Harmony Rae

You toss the blanket away, the heat overwhelming. You turn to your side, clutching your stomach. Your cramps have been worse this month and the hot flashes were getting on your last nerve. 

You feel your thighs glide against each other, you assume the sweat has built up and you’ll have to take another shower to cool off. You huff a breath, blowing a stand of hair away from your nose - there’s no shot you’re risking a sneeze right now. You hear the door creak open and you squint your eyes against the stream of light pouring in. The light frames his form in the doorway, his silver hair damn near glowing. 

“Still sleeping, sweetie?” 

His voice was so gentle, you wanted to cry. Of course you wanted to cry, everything made you want to fucking cry. God, you hated this. It was your first weekend in two months you had completely off and you were so excited to spend time with Sylus. But here you are, curled up in a ball in his bed, downing pain meds every few hours and biting your tongue to avoid snapping at your patient boyfriend. 

“Not anymore… I’m sweating again…”

Sylus pushes the door open wider before making his way to you, letting the hall light guide his way. He switches on the bedside lamp and leans down to place a kiss to your damp forehead. His eyes trail down your body and stop at your waist. His eyes widen, his calm expression returns just a moment later, but you’d already seen the momentary change. You glance down and your heart drops.

The bedding beneath your hips was stained with blood along with your satin sleep shorts. The comforter was also spotted with blood and damp with sweat. Tears stream down your face and you can’t suppress a sob. You were already boiling, but now your cheeks felt positively molten. 

Sylus lifted a hand to cup your face, wiping your tears with his thumb.

“No, stop. Don’t cry.”

“But yo-your mattress and th-the sh-sheets… I’m so-sorry…” You manage to stutter through your sobs.

“It’s not an issue. Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” 

He gathers the comforter and tosses it to the floor. He swiftly untucks the bedding and wraps it around your waist before gently placing a hand to your lower back, trying to help you shift off the bed. You squirm against his touch, your skin slick with sweat and, most likely, blood. He doesn’t pull back, helping you to the edge of the bed. You stand and turn and look back at the mattress, but Sylus circles behind you blocking your view. He guides you to the bathroom and closes the door. He leans you against the counter and prepares the shower.

He doesn’t run the water for too long, knowing the steam will only make you warmer. He places a lavender aromatherapy shower tablet on the floor of the shower, the scent already filling the room and making your shoulders relax. He turns to you slowly and starts to peel away the sheet.

“I can do it, you’ve done too much already.”

“Kitten…”

His warning tone shuts you up immediately. You know he isn’t going to leave you alone. He folds the sheet and places it on the counter before kneeling to help you step out of your sleep shorts. 

“I should probably use the…” You don’t look up at him, you don’t want to explain that you were wearing a tampon and an emergency pad that you bled through. You couldn’t believe this was even happening, this hasn’t happened in so long and never at someone else’s house. 

“Okay, come on then.”

He leads you over to the toilet and you finally look up at him with a grimace. He looks at you and smiles sweetly - damn him for being so nice about this. You want him to be upset or disgusted. His gentle demeanor was making your other symptoms worse… 

Defeated, you sigh and wiggle your way out of your bloody underwear. Your emergency pad was soaked and you cleared your throat as you striped it off and folded it. You hover over the toilet and carefully tug your tampon free before sitting. Sylus brings the trash can to you and you toss your products away. 

He goes to the sink and wets a washcloth, returning to clean your hands and wipe some blood off of your legs while you sit. A cramp pinches your side and you double over, groaning quietly. Sylus rubs your back and continues to clean your legs.

When you’re finished, he helps you stand up and moves to lift your satin sleep tank. You grab his wrists suddenly, eyes widening as you look up at him. Your chest tightens and you grit your teeth. He needs to leave and let you deal with this, you will only embarrass yourself further.

“This isn’t the first shower we’ve shared, sweetie. Let me help you.”

You don’t loosen your grip and Sylus leans down slightly to try to meet your gaze. However, you’ve found a very interesting spot on the floor and don’t intend to stop staring at it. 

“I know, I just… I’ve got this. Go.”

Sylus pulls a hand out of your grip and lifts your chin. He puts more force behind his movements sensing your reluctance to work with him. Your eyes flare with defiance and he watches you pout for a moment before leaning closer.

“Why are you pushing me away?”

You let out a frustrated breath, you didn’t want him to think you were pushing him away, but the alternative… You felt your cheeks heat once again as you felt a familiar throb between your legs. You quickly pull your bottom lip between your teeth and pinch your brows together trying to look angry rather than unbelievably horny. 

Sylus tilted his head, analyzing your response. His brows lifted before knitting together in a subtle confusion. He let his fingers drift from your chin down to your collarbone, goosebumps rising beneath his touch, shivering slightly.

“I’m not, I just want to take my shower in peace.”

His fingers don’t stop at your shoulder, he trails them down your arm before placing his hand on your hip. You squeeze your thighs together, the throb getting stronger and harder to ignore. You lift your eyes to meet his eyes once more and notice he is staring at your thighs. Oh great, he noticed. You try to back away, but he grips your hips with both hands and pulls you closer. 

“When were you going to tell me cramps aren’t the only troublesome symptom you deal with?”

You shake your head, frowning at him.

“I just don’t want to bleed all over your bathroom, I’ve already ruined your mattress and sheets and –”

Sylus cradles your head as he leans down to capture your lips with his. His soft lips slide against yours as his tongue presses to urge your lips apart. You gasp as you open your mouth and his tongue slips inside. His tongue dances with your own, pulling a needy moan from you. He pulls back, his smug smile would usually irritate you, but tonight… 

“Sylus, please don’t tease me…”

Sylus tugs at the bottom of your satin top and pulls up slowly. With your willpower dwindling, you don’t stop him. He pulls it over your head and drops it to the floor before tugging his shirt off. He pushes his sweatpants over his hips while he backs you closer to the shower door. Your chest heaves as you take in his naked body.

“First we get you cleaned up, then I’ll take care of you.”

“Sylus! I –” You gasp.

“You what, kitten?”

You place your hands against his stomach, your eyes seemingly unable to stop staring down at his cock. Your chin trembles, he reaches around you to open the shower door. You feel a cool mist coat your back and the lavender overwhelms your senses.

“It isn’t – I’m – I’m bleeding and it’s –”

“You think I’m afraid of a little blood, is that it, kitten?”

“Well obviously it isn’t just 'a little blood’ now is it?”

You couldn’t hide your frustration any longer. He was acting like it wasn’t a big deal and the mess didn’t bother him. You had just bled all over his bed and he knew how embarrassed you were, why was he being so annoying?

“You bleed every month. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. There’s usually not much I can do to help you through this time, but this… This I can help you with.”

You open your mouth to protest, his hands circle your shoulders and he backs you into the shower completely. As the warm water rushes over your skin, you close your eyes and tilt your head back. Sylus runs his fingers through your hair, massaging your scalp. You meet his eyes again, seeing them glow in the dim light. You knew he was hungry, that he wanted this too. 

You look to the floor and see the water run pink. The dried blood slowly rinsing away from your skin. Sylus lathers soap onto his hand and kneels before you, washing your legs and thighs until the water runs clear. You rested your hands against your stomach, feeling bloated and self-conscious again. Sylus recognized that look, he moves your hands away and places kisses across your stomach and hips. You couldn’t stop yourself from leaning against the shower wall and sighing. His hands caressing the backs of your thighs. 

“Sy…”

He stands, turning you around so you lean against his chest, your hands braced against the shower wall. He works the soap over your shoulders and arms before moving to your stomach. He makes his way up your torso until he cups your breasts, his thumbs lightly flicking over your extra sensitive nipples. You moan as he pulls you under the water to rinse before lathering the soap across his own body. You turn back around and run your hands over his chest and arms, the water running down your hands to rinse the soap away. Sylus hums as he feels your hands roam and settle low on his hips. He dips his mouth to your neck as he turns off the water. Your back arching off the tile wall, pressing your chest against him. 

“I’ll make a mess…” You whisper.

He grabs a towel and places kisses along your shoulder while he dries you. 

“I don’t care if I have to buy a whole new bed, you’re not going to sleep tonight frustrated or embarrassed, do you understand me?” 

He scoops you up and carries you to the bed bridal style. He sets you down and walks over to a cabinet across from the bed. He takes out a thick blanket and spreads it out on the mattress. You blush and glance down at your naked body. You hated the idea of ruining his things, even though you knew you couldn’t control it. Sylus immediately caught onto your concern.

“It’s a special blanket I got a few days ago. The tag said it was ‘the most reliable waterproof intimacy blanket on the market.’ I guess we will put it to the test, won’t we?” 

Your eyes widen as you glance between the blanket and Sylus. He bought a sex blanket? 

He presses you back onto the bed, you crawl on your elbows backward, squeezing your thighs already worrying about leaking. Sylus leans down over you, one hand settling by your shoulder while the other rests on your knee.

“I want you to relax. Let your body respond how it needs to.”

Tears pool in your eyes, no one had ever been willing to do this when you were on your period. And he was being so gentle and sweet, wanting you to enjoy yourself without worry. Your clit throbbed, aching for friction. You hated how horny you’d get during your period. Everyone talked about ovulation hormones, but no one talked about period hormones having a similar effect. The simplest thing could make you moan and tremble. 

You lowered yourself to the bed, letting your back settle into the silky blanket. Sylus crawled on top of you before pulling your leg open. You let your hip relax as he looked down and trailed his fingers down your inner thigh. You close your eyes and hold your breath, still worried he would change his mind once he felt your blood on his hand. 

“Breathe, my love…” His warm breath tickles your ear, his voice low and husky. His fingers finally touch you where you need him most. 

His fingers circle your clit, already swollen from being frustrated for the majority of the day. He pinches lightly, your hips lifting off the bed in response. Every part of your body was more sensitive and you couldn’t stop yourself from responding, loudly. You feel one of his fingers circle your entrance and you tense, he lowers himself to his elbow and dips his head to take your swollen nipple in his mouth. A delicious burst of pleasure spirals through your chest. He licks, sucks and nibbles as he works his finger around your entrance. 

You could feel how slick you were and while you knew it was partially your arousal, you knew you were bleeding. But every time Sylus felt your body tense, he would shift his mouth. He took your other nipple between his teeth and circled his tongue over its peak. The tension melts away as you arch your back off the bed to push your breast further into his eager mouth.

Your hips were stretching wider and wider as Sylus worked you, his fingers dipping inside of you finally. He stroked your sensitive walls slowly, feeling your body writhe and your fingernails dig into his shoulders. 

“Does it hurt?”

You shake your head, his purposeful touch makes your head swim. You start grinding against his hand. He places his hand flush against you and rubs his palm against your clit. You lift your head to look down, expecting to see his hand covered in your blood, but his lips meet yours and your head tilts back onto the mattress. 

“Do you want more?” He mumbles into your mouth.

“God yes… please…”

Your thrusts match your whine as you dig your heels into the bed to push his fingers further inside of you. Your mind is fighting with your hormones, you want to be worried, but it feels so good you can’t focus long enough to visualize the mess you’re making. 

You whimper as he removes his fingers, he doesn’t let you lift your head, his kiss holding your attention. When you feel the tip of his cock slide along your folds you shake and gasp, your eyes flying open. He presses his forehead against yours, keeping you still. 

“Sy, I need…” 

He slowly presses his cock into your entrance, your body tensing.

“What do you need, angel?”

You can’t speak, your body shakes as he pauses, letting your body relax and stretch for him. You reach your hands up to his hair, still damp from the shower and grab a fistful. You yank his head back and he groans.  

“I need you I need y-ou I need you I need ughh fuck…”

You ramble until he pushes into you in one thrust and bottoms out. You cry out feeling him hit your g-spot immediately. Your chest heaves as your walls pulse, damn near vibrating with pleasure. He tucks a hand under your arm sliding up to your neck and lifts you to where you’ve trapped him by pulling his hair.

“Do you want me to be gentle or rough, angel? Speak to me.”

You place kisses over his cheeks, his nose, over his eyelids. Your hands loosen and you let his hair go, locking your arms around his neck and your chest against his.

“Sy… ahh mhm…”

You can tell your body wouldn’t mind if he fucked you so hard you splattered the walls and couldn’t walk tomorrow. But hearing him call you angel, his voice gentle and his attention being solely on you and making sure you don’t get distracted by… wait, what embarrassed you earlier? You just wanted him close to you, touching you, holding you, whispering to you.

Sylus moans and pulls out to slowly push back inside of you. There’s no resistance, he slides in and out with ease, but he keeps his movements slow so you feel everything. In a stark contrast to his cock, his mouth races across your chest. He captures a nipple and suckles before nipping at your collarbone or fully biting at the fullness of your chest. 

Your hips press into the mattress and you work to keep your legs open. You want to wrap your legs around him and thrust, but he’s fucking you so perfectly and you don’t want to ruin it. Yes, you want to flip him over and ride him so hard until he has tears in his eyes. You want to deny his orgasm until he is begging for it and his fingers are digging into your hips leaving instant bruises. You want to get on all fours and tell him to fuck you from behind, wrapping your hair around one of his hands while he chokes you lightly with the other. 

“You want me to be rough, don’t you?” 

Your eyes fly open and you stare at him. He traces your forehead with his nose, his breath tickling your lashes.

“Your tense, restless. Tell me what you fucking need.” 

You bite your lip and moan breathlessly as he rams into you harder and harder.

“Fuck m– ugh… fuck me fuck me until– until I scream…” 

Sylus doesn’t hesitate. He drops you onto the mattress and plants both hands by your head. His knees push your thighs upward. He rises to his knees, his cock still buried inside you. He reaches down and pulls your legs up, holding your legs flush against your chest. His hand wrapping around your thighs, his grip tightening as he pulls out only to ram back into you harder and harder.

“Moan for me, whimper and moan until you can’t stand it and then when you’re about to come, scream. Scream my fucking name. I want to hear you when you come all over my cock, angel.”

He doesn’t talk to you like this in bed normally. But your neediness is different. It’s not desperate, it’s commanding. Maybe it’s the hormones? It doesn’t matter, he is matching your energy and giving you exactly what you need and nothing less. The aggression is mutual and it’s making you feral.

His pace is rapid and you can’t close your eyes. Your gaze locks onto Sylus, his cheeks red, sweat trickling down his forehead, his eyes half-closed, his mouth slightly open as he gasps. Your moans and whimpers turn into grunts and gasps, your body wriggling to get away from the intensity building at your core. 

Finally you scream, you scream so loudly you know Sylus’ neighbors would probably think he is killing someone... again. Sylus doesn’t slow down, he releases your legs and leans down to grip your hip. You come hard, your orgasm intense and overwhelming. You scream his name over and over and then you feel his movements stutter. His hips snap forward and he groans your name just as loudly. You feel the heat of his release spreading and leaking out of you already. He forces himself to continue to move his hips, working you both through the high. 

You lift your arms over your head and grip the edge of the mattress above you. You’re almost tempted to pull yourself away from him as you near the point of over-stimulation. Your swollen clit and tender pussy ache from the exertion. It’s a welcome ache, but you can’t handle much more.

Sylus pulls out and nearly collapses on top of you, letting out a sigh before nuzzling into your neck. You press a sideways kiss to his temple as you rub his back slowly.

“Are you okay?” He asks.

“I’m perfect.”

He lifts his head and looks at you. He smiles and shifts his hips, this is when you feel how slick your bodies are against each other. Your stomach tightens. You try to lift your head to look, but Sylus stops you. He hovers over you and looks at you with a stern expression.

“You’re going to close your eyes and I’m going to carry you to the bathroom for another shower, okay? I’ll take care of everything once you’re settled in the living room.”

“The living room? Oh god, I ruin –”

Sylus reaches down to cup your pussy, the sudden touch making you jump and whimper.

“What did I say, kitten?”

“I – you…”

He circles your sore clit with the pad of his finger, pressing harder than he needs to. You pull your hips backwards into the mattress, groaning.

“Okay, okay! I didn’t ruin anything.”

“We are going to the living room to watch a movie with dinner. The bed is fine.”

You sigh as he kneels over you. You stare at the ceiling trying to stifle the temptation to look. You finally close your eyes and feel Sylus pick you up, once again carrying you bridal style to the bathroom. 

“And don’t even think about peaking over my shoulder.”

You giggle into the crook of his neck and squeeze your eyes closed. You hear the bathroom door close but you keep your eyes closed reveling in the tender moment. Sylus walks right into the shower and turns it on, letting the water warm as it spills over your skin. He holds you for a while, twisting from side to side to let the water rinse over your skin. He puts you down and takes care of you, washing your hair and using your favorite soap. 

The rest of the night you are at ease, satisfied and sore. Sylus holds you in his lap after dinner, holding a heating pad to your lower stomach and feeding you chocolate covered strawberries. You lean your head back against his chest and fall asleep. When you wake up the next morning you are in Sylus’ bed with no blood stains in sight. Sylus walks in the bedroom with two cups of coffee and sits down next to you. You smile and sit up to wrap your arms around him.

“What’s this for?” He whispers into your hair, wrapping an arm around you to hug you back.

“I just… Last night… Thank you.” 

“Of course, my love. Now that I know your symptoms, I can better take care of you.”

He leans back and winks at you. You roll your eyes, but can’t help but smile. 

“You’re going to be insufferable, aren’t you?”

Sylus chuckles before pulling you into a gentle kiss. You’ve never felt so safe. The embarrassment you felt, a distant memory. Sylus never judged and he loved you no matter how messy you might become. Yeah, he can be insufferable if he wants to. After last night, he’s earned it.

You crossed your arms and pouted. You’d been tarrying about your father’s study for the last hour, hoping he’d change his mind. But tonight, no matter how you twisted and turned your words, he seemed determined to remain unswayed.

Frankly, it was annoying you to no end. Your father had always been resolutely obstinate, but rarely when it concerned you. Every bloodsucker, far and wide, freshly turned and centuries old, knew that the King of Vampires, Sukuna, could never deny his daughter her heart’s content. You were the apple of all four of your father’s eyes, and all you had to do was simply exist.

It had been this way since the beginning. You occupied the largest wing in the castle, which was redecorated every season according to your mood, while the furniture in Sukuna’s own wing remained as permanent as the prime immortal himself, unchanging since the dawn of time. You loved roses, so Sukuna had captured employed a team of alchemists and gardeners to drape the expansive gardens with every imaginable species of the flower, and to ensure they were in perpetual bloom all year round, including winter. Whenever you attended any of your father’s audiences, it was customary to greet you first before Sukuna, and whenever you were absent, it was customary to ask after your well-being before uttering anything else. The more creative a compliment towards you that one could conceive, the more inclined Sukuna was to listen to their plights.

No request you made, however fanciful, however outrageous, was too much for Sukuna to grant. 

Except this. Except when it concerned Satoru Gojo.

“What if I bring Uraume along?” you tried again. “Certainly you won’t object to that.”

“It changes nothing. And Uraume is busy. The blood moon is less than a month away, and there is much left to be prepared for the Red Feast. Our pens are not yet fully stocked. I should like to avoid feeding our guests rat wine during the night of my daughter’s betrothal announcement.”

“Then all the more you should let me go out tonight,” you pressed. “Since, my dear father, I have yet to decide who I wish to be betrothed to.”

“Mmm, and you seem to be taking your own sweet time with it.” Sukuna raised an inquiring brow at you. “I should think a hundred years was long enough for you to find someone to your liking. And since we’re on the topic of suitors, this Zenin boy you are so insistent on meeting tonight—I was under the impression that my daughter had better tastes than that.”

“What’s wrong with Naoya?”

Sukuna did not look amused. “Only in so much as I believe him to be a waste of your time. The boy has no respect for our ways and behaves like a rabid gutter rat during hunting season. If he weren’t a Zenin, I’d have him staked out under the sun by now.”

“Well, I disagree. He’s been perfectly nice to me.”

“Everyone is nice to you, my dear. Unless they’d like to perish most painfully. And I said the boy is a waste of time, I never said he was stupid. He’s a power hungry maniac—“

“Speak for yourself, father.”

“Yes, but I am powerful. The Zenin boy merely thinks he is, in which, he is sadly mistaken. You are my only daughter. The Crown Princess of the Night. You will be the Queen of Vampires when I retire. I’d hoped you’d at least settle on someone more… amenable. Someone who delights in giving you everything as much as I do.”

“But he stirs something in me, father.” You didn’t want to say it was because Naoya gave good head. “And he’s always bringing me gifts. Like tonight. He said he has something he wants to show me, and that I won’t want to miss it.”

