The threat is real.
The offer is our new potential reality.
An unpredictable rebirth that will shock everyone when they realize what I’ve manifested.
Everything between us—the hatred, the suspicion, the reluctant alliance, the devastating confession—crystallizes into this single moment of choice.
Elena's screech tears through the frozen air.
My spectral gaze snaps toward her, and I see the moment she realizes what I'm about to do. Her diseased form trembles with rage so profound it seems to accelerate her deterioration—more veins blackening, more flesh rotting, more of the curse consuming what remains of the sister I never knew.
"HE IS TAINTED!" she howls, each word dripping with venom and desperation. "RUINED! REJECTED! NO! You cannot bond with something sobroken—something I've already claimed—something that was only ever meant to be aweapon?—"
I look back at Damien.
His body has deteriorated further in the seconds I looked away. The poison has reached his jaw, tinting his remaining humanity with corruption that spreads like ink through water. His eyes—those beautiful, terrible eyes—are drooping, consciousness slipping away despite his obvious desire to stay.
"Now," I breathe, feeling the pull of my physical body beginning to call me back. The chalice's power is stabilizing. Reality is reasserting itself. We havesecondsbefore the frozen moment shatters and chaos resumes. "Now or never."
We share one final look.
In his eyes, I see everything he never let himself show—the vulnerability he buried beneath arrogance, the devotion he disguised as possession, the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, he's worthy of the chance I'm offering. The monster's features fade as he struggles to open his mouth on the side that isn't melting, forcing destroyed muscles to obey one last command. His vampire fangs extend with visible effort—longer than I remember, sharper, carrying the desperation of a dying man reaching for salvation.
The transformation happening on his face is simultaneously horrifying and heartbreaking. Human features war with hellhound corruption, his jaw shifting between shapes as the poison fights his will for dominance. I can see the exact momenthis vampire nature surges forward, claiming enough control to maintain a mouth capable of biting.
I lift my wrist to the space, positioning it carefully between fangs that tremble with weakness.
"Bite.Now."
His fangs sink deeply in.
The pain is exquisite—not the sharp sting of a normal bite but something deeper, more fundamental. His fangs pierce not just skin but something essential, reaching through flesh to the blood that carries my heritage, my bonds, my very identity as heir to everything the Wicked world contains.
Darkness takes me—not the gentle darkness of sleep or the frightening darkness of death, but something else entirely. It's the darkness of beginning, of creation, of two souls colliding in the space between heartbeats and choosing to bind themselves together despite every reason not to.
His blood mingles with mine.
The taste of him floods through the forming connection—ancient vampire bloodline mixed with the corruption Elena forced upon him, the proud prince buried beneath layers of manipulation and pain. I feel his consciousness reaching for mine with desperation that breaks my heart, clutching at the bond like a drowning man grasping a lifeline.
His pain floods through the forming connection—centuries of loneliness that stretch back before his transformation, decades of manipulation by the Purebloods who saw him as nothing but a weapon, years of pretending to be something he despised because it was the only way to protect what he secretly loved.
I feel his memories—flashes of stolen moments watching me from shadows, silently intervening to tip trials in my favor without anyone noticing, making deals with devils to ensure I'd survive long enough to reach this point.
Everything he did was for me.
The realization hits with force that threatens to shatter my spectral form entirely.
I feel the poison in his veins meeting the hybrid power in mine andscreamingat the contact.
My blood—infused with dragon fire, shadow magic, vampire vitae, feline frost—wars against the corruption Elena planted. The battle plays out in seconds that feel like hours, power clashing in spaces that exist only in the bond between us.
I feel our bond mark forming somewhere on my body—another claim, another connection, another thread tying me to someone I've chosen and who has chosen me in return. It burns into existence with heat that has nothing to do with temperature, writing itself into my flesh with the permanence of destiny accepted rather than destiny forced.
And then there's nothing but darkness, spreading like wings across everything I am, carrying me toward either salvation or destruction with no way to know which until I arrive.
The last thing I hear before consciousness abandons me completely is Elena's wail of pure, devastatingloss—the sound of a woman watching everything she's worked for crumble because she never understood that love was never meant to be taken.
Only given.
