The first thing I felt was hunger.
Not the kind that gnaws at the stomach, but the kind that tears through your soul, scraping against centuries of silence.
For a long time, I couldn't remember my name. I couldn't remember why I still existed. The earth above me was heavy, pressing against my coffin lid like a god's forgotten hand. Every breath I tried to take turned to dust. Every dream was fire.
Then came the sound.
A heartbeat.
Soft. Fragile. Human.
It pulsed through the soil, calling to me with the rhythm of life I had long since forsaken.
I moved before I remembered how.
Fingers clawed upward, breaking wood, tearing stone, ripping through roots that had grown fat on my grave. My body screamed, ancient muscles waking in agony. But the sound of that heartbeat—it pulled me. It fed me.
When my hand broke the surface, the night greeted me like an old lover.
Cold. Faithless. Beautiful.
The moon was red that night. Not the gentle blush of twilight, but a deep, bleeding crimson. My kind once called it the Oath Moon—the sign that a vow of blood had been broken. Perhaps it was mine.
I rose from the dirt, naked beneath the open sky. My veins hummed with the pulse of eternity, every drop of blood whispering a name I had forgotten.
Lucien.
Yes. That was me. Lucien Virel.
The world's last mistake.
I took my first step toward the sound of that heartbeat—and saw her.
A girl stood at the edge of the forest path, clutching a lantern that flickered like a dying star. Her eyes were wide, filled with fear and something softer. Curiosity, perhaps. Or fate pretending not to tremble.
Her scent struck me first.
Not perfume, not blood—but warmth. Humanity. Life.
For a moment, the hunger faltered. The silence between us was thicker than the grave I'd crawled out of.
She whispered, "Are you hurt?"
And for the first time in three hundred years, I almost laughed.
Hurt? No. I was beyond pain. Beyond mercy. Beyond the world itself.
But her voice—
It reached the part of me I thought I'd buried deeper than my bones.
When I spoke, my voice was a ghost, rough and low.
"Run, little mortal," I said. "Before I remember what I am."
She didn't move. Not even when I stepped closer.
Not even when the moonlight caught the blood still drying on my lips.
Somewhere between that breath and the next, I realized something terrifying.
The hunger I felt—it wasn't for her blood.
It was for her heartbeat.
Because it sounded like home.
The air still trembled from her heartbeat.
It was maddening—too loud, too fragile, too alive.
I stood in the moonlight, drenched in soil and centuries of silence, staring at her like she was the first sunrise I'd ever seen. The scent of iron clung to my hands, ancient blood that wasn't hers but still marked me as everything she should have feared.
Yet she didn't run.
She stepped closer.
Her lantern wavered, painting her face in gold and shadow. "You're bleeding," she said softly. "Your eyes—"
I turned away before she could finish. My body was still remembering how to be alive, how to breathe, how to pretend I belonged to this world again. The last thing I needed was her pity.
"I told you to run."
"And leave you here?" she asked.
Her voice was steady, but her pulse betrayed her—fluttering, wild. I could hear it through her throat, the soft music of mortality.
She reached for me.
Her fingers brushed my arm.
It was a small thing—skin against skin—but the shock of it burned through me like sunlight. I hadn't felt warmth in so long. It crawled under my skin, threading through the cold veins that had forgotten what it meant to hold anything human.
I pulled back sharply. "Don't."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not what you think."
Her brow furrowed. "Then what are you?"
I could have told her. I could have shown her. I could have let the fangs slip and the hunger take me and end the question before it began.
But the words that came out were a lie—and a truth.
"I'm cursed."
She tilted her head, studying me. "Then maybe you need someone cursed enough to help you."
That made me look at her again. The lantern flame caught her hair—it was dark, but with hints of copper, like fire hidden beneath water. A drop of rain slid down her cheek. Or maybe it wasn't rain. The storm above us had been waiting, and now it began to fall, soft and cold.
The rain hit my skin and hissed.
