“Too much,” she said simply. “Too talkative. Too sensitive. Too… me. People like me until they realize I don’t come with an off switch.”
I studied her for a moment. She wasn’t making a jest. There was no bitterness in her tone—just quiet certainty, the kind that came from being told the same thing too many times. Butalthough I didn’t want to be bound to her—toanyone—there was nothingwrongwith her.
“Perhaps they were insufficient,” I said.
Her head jerked up, surprised. “Insufficient?”
“For you,” I clarified. “Not everyone is built to keep pace with… abundance.”
Her lips twitched, but she looked away.
I examined the next garment. It was made of soft, gray cotton. Pink letters sprawled across the backside:JUICY.
I frowned. Then, against my better judgment, grinned. “Juicy,” I repeated slowly. “Intimidating. Powerful. Likely a title of status.”
She blinked. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet, clothed I shall be.”
I muttered to myself as I dressed, trying to make sense of the fabric. The hoodie swallowed my shoulders. The trousers—sweatpants, she called them—lacked any structural integrity. I longed for tailored coats, brass buttons, the weight of a sword belt slung across my hip. These garments were an insult to formality.
Once, nations had feared me. Now, I was standing in a mortal woman’s modern house, adjustingsweatpants.
But adaptation was survival. It always had been.
If I wanted to fix this—free her, free myself—I needed to learn this new world quickly. The tether between us pulsed like a quiet drum, constant and unwelcome. I couldn’t let it dictate me. I wouldn’t die here, playing house while my gold and my vengeance against the Sovereign Court lay buried beneath centuries of dust.
I left the bedroom and paused by a narrow mirror in the hall. I hadn’t looked in one since after I’d been turned. Old habit. Old superstition.
When I finally did, I startled.
My reflection blinked back at me—pale, leaner, hair longer than I remembered. My eyes glowed faintly in the dim light. But my jaw was still strong, my shoulders broad. The soldier still lived under the ruin.
“Still noble,” I muttered. “Still terrifying.”
Behind me, Nadia’s voice broke the moment. “You can see yourself?”
I turned. “Of course.”
“I thought vampires couldn’t see their reflection.”
“A myth,” I said. “Not true, at least for some. I’ve always been able to.”
I didn’t tell her that it was harder now—that the mirror showed too much. Time wasted. Ghosts unburied. The face of a man who should’ve been a legend, not a relic haunting a stranger’s spare room.
She studied me for a beat, her expression softening before she masked it. “Arrogant much?”
I let her think that. Let her see pride instead of the hollowness behind it. Pride was cleaner than grief.
And at that moment, it was the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
Hunger was the one companion I had not missed.
It began as a dull ache in my throat, then deepened to an animal’s pacing inside my ribs. The scent ofheronly worsened it. Warm skin. Soap. The faint sweetness of blood beneath the surface. She smelled alive in a way that made the entire house unsafe.
I told myself I would behave. She had been clear: no biting, no lurking, no “creepy vampire behavior.”
I was failing at all three.