“There is not much difference between wanting something and pure stupidity.”

“Are you calling me stupid?”

“Far from it, but you will be if you insist on going out, which you will not. I do not wish to wake tomorrow night only to discover I am short of a daughter.”

Naturally, for someone who was used to getting everything you wanted, hearing the word ’no’ was an unusual experience. You weren’t used to it, and you certainly didn’t like it.

Your beaded slippers tapped the cold stone floor with equal persistence. You huffed. “I fail to see what’s so dangerous about this slayer. It’s all merely rumours. Surely if he’s so incompetent, then there’s nothing to be worried about Satoru Go—“

Your father’s answering growl was vicious, causing you to hesitate. The glow of the candelabras caught in all four of his ancient eyes, and you saw that his irises had deepened from a glittering crimson to icy black voids. 

“Never speak his name in these walls.” But Sukuna must have caught your slight flinch, because his tone softened immediately. He sighed, and put down the tome he was reading, finally paying you his full attention. “Ask yourself this, daughter—if there are rumours abound of a singular individual, then is there not some truth to them? Incompetent he may be, but there is a reason he is called the Six Eyes. And if he truly is as lousy as they say, then why have none of our kind managed to survive an encounter with him?”

You frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. If no vampire has survived the Six Eyes, then who is spreading all these rumours? And how do we know they’re true?”

Sukuna watched you in silence, as impervious as the gargoyle statues carved into the castle’s exterior. His fingernails, sharpened to wicked points, rapped against the intricately carved mahogany desk before him. 

“That is a story for another day, dear daughter,” he said at last, and picked up his tome. “The only thing you need to be concerned of tonight is staying within the castle grounds. I’m certain you will find something to occupy yourself with for one night. Go torture one or two of the gardeners should it please you. But if you do feed on any of them, remember to let Uraume know so we can find a replacement.” 

He waved one of his four hands, signalling that your conversation had come to an end. 

You wanted to argue. Wanted to stomp your foot and demand he put that tome down again. But you resisted. You were smarter than that. Your father might acquiesce to most of your wishes, but he wasn’t a pushover. Whining he could take, but a tantrum you knew for a fact he wouldn’t tolerate. His default mood was already surly, and toying with his temper by showing your own was a bad way to go about it. 

No. Safer to just do it behind his back. 

Which was why the moment you left your father’s study, you announced to your servants you were going to sulk and wished to be left alone, then proceeded up to the castle’s highest tower, and leapt right out the window. 

Your eyes closed, savouring the sensation as you plummeted down and down and down. The thrill of it. And when you opened them again, you saw that the ground had nearly swallowed up the distance. You grinned.

Not yet. Not until the last seconds. 

A rise in your chest. A tingle. A beat? You clutched on to the feeling. A feeling you couldn’t name but could not resist chasing. 

Three…Two…One… the ground expanded around you.

You shifted.

Great membranous wings sprouted out your back, unfurling. Then you were soaring up and away, into the night sky, the cold winter winds beating against your colder skin, and with your back to the moon, you flew further and further away from the cliffside castle you called home, headed for the forest. 

Up here, among silence and the stars and pale, silvery light of the moon—the only light you ever knew—your breaths eased, and you could not help but wonder if this feeling was as close to what the humans described as peace. 

For vampires did not feel like humans did, yet it fascinated you so. That all it took was a beating heart to conjure an unfathomable amount of emotions, and if you dared admit, was the one thing about humans you envied. Because the thing in your chest—if you even had one—had never once moved. It was still when you were born, and would remain so for eternity.

You spotted the clearing where you were to meet Naoya, the midpoint between the castle, the Zenin Estate and the human settlements. But you remembered your father’s warning about the Six Eyes. That Satoru Gojo was on the hunt tonight. Your predator’s vision zoomed in like a magnifying glass, searching through the darkness of the trees below. 

You saw Naoya. He was in his vampire form. The idiot. Every creature of the night knew to hide their true form this close to the human settlements. No one wanted to scare their food away. If word spread that a vampire was skulking about nearby, the towns would go into lockdown, merchants would stop travelling through the forest routes, and the slayers would be deployed in droves. There would be no food for the vampires to hunt. They’d have to live off animal blood for weeks, a poor substitute compared to their usual sustenance. 

And then you realised Naoya wasn’t alone. He was kicking something on the ground. Something small and limp—

A human. 

You descended, your wings angled for a quick landing, diving into the shadows of the forest. The moment your feet touched the snow-covered ground, silent and swift, you immediately shifted into your human form. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” you hissed, not bothering to greet him. 

Naoya turned around, eyes glinting in the darkness. His arms spread out in welcome. “Finally. Took you long enough. It’s not nice to keep your betrothed waiting, princess. I was growing bored and was about to start without you.”

“You’re not my betrothed yet. And is that...“ Your eyes widened at the bloody lump of flesh, unmoving on the dirty snow. 

“Your gift. To celebrate our union.” Naoya grinned, fangs flashing. “Don’t worry, it’s alive. Barely. But still breathing. I’d never feed you expired produce.”

“Naoya, that is a child.” 

“So it is. Females are always so perceptive, aren’t they?” Naoya spared a glance at the prone body. A girl that looked not even past ten years of human age. “Go on. Have the first bite. Or we can do what we usually do—you may feed on it while I feed on that cunt of yours. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, my little slut—”

“We’re not supposed to feed on children,” you cut him off. “It’s against our rules, and the pact my father made with the first mortal king. You know this. Hunting them down this young will only dwindle our supply.”

But Naoya seemed genuinely surprised. “You’ve never tried a child before? And here I am thinking you’re not as innocent as you make yourself out to be.”

You stared at him. “How long have you been feeding on children?”

Naoya shrugged. “Long enough to know they taste better than aged blood. They’re sweeter. Fresher. Like a clear, crystal lake.” He grabbed the child, dragging its body through the slush of snow and earth before dumping it in front of you. “There’s a first time for everything, princess. Try it. You’ll never want go back to sucking aged blood once you do, trust me.”

“No,” you said, firmly. “Return it. Make it seem like an accident. If the humans find out you’ve been hunting their young, the pact will be annulled and the slayers will have free reign to invade our lands. And the child deserves to experience mortal life before becoming our prey.”

Naoya frowned. “I don’t remember you being this… opinionated. It’s unbecoming of you, princess. I think I much prefer that mouth of yours when it’s moaning my name.”

“I’m serious, Naoya. Put the child back where you found it.”

He moved then, like a fault in time, a warping of space, his preternatural speed placing him behind you before you could blink. With him in his vampire form and you in a human’s, your own reflexes were dulled, and the next thing you knew, he had his fist in your hair, his fangs grazing up your neck. 

Naoya licked the shell of your ear. “Don’t play coy, princess. If this is your way of asking me to fuck you before we feast, then it’s better to just beg.”

“I’m not playing around, you idiot.” You tried pushing him away, but his grip on you tightened, sharp fingernails digging into your skin. Good sex or not, you were starting to question why you liked him at all. “Stop. I mean it. Let go of me or else—“

But Naoya was laughing. “Or else? Or else what?”

A rip. He’d torn through the neckline of your dress. Your sleeve split down your shoulder. 

“Admit it,” he was saying. “You like it when I treat you like a disobedient slut. When I shut that mouth up with my—aargh! What the fuck?“

Naoya’s grip loosened, his head snapping around, then down.

There was something white on the ground. Something so mundane yet so out of place in the middle of a forest that it confounded you just as much.

Was that… garlic?

A rustle in the silence. 

A man was standing in the clearing, as if he’d materialised out of blank space like an apparition. The first thing you noticed was his white hair, as white as falling snow. Then his eyes…

“Ah… excuse me, miss,” he seemed to be speaking to you. In one of his gloved hands was another bulb of garlic. “I couldn’t help but notice you seem to be in a bit of a pickle. Might I offer you some assistance?”

The sudden presence of another—human? Yes, he was definitely human. You didn’t before, but you caught his scent now. Smelled the blood flowing in his veins, rich and heady and oh so sweet…

But how could a human have evaded your senses? Even Naoya, in true form, hadn’t noticed the man until he’d shown himself. It baffled you, and apparently Naoya as well, because he was as speechless as you.

You asked the only question that came to mind. “Who are you?”

The man stepped forward, moonlight casting silver lines across his face, pale and young and pretty; illuminating his tall, lithe figure, clad in the simple leathers of a village hunter. 

He cleared his throat. “Well, you see, I’m a vampire slayer. And that there, as I’m sure you are already aware, is a vampire—“ he gestured at Naoya, somewhat carelessly. “I regret to tell you this, miss, but that thing isn’t going to kiss you if that’s what you’re expecting.”

“You’re a slayer?” 

He must have thought you were rendered stupid because he spoke slower this time. “Yes, ah… I’m sure you’ve heard of the occupation. I slay vampires for a living. As in return them to dust. Vanquish them. Kill them, to put it simply.”

“You pelted me with garlic, you fool,” Naoya growled, having recovered from the man’s unexpected intrusion. “Only an imbecile would do that.”

The man’s—slayer’s—eyes, a deep entrancing blue that glowed in the darkness like the heart of a flame, settled on Naoya. “Well, it caught your attention, didn’t it? So I’d say it worked.” His tone hardened then. “And shame on you. Preying on a child and giving such a lovely lady false hope. I don’t tolerate rakes who go around breaking hearts, much less vampires. And it seems you are both.”

But Naoya was laughing. “Oh, you are hilarious. What kind of slayer confronts a vampire without holy silver? It almost makes me want to spare you out of pity, which I won’t, just so you know.”

The slayer merely grinned. “I’m not asking you to, fiend. In fact, I was actually planning on hitting you in the head again.”

His answer only amused Naoya further because he finally released you, red eyes gleaming with newfound excitement, as if he’d found a new sport.

“Is that so?” Naoya bared his fangs, tongue licking the tip. “Because my suggestion is that you’d better run, slayer. Run fast, and run far. I’m feeling generous so I’ll count to ten, and when I catch you, your throat will no longer be attached to your head.”

To your surprise, the slayer laughed right back. “I wouldn’t bother counting if I were you. I might not use swords, but I’ll have you know I’m quite fast.” He crooked his fingers at Naoya. “Come on, try me.”

Everything in your mind snapped into place then. The man’s sudden appearance. That he called himself a slayer. The garlic. That he wasn’t intimidated by Naoya even without a holy weapon. Your father’s countless lectures swam in your head, solidifying into the only plausible conclusion you now could not deny. 

This man—he was no ordinary slayer. 

You spun to warn Naoya. To tell him to run. But it was too late. He’d already moved, and it was like he’d stretched through the clearing in a single step, no longer next to you but where the slayer stood— 

Or had been standing.

You could have sworn upon your entire undead existence that the slayer hadn’t so much as twitched a muscle. But what you saw with your own eyes was irrefutable. He was there one moment, and then he was simply… not. He’d disappeared like a ghost—no, that wasn’t right. He’d swerved, like a gust of wind, and before Naoya’s fangs could bite into nothing, the slayer was already behind him.

“Watch out!” You shouted. 

The slayer must have thought you were talking to him because he was smiling at you. “Not to worry, my lady. I promise you I have quite a lot of experience in handling vampires—“ Then he did it again, moving as the air moved, feinting another one of Naoya’s deadly slashes. “Not as much as other slayers, come to think of it. Perhaps a higher kill count, though I can’t be sure. Still, quality is better than quantity, that’s what Suguru always told me. Then again, he liked to think he was very profound…”

He continued like this, rambling on and on while he dodged every attack Naoya threw at him.  No matter what Naoya did, no matter how many times he tried, clawing and slashing and pouncing, he couldn’t touch the slayer. Not even a brush. And this only incensed him further. 

“You dare play tricks on me?” Naoya growled, furious, but you could tell he was growing tired. His movements were lagging. “No human can possibly move this quickly.”

Perhaps it was your imagination, but the slayer’s impossible blue eyes seemed to glow brighter. “My gratitudes for the compliment. For that, you get a present.”

It took less than a blink—not even—for the slayer’s fist to connect, fingers splayed as he smashed the garlic he’d been holding this whole time in Naoya’s face. Another hand was wrapped around Naoya’s neck in a chokehold, lifting him off his feet for half a second before slamming him onto the ground. 

Naoya was gasping now. The gasps turned into splutters as the slayer’s boot came down on his face, smooshing the garlic into mush.

“Take—her—princess…”

The slayer put a hand to his ear, but eased the pressure of his boot slightly. “I’m sorry, what was that? You know, it’s rude to speak with your mouth full.”

Naoya heaved, one hand struggling to claw at the slayers leather boot, to no avail, while the other feebly pointed a finger in your direction. “S-spare me—you can have her… she’s the princess...“

Your eyes widened, your body growing rigid. 

Oh, that bastard. He would sell you out to save himself. You suddenly regretted you’d ever entertained him as a suitor at all. 

“Princess?” The slayer lifted a brow, but his boot was twisting into Naoya’s face once more as those blue eyes glanced your way, sparking your veins, yet you never felt your blood turn so cold as it did now. 

“I…” Your mind screamed at you to run. To shift into your winged form and hurtle into the sky. But the compounding thought of your father’s words and the sight before you—Naoya flailing in the snow, the slayer’s unnatural speed, those blue eyes… your muscles were frozen in place, as if dreading the thought of moving. 

“My lady, you never mentioned you were royalty,” the slayer said, perhaps a little awestruck. “You should have said so. I would have addressed you with your proper title. I mean, I knew you weren’t from the villages, because I would have noticed if someone as beautiful as you—ah… my apologies, now I sound like a cad. But you are, ah, that is to say, beautiful. Very much so—“ He paused, glancing down briefly. “Excuse me, Your Highness. I’m just going to…”

He stomped on Naoya’s face again. And again. And again. And you watched in horror as a wet crack pierced through the clearing.

Naoya went still.

“Again, I apologise,” the slayer said, finally removing his now bloody boot off your former suitor. “You shouldn’t have to see that. But I should warn you not to go near it since it’s still alive. There are only two proven methods to completely vanquish a vampire—holy silver and sunlight. Don’t be afraid though, I might not have any silver on me but I have a way to make sure this one won’t regenerate before—“

“You’re—“ you found your voice at last. “You’re the Six Eyes.”

The slayer grinned, and it took everything in you to keep from turning on your heels and running as he approached you.

“At your service.” He bowed, then took your hand and kissed the back of it. “And it’s Satoru, Your Highness. Satoru Gojo.” He winked. “Now, let’s get you and that child home, shall we?”

He was prattling again.

“There, all done. I made this one extra deep, so I don’t think it will be able to crawl out any time soon. Well, I guess it could sprout wings, but I made sure to break all its bones just in case. Besides, I doubt it will wake up until sunrise, so it doesn’t matter since it will be fried to a crisp…”

You stared into the mouth of the pit, in which Naoya had been tossed, his body swallowed by darkness. A part of you almost felt bad for him, but then again, he did try to offer you up on a platter to save his own sorry ass. 

The Six Eyes—Satoru Gojo—dusted his gloved hands, cheerfully, as if he’d finished tending his garden and not condemning one of your kind to dust. “You’re very lucky this one’s quite dense, Your Highness. The only reason I managed to track you down was because it was dumb enough to assume its vampire form this close to the borders. And to think, I was about to take a nap and miss out on meeting the most beautiful person I’ve ever—”

“Are there more of these pits around the area?”

“Huh? Oh, yes. Took some time to dig them all,” he said, a little too proudly. “They’re quite effective, if I do say so myself. Helps to keep the vamps trapped since there’s only one of me, and I can’t be out patrolling all the time. I installed spikes at the bottom, too. Holds them in place until either me or the sun arrives, whichever comes first.”

You didn’t know if you were more horrified or impressed with his methods. They were odd, certainly unorthodox. Every slayer you’d encountered previously (and killed, but he didn’t need to know that) treated a silver sword like their third leg, brandishing and poking the weapon in your face, desperate to impale you with it.

But not the Six Eyes. Not Satoru Gojo. Apparently, he preferred throwing root vegetables and digging holes in the ground. 

So this was what the rumours meant about him being incompetent but effective. All this while, you’d assumed he was just some dunce with luck on his side. But you knew better now. There was nothing lucky about that incredible reflex—Naoya’s speed was unrivalled among vampires, but the way Satoru Gojo had so easily taken him down, as if he was swatting a fly… no mere mortal would ever be able to accomplish such a feat.

“I have a question, Six Eyes” you said, trying not to sound as though you were prying. But you had to know more about him. For your own survival, of course.

“Anything, Your Highness. All you have to do is ask.” He’d picked up the child and was gently cradling its mousy-looking body, and the sight of it—of something so fragile, so helpless, in his arms—you couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like if it was you instead. “You are under my protection from now on. Until I return you safely to your home, whatever you wish, whatever you desire, I am at your disposal.”

You would have found it charming, if it weren’t for the fact that you were the very creature he hunted. 

“Are you—“ There was no way around it except to put it plainly. “Are you human?”

He seemed genuinely taken aback by this. Perhaps slightly insulted—no, that was not it. You saw his brows furrow, his smile fall away. Almost as if he was…

“Have I given you cause to be afraid of me?” His concerned tone confirmed it. “Do you distrust my nature? Because I swear upon heaven and hell that my blood is mortal. I slay creatures of the night. I’d never hurt you, Your Highness. Please believe me. May lightning strike me dead if I—“

“Well, it’s just that what you did to Nao—that vampire—I’ve never seen a human move that fast.”

“Oh, you mean my excellent perception.” Like a turning of the page, he was back to smiling. “Why didn’t you just ask? It’s not a secret. Not really. I’ll tell you all about it if you want. Takes an hour to reach the nearest village, so we have plenty of time. I’ll drop the child off first and then escort you back to—ah, which kingdom did you say you’re from?”

You stiffened. “Kingdom?” You pointed in a random direction. “It’s that way.”

“Are you sure? It’s all mountains over on that side.”

“Ah… I’m not sure. I thought it was. I’m not very good at… maps.”

“The closest kingdom that way would be where Poenari Castle is. Come to think of it, I did once hear the princess there was renowned for her beauty, but I’ve never been—

“Yes, that’s the one,” you said, quickly. If he’d never seen the place before, then it would make it easier to fabricate a story until you found a way to escape him. 

And you would have to do it soon. In a few hours, to be precise. Before the sun rose and you were turned to dust.

But for the time being, your immediate problem was Satoru Gojo and his insistence on becoming your knight in shining armour. You were not unaware that you were now probably the only vampire to have survived an encounter with the Six Eyes. A disturbing thought, since you were currently stuck with him, and the only thing saving you was your very, very wise decision to stay in your human form. 

“Great! Then we’d better get moving,” he said, and began leading the way, leaving you with no choice but to follow him further away from the vampire territories. “It’s going to take us at least six days’ travel to Poenari Castle."

You halted.

Six days? You didn't have six days. You didn't even have six hours.

"We’ll stock up on supplies and hire a carriage in the village. Can’t have a princess travelling on foot the whole way—“

“I—I can’t go to the village.”

He stopped, and gave you a confused look. “Why not? Are you tired? Are you hurt? Did that vampire bite you somewhere I didn’t see?”

“It’s just—well, the thing is—“ You racked your brain for any plausible excuse, pulling up whatever you could recall about New Transylvania’s human settlements, whatever your father had told you about them. But all you could remember was that it had its own castle, not so different from your own…

A castle. With a king and a queen. And more importantly, there was a prince…

An idea started to form. 

“Well, you see, I can’t go to the village because I don’t want the prince finding out my whereabouts,” you said before you could regret it. “I’m betrothed to him. I—I ran away. I got lost. A vampire found me. Then you came along.”

You felt a strange hammering in your chest when he didn’t reply immediately. When all he did was just look at you with those bewitching blue eyes, and it was as if he had put you under a spell. Was this what humans felt like when vampires compelled them? Because you couldn’t look away either.

Anger. Hatred. Fear. Regret. Humans were so simple to read, even when they thought they were hiding it. But with the Six Eyes, you only had more questions. Had you convinced him? Did he believe you? Or could he tell you were lying? It only drew you in deeper.

But then he was nodding. “Well, that explains everything,” he said at last. “I was actually wondering what a princess from a far away kingdom was doing in the middle of a forest at night in New Transylvania, but I thought it impolite to ask.” He turned sharply in another direction. “Change of plans. No village. We’re heading this way now.”

