ADRIAN'S POV
How dare he?
The glass shattered in my fist.
Blood seeped between my fingers, tracing crimson paths down my palm. I barely registered the pain. It was insignificant compared to the fury clawing its way through me.
I had made a promise.
And I had failed to keep it.
Andy was gone.
Again.
And this time, she was in Dawson's hands.
Something ancient and merciless stirred within me, awakening a hatred I had spent six years keeping on a leash.
Six years of waiting.
Six years of remembering.
Six years of imagining the countless ways I would make Dawson pay for what he had done.
If he hurt her—
If he so much as laid a finger on her—
I would reduce his kingdom to ruins and leave nothing standing in its wake.
Because I remembered.
Every scream. Every wound. Every tear.
I remembered everything.
SIX YEARS AGO
Washington.
Some memories faded with time.
Others became permanent scars.
This one had been carved so deeply into my mind that even after six centuries of existence, I could still hear her screams as though they were tearing through the night all over again.
I had been moving through the forest when the sound reached me.
A scream.
Raw. Desperate. Terrified.
It wasn't anger I heard.
It was the unmistakable sound of someone who had lost all hope of being saved.
I followed it through the trees until a castle emerged from the darkness, its towering walls silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
Then came another sound.
A plea.
A broken voice begging for mercy.
Every instinct urged me to storm the gates and tear apart whoever was responsible.
Instead, I returned home.
I needed help. Whatever awaited me inside that castle, I wasn't going to let it stand between me and the person screaming for her life.
Elisa looked up the moment I entered.
"What happened?"
"We need to save someone."
Mike frowned. "Who?"
"A girl." My jaw tightened. "She's being held inside Dawson's castle."
The room fell silent.
Then Mike gave me the answer I had already known I would hate.
"No."
I stared at him.
"He's going to kill her."
"We can't interfere, Adrian."
"Can't?" I stepped forward, disbelief hardening into anger. "Or won't?"
Mike's expression darkened.
"You're talking about Dawson. You know what he's capable of."
"I know exactly what he's capable of."
"Then you understand why we can't simply walk into his territory and—"
"He's going to destroy her!"
My palm struck the table, rattling everything upon it.
Nobody moved.
Nobody answered.
And that silence told me everything I needed to know.
"If you're all so determined to stand aside," I said coldly, "I'll go alone."
I didn't wait for their objections.
I was already halfway out the door when Mike called after me.
Hours later, I crouched beyond the castle walls, studying the guards and searching for a weakness in their defenses.
I had no guarantee of finding her.
No certainty that I would make it out alive.
I didn't care.
Then footsteps approached from behind.
My hand moved instinctively toward my weapon before I turned.
Mike.
Drek.
Elisa.
George.
Justin.
Harry.
For a moment, I simply stared at them.
Then a slow, satisfied smile curved my lips.
"I thought you weren't coming."
Mike rolled his eyes.
"Don't make me regret it."
That was all I needed.
We moved.
The first clash of steel shattered the silence. Shouts erupted from the courtyard as our attack ripped through the castle's defenses. Guards rushed toward the commotion, and the carefully maintained order of Dawson's fortress dissolved into chaos.
"Go!" Elisa shouted over the din. "We'll handle the guards!"
I didn't waste a second.
I plunged into the castle.
Corridor after corridor blurred past me. I searched every room, every shadowed alcove, every place someone might have been imprisoned.
Nothing.
No girl.
No sign of where Dawson had hidden her.
Then I heard it.
A faint sound beneath the chaos.
So fragile that a human might have mistaken it for the wind.
I stopped.
Listened.
There it was again.
A muffled, broken whimper.
Below me.
I tore the carpet aside, revealing a narrow seam in the floorboards. Beneath it lay a concealed trapdoor.
I wrenched it open and descended.
The darkness swallowed me whole.
The air was stale, heavy with the stench of decay and neglect. Every step down the narrow staircase carried me farther from the sounds of battle and deeper into a silence that felt almost suffocating.
Then I saw her.
Huddled in a corner.
Her knees drawn against her chest, her arms wrapped around herself as though they were the only things keeping her together.