I hadn't felt that pain in centuries. Holy water? No—just rain. I'd forgotten it burned like memory.
She gasped as steam rose from my shoulders. "You're burning—"
"I told you, little mortal. I'm not meant for your world."
Her eyes widened, but she didn't run. She lifted the lantern higher, searching my face. Then she saw it—blood trickling from the corner of my mouth, dark as the night around us.
She reached out again. This time, her fingers brushed it away. The drop of crimson smeared on her skin, glistening in the lantern light.
I froze.
Because I knew what would happen next.
My blood was ancient. Sacred. Cursed.
And as that single drop touched her skin, her eyes flashed crimson for the briefest heartbeat—then returned to brown.
She didn't notice. But I did.
The bond had begun.
I stepped back, breath sharp. "What's your name?"
"Evelyn," she said softly. "Evelyn Rae."
Evelyn. The name lingered on my tongue like temptation.
Her scent, her courage, her warmth—it was all wrong. Too pure for what I was. And yet every instinct screamed that fate had dragged her here for me to find.
Above us, thunder cracked like a warning.
She whispered, "You shouldn't be alone out here."
I smiled, but there was no kindness in it. "Neither should you."
Then I vanished into the dark before I could do something unforgivable.
But even as the rain erased my footprints, I could still hear her heartbeat—steady, defiant, calling me back.
And I knew with a certainty older than death:
The world had just made a terrible mistake.
Because now, I needed her.
And a vampire who needs… is far more dangerous than one who feeds.
The forest still remembered the sound of her heart.
Even after I fled, its echo lingered between the trees—soft, human, unbearably alive. Every drop of rain that slid from the branches carried it back to me. A rhythm I could not silence.
I walked until the earth became stone again, until the night wind stopped smelling of her. But it never truly left. It clung to my skin, soaked through the cracks of what I was.
I found shelter in the ruins of an old church. Roof half-collapsed, windows nothing but teeth of glass. The kind of place mortals had once built to beg forgiveness from creatures like me.
When I crossed the threshold, the air shivered. The cross above the door fell with a clatter, wood splintering at my feet. Fitting. The saints had stopped listening to me centuries ago.
I sank against the wall, watching moonlight slide through the cracks. My hands were shaking—not from weakness, but from memory.
Her touch still burned there.
Evelyn.
The name tasted like sunlight, and that frightened me more than any blade ever had.
For three centuries I had dreamed only of vengeance: on the hunters who buried me, on the lover who betrayed me, on the gods who allowed it. But now… now there was a heartbeat in my head louder than revenge.
The bond.
A single drop of my blood on her skin. It shouldn't have happened. My kind call it a half-mark—a tether that draws mortal and vampire together until one breaks or both fall.
I had sworn never to bind again. Sworn it with fangs in the throats of those who dared suggest it.
And yet, in one careless moment, fate had undone my oath.
Wind rushed through the broken nave, carrying whispers. For a moment I thought it was only the storm, until I heard it—
my name, low and soft, like breath against my ear.
"Lucien…"
I froze. The sound came from nowhere, and everywhere. It slid through the air like smoke, curling around my spine.
Impossible. No one alive should know that name. The world had forgotten it before her ancestors were born.
"Lucien…"
The whisper again. Feminine. Fragile. Hers.
I rose slowly. "Evelyn?"
Only silence answered, but the faint scent of warmth drifted in—the same that had clung to her skin.
She was dreaming of me. That's what the bond did when it first formed: thoughts bled across distance, hearts echoed in each other's sleep.
Through her dreams, I could feel flickers—candlelight, the shape of a small room, rain tapping against a windowpane. She tossed beneath sheets, whispering the name she shouldn't know. My name.
I pressed a hand to my chest. It was still still, yet the ghost of a heartbeat pulsed there in time with hers.
"Stop," I hissed into the dark. "You'll draw me to you."
The whisper came again, softer now, not a voice but a feeling: don't leave me.
And in that instant, I realized I was already moving.