he pulled from you. His free hand slid between your thighs, fingers finding your clit with cruel precision, circling just there, just enough to make your hips jerk, your body tightening around him—but never enough to give you what you needed.

"Sol—" you gasped, voice breaking.

"Say it again," he demanded, biting your shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise, his voice rough with hunger. "Say my name like you mean it."

And then—

Pain.

Blinding, exquisite pain as his fangs sank into your back, piercing deep. The sharp sting melted instantly into pleasure so intense it stole the air from your lungs.

Your vision whited out, your body seizing as you came with a scream muffled into the pillow, your muscles clamping around him in helpless, shuddering waves.

Sol didn’t stop.

He fucked you through it, his pace never faltering, his grip on your hips bruising as he chased his own release. His mouth never left your skin, drinking you in, swallowing every moan, every broken sound you made as he dragged you back from the edge only to push you over again.

"Mine," he snarled, his voice raw with possession.

And when he came, it was with your blood on his tongue and your name like a curse on his lips, his hips stuttering against yours as he spilled deep inside you, his body shuddering with the force of it.

Afterward, as you lay trembling in the wreckage of what he’d done to you—limbs weak, skin marked, breath still uneven—Sol traced the bites and bruises he’d left with something almost like reverence. His touch was unexpectedly gentle, fingers skimming over the evidence of his hunger, his ownership.

"Pathetic," he murmured again, softer this time.

But the way his thumb lingered on your pulse, the way his eyes darkened as he watched the slow rise and fall of your chest—

It almost sounded like a prayer.

Sol’s hand slid around your throat—not enough to choke, but enough to claim. His fingers pressed just beneath your jaw, tilting your head back, forcing your gaze to meet his. There was no escape now. No pretense. Only the raw, electric truth of what he was about to take from you.

“You should have run when you had the chance,” he murmured, his voice a dark caress against your lips.

Then he moved—swift, effortless, predatory. One arm hooked beneath your knees, the other braced against your back, and suddenly you were weightless, swept off your feet as if you were nothing. As if your resistance meant nothing. The bed met your spine with a soft thud, the sheets cool against your feverish skin.

He didn’t give you time to think.

In one fluid motion, he was above you, knees caging your hips, his body a heavy, intoxicating press against yours. The heat of him was unbearable. The power of him was worse. You could feel every hard line of him, every controlled flex of muscle as he settled over you, his weight pinning you in place.

“Look at me,” he commanded, fingers tightening just slightly on your throat.

You obeyed.

His eyes were filled with red in the dim light, pupils blown wide with hunger—but not just for blood. No, this was something deeper. Something worse. The kind of hunger that didn’t just want to consume you.

It wanted to ruin you.

His free hand dragged down your body, slow and deliberate, mapping every curve, every shuddering breath. The fabric of your clothes was an insult—he made quick work of it, tearing, peeling, unmaking you until there was nothing left between his skin and yours.

“You thought you could hunt me?” His lips brushed your ear, his voice a velvet snarl. “Sweet thing. You don’t even know how to beg yet.”

Then he took you.

There was no gentleness. No hesitation. Just the brutal, unforgiving thrust of his hips, seating himself inside you with a groan that vibrated through your bones. You arched, gasping, nails digging into his shoulders—but he didn’t let you adjust. Didn’t let you breathe.

He moved.

Each stroke was a punishment. A promise. The bed rocked beneath you, the headboard slamming against the wall in time with his merciless rhythm. You were unraveling, pleasure coiling tight in your belly, your thighs trembling around his waist.

“That’s it,” he growled, his hand still firm on your throat, his thumb pressing just enough to make your vision blur. “Let go. I want to feel you break.”

You were close. So close.

And then his fangs grazed your pulse.

A sharp, sweet pain—bliss and agony tangled together as he bit down, drinking deep as his hips never slowed. The world tilted, colors bleeding at the edges, your moans turning ragged, desperate.

You were losing too much. You were giving too much.

But it didn’t matter. Because as the darkness crept in, as your body shuddered beneath his in helpless, overwhelming pleasure, one thought flickered through your fading mind:

At least you’d pass out before he was done.

Bro writing this? Sol as a vampire? DAMNNNNNNNNNNN—when did he get that fine? Like, be serious. I don’t even like Sol like that, hence why I still added, his yandere tendencies, his arrogance, his smug little smirk, the way he talks and somewhat begs like he's already owned you in three past lives—normally, that’s not my taste.

But the fanart? It did something unholy. Now suddenly I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, writing him in scenes where he’s still toxic, still dangerous, still so him… and yet somehow, it’s hot. Like fine fine. Like, I hate that I get it now, fine.

He’s the kind of beautiful that pisses you off in a way. Like, the kind where you’re glaring but your pulse is faster, and your morals are losing a debate with your instincts.

#the kid at the back x reader #the kid at the back crowe #the kid at the back sol #solivan brugmansia #jericho ichabod #tkatb #tkatb crowe #tkatb sol #the kid at the back vn #crowe ichabod #crowe x reader #sol x reader #sol brugmansia #tkatb vn #tkatb smut #tkatb head canons #tkatb x reader

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