You hesitated. “Where are you taking me?”

Satoru Gojo’s smile widened. “To my home, of course. I’m guessing you need a place to hide, am I right? And contrary to what everyone believes, I don’t actually live in the trees.”

You should have just gone to the village. 

Now you were stuck in the dining room of a decaying manor, alone with a vampire slayer, trying not to grimace as a bowl of what looked harrowingly similar to sludge was placed on the long table. Thick and brown and steaming. Not so different from the stuff Uraume fed to the humans in your castle’s pens.

And the smell—it was odious. It made you want to gag. But the last thing you wanted to do was insult the Six Eyes. 

“Is something wrong with the stew, Your Highness?”

Your face must have shown it because he’d stopped stirring his own bowl. 

“No, not at all.” You smiled, tightly. “It’s just that… I’m not very hungry right now.”

Unfortunately, your stomach chose that moment to betray you, a growl echoing throughout the silence of the dining room. 

The corners of his eyes crinkled upwards. He pressed his lips together, as if trying to keep a straight face, and perhaps, for the first time, your cheeks warmed.

“I know it’s not on par with the kind of fare you’re used to," he said. "But I promise you it’s not as bad as it looks. You must have been out in the cold for hours. A little nourishment will make you feel better. At least take a few bites before you retire for the night.”

Bite. What you’d really like to bite was him. You hadn’t fed the whole night, and it didn’t help that his scent was very, very appealing. Such as humans had different tastes in the food they ate, vampires, too, had their own preferences. Your father favoured bitter blood, with a healthy dose of misery and suffering. Naoya—before you knew he preyed on children—always took his blood young, barely cross the coming of age. And as for you—

There was no blood that smelled as exquisite as what was flowing in Satoru Gojo’s veins.

You tried not to think about how delicious his neck looked, and forced yourself to pick up your spoon. You skimmed the surface of the stew, avoiding the dubious chunks bobbing about, brought it to your mouth, and took a very, very tiny sip.

It was horrendous. You were better off eating rat shit.

With every five scoops he took, you made yourself take one, swallowing down each mouthful with so much force that it must have looked like torture, because he was grinning. 

You frowned. “Do you find me funny, Six Eyes?”

He chuckled, and leaned slightly forward. “More entertaining than funny, I assure you, Your Highness. And please, it’s Satoru. Only dead things call me Six Eyes.”

You didn’t miss the irony of it. “Right… Satoru—so, do you live here alone?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “There’s my little witch boy, Megumi. But he comes and goes whenever he pleases. Unless I need him for a job, he mostly boils grass and sells them as love potions in the villages.”

You counted your lucky stars. Apart from this Megumi fellow, the only occupants here were Satoru and the child he’d left sleeping in one of the rooms. That should make it easy for you to escape this creepy estate—and creepy it was, even for an immortal predator such as yourself. Unlike the candle-lit halls of your own castle, this place was the epitome of doom and gloom. Barren. Mottled. Inside, the cold stone walls were thick with shadows, the dusty furniture like forgotten skeletons. The grounds surrounding the manor house were not much better, resembling a graveyard for dead leaves and brambles, surrounded by towering iron fences, affixed with spikes at the top.

Thank Lucifer you had wings. You’d wait until he retired for the night, and then make your escape.

You steeled yourself, and finished the foul stew. You had a couple of hours left until sunrise. If you hurried, you’d be able to reach your castle before you were reduced to corpse dust. 

“Thank you for the meal,” you said, standing. “If it’s alright, I’d like to rest now. Tonight’s… adventures have left me positively exhausted.”

“Of course, of course.” He rushed to his feet, and began leading the way out the dining room and up a creaking grand staircase to a hall full of doors. He stopped at one of them, and opened it, standing aside for you to enter. “The best room for the best—ah… never mind. After you, Your Highness.”

As you squeezed past him, this close, all your thoughts narrowed on how good he smelled, and a particularly delicious spot just below his ear. 

Satoru’s voice lowered, his previously circumspect manner switching like the sudden turning of tides to something that sprung heated coils below your stomach. “You’re staring, Your Highness,” he said, those blue eyes fixed on you. “Do I have something on my neck?”

You regretted flinching. “What? N-no. Nothing. I wasn’t…” your voice trailed off. You cleared your throat, and quickly put as much distance between yourself and him as possible. “Well, good night. And you don’t have to call me Your Highness.”

“Oh?” Satoru leaned his broad frame against the door like a very tempting feast. Your empty stomach fluttered. “Then what should I call you?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.” It didn’t really matter. It wasn’t as if you’d be around to hear it. “I’ll, ah, see you in the morning.”

He gave you a smile you couldn’t decipher. “I’ll be waiting, princess.”

When he finally left, you loosened the breath you’d been holding all this while. He might still be lurking around so you couldn’t leave just yet. 

Left with time to kill, you began pacing around the surprisingly lavish room. It had been cleaned out, almost like Satoru had expected to have guests. Perhaps this was where he usually slept, and was courteous enough to relinquish it to you for the night. But he was also courteous enough to kill Naoya, so you should stop thinking about him. 

You didn’t know how long you waited, but you deemed it long enough that he was most likely sleeping by now. The bedroom’s window was too small for you to squeeze through, which left you with no choice but to slowly—ever so slowly—turn the knob and inch the door slightly ajar.

The yawning silence of the hallway greeted you as you peeked out. Darkness had never bothered you—your vision was built for it. You slipped out of the room, wincing as the door creaked shut behind you. 

Your feet made no sound as you hurried past the stained glass arches and down the grand staircase, taking two steps at a time. Thankfully, some of your vampiric abilities were still ingrained in human form—night vision, superior stealth—and you reached the carved double doors of the manor’s entrance without any trouble. 

Your hands reached for the dull brass handles when a loud yawn broke through the silence.

You spun, your chest seizing, and found the child Naoya had almost beaten to death standing by a small archway, looking very much alive.

The child yawned again. “About time. I was getting sick of standing around.”

You frowned. “I’m going for a stroll. Go back to sleep, child.”

“A stroll?” A familiar voice spoke then. A voice that froze your entire body stiff. “In the middle of the night? How odd you are, princess.”

Out of the shadows in the archway, like a spectre that hadn’t been there before, stepped Satoru Gojo.

He smiled. “Would you like some company? I’m wide awake, as you can see, and Megumi here doesn’t mind. We’ll bring him along just in case.”

Megumi? Your eyes darted to the child, who grumbled inaudibly. He knew the child? And Megumi was a… he?

Satoru extended an arm towards you. “So, what do you say, princess? It will be safer with the both of us. Who knows what manner of creature might be lurking in the bushes.” His teeth flashed in the most wicked way. “Creatures like you, for example.”

A heaviness seeped into your muscles, calcifying your bones. You couldn’t feel your legs. Neither could you tear your eyes away from his penetrating blue gaze. 

“You know…” your voice was barely audible. If there was ever a good time for your body to move, it was now. But you were trapped. Paralysed. “You’ve known the whole time.”

“I can never understand why you vampires like to think I’m an idiot. Of course I know.” He lifted a finger. “One, my eyes can see through anything. Excellent perception, remember? And no human alive can be as beauti—“ He stopped, as if he’d almost given something away. “Forget number two. You get my point.”

“If you’re going to explain your whole plan, then hurry up,” said Megumi. “I want to go back to sleep.”

Plan? They had a plan?

“You’re ruining the suspense, darling Megumi. I was going to let her—it—ponder for awhile longer before telling her—it—that we’ve been tracking its movements for quite some time now. Weeks, actually. That everything was fabricated and we used you as bait, and it was no coincidence that you were almost eaten by her former lover, which, of course, I’d never let happen to you, my darling Megumi.”

Megumi scoffed. “Not like she’s going to stay to hear the whole story.” He pointed at you. “See, she’s so bored she’s already leaving.”

You didn’t bother answering and threw open the double doors. There was no besting the Six Eyes in a fight, so the only other option was to run. You had to shift into your wings and get as high up as possible before he could catch you. If there was one thing you were sure of, it was that he couldn’t fly. 

Dark open skies stretched above you, and without hesitation, you called forth your wings. 

Nothing happened. 

You were still in human form. 

A lazy tapping of boots followed behind you. 

“Ah… right.” Satoru shrugged, too casually. “I forgot to mention that we might have put something in your stew. A spell, to be exact. Well, Megumi did—not me. But I told him to. Did I mention he’s a witch? So I wouldn’t bother with trying to flap those wings.”

Your lungs hollowed out, and for the first time, you understood what fear truly meant, and it was consuming.

But you were your father’s daughter. The Crown Princess of the Night. If this was to be your end, you would face it with dignity. You refused to die a grovelling fool.

“Fine. You win,” you spat at him, but stood your ground, holding your head high. “If you’re going to kill me, then just do it.”

Satoru raised a brow. “What? Oh no, no, no. You’ve mistaken me. You’re my esteemed guest. I’m not going to kill you… yet. That would certainly do me no favours with your father. And I do so want to meet him again.”

It dawned on you then—the plan he orchestrated, your capture—the real target had never been you. 

The Six Eyes was after the King of Vampires. 

Your voice turned venomous. There was no point in hiding your true nature. Not anymore. “You really are a fool if you believe my father will be so easily defeated.”

Satoru answered with his own grin. “Oh, I don’t believe. I know. Because I now have, in my possession, the only thing Sukuna treasures most in his entire undead existence. And I have no doubt he’ll want it back… most desperately.” He gave you a mocking bow. “A warm welcome, Your Most Immortal Highness. You’re stuck here with us whether you like it or not, so I urge you to make yourself at home.”

You were hungry. 

There was nothing but rodents. Small mice squeaking in the dim corners of the halls, and big, fat rats scurrying about in the barren larder, picking on scraps of rotten vegetables. 

But you would not stoop so low… not until you had to. Three nights had passed since your last feed, and you knew that the Six Eyes knew vampires could technically survive without blood, though they’d be immensely weakened, reduced to a husk—a withered shell of themselves, like a dried prune. But they wouldn’t die. Not truly. 

He was starving you on purpose. The bastard. And perhaps it was even more wicked that he gave you free reign to wander about the manor estate as you pleased, yet denied you of the very sustenance you craved. 

And worst of all? The most delicious blood you’d ever smelled was flowing in the veins of the very man who held you hostage. It seemed you were not only a captive, but captivated with the thought of biting him.

Your skin was starting to itch. The first sign of withdrawal. You’d never experienced it before—being a princess and all that—but it seemed like you were experiencing a lot of firsts as of late. None of them particularly enjoyable. 

You stomped through the garden, as if the snow you crushed underneath your slippers were to be blamed for your current predicament. Dirt clung to the hem of your dress, torn fabric hanging off and exposing your shoulder to the chilly, midnight air. But you’d rather your own clothes than the unsightly peasant’s sack one of them—the Six Eyes or the child—had left outside your bedroom door for you to change into. 

Not wanting to sequester yourself in the manor and breathe the same air as Satoru Gojo—and his maddening scent—you’d come out to the gardens the moment the sun disappeared, only returning to lock yourself in your room again right before dawn. At first, you’d wondered why you weren’t followed. Surely they’d anticipate you would risk the spikes and try to climb over the fence. Your suspicions were soon confirmed when you realised that the fences surrounding the estate had simply… vanished.

And in replacement was an infinite sea of snow, stretching on and on and around the perimeter of the estate. White and never-ending. That little witch boy must have put some kind of enchantment on this place. Whenever you tried to cross what you remembered was the threshold between the property and the outside world, it was like walking in loops, because you’d just pop back out a few steps behind. 

You wandered through the statue garden, where a collection of stern, moss-covered figures stared down at you, as if they were passing judgement on you for disobeying your father, and now you were paying the price for that stupidity.  

“Searching for stray cats to feed on, princess?”

Satoru Gojo stepped out from behind a faceless statue, as if he’d materialised out of thin air. 

You scowled at him. “What do you want?”

He chuckled. “Not so decorous anymore, are you, princess? I was just dropping by to check on how my lovely guest is faring—“

“I’ll fare better when you let me leave this forsaken place.”

“Come now, it’s not that bad. Haven’t I provided you with every comfort? You have a nice room, you can go about the estate as you please, do whatever you wish. Why, I don’t think I’ve treated any vampire this graciously before—well, not that it ever gets to that point since they would already be dead. Like that lover of yours.”

“Stop calling him that. He’s not my lover,” you snapped. “And if you’re here to merely goad me on, then do kindly fuck off. I don’t wish to spend the rest of my walk listening to your inane drivelling.”

“Still pissy, I see, which means you’re doing more than fine.” He shrugged. “Shame. I was going to offer you some blood, but since you’re so energised, I guess you won’t be needing it.”

“If you’re slicing up rats to offer to me, then you can go feed it up your—“

“Rats? Who said anything about rats? You think I don’t know creatures like you are only sustained with one type of blood?”

“You think I’d believe you would draw blood from a human to feed me?”

“Well, I wouldn’t need to draw blood from anyone. I’d just let you take a bite.”

You couldn’t tell if he was being serious. “And who is this person? A condemned prisoner you bought off the gallows? I don’t drink tainted blood.”

“Heavens, no. I would never be so crude, princess. Not even when I slay you…eventually.”

Your eyes narrowed. “Then what kind of human is it?”

“Only the best kind.” His grin widened. “Me, of course.”

Your throat bobbed, and worse, he noticed. He propped himself against the edge of the statue’s pedestal, and tilted his head aside. 

“This is what you’ve been staring at, am I right?” He traced a finger down the side of his neck, taunting. Unravelling the firm grip you had on your self control from the inside out in a matter of seconds. 

You dug your toes into the sharp points of your slippers, refusing to lose any more composure. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

“Why would I? There’s no reason to. I need you looking alive and well for when your father comes to collect you. That is, after he agrees to my demands, which will take some time. It seems being alive for centuries can turn one dreadfully stubborn. Though, I do have something I’d like you to do for me first…”

 He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small vial filled with shimmering blue liquid.

“It’s the same stuff we put into your stew,” he said, holding up the vial for you to better see. “The previous spell should be wearing off, and we can’t have you suddenly sprouting wings. I’m going to need you to drink it before you drink me. ”

A bargain. You should have known his offer came with conditions. And could it even be called manipulation if he wasn’t trying to hide it?

Whether you accepted or not, the outcome would be the same. You’d remain stuck here. It was either starve and turn into a prune, or take the potion and feed on him. Whichever you chose, you still wouldn’t have your wings.

Why make it harder, was what you convinced yourself as you trudged over and snatched the vial, uncorked it, and poured it down your throat, all the while glaring at him. 

“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He said, catching the empty vial you flung back at him, tossing it aside. He patted his lap. “Come here, princess. Time for your reward.”

The annoying tug in your chest piqued again, progressing to a thunderous pounding as you approached, and lowered yourself onto him.

This close—touching—the heady scent of him engulfed you. Irresistible. Intoxicating. 

But you weren’t about to let him reduce you to a mewling buffoon. He’d had the upper hand for long enough. You were born an apex predator. You held the uncontested throne at the peak of the foodchain.

And you would show him exactly how you treated your prey. 

You smiled, and placed your hands on him, sliding them down the solid plain of his chest. Your voice lowered to a soft melody. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about, and I think you can help me out with it, Satoru…”

You sensed his pulse quicken, but those blue eyes remained fixed on you in calm amusement. “Oh? Now I’m curious. As I’ve said before, all you have to do is ask. Though it doesn’t mean you’ll get the answer you’re hoping for.”

Your hand moved up to his undeniably stunning face, tracing the sharp line of his jaw. “I couldn’t help but notice that you find me beautiful. Is it true? Do I appeal to you?”

A corner of his lips curved upwards. “Are you trying to compel me, princess? If so, you need not bother. I’ll simply tell you that while I may find you very, very attractive, I will never forget what you are. What you and your kind do to humans. What your true nature is—” the glimmer in his eyes darkened. “Cold. Heartless. A stain on this world. A creature that should be sent back to the deepest pits of the underworld.”

You felt something sharp dig into the side of your waist, and looked down.

Silver glinted back at you, pale moonlight reflecting off the polished blade.

“A knife?” You laughed. “Are you flirting with me? How romantic.”

He wound an arm around you, locking you in place against the blade’s tip.

“Thrilling, no?” He smirked. “Wouldn’t want you sucking me dry the first time when we have so many more nights to spend like this.”

Oh, he was good. Too good. You’d never met a human who resisted your compulsion this effectively, and at the same time, compelled you right back. 

But two could play his game. 

Your hand trailed to the back of his neck, fingers weaving into his soft, snowy hair. “Clearly, Satoru, you have never been bitten before. Because you wouldn’t be saying that to me if you had. Because instead, you’d be begging me to drain you to a corpse.” 

You fisted his hair, and yanked his head aside. Your lips grazed up the length of his delectable neck.

“Are you ready, Six Eyes?” you whispered. “If there’s one thing I can promise you, it’s that this will be your awakening, and your biggest regret.”

That delicious pulse of his raced under his skin. But he merely scoffed, “Do your best, princess.”

You parted your lips, and what was previously blunt canine teeth started to elongate, sharpening into two pin-prick points. 

And finally, your fangs sunk into his flesh. 

The taste of him—it decimated the world around you. There was no before. There was no after. Only the overwhelming high that floated inside and through you. An inexplicable, devastating pleasure that gushed down your throat and drummed through every fibre of your being. 

If such a thing as heaven existed, then it was him. 

A soft groan. His grip on your waist tightened. “This is—fuck….”

You gulped down more of him, helpless to the ultimate bliss that consumed you. The better he felt, the more you wanted. More than this. More than blood. You wanted everything.

All of him.

Still gripping his hair, you slid your free hand back down his chest, and then further down, and down some more, until you felt him—the thick, straining length of him, hard against your palm. 

Another groan escaped him, louder this time, as you rubbed him through the fabric of his breeches. And the sound he made…it unravelled you, just as much as you knew you were unravelling him. You wanted to hear him again. You could hear him forever.

“Don’t...” His voice had deepened to a slow lull as you increased both the pressure of your hand and your mouth on his neck. “Oh god—yes…”

A muffled crunch. Something heavy had fallen on the snow, and you knew it was his knife. Then his hands were on you, ripping your dress in half down the neckline. 

Icy winds kissed your cold skin, and then his hand was on your breast, the other underneath your skirt, dragging up and up and dipping between the apex of your thighs. 

You moaned, a stream of blood leaking down the side of your mouth, as his warm fingers met what you couldn’t hide, sliding up the centre of your slick folds. 

Never—never before had anyone made you lose yourself like this. Not Naoya. Not all your past suitors. And for a human to—how was he even moving? He was supposed to be pliant. Limp. A puddle of mush under your thrall. 

Instead, your moans grew louder as his fingers worked you in broad strokes. Your feeding grew careless, more blood spilling out and smearing around your mouth. 

You would eat him alive. You would—

You released the fastening on his breeches, tugging the strings loose.

His breath hitched. “What are you—“

You unlatched, your fangs receding back into teeth as you found his gaze. And in his eyes, you saw a war. A collision of heaven and hell. Temptation and sin. The unmistakable glaze of lust, and perhaps, something more. 

“Hush, Satoru,” you said, placing a finger on his lips. Licking his blood off your own. “I’m not done yet.”

You pulled away, and bent on your knees before him. You yanked his breeches down further, freeing his cock—thick and flushed and hard enough to ache. It was a beast.

And damn propriety, you needed all of it. Now.

You pressed your lips to his tip, and licked him. Licked at the beads of moisture seeping out his slit, and then took him in your mouth, and sucked.

“God, I—you’re… fuck it.” He let out a low, guttural groan. His fingers dived into your hair. He seemed to have collected enough of himself, because his voice steadied. “You want me this bad, princess? You can have me.”

You felt the rough tug of his fists in your hair, gripping you so tight your couldn’t move on your own accord. Then he was shoving the full length of him down your throat. 

You gagged, constricting around his thickness that filled you entirely. Your hands clutched onto his hips for purchase, eyes shuttering as he manoeuvred your head to pump you full of him, right up to the hilt. 

“I will vanquish you,” he said. “One day. This, I swear. But today, I will do it with my cock.”

In one swift motion, he pulled out. The next thing you knew, you were bent facing the statue, hands on the cracked pedestal as he lifted your skirt, and plunged two fingers into you. 

It was—your mind blanked.

You cried out as he drove into you, so deep, so unforgiving, his fingers curling just right, as if he knew the exact way to break you apart. 