She looked impossibly small in that desolate room.
And when she lifted her head, I understood something that no amount of violence could ever teach me.
There were wounds that left no visible scars.
I approached slowly and lowered myself a short distance away.
"Hey."
She recoiled so violently that her back struck the wall.
"P-Please..." Her voice broke. "Don't hurt me."
Something inside me went still.
I had witnessed cruelty in a thousand different forms. I had inflicted violence, survived wars, and watched entire kingdoms fall.
Yet there was something unbearable about the terror in her eyes.
I softened my voice.
"I'm not going to hurt you."
She watched me with the desperate suspicion of someone who had learned that kindness could be another disguise for cruelty.
I held out my hand.
"Come on. I'm taking you home."
For several seconds, she didn't move.
Then her gaze dropped to my outstretched hand.
Her lips trembled.
And suddenly, whatever fragile control she had been clinging to gave way.
She threw herself into my arms, sobbing so violently that her entire body shook.
I caught her.
One arm secured around her trembling shoulders, the other supporting her as she clung to me with the desperation of someone drowning.
I held her carefully.
Not because she was weak, but because she had endured enough brutality to last several lifetimes.
For once, there was nothing I could say that would make what had happened to her any less terrible.
So I simply held her until her sobs began to subside.
When we finally emerged from the castle, Drek was waiting for us.
"The king escaped."
The words registered somewhere in the distance.
I had expected that possibility. Dawson had always been a coward when confronted with consequences.
But I couldn't spare him another thought.
Not when Andy suddenly seized my shirt.
Her fingers tightened around the fabric.
She looked up at me, panic flooding her face.
"He'll come back."
Her voice was barely audible.
"He always comes back."
I met her gaze.
There was no comfort in offering her an empty reassurance. She had already heard enough promises that meant nothing.
So I made her one that did.
"If he comes for you..."
I paused, allowing the words to settle between us.
"I'll kill him."
Something shifted in her expression.
It wasn't happiness.
It wasn't trust.
It was something far more fragile.
Hope.
And I would have burned the world to keep it alive.
Later, after we had brought Andy somewhere safe, I sat outside her room.
I didn't force her to speak.
Whatever she had endured, she deserved the chance to decide when she was ready to tell someone about it.
For a long time, the room remained silent.
Then her voice drifted through the partially open door.
"My name is Andy."
I looked up.
She sat on the bed with a blanket gathered around her shoulders, staring down at her hands.
"I had a normal life once."
Her mouth curved into a faint, wistful smile.
"I had a family. A home. I was in college."
For a moment, she seemed to retreat into that distant past.
"They loved me."
The smile vanished.
"Then one day, while I was leaving college, I accidentally bumped into someone."
Her fingers tightened around the blanket.
"I apologized and walked away. I didn't think anything of it."
She swallowed.
"I had no idea that one little mistake would destroy my entire life."
It began with the feeling of being watched.
Someone following her.
Someone appearing in places where he had no reason to be.
At first, she dismissed it as coincidence. She had no reason to believe that a passing encounter could have such devastating consequences.
Then she met Dustin.
For the first time since the nightmare began, something gentle returned to her expression.
"He was kind to me."
A faint smile touched her lips.
"He listened when I spoke. He made me feel safe. He protected me when I was frightened."
Her eyes glistened.
"And he loved me."
She paused, gathering herself.
"We fell in love. For a while, I thought everything would be all right."
Her gaze drifted toward the window.
"Then, one afternoon, I was leaving college when a man suddenly dropped to one knee in front of everyone."
I already knew the name before she spoke it.
"Dawson."
My jaw tightened.
"He proposed to me in front of the entire campus."
Her voice grew quieter.
"I was shocked. I barely knew him. I told him I was sorry, that I couldn't accept."
She closed her eyes.
"I told him I loved someone else."
Her fingers twisted into the blanket.
"I thought he would be embarrassed. Angry, perhaps. I never imagined..."
Her voice failed her.
She didn't need to finish.
I could already see where the story was heading.
That night, she told Dustin what had happened.
