I woke to the taste of blood in my mouth.
Not my own. His.
The room smelled of candle wax and old stone. Everything ached. My throat. My chest. My bones. I tried to sit up and my body refused, heavy and useless against silk sheets that were far too soft to be mine.
Where was I?
The memories came back in pieces. The alley. The vampire with hollow eyes and sharp teeth. My scream cutting through the night air. Pain. So much pain. Then darkness.
And a voice.
Drink. Live. You will not die tonight.
I forced my eyes open. The ceiling stretched above me in shadows and Gothic arches. Candles burned in iron holders along the walls. Heavy curtains blocked whatever lay beyond the windows. This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't anywhere safe.
I turned my head.
He stood by the window with his back to me. Tall. Still. His black coat hung open over a white shirt. Dark hair fell past his shoulders. He didn't move. Didn't breathe. He just stood there like a statue carved from marble and regret.
Lucian Graves.
My target. My mission. The monster I had been sent to kill.
"You are awake." His voice was quiet. Empty. He still did not turn around.
I tried to speak but my throat burned. When words finally came, they scraped out rough and broken. "What did you do to me?"
"I saved your life." He said it without emotion. A statement of fact. "You were dying. I gave you a choice. Death in that alley, or life bound to me."
Bound.
The word hit me like cold water. No. No, that could not be right.
"What do you mean bound?"
He turned then, and I saw his eyes. Red. Glowing faint in the shadows. Ancient and tired and filled with something that looked like sorrow.
"I made you my blood servant. Blood to blood. Life to life. We are connected now. What I feel, you feel. What you feel, I feel." He moved closer. Not human movement. Too fast. Too smooth. One moment by the window, the next standing beside the bed. "The bond cannot be broken. Not by magic. Not by distance. Not by death."
My heart hammered against my ribs. Blood servant. I had studied this. Every hunter knew what it meant. Shared pain. Shared hunger. Shared everything until the bond drove the vampire mad and they killed their servant in a frenzy of bloodlust.
"You are lying." But even as I said it, I felt something. A pull. A presence that was not my own sitting heavy in my chest. Loneliness. Deep and vast like an ocean. His loneliness.
"I wish I were." He looked down at me with those terrible, ancient eyes. "In six months, perhaps less, the bond will destroy my control. I will hunt you. I will kill you. There is no other ending to this story."
Six months.
The order had given me three months to complete the mission. Get close. Earn his trust. Strike when he was vulnerable. They had not prepared me for this.
"Why?" The word came out as a whisper. "Why would you do this? Why not just let me die?"
Something flickered across his face. Pain, maybe. Or guilt.
"Because I am a fool." He turned away. "And because your blood called to me in ways I have not felt in two hundred years."
I tried to sit up. The room spun but I forced myself upright anyway. The nightgown I wore was not mine. Someone had changed me. Cleaned the blood away. The thought made my skin crawl.
"I want to leave."
"No."
"You cannot keep me here."
"I can." He moved back to the window. Put distance between us. "The vampire court has been informed of your existence. They want you dead. A blood servant is forbidden by our oldest laws. If you leave this house, they will find you. They will kill you. The bond is the only thing protecting you now. They can smell me on you. They know you are claimed."
Claimed. Like I was property. Like I was his.
Rage burned through the fear. "I did not ask for this."
"Neither did I." His voice was soft. Sad. "But we are bound now. Your life is tied to mine. If I die, you die. If you die..." He paused. "If you die, I will follow soon after. The bond will make sure of that."
I stared at his back. At the tension in his shoulders. At the way he held himself so carefully still, as if one wrong move would shatter whatever control he had left.
I could feel it. Under my skin. In my blood. His control was a fragile thing. And beneath it, something dark and hungry waited.
"What happens now?" I asked.
"Now?" He finally turned to face me. "Now you stay here. Under my protection. The court will send representatives tomorrow to confirm the bond and demand your execution. I will refuse them. It will buy us time."
"Time for what?"
"For me to find a way to keep you alive." He said it like a promise. Like he actually believed there was hope. "Or for you to accept that we are both already dead."