“So wet, princess,” he murmured, breath ghosting your ear. “And all I did was bleed for you.”

You didn’t get the chance to retort. His fingers thrust again, harder, obscene sounds spilling from the tight clutch of your body. Every pump made your knees buckle, every curl of his knuckles tore another strangled moan from your throat.

His other hand slid up your spine, fingers trailing your exposed skin until they closed around the back of your neck, making you arch for him like you existed for nothing else.

He pressed his lips to the shell of your ear. “You’re going to come on my fingers,” he said, voice quiet as the knife he hadn’t bothered retrieving. “And then I’m going to fuck you. Right here. In front of all my stone-faced ancestors. Let them watch your fall from grace.”

You should snarl. You should spit in his face.

Instead, you rocked back on his fingers like a starving creature chasing a high.

Because that was what he was—your undoing. The deadly storm you couldn’t help but be drawn into. 

“Look at you,” he whispered, and there was a softness in his tone that didn’t match with the words he spoke. “Princess of the Night, losing herself on a human’s hand. If there’s ever a sight I shall remember, it is this…”

He shoved his fingers deeper. You gasped as he curved inside you, so perfectly, dragging a sound from your throat you didn’t recognise, and you shattered, a brutal climax consuming you so fully you couldn’t think past the blinding stars in your vision. 

He withdrew his fingers, making you shudder at the sudden emptiness—only for him to grab your hips, drag you back against him, and grind the hard length of his cock between your thighs, sliding along your soaked heat.

You nearly collapsed.

“Say it,” he murmured, lips dragging down your throat from behind. “Say you want me inside you.”

You heard it clearer this time. He might not be fully compelled but the aphrodisiac from your bite was still flowing inside him. But beneath the manic frenzy, hidden behind the veil of his rough words and rough hands, you didn’t miss it… his desire. His desperation. For you. 

So you spoke what he couldn’t bring himself to say, your voice spilling into the night like a confession.

Not a plea. A recognition. 

“I want you, Satoru… I can’t help it.”

A hitch in his breath. A tremor in his grip. A ripple of unseen power, stirring like a beast awakened.

“You—” his voice frayed. “You’re—fuck.”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence as he twisted you around to lift you up, legs straddling him, and backed you up against the statue, pinning you tight against unyielding stone. 

Yours mouths crashed together, a clash of tongue and teeth, the leash barely restraining the both of you snapping at last. Your hands were on him. His hands were on you. A melding of fire and ice, consuming one another with no end. 

And with his tongue filling your mouth, he dropped you down on his cock. 

You moaned into him, feeling him go deeper, and deeper still. Until you felt him everywhere. In your bones, in your breath. In the frantic, traitorous flutter you barely recognised as a pulse. 

You shouldn’t feel like this. You shouldn’t feel at all. Not for a human. Not for a slayer. Not for him. What you thought was hunger for his blood was—

He thrusted into you again, and you lost your train of thought. All that you were narrowed on the way his cock was stretching you out, so exquisitely, that you could only clench harder around him. As though your body had decided on its own that he belonged there.

“Why do you—” Satoru bit out, only to choke on a groan as your body clamped around him again like a vice. “Why the hell does this—why must you feel so fucking good—”

Eyes heavy-lidded, you peered up to find his gaze fixed on you. An incandescent blue that overwhelmed you, his pupil blown wide, hair tousled from your grip, dark red smears painted all over his neck.

And you realised what he already had. That he was ruined for you just as much as you were for him.

“You shouldn’t fit me like this.” His lips brushed against yours, so tender it jarred you. “You shouldn’t fit like you were made for me…”

A crackle in the air. A surge of—something bigger… ancient. Something inevitable—coiling between and around your bodies. Humming under your skin. Vibrating through your blood. Like a thread pulled taut. A door the both of you hadn’t meant to open.

Something binding.

Something was wrong. 

Your kind didn’t pull. Your kind didn’t bind. Your kind didn’t—

Then Satoru was laughing. An incredulous, bitter laugh. “Oh, this is cruel... fate just loves to fuck with me.”

Before you could form a reply, he was fucking into you again. Harder this time. Relentless. A man possessed. Your fingers dug into his back, clawing against his tunic. 

“S-Satoru—ahn!” You cried out his name. Over and over again as he impaled you, each deep, savage thrust obliterating your mind to dust. Ripping your soul from your body. 

Release barrelled through you as he pushed you over the edge. A bottomless freefall that wiped your mind clean of anything save the explosive rush encompassing you in its totality.  Then you felt him, warm and spilling into you with a final thrust. 

But you didn’t let go. Neither did he. Your mouths found each other again, moving in a rhythm of pure instinct, long and slow, deep and searching for the very thing you could not yet name. 

If you could, you would stay like this forever, with him buried inside you and the heat of his caresses against your tongue. Wrapped in his arms until your bodies became one. 

And for the first time, you were not cold. 

Then Satoru was pulling away.

Gently, he set you back down, and picked up his coat you just now noticed was lying in the snow. He threw it around your shoulders and pulled it closed, the heavy fabric settling over your bare chest where your dress hung in tatters.

He stepped back, and released a heavy breath. 

“Go home, princess,” he said. 

You didn’t think you heard him right. “You’re—you’re letting me leave?”

“There’s a vial in your right pocket.” He gestured at his coat around you. “It cancels out any spell’s effects. I was going to use it if you had succeeded in compelling me, but I guess you’ll need those wings if you want to make it back before sunrise. Megumi’s barrier enchantment answers to my will, so you should be able to cross the threshold now. Besides, I’d advice against walking—I dug up a lot of pits around the area.”

You stared at him. 

He was serious. The look on his face confirmed it, for it was a look you could only recognise as utter defeat. After everything—your capture, his plan to lure your father, his repeated threats to kill you—he would just…send you off?

“Why?” you asked.

But Satoru was already retreating. He laughed, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “Now there’s a question that won’t do you any good if I answer.”

You watched him head back in the direction of his miserable, decaying manor. 

Your feet moved before you could think.

“Wait—“ you called out. Saw him hesitate. “What if—what if I stayed?”

His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t turn around. His reply came too quick. To easily. “My, my, and here I am thinking you’re smarter than this.” He waved his hand, flippantly. “Game’s over, princess. Happy flapping.”

This was it. This was your cue to leave. But instead, you were moving faster, as if there was an invisible string tied around the both of you, connecting you together, and it was pulling you towards him. 

You grabbed his arm, stopping him mid-stride. Satoru’s gaze darted to you, as if he hadn’t meant to but couldn’t help it. 

You reached for his face, your palm resting softly against his cheek.

“If you’re going to lie, Satoru,” you said. “At least look at me while you do it.”

A flicker in his infinite blue eyes, and for once he looked… lost. Like he’d stopped fighting. Not surrender, but acceptance. Like he’d uncovered a terrible truth—a force he knew he could not win.

It was snowing. White flakes drifted down from the sky like a shower of feathers, as quiet as Satoru’s voice.

“Princess...” he said. “I—you’re my—“

The sky boomed. 

Not thunder.

A voice. 

A deafening roar that rattled the stars and shook the lands. The furious roar of a great beast smiting his ire down from the heavens. 

A roar you could not mistake for any other.

“Satoru Gojo!” Sukuna’s menacing bellow echoed with the wind, and the night seemed to grow darker. “You thought I wouldn’t find you first?”

Your head snapped up to the sky, at what you could not see outside Megumi’s enchanted barrier. 

You should be relieved. Your father had come to rescue you. He would kill the evil slayer and take you back to safety. 

You held Satoru tighter. 

Satoru spared one more second—just one—his eyes completely fixed on you, and in that glance, you saw his whole world. Everything he would not show you.

Then his mask slipped back on.

“Huh, daddy’s early,” Satoru said. “Doesn’t sound too happy, either.”

The sky wavered, like the billowing of an iridescent sheet, and began melting as the enchantment over the manor estate broke down bit by bit, the endless snowy plains beyond the threshold dissolving away. You saw the the iron gates, the spiked fences, the forest—

And descending from the sky—a great winged shadow that blotted out the night itself.

The ground trembled as Sukuna, all eight arms and four eyes, landed a few paces from you and Satoru. You also saw the shift in his expression. The cold, immortal fury morphing into a viciousness you had never seen in him before, as he beheld the sight of you and Satoru, bodies pressed up against each other, your hands still on his face.

But your father did not shout or snarl. He spoke, quiet as looming death, and it was worse. 

“You took my daughter. You used her to threaten me. And now you dare defile her?” Both pairs of Sukuna’s crimson eyes narrowed on Satoru. “Have you been so desperate for my attention all these years that you would resort to such unscrupulous tricks?”

Satoru scoffed, and pulled away from you, striding forward. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? So I’d say it worked out fine. I should actually applaud you for finding me this quickly, and for breaking through my barrier. Now if you have no more use for Megumi, do inform your big, fat blood-sucking bird flying above my property to return my witch to me.”

You father’s mouth sliced upwards. “I see your perception has not dulled with age, Six Eyes. Though it will make no difference after I’m done with you.”

Another figure swooped down from the sky, pale and slender, dropping next to Sukuna. 

“My king.” Uraume bowed, and then did the same to you. “Princess. I apologise for the wait.”

But you weren’t focused on any part of Uraume other than what they were holding. Bound with ropes, a gag in his mouth, was Megumi, dangling off the ground as Uraume held him up like hunted game. 

“Has the Six Eyes agreed to the terms yet?” Uraume asked, flatly. 

“I doubt he has a choice, unless he doesn’t mind me gutting his little witch and feeding its intestines to my hellhounds.”

“Father—“ you started, but cut yourself short before you said something damning. It was bad enough that you were wearing Satoru’s coat, and your father was a man who never missed a thing…and it’s implications. “I—he didn’t hurt me.”

All four of Sukuna’s eyes slid towards you, narrowing slightly, as if he saw right through your words. “We shall talk, daughter. But later. I have a bargain I wish to strike with the Six Eyes.”

Satoru’s laugh was humourless. “Bargain? I don’t recall inviting you over for tea and cakes. I called you here to kill you, King of the Night. To fight. One on one. Slayer and blood-sucker.”

Sukuna smirked. “But the battle has already begun, slayer. And you have already lost. Why do you think my daughter hasn’t tried to run to my side? Are you so obsessed with killing me that your Six Eyes can see nothing else?”

Satoru fists clenched. “You killed Suguru.”

“He burnt my wife on a pyre.”

You froze.

Your father had never spoken about your mother before. All this time, he’d led you to believe you were the product of an affair with a low-born vampire. That he’d abandoned her but took you in and raised you as his heir. You didn’t even know her name, if she was even alive and wandering about New Transylvania while you were growing up in a castle with an army of servants at your beck and call. That she’d died. 

“You’ve been a thorn in my side, and menace to my kind for long enough, Six Eyes. It’s time to end this,” Sukuna said, the tips of his claws growing longer and longer to sharpened points. “Listen well, Satoru Gojo, because I will not be so generous if I have to repeat myself again. You will surrender yourself. Willingly. In exchange, I will not kill your little witch. You will be coming with me to my castle, where you will await your execution in front of all my subjects. Uraume will stay here until I have sent word. You will be dead by then, but the boy will be freed.”

What? Your body went rigid. No… 

Megumi bit out a muffled protest and shook his head violently. 

Your legs moved towards your father. Past Satoru, who didn’t stop you. 

“There’s no need for this,” you said. “He was going to let me go when you arrived. Leave him here. We’ll go back home. He won’t come after us, I promise.”

Sukuna glanced down at you, his gaze softening momentarily. But he said, “I do not wish to perpetuate this blood feud any longer, and the only way this ends is with his death. You should have a clean slate when you ascend the throne.”

“I don’t want you to kill him—“

“Not here, daughter. Not now.”

“But I—he and I… I think he’s—“

“Fine,” you heard Satoru say behind you. He sighed. “Have it your way. But if I see Megumi in hell, I will personally come back as a very annoying ghost and haunt you for eternity, which is a long time for someone like you.”

You spun, a horrible pit forming in your stomach. “Don’t,” you said. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t—I can’t let you—“

But Satoru wouldn’t meet your eyes. Instead, he turned to Megumi, still gagged and bound, and said, “Remember to spell the roses. Don’t let them die.” Then he yawned, and stretched his arms over his head. “Alright, shall we get moving before I fall asleep? It’s been a long night.”

The entire castle was convinced you had gone mad. 

The princess… reading? Surely you were not the same vampire they knew. The only times you’d ever stepped foot in the library was during lessons. Even then, you’d always convinced your tutors to conduct them in the gazebo, or while you strolled around your gardens, half listening to whatever they were droning on about. You had not seen a point in suffocating yourself among stale air and dusty tomes when you could be outside with the moon and stars. 

That dastardly Six Eyes must have switched you with someone else, everyone thought. Their Crown Princess was gifted in many things—lounging, frolicking, taking long milk baths and ordering the servants around—but academics was not one of them. 

So it was no wonder you had everyone perplexed, and frankly, immensely concerned, when you arrived back at the castle and proceeded to lock yourself up in the library every single night without fail. It had reached a point where you’d ordered for all of your meals to be taken there, and for a cot to be set up so you wouldn’t have to make the long trip back to your quarters when your eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. 

Because, for once in your immortal existence, you had work to do. That, and you had to preoccupy yourself with something, anything, to keep you from agonising over the fact that Satoru was rotting away in the dungeons below. 

Your father had given explicit orders that no one was to visit the Six Eyes until the Red Feast, which was to be the night of his execution. Not even to sneer or spit in his face. And no matter what you said, or how you said it, he wouldn’t change his mind. 

But tonight would be different. You’d done your research. You’d combed through every text on humans, on slayers, on the history of vampires, from ancient scripts to tomes heavier than a tombstone to the most obscure spell books, until finally finding a thread to follow. 

Slowly, laboriously, you put the pieces together. Slowly, you’d understood.

And now you would confirm it. 

When you entered your father’s chambers, you saw that the thick drapes were pulled open. He was by the window, back towards you, already dressed in ceremonial attire. The pale crimson glow of the blood moon, hanging low in the sky outside, glinted off the rubies embedded into the crown he wore. 

“We should have that talk,” you said, without greeting. He would have already guessed why you were here.

“It will have to wait.” He didn’t turn around. “The feast has begun. We have guests to entertain. You are to announce your chosen suitor tonight. The Zenin boy is dead, so I don’t expect it will be him. But it still doesn’t relieve you of the duty you must fulfil.”

“You are executing my bonded mate tonight, father. I think I deserve answers before you slice him in half.”

Sukuna stiffened slightly. “Are you certain you want to toss that term around so carelessly? Is this why you’ve taken a recent interest in books? I’d advice you not to trust everything you read.”

“Careless I may have been, but it is the truth. I cannot deny it. The same as I cannot deny an impending avalanche. He is my mate. You know this as well as I. Perhaps better.”

“And what makes you think I know anything about it?”

“Well, you should since you had one before. You had my mother. She was your mate, wasn’t she? Before you lost her. She may still be. I imagine a force this strong would be able to persist beyond death. It would explain why you’re always so sullen.”

“If you are hoping I will be persuaded into rescinding the execution, then I will have to disappoint you.”

“I am not hoping for anything. I swear to you I will do my duty and pick a suitor tonight. But first, I want answers.”

For a long while, Sukuna didn’t speak. Then he faced you, and nodded once. Barely. “Ask your questions,” he said. “And I will answer what befits answering.”

“Mother was human.”

“That is not a question.”

“And so am I. Not fully, but enough to… feel.”

“Still not a question.”

You approached him, peering up at his towering figure. “Those are facts, father. What I want to know is why—why would you deny me what completes my soul when you know what it’s like to have lost yours?”

You might have imagined it, but you thought you saw his expression soften. There and gone in less than a blink. 

“Because it is not what we are designed for,” he said. “You are a vampire, daughter. You have been raised as one, and will continue to be one for eons. Until the world had crumbled to ashes and dust, and still you will prevail. Humans are fleeting. They only serve us one purpose. You’d do well to understand this.”

“But Satoru is not fully human too, is he?”

The corners of Sukuna’s eyes tightened. “I do not know what he is—perhaps a sorcerer, but those have been extinct a long, long time ago. What I know is that he is mortal enough. His life is finite. To be rid of him now is a mercy, before the attachment grows. In this, you should trust me.”

“It is already irrefutable, father.” You took one of his hands in yours. The one he always favoured using to stroke your hair when you were little. “Was my mother burnt for being attached to you? Because the humans—this Suguru—found out she was involved not only with a vampire, but with their king?”

You felt his hand tense. Then his fingers wrapped around yours, gently. 

“Listen well, daughter, because I’m only going to say this once—“ Sukuna sighed, and it was the loosening of a breath you suspected he’d held in for a lifetime. “The last time I saw your mother was also the last time she saw you. We’d agreed that we would keep you away from anything to do with humans other than feeding on them. To have a relationship with your prey will only complicate things for you. But your mother could never stay away for long, so every few months, I’d visit her, and take her here. She would disguise herself as a servant and watch you from afar for a few hours. Then I would bring her back to the village before dawn. But on the last night—before she was condemned to die—a slayer saw her. Saw me with her. I wanted to go after the slayer, but she assured me nothing would come of it. She believed no harm would befall her because she was human. I shouldn’t have listened. That is the story. Satisfied?”

He let go of your hand and began striding out the room. “Come. We want to be fashionably late, but not rudely so.”

You followed after him. “So I’m not wrong. You can feel, too.”

A quiet scoff.

“Stare at something too long, daughter, and you will find it stares back.”

Satoru was brought out in chains. 

You hadn’t spoken to anyone since gracing the court with your presence, and had remained brooding in the throne beside your father’s on the elevated dias. Besides the occasional nod, all you did was stare at the roses in the garden—the customary location for the Red Feast—and the moon crowning the night sky, painted the same shade as the flowers you adored. 

Your mercurial demeanour did not go unnoticed, though no one dared comment on it. Especially in front of Sukuna, lest they wanted to end up staked in front of the castle gates. They must have assumed you were not too thrilled about having to pick another suitor since Naoya was no more. It was no secret that he’d been the closest candidate to becoming the prince consort. 

But the moment the music stopped, you sat up straighter. 

Two guards appeared, dragging Satoru through the hush of the parting crowd towards the dias. Heavy manacles bound his wrists and ankles. He was still in the same clothes from that night, now soiled and marred with dungeon filth, his snowy hair limp and matted against his head. 

It seemed your father had succeeded in making the infamous Six Eyes look as pathetic as possible on his last night alive, at least in appearance. But where he’d lost was in Satoru’s expression, for there was nothing pathetic about the resolve in his blue eyes.

Eyes that immediately, implicitly, found yours as he was made to kneel at the foot of the dias. 

A corner of his lips curved upwards.

“Good evening,” he said, gaze fixed entirely on you. “Nice place you’ve got here—beautiful.”

It took everything in you not to shoot up from your seat and run to him. You were clutching the armrests of the throne so hard that the wood started cracking. 

And the court must have seen it, because they took your reaction as their cue to hiss and jeer.

“He is distressing the princess!” someone shouted.

“Scum!”

“Rot in hell!”

“Kill him!”

“Enough,” Sukuna said. 

The silence that followed was instantaneous. 

Sukuna stood, and approached the edge of the dias in a single stride to peer down at Satoru. Your father had never been one to drag a moment with long speeches, preferring to cut straight to the crux of the matter. In this, he was no different.

“I won’t ask if you have any last words, because they are not important,” he said, cold and imperious. “What matters is that with your death, we shall finally have some semblance of peace.”

Sukuna held out his hand. Another guard appeared, hurrying up the dias with a large case, and from it, your father pulled out a simple longsword.

A sword with a blade of silver.

Gasps escaped the gathered court, more than a few retreating back a few steps. 

Sukuna ignored them, and continued. “You will die tonight, Six Eyes, by the very weapon slayers like you use to kill our kind.” He stepped down the dias. “Guards, prepare him.”

You watched as Satoru was forced to bend over on his knees. You couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear anything past the roaring storm in your head, the pounding in your chest. You tore your gaze from Satoru to the blade your father was raising high in the air, positioned for a clean cut.

“Let’s get it over with,” Sukuna said.

He brought the blade down. 

“Wait!”

The blade halted, inches from Satoru’s neck.

You were standing. 

Your father was looking at you, and so was every member of the court. 

Satoru was looking at you.