He reassured her. Told her not to worry. Told her Dawson would eventually move on.
But Dawson had never wanted her affection.
He wanted possession.
And rejection was something he had never learned to tolerate.
Late that night, Andy went downstairs to get a glass of water.
Then someone seized her from behind.
She went rigid.
"He leaned close to my ear," she whispered.
Her hands began to tremble.
"'You thought you could leave me?'"
A tear slipped down her cheek.
"'I really love you.'"
The words sounded almost incomprehensible coming from her mouth.
She drew a shaky breath.
"Then he pointed toward my house."
Her face crumpled.
"The next second..."
She stopped.
Her eyes fixed on something beyond me, something buried so deeply in her memory that she could barely bear to look at it.
She didn't have to say another word.
I understood.
Her family was gone.
Everything she had once called home had been ripped away from her in a single, merciless moment.
And Dawson wasn't finished.
He brought Dustin before her.
Beaten. Bloodied. Barely able to stand.
Yet even then, Dustin had tried to protect her.
"I tried to reach him," Andy whispered.
Her voice shattered.
"I kept trying, but I couldn't get to him."
My fingers curled into fists.
She stared down at her lap, tears falling unchecked.
"Dawson wiped my tears away. He told me nobody would ever come between us again."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
I had heard countless threats in my lifetime. I had watched monsters justify atrocities with words dressed up as love.
But nothing enraged me quite like the way Dawson had twisted those words into an excuse for cruelty.
Andy drew a trembling breath.
"He took everything from me."
Her voice had become strangely hollow.
"My family."
A pause.
"Dustin."
Another.
"My future. My freedom. Everything I had ever wanted."
She looked at her hands as though they belonged to someone else.
"And then he brought me to that castle."
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
The weight of what she had endured settled over the room, leaving no space for meaningless consolation.
Finally, she whispered, "I died there."
I looked at her.
She wasn't speaking about the end of her heartbeat.
She was speaking about the girl she had been before Dawson took everything from her.
"And the person who came back..."
Her lips trembled.
"...wasn't the same girl anymore."
She lifted her eyes to mine.
There was no anger in them. No plea for revenge.
Only the exhaustion of someone who had survived the unimaginable and no longer knew how to find her way back to herself.
I had spent centuries believing that strength meant never allowing anything to break you.
Looking at Andy, I realized how wrong that was.
She had been broken in ways I could scarcely comprehend.
And still, she was here.
Breathing.
Surviving.
That night, I made a promise I intended to keep until my final breath.
Not as a vampire.
Not as a warrior.
Not as someone seeking vengeance.
But as family.
No one would ever hurt her again.
Not while I existed.
And if the world demanded that I tear it apart to keep that promise, then the world would learn what it meant to stand in my way.
PRESENT
My eyes opened.
The past receded, leaving the present in its wake.
The shattered glass lay scattered across the floor. Blood continued to seep from my palm, dripping onto the polished wood.
I barely noticed.
Six years ago, I had promised to protect her.
Now Andy was gone.
Again.
And the man responsible was the same monster who had already stolen years of her life.
Dawson.
The name tasted like poison.
I had failed to keep my promise once.
I would not make that mistake again.
A violent knock rattled the door.
It swung open, and Drek strode inside, his chest rising and falling with barely restrained urgency.
"We found him."
For several seconds, I didn't move.
Then I slowly rose from my chair.
At last.
The bastard had finally given me somewhere to direct the hatred that had been festering inside me for six years.
A faint smile touched my lips.
There was nothing warm about it.
"Good."
One word.
A verdict.
I reached for my coat and headed toward the door.
Every instinct urged me to hunt him down, drag him from whatever hole he was hiding in, and make him answer for every atrocity he had committed.
But rage alone wouldn't be enough.
Dawson had escaped me before.
This time, I would leave him no opportunity to do so again.
Andy.
Hold on.
Whatever he has done to you, whatever horrors he has forced you to endure, I am coming.
And when I find him—
He will discover that some promises survive even six centuries of darkness.
I wasn't coming merely to rescue you this time.
I was coming to end him.