The words hung in the air between us. Heavy. Final.
I should have been afraid. Every instinct screamed at me to run. But I could feel him. That aching loneliness. Two centuries of isolation. Of refusing to let anyone close because closeness meant loss.
He had saved me because some broken part of him could not watch another person die.
And it was going to destroy us both.
"I can feel you." The confession slipped out before I could stop it. "Your emotions. Your..." I pressed a hand to my chest. "It hurts. How do you live with this?"
His expression softened. Just for a moment. "You learn to carry it. Or it buries you." He moved toward the door. "There are clothes in the wardrobe. Food will be brought shortly. You will remain in this wing of the house. Guards are posted outside. Not to keep you prisoner, but to keep you safe."
"Safe from what?"
"From everything." He paused at the threshold. "The court. The other vampires who can smell your blood. And from me, when the hunger becomes too strong."
My breath caught. "You would hurt me?"
"I will kill you, Rose Thorne." He said my name like it pained him. "When the bond reaches its final stage, I will hunt you down and drain every drop of blood from your body. It is inevitable. It is what the bond does. The only question is how long we have before that day comes."
He left before I could respond.
I sat alone in the darkness, listening to my heartbeat thunder in my ears. The bond pulsed between us even through the walls. His presence. His pain. His hunger.
I touched my throat where the vampire had bitten me. The skin was smooth. Healed. As if nothing had happened at all.
But something had happened. Something irreversible.
I was bound to the monster I had been sent to kill. And he was bound to me. Two doomed souls tied together by blood and magic and the certainty of death.
I needed to contact the order. Tell them what had happened. Get new instructions. But how? He said he could feel everything I felt. Would he know if I tried to reach out? Would he feel my betrayal before I could act?
I closed my eyes and took a slow breath. Think. Plan. Survive.
That was what Sister Miriam had taught me. No matter what happened, no matter how bad it got, a hunter always found a way.
But Sister Miriam had never been bound to her target.
A knock sounded at the door.
"Enter," I called, expecting a servant with food.
The door opened. A woman stepped inside. Tall. Elegant. Silver hair pulled back severely from a pale, ageless face. Her eyes were the color of ice, and when she looked at me, I felt pinned like an insect under glass.
"So you are the girl who has captured Lord Graves' attention." Her voice was cold. Sharp. She moved into the room with predatory grace. "How... unexpected."
I pulled the blankets higher. "Who are you?"
"Lady Valeria. Court Enforcer." She circled the bed slowly, studying me like I was something distasteful she had found on her shoe. "I came to see for myself if the rumors were true. A blood bond. How deliciously reckless of our dear Lucian."
Court Enforcer. That meant she was here to judge whether I lived or died.
"Lord Graves saved my life," I said carefully.
"Did he?" She smiled. It did not reach her eyes. "Or did he damn you to something far worse than death? The bond will drive him mad, child. When that happens, he will tear you apart. I have seen it before. It is not a pleasant way to die."
"Then why are you here? To gloat?"
"To warn you." She leaned closer. "The court meets tomorrow night. They will demand your execution. Lord Graves is powerful, but he is not invincible. If he chooses to protect you, it will cost him everything. His position. His coven. Perhaps his life." Her eyes bored into mine. "Is that what you want? To be the reason a great lord falls?"
I met her gaze. "I did not ask for any of this."
"No one ever does." She straightened. "But we deal with what we are given. Remember that, Rose Thorne. When the court comes for you, remember that your death could save him. A noble sacrifice. A clean ending." She moved toward the door. "Think about it."
She left as silently as she had come.
I sat frozen, her words echoing in my head. Your death could save him.
But I did not want to die. Not now. Not like this. The mission was not complete. My family's justice was not served. I could not die without finishing what I had started.
I touched my chest where the bond sat like a second heartbeat.
And felt his hunger rise.
Sharp. Insistent. Growing.
Somewhere in this house, Lucian Graves was fighting against the need to find me. To taste me. To take what the bond demanded.
And I could feel every moment of his struggle.