You willed your voice to steady, and spoke. “I have decided on who is to be my betrothed, father. I wish to announce it.”

Sukuna frowned. “It can wait until after the execution.”

“No. It cannot.”

Your body was moving down the dias, then in front of the silver sword and your father.

“It cannot wait,” you said, “because I choose to be betrothed to Satoru Gojo.”

The escalation happened gradually. For awhile, the only sound was the wind as confusion washed through the entire court. They weren’t sure if they heard you right, only for realisation to hit like a hailstorm when you bent down and took Satoru’s face in your hands.

Ever so gently, you stroked his cheek.

“You’re right,” you whispered. “You and me—we were planned all along.”

Satoru stared at you, and in his eyes, you saw his ruination. 

His lips parted. “Princess, I—“

“Traitor!” 

Someone had stepped out of the crowd. Naobito Zenin. Head of the Zenin clan of vampires, and Naoyo’s father. 

“The princess is a traitor,” he seethed, jabbing a finger at you. “Now it makes sense. You think I’d accept that my son, a Zenin, would be killed so easily? She must have conspired with the Six Eyes to murder him. How else can a slayer known to be so incompetent kill so many of us? The princess was never captured. She was helping him. This whole time, she was fraternising with the enemy!”

His accusation seemed to embolden the crowd. Cries of protests resounded through the garden, and now that head of the second most powerful vampire family had denounced you in front of the king, the others were suddenly much braver. 

“Is this how you raised your daughter, King of the Night?” Naobito growled. “To turn against her own kind? To betray us for becoming a slayer’s whor—”

But Sukuna’s own growl shook the very cliff holding his castle. 

“You dare slander my daughter, Zenin?” Your father was no longer calm. “Open that despicable mouth of yours again and I will fill your throat with silver.”

Naobito dared laugh. “You will do nothing of the sort. She may be your daughter, but she’s just signed her own existence to dust. Or is our king not familiar with the law he created himself? Vampires are forbidden from fornicating with humans, on pain of death. She may be a princess, but she is not exempted from it.”

“He is my mate,” you hissed.

That shut Naobito up. But for only a second. Then his face morphed into something hideous. “You are smarter than I took you for—using our most sacred law to hide behind. There hasn’t been a bond amongst our kind in centuries, and even if it is true, merely declaring it will not save you and your human.”

“That is not what I’m declaring, you swine piss. You forget I also named him my betrothed.”

“Irrelevant. Our law forbids a human to sit on the throne—“

“God,” Satoru’s voice cut him short. “You vampires bicker more than my dead grandmother.” He was still on the ground, the manacles around his ankles keeping him from standing, but he straighten up as much as he could. “Look, there’s a simple way to solve this. Just do what you were going to do before and kill me. There, settled. Now you can all stop fighting over me. I will die, and the princess can go back to being a princess. Happy?”

“No.” You knew what he was trying to do, and you wouldn’t let him. You faced your father. “I do not expect you to break your own laws for me, father. So I will adhere to them,” you said. “Line six hundred sixty three to six hundred sixty six, passage thirty three, volume six of the First Scripture—if a bond is in doubt, then the bonded has the right to prove it by invoking the Sun Trial, after which the claimed bond cannot be refuted should they succeed.”

Sukuna said nothing while he studied you, mouth drawn in a tight line. But you’d caught it—the slight twitch at the corners, something almost akin to approval. He exhaled, quietly, then glanced at the guards.

“Release the human.”

Naobito’s fangs flashed. “This is treachery. I will not stand for this—“

“It is in our laws,” Sukuna interrupted. “Laws that you’ve been proclaiming to know better than me. Are you going to dismiss them now, Zenin?”

“The slayer is still human, and the princess has still committed treason. If you are too weak to strike your own daughter down, then I will do it for you.”

Sukuna’s eyes darkened, but he did not stoop to Naobito’s taunt. “By all means, kill her if you want,” he said. “But you will have to hunt her down first, in accordance with the Sun Trial. As for the human—“

The manacles around Satoru’s wrists had barely touched the ground when Sukuna stepped forward and, in one swift motion, pierced the silver blade through his stomach. 

Satoru’s eyes widened as he stared down at the blade pulling out of him. Stared at the dark gush of blood, pooling. Dripping onto the snow-covered ground before his own body fell, collapsing.

“No…” Everything in you shattered. “No, no, no…”

You dropped down next to Satoru. You were calling his name. Using your hands to staunch the blood, but it was futile. 

“The Six Eyes has received his punishment,” Sukuna declared. “The Sun Trial is now commenced. The Crown Princess and her mate will have to survive until the next nightfall, after which their bond will be recognised, and their union protected by our most sacred law. In the meantime, all vampires, from any status, will have free reign to hunt them down until dawn breaks.” He tossed the blade aside. “On your feet, daughter.”

You were shaking. You glared up at your father. “I will never forgive you for this.”

But Sukuna only peered down, cold and imperious.

“You do not need to,” he said. “Now run.”

At his words, you moved on instinct.

You shifted. Your wings unfurled. 

Then you were hauling Satoru up into the sky. 

You were going to die. 

“There,” you said, dragging Satoru behind a dense copse of trees. “We can’t stay long. You’re going to bleed out if we don’t get you to the village soon.”

“I’m… fine…”

“You’re dying, Satoru.”

“Dying… not dead…”

Gently, you leaned him against a tree trunk, and crouched down next to him. You tore more fabric off your skirt and added to the blood-soaked wrappings around Satoru’s stomach. 

Satoru winced as you knotted it tightly over his wound. His lips were pale, his breaths shallow and struggling. 

“You should go,” he said, finally stringing his sentences better now that he was resting.

“I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“We won’t reach the village… you know this.”

You did, but you wouldn’t accept it. You pressed your hands against his stomach, applying more pressure. “We’ll find a way,” you said. 

Flying was out of the question. The sky was infested with vampires. The entire court was out hunting for you, and if you so much as flapped your wings, they would surround you and that would be it. 

The only option was by foot. To dart between the cover of the forest, but darting implied you could move quickly, which wasn’t the case given Satoru’s worsening condition.

His eyes were falling shut.

You slapped his face.

“Don’t you dare close them,” you warned him, panicking. “Not now that I’ve carried your sorry ass halfway through this fucking forest.”

A weak chuckle. “A kiss would’ve been better.”

“I’ll kiss you after we’re done with this blasted trial. That way you’ll have something to look forward to.”

“What if… I say please?”

You hesitated, the thing in your chest you now recognised as your heart, twisting.

You leaned in, and brushed your lips against his. 

Satoru caught your mouth, deepening the kiss, and you couldn’t help but part for him. For his tongue to sweep in and claim you, long and slow, tender and painfully desperate.

“Like heaven…” he breathed. 

You stroked his cheek. “We should get going.”

“I think... I’ll stay here.”

“I told you I’m not—”

“Listen…”

“No. I’m helping you up. We’re going to keep moving—”

“I said listen…” He tilted his head up, and you realised then what he meant.

Because you heard it, too.

The lack of sound. No more flapping wings. No more screeching.

The sky was silent. 

Which only meant one thing.

Satoru’s gaze met yours again. “You have to go…”

But you’d known this would happen. Your plan hadn’t been to reach the village, but to get him as close as possible before sunrise. You’d perish, but at least there was a higher chance another human would pass through and find him. 

You steeled yourself, and took his arm. “Come on.”

“Princess—“

“Stop being so stubborn. How many times do I have to repeat that I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“I’m not… the stubborn one here…”

“Move, Satoru.”

But he refused, slumping his weight down further against the tree trunk. 

“I said move!”

“You move…”

“You stupid, stupid fool!” You wanted to slap him again, but then you thought he might just keel over and die just to prove a point. You dropped back down on the ground. “Fine. Stay if you want. So will I.”

He choked out a laugh. “Am I…so irresistible?” 

“You are annoying, that’s what.”

“Come here…”

You let him wrap you in his arms, careful to lean against him where you were sure he wouldn’t hurt. Snow was falling, the shadows of the forest shrinking as you sat with Satoru in silence. You sensed the uneven beat of his pulse slowing. 

“What is it like?” you asked. “The sun?”

“Nothing… compared to you.”

“You have to say that. We are bonded.”

“We don’t have to be… for me to think you’re… beautiful…”

You brushed away the hair on his face, and your fingers continued tracing down his jaw, over his lips, as if memorising very line and curve of the man you were supposed to kill. The human who was supposed to be your prey. The slayer you were supposed to despise. The mortal you were never supposed to give up eternity for.

“Well, Satoru Gojo,” you whispered. “You’ve done it. You’ve vanquished me.”

His breaths were slow, the lids of his eyes heavy. But he smiled. “How cruel of me.”

A pale, golden glow broke through the trees. You stared at it, entranced, watching the snow covering the forest floor shimmer. Watched the skeletal branches of the barren trees lighten, the texture on the barks growing defined. 

You watched the sunlight, and it was everything you’d imagined it to be.

You skin started to prickle. 

Then it was searing. 

You crumpled inwards. Your whimpers turned into cries into screams. It was like being tossed into a flaming hearth. Like having the constant lick of fire against your skin, eating you to the bone.

The pain… it was excruciating. 

You didn’t notice Satoru shifting until he was on top of you. Until the burning ebbed slightly and you found his body curled over your own. In that moment, you realised why he hadn’t wanted to move. With his own broad frame, and the shadows casted by the closely packed trees, he’d created a shield for you.

But light was ever fluid, and it leaked into the crevices of your shelter. Biting. Gnawing. Like the scraping of a candle flame against the bare spots of your skin. 

“Be still,” Satoru breathed. “Or it will… be worse.”

“It hurts…”

“You’ll be alright… you have… me…” He pulled you in tighter underneath him. “Talk to me… tell me something…”

He was trying to distract you, but you couldn’t think past the burning. 

“I’ll go first,” he said. “The night we met… I think I was already in love with you, but I… I couldn’t admit it… After Suguru’s death, I went mad… Megumi… he warned me against it, but I… wouldn’t listen… I sneaked into Sukuna’s castle… and saw you…”

It was too painful to speak, so you just whimpered. 

Satoru continued, “You were in the garden… in a red dress surrounded by red roses… and I think… I made up that plan partly to… give myself an excuse to see you again… to keep coming back…”

He told you about the first time he saw you fly. That he’d almost ran out of his hiding place when he saw you throw yourself out a window, and then almost given himself away a second time when he heard you laughing as you swooped up into the sky. So beautiful. So free. 

He also told you about the first time he saw you feed, and how he realised he could never have you. That he had planted roses in his own garden to remind himself you had thorns. That you were his enemy. That he tried to hate you, everyday, but always ended up failing spectacularly. 

The sunlight was blinding now, seeping through your lids and frying your eyeballs. Your muscles were screaming, your bones were melting, your body a shaking ball of flame beneath him. 

Every time you thought this was it, Satoru would tell you to hold on. Every time you were about to give in and start flailing, Satoru would tell you it was almost over. Just a little while more, he’d say. The sun was coming down, he’d promised. 

Somewhere in between, the agony and the solid weight of his body had melded together, and you could no longer tell one from the other. Time was an unending void, and the lure of death was tasting much, much sweeter.

But then the light began to wane. The scorching brightness behind your eyes dimmed. The flames scorching you alive eased to sweltering to prickling to a cool, winter’s breeze that had you doubting if you were still of this world.

Your eyes squinted open, and the dark veil of night greeted you once again.

“S-Satoru?” you croaked out. 

He didn’t answer. You didn’t remember when he’d stopped speaking, and you were suddenly conscious of his full weight pressing down on you. 

Struggling, you slowly lifted him off you. His body fell limp on the snow, and your hands were on him.

“Satoru,” you shook him. “Satoru, wake up. It’s night.”

Silence. 

“Wake up.”

You shook him harder. 

“Wake up!”

Nothing. 

You stared at him, and there would never be anything more profound than that of your heart shattering. 

“I thought you were beautiful, too,” you whispered, stroking his face. Skin was peeling off your hands like scrolls of burnt parchment, brittle and grey, but you were numb to everything but him. 

You leaned down, and spoke against his still lips.

“Whatever I have been searching for in the skies, I now know it is you.” You kissed him. “Please, come back to me.”

You felt it then. The whisper of a pulse. Barely there. A thread away from snapping. 

He was still alive. 

You didn’t hesitate. Your fingers morphed into claws, tearing into your skin.

Red, dark and fresh, streamed down your palm. You held up his head, parted his lips, and let your blood flow into his mouth, down his throat.

And you waited. For his pulse to stop and the thread of his mortal life to snap, and when it did, the change was immediate.

His fair skin, once the dull, matted tint of a human’s, took on the pale, ethereal sheen of moonlight. His stark white hair was glossier, thicker, the lines of his handsome face sharpening to an incredible definition, and there behind his parting lips—thin and pointed and drenched with your blood—were the beginnings of fangs.

A cough. A splutter.

Blue eyes fluttered awake, peering up at you. And they were now a blue so impossible, it drowned you. 

“So it is done.” 

The voice who spoke did not belong to Satoru, but to the immortal who had appeared, as silent as death itself. 

The night seemed to bend around your father as he stepped towards you.

“The Sun Trial had ended, and so has this ridiculous feud,” Sukuna said, crimson eyes settling on you and Satoru. “You have made your choice, daughter. And now, he will make his.”

Satoru sat up, still dazed. He stared at you, then at Sukuna, then at himself—at the subtle glow of his skin, the new movement his hands made as he turned them in front of his face, at the wound on his stomach, no longer bleeding. His gaze found yours again.

“You—you turned me into—“

“She did you a favour, slayer,” Sukuna said. “You would have died either way—I made sure of it. And you are not a vampire yet until you have fed.”

“I did not ask for this.”

“Then go ahead and die for all I care. Do you really think it is so simple to become one of us? If it was the case, there would be many more of us and less of you.”

Sukuna tossed a vial of red liquid onto the snow.

“A vampire can only turn a human once in their entire existence, and my daughter has, for better or worse, chosen you. I cannot fathom why—she’s always had bad taste in men—but in doing so, you now have a luxury even kings cannot claim.” He gestured at the vial. “So choose. Do your treasure your mortality so much you would die for it, or do you treasure my daughter more than life?”

But your father’s words swam in your head.

“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?” you said, fixing him with a look that dared him to deny it. “You waited to execute Satoru so I would find a way to save him. You rearranged the books in the library knowing I would come across the Sun Trial and invoke it. You stabbed him with that sword knowing I would choose to turn him.”

Sukuna merely regarded you, calmly, and said, “If you believe I would go to such lengths for you, my daughter, then I will take it as a compliment.” But you saw the tell-tale sign in his jaw. The feather of a twitch. 

There was no point in wringing it out of your father, so instead, you took Satoru’s hands in yours. 

“Despise me if you must,” you said. “Whatever you choose, I will accept it—I will accept it if you take the blood and leave me. I will accept it if you don’t and leave me. But what I cannot accept is not telling you that I love you. I will never stop. You are the shape of my soul, until I am beyond dust. Until time unending.”

Snow fell in the space between you and him. Satoru looked at you, quietly. Completely. For a long while, he didn’t speak. 

Then he sighed. “Megumi’s going to throw a fit.”

Satoru pulled you against him, and like the force that drew you hopelessly together, your mouths found one another, and it was a kiss to end all that was before, and all that would come after. There was only him and you, and two halves of a desperate wish finally becoming whole. 

“My princess,” he murmured against your lips. “You are the cruelest of them all—making me love you for eternity.”

“Do you not want to?”

“I cannot help it.”

You smiled, and kissed him again.

Sukuna cleared his throat. “If you are done slobbering all over my daughter, slayer, then get it over with. I have other pressing matters than standing here and regretting I didn’t separate your head from your body.”

Satoru simply stuck out his hand.

“Then toss the vial over here, old man. As you can see, the princess is clearly incapable of letting me go just yet.”

It was a time of peace, at least for the humans. The legend of the supposedly incompetent yet deadly Six Eyes had become exactly that—a legend. 

New Transylvania had a vampire prince. A prince who only drank donated blood, and only from his jewel-encrusted goblet. A prince who carried a silver sword around, impaling any immortal who dared step foot across the village borders. A prince whom the vampire king received complaints about to no end. A prince who, everyone and the king himself knew, they would be stuck with for the rest of time, because their beloved (unless one wanted to be staked) princess loved him with all her heart. 

And it was glaringly obvious the prince loved her in return, because he made sure to remind everyone of it—the court, the servants, the guards, and any unlucky creature who had the misfortune of hearing them. Every. Single. Night.

“That’s it, princess. God, you’re so fucking tight I’m going crazy,” he groaned as he pounded you against the library stacks. “Go on, let them know who your perfect pussy belongs to.”

“Ahn! Yes! Satoru—fuck—fuck me harder!”

“Who’s cock do you love? Say it.”

“I love Satoru Gojo’s cock!”

It would continue like this for hours, sometimes until dawn, rendering whatever room or hallway the both of you were fucking in completely inaccessible. And if it was out in the gardens, then the castle occupants had the option to stay indoors, or stay outside and have Sukuna pluck out their eyes later. 

Eventually, when even the king’s own ears were staring to bleed, he was forced to hold an intervention with you and Satoru, to establish certain boundaries. Those boundaries being sending the both of you away to torture Megumi instead at Satoru’s estate every fortnight. 

“After you, my love.” Satoru was grinning as he held out a hand.

You took it, and let him help you up the tower’s ledge. Felt his arms winding around your waist, pressing your back against him. 

His lips brushed the shell of your ear. “Shall I catch you?”

“You’re not fast enough.”

“Really? Then I suppose you’ve conveniently forgotten about all the other times I was.”

“Not tonight.” You smiled as you pushed him away, and leapt off the ledge. 

You heard his laughter follow behind.

Wings spread, you soared up high, and chanced a look back.

Only to find him swerving around and in front of you with swift, leathery wings. But unlike your own—the colour of smoke and shadows—his were silvery white, pale as the moon that watched him pull you against him in the air.

He kissed you, deep and slow, like he had all the time in the world. Like the infinite times he did before and the infinite times he would after. 

“It’s not so bad,” he whispered.

“What is?”

A million stars gleamed in his impossible blue eyes. Satoru smiled.

“Forever.”

thank you for reading to the end ilyyy! i originally intended for this fic to be short, but then i caught worldbuilding disease and now it's a whole soulmate arc >.< what do you think? i'd love to know your thoughts ♡

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“Something I did?” he asked, letting the question hang in the air without weight. His red eyes were striking, yes, but there was nothing sharp in them now—only a kind of slow-burning attentiveness, like he was already halfway through mapping out the answer she might not know how to voice. His voice dropped a note, more intimate without becoming urgent. “Or maybe something I didn’t?”

Her head tilted, uncertain, caught between brushing it off and being honest. He didn’t wait. “Let me guess,” he went on, smoothly, as if reciting a familiar script. “You're wondering if you said something too much, or not enough. Whether the silence in the restaurant meant I was bored, or thoughtful, or both. Whether leaning into me when we walked back was okay or if I was just polite and now you're replaying every step wondering which part crossed some invisible line.”

She blinked, mouth parting slightly. His gaze didn’t shift. He leaned in a bit, his shoulder brushing hers just barely. “You’re not wrong for wondering. You’re not crazy. But I think you’re used to people who let you wonder instead of answering.” A pause, deliberate. “So let me be the guy who answers.”

A breath left her. Not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. Relief beginning to thread in, cautious but real.

“I liked tonight,” he said. “I like the way you watch people when you think no one’s paying attention. I liked how you asked the waiter if he was okay after he spilled the water. I liked that you were nervous but came anyway. I liked that you talked about the novel you started but didn’t finish because you got scared it wouldn't be good.” He paused, just for the rhythm of it. “I liked that you were willing to be a little real.”

Her voice was soft when it finally came. “But I talk a lot when I’m nervous. Ramble.”

“So let me listen when you ramble,” he murmured, smiling slightly. “I’ve got more patience than you think.”

She turned toward him then, more fully, shoulders easing just slightly. The look she gave him wasn’t wide-eyed or grateful—it was tentative, like testing a bridge to see if it would hold her weight.

“And if I overthink everything?” she asked, finally voicing it.

“Then I’ll over-explain everything,” he said without missing a beat. “I don’t care if it takes three conversations and a pie chart. I’ll walk you through what I feel, what I meant, what I didn’t mean, and when I breathed. You never have to guess with me.”

