She sat on the floor beside her couch, wrapped in a blanket she didn't remember grabbing, eyes unfocused on the window, her apartment, too small for her thoughts.
The world outside looked smeared, like the rain was trying to wipe the city away instead of wash it.
Her apartment wasn't messy, but it had that lived-in loneliness vibe.
She whispered almost to herself like breathing
"I don't want to be alone anymore."
She didn't say it expecting anything.
She barely heard it herself.
Then the temperature in the room dipped
It felt more like someone opened a door to winter somewhere behind her
She thought she imagined it at first.
Until the lights flickered.
There was someone standing near the corner of her living room.
The figure wasn't hunched or monstrous.
He simply stood there, tall, hands relaxed at his sides, like arriving in someone's home uninvited was the most natural thing in the world.
His clothes were dark.
His presence felt wrong but quiet, like staring at a wolf that decided not to growl.
His face didn't look evil, it looked tired.
Regal in a way that didn't feel human.
Sharp features softened by exhaustion.
Eyes that held heat the way coals do not burning, just remembering fire.
He studied her
She finally found her voice, and it came out thin, confused
"Who are you?"
He moved before the question finished
The lamp between them shattered under his hand, glass sprayed across the floor.
The blanket she clutched slipped free.
Aeris shoved herself back,
Her palms scrabbling on hardwood to find safety but he was there in the next breath and slammed her against the wall with one arm and took her throat with the other
There was no glamour in his violence.
It was precise, efficient, cold.
Aeris clawed for anything
Pain flashed white through her temples.
Through the panic she moved with a small, brutal clarity
her left hand went to the only thing she kept on the table, the thing she'd grabbed that night without thinking
A thin, silver pendant on a short chain.
Lucian didn't give her time to breathe.
He pushed her chin up with his thumb so she had to look at him.
His eyes were hungry and terrible.
"Why did you summon me?"
Pain choked her vision.
The wall dug into her spine, her feet barely touching the floor, his hand a locked iron bar on her throat.
Her fingers trembled as they closed around the pendant.
She ripped it upward and drove the silver edge into the side of his neck.
A his sharp, animalistic cut the air as metal met flesh.
Aeris didn't wait. She forced it deeper, desperation turning into raw force.
He didn't flinch away.
He leaned into it.
And she watched, horrified, as the wound sealed almost the same instant it opened
Lucian's mouth twitched
The smallest hint of amusement, almost bored, but edged in hunger.
A soft, low chuckle rolled from him, vibrating through his chest into her bones.
"Cute" he murmured,
Then abruptly, his grip loosened.
"Speak," he said.