A beat of silence. She looked down again, this time not out of retreat, but recalibration. A quiet surprise that maybe—just maybe—she didn’t have to keep doing all the math alone.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Sylus reached up and brushed a knuckle gently down the side of her cheek, not as a caress but a promise. “No ghosts. No riddles. Just us. And maybe some late-night takeout if you’re hungry.”

Her smile then—small, real—was all he needed. The air between them changed. Still tender, still cautious, but beginning to open. He walked her to the door without rushing, his fingers brushing her lower back with an easy, anchoring kind of care. The kind that said: I see you. You’re safe. You’re not too much.

—

Her number lit up his screen just past midnight, soft buzz against the wooden table where his book lay open but long since forgotten. Sylus blinked once at the name, then again at the time, the corners of his lips twitching faintly. He didn’t hesitate. Thumb tapped “Answer” before the second ring could roll into the third.

“Hey.” His voice was low, sleep-roughened but not annoyed, carrying that smooth weight like a blanket pulled close on a cold night. “Everything alright?”

There was a pause. Breathing on the other end—quick, caught, trying to steady. “I… I didn’t want to bother you,” she said, her voice a quiet scrape. “I just—something’s been gnawing at me and I couldn’t sleep, and I know it’s probably nothing but it feels like something, and the longer I sit with it, the worse it gets.”

He leaned back in his chair, one arm draped over the back, a muscle twitching in his jaw not from irritation, but empathy. “You’re not bothering me,” he said simply, and meant it. “Tell me what’s gnawing.”

She exhaled a small, nervous laugh. “It’s stupid. I keep thinking back to when I made that joke about your reading habits. The vampire comment? And you didn’t really laugh, and I just… I don’t know. Maybe I crossed a line, or maybe you thought I was making fun of you.”

A slow smile pulled at his mouth. His white hair slipped forward slightly as he tipped his head, listening like someone savoring every word of a song. He didn’t interrupt. Let her keep going.

“And then I remembered you went kind of quiet after that, and I wondered if I killed the mood, and maybe that’s why you didn’t text yesterday, and I know it’s only been a couple days but my brain’s been running loops, like… like I ruined it. Somehow.”

Sylus breathed in, slow and deep, the kind of breath meant to ground more than just himself. “You’re doing a whole autopsy on a moment that didn’t even die,” he said gently, voice threaded with warmth. “I didn’t laugh at the vampire thing because I was trying not to make a face. I was swallowing a mouthful of wine. And I didn’t text because I passed out the second I got home. You didn’t ruin anything.”

A pause. Soft breath on the line. She didn’t speak, but he could feel it—her shoulders starting to loosen.

“I liked the joke, for the record,” he added, red eyes flickering as he stood and paced slowly toward his window, the city lights casting faint patterns over the floor. “You saw something about me and made it playful instead of weird. Most people don’t know how to do that.”

She made a small, involuntary sound. “God, I feel ridiculous.”

“Then be ridiculous,” he said, with the easy cadence of someone who'd made peace with all his own sharp edges. “Be anxious, be honest. Let me meet you there instead of watching you spiral alone.”

She went quiet again, but it was different now. No tension in it, just processing. Just quiet appreciation without knowing how to voice it.

He leaned against the window frame, bare chest reflected faintly in the glass, and said, softer now, “You don’t have to rehearse your heart with me..”

A small laugh escaped her. Real this time, light enough to chase the shadows back.

“I didn’t want to seem… clingy.”

“If this is clingy, then I’m building the damn shrine,” he murmured. “Call me when you need. Or when you don’t. I’ll answer either way.”

He could hear the way her breathing changed then—slowed, softened. Like she’d finally let herself exhale. The silence between them stretched, but it was warm now, full of permission.

“You should sleep,” she whispered eventually.

“I will,” he said, sitting down again. “After you do.”

“You don’t have to wait—”

“I know. Still will.” His voice dipped again, that signature tone of quiet finality wrapped in care. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

She hesitated, then whispered it back: “Goodnight.”

He didn’t hang up. Waited until her side of the call went still, breathing deep and slow, before he let the line fall quiet—like a watchful promise held through static.

—

It happened at the edge of quiet, in the hush that follows laughter when two people have run out of things to joke about but not out of reasons to stay close. They were sitting on the stairs outside her building, not in any hurry, Sylus with one knee up, arm draped casually over it, his other hand resting just inches from hers on the step. The night was cool, not cold, the kind of evening that coaxed confessions and comfortable silences, and she’d just finished telling him some childhood memory—something silly and embarrassing, complete with hand gestures and mock voices.

He’d laughed—really laughed, low and rough and genuine. And then he’d gone quiet, not because the story wasn’t good, but because he didn’t want to chase that moment away too quickly.

She glanced over, eyes catching on the sharp lines of his face, the white fall of hair brushing over his cheekbone, those red eyes softened now like embers rather than flame. And he was looking at her—not just glancing, but watching, with a focus that didn’t flinch, like he was memorizing her face in case he’d never see it again.

“You do that,” she murmured.

His brow arched slightly. “Do what?”

“Look at me like… like you already know something I don’t.”

Sylus’s mouth curved faintly. “Maybe I do.”

Her heart kicked once, sharp and unexpected. He didn’t lean in—not yet—but he shifted, just a fraction closer, the space between them thinning to something almost intimate. “You don’t talk to fill silence,” he said, voice low. “You talk to see if someone will stay.”

She opened her mouth—then closed it. That was too close to the truth.

He reached up then, slow, telegraphed every movement, giving her time to pull back, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, fingers grazing the curve of her cheek. His touch was warm, firm but not forceful, as though the weight of her against his palm was something he’d thought about longer than he should have.

“I’m still here,” he murmured.

Her breath hitched. And then she leaned, not in a dramatic sweep, just enough to cross the line between wondering and wanting. His hand slid from her cheek to her jaw, guiding—not taking—and when his mouth finally touched hers, it was with startling care. Not tentative, not unsure, but intentional. His lips moved slowly against hers, tasting, exploring, telling her in pressure and heat what his words hadn’t dared say yet.

She melted into it almost without meaning to, fingers curling against the fabric of his sleeve, grounding herself in the moment as his thumb stroked lightly beneath her ear. The kiss deepened—not rushed, but inevitable—until their mouths moved with a rhythm that spoke of things unspoken, of late-night phone calls and slow-burning promises, of a man who kissed like he explained: thoroughly, attentively, leaving no part of her doubt untouched.

When they finally pulled apart, her lips tingled, flushed and full. He stayed close, forehead nearly brushing hers, red eyes half-lidded and watching her with something quiet and devastatingly warm.

“I wanted to do that since the first time you said my name,” he murmured.

Her smile came slowly, blooming like a secret.

“I’m glad you waited,” she said.

“So am I.”

—

She closed the front door behind them with a soft click, the hallway light catching on the curve of her cheek as she turned to Sylus, her fingers still laced around his. The smile she’d worn through most of dinner had faded now, lips pressed into a thoughtful line, eyes distant. He could already read it—the gears spinning too fast, replaying the evening in fragments and tones.

They reached her apartment door before she spoke, her voice low, hesitant. “Did… what my dad said—about your eyes—did that bother you?” She wasn’t looking at him, not directly. “I don’t think he meant it in a bad way, he just—he can be blunt sometimes, and now I keep thinking about it and it’s sitting weird.”

Sylus paused. Slowly, deliberately, he reached out and brushed his fingers beneath her chin, tilting her face up gently so their eyes met. His were unreadable for a second, glowing faint under the dim hallway light, and then softened into something unmistakably warm.

“You mean the part where he asked if I wore contacts because they looked unnatural?” he said with a ghost of a smirk. “Or the bit where he wondered out loud if I was part ‘something’ because of the ‘sharp features’?”

Her mouth opened, horror flickering in her expression. “God. That’s it. That’s exactly what I—he didn’t mean it like—”

“I know,” Sylus cut in, gently, thumb brushing across the underside of her jaw. “I’ve met that kind of man before. Observational, not malicious. Says what he sees and doesn’t dress it up. I didn’t take it personally.”

She blinked. “But still. I should’ve said something.”

“You did,” he said simply. “Your hand tightened around mine when he said it. I felt it. That was enough.”

A breath caught in her throat, half-relief, half-something else—something tangled in guilt, or the ache of wanting to shield someone you care about from things they may not even be hurt by.

Sylus stepped closer, until her back brushed the door. “You don’t have to carry every awkward thing someone says like it’s yours to fix. You already do enough of that.” His voice dropped slightly. “I don’t bruise that easy. And I don’t expect your family to filter their curiosity before I’ve even earned their trust.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed, unsure whether to lean into the comfort or apologize again.

He beat her to it. “Besides,” he added with a smirk, “he didn’t say anything about my height, or the fact that I eat steak like I’m stalking it. I count that as a win.”

She laughed, a real laugh this time, head tipping forward into his chest. He wrapped his arms around her without hesitation, pressing his lips briefly to her temple.

“I like them,” he murmured into her hair. “And I like how much you care. But next time, let me decide what stings and what doesn’t. You just keep holding my hand.”

She nodded against him, breath easing. “Deal.”

— She hadn’t said much through dessert, which was the first red flag. No warm tease when he subtly stole the last spoonful of her tiramisu, no amused glance when her cousin’s obnoxious friend launched into yet another overly dramatic story punctuated with a flirty giggle and barely-disguised glances at Sylus. Her hands were still—too still—and when she finally excused herself from the table, she didn’t touch his arm or shoulder or back on the way out. That was the second.

He found her on the terrace, pacing, arms crossed. Her jaw was set, not with sadness or hurt, but tight fury barely held together under a thin veneer of calm.

“She really thought I was going to sit there and smile through it,” she muttered without turning around, as if the moment he walked out, she knew it was him. “Like I was invisible. Like I was the fucking potted plant between her and you.”

Sylus leaned against the railing beside her, arms folded over his chest, his white hair catching the low golden patio light like moonlight over bone. “Are we talking about the friend with the nails that could gouge glass?” he asked, tone casual but edged.

She cut him a look. “Don’t joke.”

He straightened, no longer leaning. “Wasn’t joking. Just trying to see if you’re pissed about the right person. Because it sure as hell better not be me.”

“I’m not mad at you.” The words came sharp, fast, like a reflex. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You never do. That’s what pisses me off. She saw me with you. She saw us. And she still—God—she was halfway in your lap every time she leaned forward to tell some story she probably rehearsed in the mirror.”

He didn’t smile, not even a flicker. Instead, he reached out and caught her hand mid-gesture, drawing it down to his chest, right over his heart.

“You think I didn’t feel that?” he said, voice low. “Every time she looked at me, I looked at you. Every time she touched my arm, I shifted closer to you. You think I didn’t notice you dying in your seat because I was waiting to see if you’d speak or if you’d swallow it?”

Her breath stuttered. Her eyes flicked down to where his fingers had closed around hers.

“I didn’t want to make a scene,” she muttered.

“You can set the whole table on fire if someone disrespects you,” he said calmly. “I won’t blink. I’ll pass you the matches.”

A breath caught in her throat, then softened into something deeper. He pulled her in slowly, arms wrapping around her waist, holding her tight, grounding her in the sheer solid mass of him—warm, calm, unbothered, but entirely hers.

“You don’t have to question if I’m yours,” he murmured, lips brushing against her temple. “But if someone wants to pretend they don’t see the crown on your head, I have no problem reminding them who stands beside you.”

She exhaled shakily, pressing her face against his chest, fury ebbing into frustration and finally into something she didn’t need to name—safe, steady, solid.

“I don’t like being disrespected,” she whispered.

“And I don’t like watching you try to swallow it down,” he said. “Next time, let me take her wrist when she gets too close. Just a tap. Enough for the message.”

She laughed into his shirt. “You’re not subtle.”

“I’m not interested in subtle when it comes to you.” His voice dropped even lower, right against her ear. “I want the world to know where I stand—and who I stand with.”

She looked up at him then, fire still in her eyes but calmed now, focused.

“You really weren’t tempted?”

Sylus bent down, pressing his lips to hers—slow, sure, and deeply possessive. “Tempted?” he echoed against her mouth. “I can’t even see other women when you’re in the room. She was a shadow. You are gravity.”

She kissed him again, hands fisting in his shirt, and this time the heat wasn’t from anger.

— The villa they’d rented was tucked along a quiet stretch of coastline, sun-warmed stone and drifting salt air, with a private pool that shimmered like melted sapphire under the late morning light. She stood just inside the glass doors, wrapped in a towel, fingers bunching the fabric tight around her middle. The scent of sunscreen lingered faint on her skin, but she hadn’t stepped outside yet.

Sylus was already by the pool, lounging back on one of the low chairs, dark swim trunks slung low on his hips, hair a tousled shock of white in the sun. He’d pulled his shirt off casually and tossed it aside—muscled, broad, comfortable in his skin in a way that made it look effortless, but never performative. When he noticed the movement behind the glass, he turned his head—and stilled.

Her hand hovered on the doorframe. She wasn’t trembling, but her body language said it all: hesitation strung tight as a drawn bow. The towel hadn’t shifted, not even a little. She was still wrapped like armor.

His gaze softened instantly.

He rose slowly, not with urgency, but purpose, and crossed the patio toward her, every step of his tall frame radiating ease. He opened the sliding door himself and stepped in, not saying a word at first. Just looked at her, quiet and steady.

“You don’t have to,” he said, gently. “You don’t owe me a show. Not here. Not ever.”

She looked up at him, uncertain, caught between the vulnerability of being seen and the fear of not being enough in the face of someone like him—someone who made turning heads look accidental.

“I know,” she said, voice small. “But I wanted to. For me. I just…”

Sylus leaned down slightly, one hand coming to rest at her hip, the other brushing a thumb just beneath her chin, lifting her gaze to meet his.

“You know what I saw when I looked over just now?” he murmured. “You. Standing in the sunlight, wrapped up like the fabric was holding you together, but your eyes already out here. You looked beautiful before you even stepped outside.”

She swallowed, lips parting—but he wasn’t done.

“I don’t care about stretch marks. Or softness. Or lines. I care about the way you look at me when you’re trying not to smile. The way you walk into a room like you don’t belong, and then own the air in it. That’s what I see when I look at you. Not what you’re wearing. Not what you’re hiding.”

Her fingers relaxed around the towel slightly.

“And if you come out there,” he added, voice velvet and certainty all at once, “I’ll make sure you never have to wonder if I see anything but the woman I chose.”

She stared up at him, then slowly nodded. Hands moved, unfastening the towel with a slow breath and letting it fall from her shoulders. The swimsuit hugged her close—flattering, but revealing enough that the unease curled just beneath her ribs.

Sylus didn’t look away. His red eyes tracked down and up again with open reverence—not hunger, not evaluation, but pride.

“Holy shit,” he said softly, a grin tugging at the edge of his mouth. “You’re stunning.”

Her blush bloomed so fast it made her laugh, half hiding her face.

He stepped back, offered his hand with an incline of his head toward the sunlit pool. “Come on. Let the sun see what I get to wake up beside.”

And she followed him—still a little self-conscious, still adjusting—but walking straighter, a smile fighting its way back onto her face, because he wasn’t looking at her like she was pretending to be beautiful.

He looked at her like she already was.

— It happened slowly, like warmth creeping into cold skin—no sudden fire, no frenzy, just a steady draw, a pull that had been simmering under every glance, every brush of fingers, every breath caught between silences.

They’d fallen asleep curled together on the second night of the trip, tangled beneath white linen sheets, the balcony doors open to let the night breeze sweep in, carrying salt and jasmine and moonlight. At some point before dawn, she’d stirred, shifting closer in the dark, her hand sliding across his chest with the kind of quiet need that wasn't asking for sex—it was asking for closeness. For skin. For certainty.

Sylus hadn’t been asleep.

His arm wrapped around her immediately, drawing her in with that same confident, unhurried strength he always carried—like the weight of him alone could make her feel anchored. He tilted his head, nuzzling his nose just under her ear, and whispered her name—soft and full of things unspoken.

“I know,” she murmured, barely audible. “I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

No need to name it. The way her fingers curled against his side, the way her thigh slid over his, the way their mouths found each other in the dark with instinct more than aim—it said enough. The first kiss wasn’t like the others. Slower. Mouths open, lips brushing again and again as if searching for the right angle, the right rhythm. He kissed her like she was something sacred, something fragile but fierce, letting her set the pace.

Her hands explored tentatively, tracing the hard planes of his shoulders, the smooth warmth of his chest, down to the sharp V of muscle just above his waistband. He shivered beneath her touch, but never rushed her, letting her feel every shift in him, every breath he took like it meant something.

When she pulled back to look at him, moonlight caught in the strands of his white hair, she saw more than want in his red eyes. She saw restraint. Devotion. An almost unbearable care that made her heart throb harder than the slow ache building low in her belly.

“Are you sure?” he asked, even now, even with his hands cupping her waist, thumbs stroking gentle arcs over bare skin.

She nodded, voice caught somewhere in her throat. “I want to remember this.”

His expression shifted—something tender and reverent sliding over his features—and he kissed her again, deeper this time, rolling her gently onto her back, blanketing her with his body without crushing, without taking. His weight was heat and solidity, his breath warm against her neck as his lips traveled lower, trailing over her collarbone, her shoulder, the swell of her chest.

He undressed her slowly, like he’d dreamed of doing it a hundred times but had waited for the real thing. Every inch of her he revealed was met with a kiss, a brush of his knuckles, a quiet murmur of something that wasn’t quite words—just low sounds of approval, of worship.

When he finally slid inside her, it wasn’t fast or frantic. It was slow—achingly slow—his forehead resting against hers, both of them breathing each other in. She gasped, one hand gripping his back, the other curled into the sheets as her body stretched to take him. He groaned low, barely holding onto his control, and whispered her name like it steadied him.

“Look at me,” he murmured, hips rolling forward, filling her in smooth, measured thrusts. “I want to see you when you fall apart.”

She did.

She watched him watching her, eyes locked as his body moved with hers—no rush, no pounding pace, just a rhythm that built and built until it felt like they were unraveling together. Her moans were soft at first, lips parting in disbelief at the fullness, the stretch, the pressure that climbed higher with every movement. He kissed her when she whimpered, kissed her when she cried out, kissed her when her back arched and her legs trembled around his hips.

And when she came—fingers digging into his arms, breath stuttering, body clenching around him—he didn’t stop. He rode it out with her, whispering praises against her skin, holding her like something precious even while his control finally broke.

He came with a groan against her shoulder, deep and raw, his body shaking as he buried himself inside her, holding her tight like he needed her to feel how much it meant. Not just the pleasure—though there was that, too—but the trust, the closeness, the act of being let in.

Afterward, he didn’t roll away.

He stayed wrapped around her, hand on her lower belly, nose buried in her hair, whispering small things in the dark that made her laugh softly, even as her limbs ached and her skin buzzed. He didn’t fall asleep right away, and neither did she. They just lay there, the sea whispering outside, their bodies pressed together, and nothing between them but breath.

— The restaurant was beautiful, the kind of hidden rooftop jewel that didn’t rely on popularity to fill its tables—just moonlight, music soft as breath, and the city stretching out beneath them like a painting. Their table sat near the edge, candlelight flickering gently between them, casting warm shadows across the sharp lines of his face.

But Sylus hadn’t touched his wine. He hadn’t even made one of his quiet, amused jabs when she mispronounced the appetizer. He was watching her too closely, smile a little too careful, gaze flicking down to the tablecloth when she reached for his hand.

“You’re quiet,” she said, her thumb brushing over his knuckles. “Not in the ‘I’m enjoying the view’ way. In the ‘I’m stuck in my own damn head’ way.”

His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Observant.”

“Try dating you for a year,” she teased lightly. “I speak fluent Sylus silence now.”

He looked up then, really looked at her, and the flicker in his expression—an almost-vulnerability, the edge of something deeper just beneath—made her pulse skip.

“I’ve been overthinking this night since last week,” he admitted. “What to wear, where to go, what gift to get. What words to say.” He exhaled, low and rough. “And the truth is, I don’t think any of it really matters. Because all I keep thinking is… this shouldn't have lasted.”

Her eyebrows knit, lips parting—but he shook his head, gently.

“Not because I didn’t want it to,” he went on, voice softer now. “Because I’ve never had something like this not fall apart. Never felt… wanted, without it turning into obligation or distance or something ugly with teeth.” He swallowed, gaze falling again to where her hand still held his. “The first few months, I kept waiting for the moment you’d see too much. Or get bored. Or realize I wasn’t what you thought.”

“Sylus…” she whispered, but he wasn’t finished.

“But it didn’t happen,” he said. “You kept showing up. Not just for the good parts. For the hard stuff. For my worst moods. For the silences I couldn’t explain. And after a while, it stopped feeling like a countdown to failure.” His eyes lifted to hers, red and burning and bare. “It started feeling like home.”

Her chest tightened. Emotion caught thick in her throat.

“I love you,” he said simply. “And not in the fragile, fairy tale way. I love you because you make me feel like I don’t have to hold my breath waiting for it to implode. Because with you, everything feels like it fits. Like I was never made for anything else but this.”

She didn’t speak for a second. Just looked at him—this man with fire in his eyes and careful hands and a soul so much gentler than anyone ever noticed. And when she did speak, her voice shook a little.

“I felt the same,” she said, fingers tightening around his. “From the beginning. I kept waiting for you to realize I was messy. Or too sensitive. Or not enough. And every time I started doubting, you just… saw me. Really saw me. And stayed.”

A smile finally broke through his tension, slow and raw.

She leaned forward, brushing her lips across his knuckles. “You’re not just loved, Sylus. You’re wanted. All of you. The overthinking, the intensity, the calm, the chaos—every part.”

He stood then—without thinking, without caring if anyone watched—and pulled her up into his arms. There, in the golden halo of candlelight and stars, he held her like the words had finally sunk in. Like maybe this was real, and maybe it wasn’t going anywhere.

And when he kissed her—slow, reverent—it wasn’t for show, or ceremony, or because the night demanded romance.

It was because she had given him something no one else ever had.

A year of peace in a heart that had only ever known war.

–

It happened quietly, the way all their moments did when they mattered most—not with a flourish, not with a spotlight, but in that hush that fell when the world outside stopped mattering and it was just her heartbeat and his breath in the same space.

They were in the kitchen. Not a candlelit dinner. Not a staged event. She was barefoot, hair pulled back, one hand around a mug that had gone lukewarm while she stared out the window, too lost in thought to drink it. The late afternoon sun spilled gold across the floor, streaked her collarbone with warmth, lit her like something he hadn’t quite deserved but somehow still got to keep.

Sylus leaned in the doorway, shirt half-buttoned, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He watched the way she chewed the inside of her cheek, the way her foot tapped slightly against the tile like her body was trying to siphon off the excess noise in her head.

He knew that look.

He didn’t say anything right away. Just stepped in slowly, letting his presence press into the silence without demanding anything of it.

Her eyes flicked up when he reached her. Then down again.

He didn’t need to ask what was wrong. He’d learned her rhythms the way some people learned languages—by immersion, by instinct, by a willingness to get it wrong until it became second nature.

“You’re doing it again,” he said softly, voice low and warm. Not accusing. Just factual.

She blinked. “What?”

“The math,” he said, brushing a knuckle along the edge of her jaw, lifting her gaze. “Trying to calculate how long I’ll stay. What it means that I didn’t say ‘I love you’ after I hung up yesterday. Whether me forgetting to buy your oat milk means I’m forgetting to see you.”

Her breath hitched, jaw tightening like she wanted to argue—then slacked, because she knew he was right.

“It’s not fair,” she murmured. “You shouldn’t have to keep... talking me down.”

“I’m not talking you down,” he said. “I’m walking beside you. That’s different.”

He took the mug from her hands, set it gently on the counter behind her, then stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head slightly to keep eye contact. His hands didn’t touch her yet. Just hovered near her waist, like asking permission even after all this time.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, quietly, steadily. “Not about if—I haven’t questioned the if since the first time I fell asleep with you beside me and woke up wishing we had forever. I’ve just been thinking about when. When’s the right moment. When you’ll feel safe enough not to flinch at the idea of permanence.”

She stilled. Her breathing slowed. Her arms wrapped around herself like a shield.

“And now you’re overthinking again,” he added gently. “Trying to read the signs. Wondering if this is a setup, if there’s a speech coming, if you’re supposed to react a certain way.”

She opened her mouth.

He stepped in before she could.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to manage this. Don’t plan your face. Don’t rehearse your heart.”

A breath. His hands finally settled—one at her waist, the other sliding up to cup her cheek, thumb brushing across skin he knew like second nature.

“I don’t want the perfect proposal,” he said. “I want you. I want every anxious question, every night where you double-check the tone of my text, every time you ask me if I’m sure—even when I’ve told you a thousand times. I want the messy love. The kind that holds, even when it shakes. The kind that stays.”

She blinked fast, once, then again. Her lips parted, but her voice stuck somewhere in the middle of a breath.

So he gave her something to hold onto.

From the back pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a ring. No box. No speech. Just silver and stone warmed by the heat of his skin. He held it up between them—not kneeling, not dramatic. Just holding it the way he held everything with her: steady, open, real.

“You want to know if I’m sure?” His voice was quieter now, threading under her ribs like a second heartbeat. “I’m sure enough to risk everything I’ve never had. I’m sure enough to want your overthinking and your soft mornings and your full-body laughs and your ‘are you mad at me?’ texts after I go quiet for five minutes. I’m sure enough to put it all in your hands. Because I’d rather live in the chaos of us than peace anywhere else.”

Tears welled but didn’t fall. She stared at the ring, then at him, and something in her cracked—not in pain, but in recognition. The dam of doubt finally breaking.

“You don’t have to say anything yet,” he whispered. “Just… take it. If not the ring, then the moment. Let it be real.”

Her hand trembled as she reached out. He let her take the ring. No pressure to put it on. No demand.

But when her fingers closed around it, and her gaze finally lifted to meet his fully, something shifted in her expression. A quiet relief. A wonder so thick it left no room for fear.

“I was going to say yes,” she said, voice thin with emotion. “But now I just want to hold it for a second.”

“Take your time,” Sylus murmured, smiling like the sun had landed behind his eyes. “I’ve got the rest of my life.”

And when she stepped into his arms, tucked her face into his chest, the ring held tight in her palm like a promise forming shape, he held her like it was already done.

Because to him, it was.

—

It didn’t feel like a momentous discovery. Not at first. Not the way movies painted it—no dramatic music, no gasped realization in a public bathroom. Just the quiet sound of her toothbrush clattering into the sink and her hand bracing against the counter as the wave of nausea subsided, leaving her hollow and shaken.

She stared at her reflection, pale, a bead of sweat tracing her temple. It was the third morning in a row, and while she could’ve written it off as stress or bad sleep or the ever-tightening knot of wedding planning, something in her gut—the part that knew things before her brain could process them—was whispering the truth.

It wasn’t fear. Not exactly. But it curled around her ribs and pressed just a little too hard, made her throat tight and her breathing shallow.

She’d taken the test half an hour ago. It sat on the bathroom counter now, facedown, like even looking at it might turn the possibility into permanence.

She hadn’t touched it since.

From the living room came the quiet hum of Sylus’s voice, low and amused, talking on the phone with the florist. Something about white garden roses and whether or not they clashed with black calla lilies. He sounded calm. Warm. Present. Like he always did when he was talking about them—the future they were building, the life they were threading together, piece by slow, deliberate piece.

She reached for the test.

Turned it.

And everything stilled.

Positive.

The word hit her harder than expected, like a soft punch to the chest. Not painful—but disorienting. Her fingers tightened around the plastic, breath catching. She couldn’t quite name what she was feeling—joy laced with panic, wonder tangled with disbelief. A flutter of something ancient and instinctive moved low in her belly, just beneath the fear.

She didn’t know how long she stood there.

But it was long enough that Sylus noticed.

She heard his steps first. Bare feet across the hardwood. Then the door opened—softly, like he was trying not to startle her. She didn’t turn.

“You okay?” His voice, right behind her now. Concern threaded through it instantly, like it was second nature. “You didn’t answer when I called out.”

She blinked. Her voice stuck in her throat. So she lifted the test instead, hand trembling just enough to betray her calm.

There was a beat of silence.

Then his hand closed gently over hers, steadying it, steadying her.

He looked at it.

Then he looked at her.

His expression didn’t crack into shock. He didn’t go wide-eyed, didn’t step back or freeze. No. His breath caught—barely audible—and his other hand came up to her face, tilting her gently toward him. His thumb brushed beneath her eye, as if checking for tears. There were none. Just something quiet and raw and too big to hold alone.

“You’re…” he began, but the word didn’t finish. Not because he didn’t believe it. Because he did.

“I didn’t plan—” she started, but he shook his head, not sharply, just enough to stop her spiral before it could unfurl.

“I don’t care,” he said, voice hushed and thick and steady. “I don’t care if we didn’t plan it. I care that you’re okay. That you’re not standing here alone thinking you have to carry this before you even know how to feel.”

She exhaled, shaky, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. His arms came around her instantly, locking tight, anchoring.

“I don’t even know if I’m scared or excited,” she whispered. “I just… it doesn’t feel real.”

“Let it be what it is,” Sylus murmured into her hair. “Let it be messy. Let it be big. We’ll sort the rest.”

Her laugh was wet, close to breaking. “God, you’re too calm. You’re too calm. Are you not freaking out at all?”

He pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes—and there it was. That faint flicker behind his gaze, the crackle of stunned awe barely contained. But he wasn’t spiraling. He was anchoring her.

“I’m freaking out,” he said. “But not the way you think. I’m... overwhelmed, yeah. But not scared. Because it’s you. And me. And now—this. And I don’t know how to feel anything but...” He paused, breath catching. “Lucky.”

She blinked. “Lucky?”

“Yeah.” His thumb stroked her cheek, reverent. “You’re going to grow a life. In there.” His hand drifted down, barely grazing her belly. “Our life. And I get to watch it. I get to help raise it. Love it. Protect it. Just like I protect you.”

Her lips parted, but no words came. Only a slow unraveling inside her, like every knot had been tied too tight for too long and now they were giving way under the warmth of his voice.

“What if I’m not ready?” she asked, not as a fear, but a confession.

He smiled, small and quiet and devastatingly sure. “Then we get ready. Together. I’ll build the crib, and you’ll yell at me because I read the instructions upside-down. I’ll hold your hair back when the morning sickness hits and sneak ginger candy into your purse like contraband. I’ll talk to your belly like a lunatic and cry the first time they kick. And when they’re born, I’ll be there. Every second. I’m already here.”

Tears burned, finally breaking loose.

She dropped the test on the counter and flung her arms around him, full force, burying her face in his neck.

He held her, stronger than the fear, softer than the doubt, the way he always did.

And when he whispered, “We’re already a family. This just makes bigger,”she believed him.

– She wasn’t going to cry over cake. She refused to cry over cake.

But she was three months pregnant, her feet hurt, her veil was lopsided because Aunt Marla had insisted on “fixing it” one too many times, and someone had changed the Spotify playlist from their carefully curated string quartet acoustic mix to some kind of... jazzy remix of Despacito, and now, on top of it all—

No cake.

Not just late. Not just “running a bit behind.” Gone.

The baker had called an hour into the reception—Sylus had answered because she was dancing with her cousin and he’d seen the number, stepped out with that unreadable expression she knew too well. When he came back, she could tell before he even opened his mouth. His tie was slightly undone. He was smiling, but his eyes had that I’ve got bad news but I’m going to say it gently look.

Now she stood in the side hall outside the reception room, heels dangling from her fingers, the hem of her dress bunched up in her fist, shoulders tight and breath shallow.

She felt a presence behind her before she heard it—the heat of his body, the way he always entered a space like gravity. Sylus stepped up silently, his tux jacket gone, sleeves rolled, hands still smelling faintly like whatever cologne he wore that made her go weak-kneed when he pressed too close.

“I could call them again,” he said quietly. “Demand blood. Or frosting. Either’s fine.”

She made a sound that might’ve been a laugh if it weren’t so tired. “I know it’s ridiculous,” she muttered, rubbing at the corner of her eye. “It’s cake, for god’s sake. But I had this... this vision, okay? Of cutting into it with you, and it being this moment, and...”

“Of course you did.” He said it with zero mockery. Just a warm kind of knowing. “You made a place in your heart for it. It’s not about the sugar. It’s about the promise.”

Her bottom lip wobbled. “It was lemon with vanilla bean. And raspberry filling. And the sugar flowers were supposed to match the bouquet.”

He turned her gently to face him, large hands settling on her waist, warm even through the satin. “Then we’ll hunt it down, and I’ll make them rebuild it from the ashes of their bakery. Or,” he added, brushing a strand of hair from her temple, “we adapt.”

She looked up at him, cheeks flushed with the effort of holding it together. “Adapt?”

He pulled something from behind his back.

A cupcake.

She stared.

It was... lopsided. Slightly smushed. Frosting clinging to the edge of the napkin like it had been saved from a battlefield. Sprinkles that didn’t match their theme.

“Raided the kids' table,” Sylus said with a shrug. “Don't tell them. I think I traded a crayon and my dignity.”

She blinked once. Then laughed. A real one, small and incredulous and helpless.

“It’s chocolate,” she said.

“It is. Not lemon. No sugar flowers. But,” he said, leaning in close, mouth brushing her ear, “it’s from me. And it’s yours.”

She pulled back just enough to see his face.

“You really think this is going to fix it?”

He grinned—one of those lazy, crooked things that made his red eyes warm instead of dangerous.

“No,” he said. “I think we fix it. Like everything else. Together.”

And then, without waiting, he knelt—knelt, like they were about to do the whole ceremony over again—and offered it up to her like a ring, eyes gleaming with mischief and devotion in equal measure.

“Will you accept this completely inadequate yet lovingly stolen cupcake as a symbol of our resilience and my everlasting desire to feed you, even in times of dessert-related tragedy?”

She snorted. Loud. Then cupped his face in both hands and kissed him, soft and laughing and full of relief.

“I do,” she whispered.

And when he stood and they bit into the damn thing together, right there in the hallway under a flickering sconce, frosting smeared on his lip and her veil sliding again and neither of them caring—

it was the best fucking cupcake she’d ever tasted.

— It didn’t start with a dramatic water-breaking moment or a midnight dash to the hospital. It started with a backache. Then a shift in the rhythm of her breath. Then the slow, dawning realization that the tension in her belly wasn’t just Braxton Hicks—it had intent.

Sylus had noticed first.

Not because she said anything—she’d been quietly timing the contractions, stubbornly refusing to make it a thing until it was really a thing—but because he watched her. Always had. Always would.

He was folding baby clothes in the nursery, neatly, like they were sacred, and she leaned into the doorway, one hand low on her stomach, the other pressing against the frame to steady herself.

“You’re doing that breathing again,” he said without looking up.

She blinked. “What breathing?”

“The kind where you think if you exhale too fast, the contractions will notice.”

That earned him a narrow-eyed glare. But her lips twitched.

“It’s too early,” she muttered. “The due date’s still—”

Sylus finally turned, red eyes landing on her, already reading every unspoken word. “You’re in labor.”

“No, I’m—”

A contraction hit.

Not sharp. Not yet. But firm enough to buckle her knees a little, and he was there instantly—arms around her, steady, grounding, his breath in her ear before she could even ask for help.

“Hey. Okay. There we go,” he murmured. “Breathe, sweetheart. Let it ride. You don’t have to be stoic. Not now.”

She sagged into him, huffing out a curse, and he smiled into her hair.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s get the bag.”

—

Labor was a marathon made of moments: the ride to the hospital, his hand on her thigh at every red light, his voice soft and steady when hers started to fray. The sterile brightness of the maternity ward, the quick movements of nurses, the rush of monitors and questions.

Through it all—Sylus never left her side.

Not once.

He sat beside her when the contractions were just minutes apart, letting her crush his hand without complaint, murmuring low affirmations into her sweat-damp hair.

“You’re doing perfect. Breathe through it. That’s it, baby. I’ve got you.”

He reminded her to drink water. Brushed her hair back from her forehead. Pressed cool cloths to her skin. When the pain crested into something primal and hot and unrelenting, when she cried out—not from fear but from sheer exhaustion, from the intensity of it—Sylus leaned in, forehead touching hers, voice unshaken.

“You are the strongest thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered. “You’re fire and storm and I’m not leaving this room without both of you in my arms.”

She sobbed once, laughter and tears tangled, and gasped through another contraction.

Later, when the doctor said she was ready to push, when the world narrowed to the roar of her own heartbeat and the ring of white noise behind her eyes, Sylus stayed with her—one hand locked around hers, the other bracing her back as she bore down.

He counted with her. Breathed with her.

“Almost there,” he said, even when she cried that she couldn’t do it.

“You are doing it,” he said. “Look at me. Just one more. You’ve got this. I swear. I swear.”

And then—

A cry.

Not hers.

A new one.

Small. Fierce. The kind of sound that cracked the world open.

She fell back against the pillows, panting, body trembling, every muscle spent. Sylus didn’t look away from her. Not yet. His eyes burned—not from fear now, but from wonder. From the sheer, awful beauty of it.

Then the nurse turned, arms cradling a bundle that squirmed and wailed and flailed like a thunderstorm wrapped in flannel.

“A girl,” she said, smiling. “Congratulations.”

Sylus stood rooted for a second. Just one.

Then stepped forward, slower than she’d ever seen him move, hands shaking as he took his daughter into his arms for the first time.

She’d never forget the look on his face.

Not awe. Not shock.

Just stillness.

Like the universe had finally stopped spinning and landed squarely in his chest.

He turned back to her, eyes full and red, hair mussed and skin pale with spent adrenaline, and he knelt—knelt, again, because everything in him still bowed to her—and laid their daughter in her arms.

She was tiny. Soft. Red-faced and furious at having been born.

Sylus stroked one impossibly small hand and murmured, “She’s loud. Just like you.”

“Shut up,” she whispered hoarsely, but smiled, even as tears spilled over.

He leaned down, kissed her temple, then her lips.

“Thank you,” he said, voice breaking for the first time all night. “For surviving. For bringing her into this world. For being mine.”

She pressed her face to his neck, body aching but heart wide open.

“You didn’t let go,” she said.

“I never will.” His hand curled around both of theirs. “Welcome home, little one.”

And in that tiny, fluorescent-lit room, with exhaustion thick and the smell of antiseptic clinging to everything, they began again—just the three of them.

—

It was late. The kind of late that didn’t really belong to one day or the next, just that blurred space between hours when everything else had gone still—except for the baby.

She’d finally fallen asleep again, swaddled and nestled in the bassinet beside the bed, her tiny mouth open in a soft ‘o’, one mittened hand resting on her cheek like she was already dreaming of something important. The little sounds she made in her sleep—those hiccupy breaths, the almost-whimpers, the sighs—filled the room in quiet pulses.

But her mother couldn’t sleep.

She lay curled on Sylus’s chest, face turned into his shoulder, one arm draped loosely across his torso. He’d wrapped them both up in one of the oversized throw blankets from the couch, the one that smelled faintly of home and a little of lavender from the dryer sheets.

She wasn’t crying, but he could feel it anyway.

That tightness in her body. That breath held a second too long. That way her fingers kept twitching like they wanted something to hold harder than his skin.

Sylus had been silent for a while, letting the moment breathe. Letting her breathe. But when she still hadn’t said a word fifteen minutes after laying down—just blinked slowly in the dark, eyes glassy and far away—he finally spoke.

“Where did you go?” he asked, voice low, thick with sleep but warm, steady.

She shook her head against his shoulder.

“I’m here.”

“No,” he said gently. “You’re with me, but your head ran off somewhere. Come back.”

Her hand curled in the blanket, fingers knotting near his ribs.

“I was just thinking.”

“Dangerous,” he said dryly, and earned the softest snort from her.

But then she sighed. It came out shakier than she meant.

“I just keep… seeing things,” she whispered. “Little flashes. Her slipping in the bath. Me forgetting the car seat buckle. The stairs. The edge of the bed. Sudden silence. It’s like my brain is building a horror movie reel out of thin air, and I can’t turn it off.”

He said nothing at first.

Just held her closer.

“You’re not crazy,” he murmured finally. “You’re a mother.”

She didn’t move.

He went on. “Your brain’s trying to protect her. Trying to imagine every threat so you can stop it before it happens. It’s survival logic. It’s instinct. But it’s also cruel. And exhausting.”

Tears welled then. Quiet ones. No sobs, no gasps. Just wet warmth bleeding into the fabric of his shirt.

“I feel like I’m not allowed to break,” she said. “Like if I do, something bad will happen. Like I have to stay ahead of it.”

Sylus pressed his lips to the crown of her head, his fingers moving in slow, grounding strokes down her spine.

“You can break,” he said. “Break a thousand times. I’ll catch every piece.”

She shuddered out a breath.

“And when your head runs away,” he whispered, pulling her even closer until her leg draped over his, their bodies tangled like vines, “when the shadows start whispering lies—about what could go wrong, about how you’ll fail, about how you’re not enough—I want you to hear me louder.”

She swallowed hard.

“I will never let you fall alone. If you stumble, I’ll be the ground under your feet. If your mind slips, I’ll hold your body until it stops shaking. If all you can do is lie here and cry while she naps, then that’s what we do. And I’ll be here for all of it.”

Her tears were quieter now. Not gone, but gentler. Not terror anymore—just release.

“I don’t want to be weak,” she whispered.

“You’re not,” Sylus said, instantly. “You’re soft. There’s a difference. And soft is what raises the kind of child who knows how to be strong and kind. Soft is what she’ll remember when she falls asleep against your chest. Soft is how she’ll learn to love.”

She nodded against him. Silent. Breathing a little easier.

He ran his knuckles down her arm, slow, rhythmic, anchoring.

“You’re the safest place she’ll ever know,” he said. “And I’ll be the one who makes sure you feel safe.”

Her voice was a breath when it came.

“Even at 3 a.m.?”

He smiled into her hair.

“Especially at 3 a.m. Even if I’m covered in spit-up and only half-conscious. Even if you’re yelling at the breast pump or cursing the pediatrician or crying over a diaper blowout. I’ll be here. With you. For you.”

She curled in tighter, her breathing finally syncing with his.

“And if I forget how to breathe?”

“I’ll breathe for both of us,” he said. “Until you remember.”

And when she finally drifted off, held in his arms as their daughter slept inches away, Sylus stayed awake just a little longer. Watching both of them. Guarding. Loving. Silent and unmovable.

The smell is pungent, reminiscent of rotten eggs. He assumes it’s something noxious. Something meant to knock him out. So, he shields his nose with his wrist, coughing when the smoke prickles the back of his throat and coaxes tears from his eyes.

Cries with various degrees of agony fill the room. Bones breaking, lives snuffed out like candle flames. No one escapes. If he’s going down, he’s taking everyone in attendance of this squandered negotiation with him.

He expects the concoction to rob him of consciousness. To turn his lungs to raisins or peel back skin until sinew and bone show. He doesn’t get the dramatic finale he anticipates when the smoke finally clears, revealing outlines of soot where bodies once stood strong and obstinate.

How anticlimactic.

Thumbing tears from his lashes, he shrugs, dusting off his hands. Perhaps the smoke was a decoy. A cheap parlor trick to throw him off. No matter.

Straightening his sleeves, he weaves his fingers through his hair, the tension once coiled in his body slowly unfurling—

Until he feels something that wasn’t there this morning.

Something soft, protruding from the top of his head, fluffier than his usual riot of white. He touches it again, wincing when whatever’s jutting from his scalp reels back and defiantly smacks his palm.

What the—

Mortification spools, cold and restricting, in his belly. He finds a gilded mirror mounted on the boardroom’s wall, leaning in until his reflection orients itself. The sight that awaits him makes his stomach plummet to his feet.

Ears.

Cat ears.

Tufted white to match his hair with a thin stretch of pink, veins showing purple through skin in the light. They twitch and swivel, tuned to every minute sound outside, his senses amplified.

So caught up in the sight of his new appendages, he hardly registers a fluffy tail swaying behind him. An extension of his spine, bundled with delicate nerves, whipping about with a mind of its own, as garish as the ears on his head.

The scarlet in his reflection narrows, and his jaw ticks. Sylus Qin, Prince of Darkness. Doom Bringer. Lucifer incarnate, reduced to whatever the hell this is, glaring back at him.

The mirror shivers against the wall, the faintest notes of his Evol leaking from the room’s corners like smoke billowing from a chimney. His tail cleaves through the air, a consequence of the vexation coloring his veins at his new affliction.

He knew better than to do business with scum.

Whatever they hit him with, he has to find a cure for it, and fast. Because if anyone sees him like this—his customers, enemies, the twins, you—he’ll never hear the end of it.

—

Sylus doesn’t do cute.

Which is why, when he arrives at Lux, the spotlights swaying to and fro, highlighting the magnificent exterior of his club, he forgoes the main entrance. Slips past the guards posted by the door, moving like a wraith in his own domain, avoiding anyone who might catch him like this.

More specifically, you. Because he can virtually hear the shrill squeal of your voice, your eyes sparkling, fingers greedily twitching to touch him when you catch sight of his ailment.

The lights of his penthouse are muted. An amber, ambient drip spilling over leather and gold trim that isn’t dim enough to conceal him.

For the umpteenth time, Sylus scrutinizes himself in the black, full-length mirror in his living room, scowling. That traitorous tail sways behind him, his newfound ears moving like satellites, clinging to every morsel of noise scraped from the city below.

Until he figures out how to approach this, it’s best he keeps a low profile. He could do without being the laughingstock of the underworld, though he could easily dispatch anyone who has the intestinal fortitude to mock him.

His musings are cut short when the elevator at the front of his penthouse pings, followed by the telltale click of heels against marble.

His stomach spools with anxiety when your voice, cautious, sweet, muffled, beckons him from the hallway, growing nearer by the second.

“Sylus?”

Shit.

Only three people can access the elevator that reaches the topmost floor besides him—you and the twins. He’s starting to regret giving you free rein of his sanctuary as he smooths back his hair, hand on hip, trying to play it cool. 

You’re the lesser of two evils. He’d rather you find him like this than Luke or Kieran. He’d prefer not to murder his closest henchmen. They’re practically his kids.

With a steadying breath out, Sylus steels himself, poised in his pinstripe vest and trousers like he isn’t the embodiment of fluffy right now.

Come on. Rip the band-aid off. Don’t hide.

He never runs from an altercation. Never, despite everything in him screaming to just—

“Sylus?” You try his name again, rounding the partition hiding his living room from the main foyer. “I didn’t hear you come back. One of the guys downstairs said he heard you heading up, and I—”

He’s stricken with something cold when you look up through the veil of your lashes, eyes wide and gleaming like gems held to the sun. Whatever words you once held sink into your throat, your body stiffening mid-step.

His pulse thrums violently in his neck. With clenched teeth, Sylus holds his head high like a king facing the guillotine, harboring no regrets.

It’s soundless for a few beats, save for the air conditioner kicking on and horns blaring in the distance from the traffic below.

His ears—the cute ones—twitch when the moment finally catches up to you. 

And when his predicament fully settles in, he flinches as if physically struck. 

Sylus Qin does not flinch.

He can practically hear the cogs turning in your head as you squint and quizzically cock your head to the side. 

When your shoulders suddenly tense, the beginnings of a snicker swelling in your chest, he thinks the guillotine doesn’t sound so bad right about now.

You don’t have to say anything. Your expression speaks volumes, and he squares his shoulders as you caution a step closer, drinking in his new, pristine white additions.

“Oh my God,” you whisper, shock and amusement dueling for dominance of your voice. 

More evident than his tail, flicking irritably, at his back. More prominent than the peach steadily powdering his cheeks when he clears his throat and, for the first time since you intruded on him, cuts his eyes away to an adjacent wall.

“What the fuck happened to you? You’re…Sylus, you’re—”

“Don’t. Say it.” 

“—adorable.”

And there it is. 

Speaking the very thing he feared into existence as if you manifested his curse yourself. Like admitting it aloud somehow worsens his plight and forces him to accept that he’s anything but intimidating. 

With a suffering sigh, Sylus pinches the bridge of his nose, the beginnings of a migraine spilling into his temples. Does he truly need a right hand?

This time, you don’t hold back your snicker. In fact, it evolves into an all-out war of laughter.

A vein visibly pulses on his forehead, the temperature in his living room descending a few degrees. 

Shadows whisper in the crevices and alcoves of his penthouse—his Evol threatening to make itself known. His chagrin doesn’t faze you in the slightest, and you bow forward with guffaws thick in your throat, clutching your stomach, tears flooding your vision.

He’s glad you’re getting a chuckle out of this. Once he finds the manufacturer of that smoke bomb, he’ll flay them alive and leave them to be pecked by crows until they’re begging for death.

Remembering yourself, you wipe the tears from your eyes, your laughter petering. You press your lips together, tamping down another round of giggles. Another smile. But your efforts are moot because your body shakes with the remnants of your mirth, threatening to bubble over again.

He’s seething. A fluffy ball of quietly concealed rage. Yet, his grimace somehow makes it worse. 

“Stop laughing,” he warns, his tone flanked by something dangerous, eyes glinting like the flash of heated silver.  

You laugh anyway, like he commanded it, and his ears quiver, involuntarily shifting, tuned to your mockery. His tail snaps. He sighs again, anguish drawing his brows together. 

Sylus Qin—The Boogeyman—fuming in his den like a caged animal, ridiculed by his subordinate. You’re dreadful. And yet, he doesn’t think he’s ever heard you laugh like this. It’s…pleasant. Had it not been at his expense, he’d take time to appreciate the refreshing sound of it. 

“Are you done?” he rhetorically asks when your laughter tempers again. 

“Yep.” Theatrically, you swipe the fresh onslaught of tears from your face, your cheeks warm, your abs aching.

He hardly believes you.

His spine locks when you begin to prowl around him, the upward arc of your lips bleeding mischief. You take him in like he’s prey instead of you. He tries to track your movements with his eyes, those soft, tufted ears atop his head trembling with each of your measured steps on the rug. 

“I think they’re cute,” you coo over folded arms, doing a shit job at masking your amusement. 

In this moment, he feels like carrion waiting to be picked clean from the road by a vulture. He’s never wanted the world to open up and devour him more. 

“You look—”

“Choose your words carefully.”

“—cuddly. More than usual.”

The crime lord’s tail ticks as if the word set him off. It’s venom. Poison. An insult, forged from blessed silver, plunged into his pride. 

He glares at you from down his nose, the faint whisks of his Evol licking around him like an ancient menace waiting to be unleashed. “Cuddly,” he parrots, like it takes something out of him to say it. 

“Mhmm. In fact...” 

You step closer, the heat of your body blanketing him, somehow tempering the maelstrom raging inside. Your perfume crowds his nose, its scent amplified with his new ailment. Everything is magnified. But nothing compares to the saccharine aroma of your skin buried beneath, clotting his senses like chloroform, the tension in his body receding the slightest bit. 

Ignoring this strange side effect, Sylus stands, unyielding, as you pitch forward on the balls of your feet. You’ve never been afraid of him despite the brutality he’s capable of. You wouldn’t be his right hand otherwise. Though your position might be vacant soon enough.

“I bet your ears are soft,” you murmur, your breath cascading over his lips. “Wanna…touch ‘em.”

His jaw tightens, mouth drawn into a thin line. Judging by the conspiring slit of your eyes, he knows exactly what you’re plotting. He puts an end to the twitch of your fingers at your side with a simple command.

“Don’t.”

Anyone with half a mind wouldn’t. But you’re his daring little temptress, constantly pushing boundaries. Testing your left and right limits without a single fear bogging you down. 

Emboldened, your hand rises, fingers creeping near one of his cat ears like you’re tempted to pluck forbidden fruit. It twitches from the static, whacking your thumb when you venture too close, and you reel back with a disbelieving laugh, clutching your hand like you touched a hot stove. 

“Oh, they are real.”

“Don’t test me, kitten.” And the irony of that pet name—the timing of it—couldn’t be more laughable.

Your grin grows all the more devilish. 

Sylus rolls his eyes, stepping away with a scoff to glower at his reflection. He catches your sparkling gaze behind him, following the idle swish of his tail like a cat tracking a bird. In this moment, he wonders who was truly hit with the gas. 

“I take it the negotiations went well.” You make gestures in the mirror to imitate the ears jutting from his scalp on your own head. “Or was it a furry convention?”

“You enjoy mocking me far too much.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t believe a word of that.”

He’s a 6’2 (debatable) mountain of a man. He warps the space around him like the laws of physics are a mere suggestion. Shadows ripple at his fingertips. Men cower at his feet like groveling dogs, begging to be spared from his wrath. He could sanitize this planet at the drop of a dime. Could reset this entire galaxy if he willed it. 

Yet, here you are, barely containing your amusement. Fearlessly fawning over him like he’s some meager house cat. Fighting every urge not to touch his ears and the velvet jut of his tail. 

Sylus scoffs inwardly. 

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Clasping your hands together behind your back, you bow slightly forward, feigning innocence. “Sorry, bossman.” A little more sincere this time. Beneath it reads, I’ll be good.

One of his ears cants back at your voice. Sighing, something close to a pout pulls at his mouth. A rare thing, foreign on the crime lord’s face. Had you had a death wish, you’d call it endearing. Then again, you’ve never shied away from pushing his buttons. 

You move beside him, your expression placating. Glancing at his reflection, you squeeze your fingers together at your back, fighting down that impulse again with a bat.

“Wanna tell me what happened?” you query, sounding more like a counselor than his insufferable right hand. “Or should I pet you until I drag it out myself?”

Sylus bristles when you tap your chin, knowing what comes next. 

“Wait. Would…would you purr if I pet you?”

Why does he have a second in command again?

—

Two days have passed.

Two days since he became every woman’s fantasy—more so than usual—donning an extra set of appendages he’s slowly getting used to.

He’s in his private office, shacked up on Lux’s upper floor, as the afternoon sun leaks in tawny shafts across the room, bathing him in ominous, shadowy stripes.

The club is thankfully devoid of patrons, though it occasionally buzzes with staff preparing for the Friday night rush in a few hours.

His second set of ears is less twitchy today. He’s found his tail more agreeable, too. Though he’s still working on controlling those nagging little instincts, calling for him to gnaw on Mephisto and to lick himself whenever he’s touched something unpleasant. 

He’s still brooding. Still sporting a perpetual scowl, having obsessively scoured his databases and connections for the source of his ailment. 

Potential leads have led to dead ends. Answers that shepherd him in circles. Names of people who no longer exist. Experimental drugs. Shoddy products. Nothing similar to whatever poisoned him days ago.

Pressing his fingers together, Sylus leans back in his leather, wingbacked chair, exhaling like he shoulders the world. He hasn’t exhausted all of his resources yet. His men move like wolves through the city’s underbelly, chasing any sliver of information that could lead him to the creator of that treacherous smoke bomb.

He hasn’t been able to attend any of his meetings. Not looking like this—the paradigm of cute. 

You attend in his stead while he hides out, chasing strings that could lead to a remedy. Not that you’d ever complain. And it’s not that he can’t trust you, knowing full well you’re more than capable of handling yourself.

He recalls that devious little crook of your lips when you found him some nights ago, and his stomach burns with a reignited flame of humiliation. 

Tipping his head back, he observes the textured ceiling as if it holds all the answers to his problems. 

Ah. 

However, the universe always seems to have exemplary timing, and it’s constantly conspiring against him. 

Because the moment he begins to deflate, allowing the weight of his affliction to slough off his shoulders, eyes slipping shut, the door to his office flies open. 

Of course. 

Of course, it would be them. 

And he was doing so good, avoiding them, too.

“Hey, bossman, we—”

The world’s rotation seemingly slows to an agonizing grind, everything whittling down to the two beaked masks frozen in the doorframe.

Sylus’ ears flatten against his head, his tail rippling into something stiff. He doesn’t need to see behind their disguises to know that Luke and Kieran are doing that twin thing—sharing a shit-eating grin, battling every synapse in their brains to keep it together. 

He’s getting pretty sick of people disrespecting him. Growing more exhausted of everyone just barging in unannounced, like he’s running a circus instead of an entire, professional crime syndicate. 

Tch. 

Because he’s the embodiment of professionalism right now. 

“Boss?” Luke cautions, his voice wavering with the threat of a laugh. 

“Holy shit!” Adversely, his brother doesn’t even try to suppress his mirth. 

The two lean against each other after the revelation sinks in, and they clap their hands together, practically beaming at the sight behind the desk. 

“He’s…he’s a catboy!” one of them screeches.

Sylus can’t be bothered to discern who the culprit is as they both erupt in laughter, dramatically piling on top of each other on his floor, clutching their stomachs, and rolling about as if they’ve witnessed the funniest thing.

His jaw ticks. Nails scrape across the lacquered wood of his desk. He narrows his eyes at the young henchmen, the weight of a centuries-old beast stirring beneath pools of magma.

Sylus isn’t one to raise his voice. He’s never felt the need to assert dominance by beating on his chest or roaring. His presence carries weight on its own. Control isn’t loud. It’s a quiet, lingering thing that he’s rarely had to flex to garner respect. 

But he’s discovered himself more on edge with his affliction. Doing things uncharacteristic of him, like now, his spine imperceptively coiling like a feline poised to attack. 

His tail is a crackling whip before it puffs up. The smack of his palm against the cherrywood desk causes the twins to snap to attention, their laughter dying like it never existed.

“Enough,” grates Sylus, another headache looming on the horizon. “If I hear another sound from either of you, I’ll have your tongues displayed above Lux’s bar as trophies.”

The twins choke, whether fearing for their tongues or biting back another peal of laughter, Sylus isn’t sure. Regardless, they’re testing his bluff.

And Sylus Qin does not bluff.

Dark red tendrils snake from his body, smoke furling around him, staining the air with the scent of murderous intent. The corrupted threads of his Evol coil around the twins’ ankles, snaking higher, and he lifts a brow, daring them to push him further. 

Spines ramrod stiff, the boys raise their hands in surrender. Sylus eyes them warily, hoping that this is the end of their shenanigans. He waves them off, and they’re seemingly grateful for his mercy, bowing before retreating as if puppeteered by his Evol. 

But, of course, they don’t just let it go. 

This is Luke and Kieran we’re talking about. Loki’s spirit split in two.

Does everyone in this organization have a death wish? 

“Not our fault he looks adorable,” Luke quips from the hallway, his voice pealing off the walls, before it gives way to another round of raucous laughter.

Pinching his nose, Sylus pushes out a composing breath, his ears quivering with annoyance. He raises his fingers to do good on his threat. But he doesn’t get to complete the thought, his glare raising to find you leaning against the doorframe, eyes gleaming with devilry, smirk heralding no good. 

Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any better...

Your lips quiver, no doubt working around a taunt. Something that will result in you being strung up by his Evol like a pig ready to be roasted.

“Think carefully about what you’re going to say, kitten.” 

That name again. He winces; he’s really gotta stop using it.

You both know the threatening curl of his voice is hollow. He’d never lay a finger on you. At least, not out of malice. Pleasure, however, in his bedroom, no less. He’s free to vent out his frustrations as much as you allow.

You mockingly concede as you saunter into his office, hands behind your back. The door closes behind you with ominous finality, sealing you in. You’re dressed to pilfer hearts—something dangerous that boasts the shape of your body, the supple stretch of your skin.

He feels his lips twitching with the beginnings of a snarl. You didn’t wear that in front of all those old geezers, did you?

Sylus is a man of principle. Of discipline. He doesn’t take what isn’t offered. So, he tries to keep his gaze on your face, swallowing against the dry clench of his throat when a slab of sunlight contours your chest just right.

Wait a minute.

You’re up to something. Suspiciously quiet. Dressed to maim. Agreeable. His nerves set alight like fireflies stirred from the grass on a humid night the closer you amble. 

Angling back in his chair, he crosses his arms, chin slightly tucked towards his chest, eyes half-slit. “Show me your hands.” 

Your smile is coy. Feigned innocence as you look around, straight-backed, whistling, and rocking on your feet. 

“Sweetie.” His voice steeps into something prophesying danger if you don’t heed him. “I won’t ask again.” 

“Alright,” you counter with a shrug. “You asked for it.”

For the nth time that day, Sylus contemplates murder. 

Because, from behind your back, you produce a garishly pink wand, iridescent feathers with a bell dangling from an equally pink string, tied to its end. You brandish it like a weapon, waving it tauntingly, the metal bell clinking atop his desk.  

His eye twitches. The fur of his tail spikes. His ears jerk. Flatten, voice toneless. “You don’t respect me.”

Roosting your elbow on the desk, cheek propped in your palm, you wave the toy lazily between you. A maestro conducting trouble. The feathered ends flutter, mimicking a bird, catching in errant sun rays alongside your wolfish grin.

“I do. Most times.”

Had Sylus not been tracking the movement of the cat wand like a predator in wait, he would admonish you for your comment. But he suddenly has a primal need to catch the toy. To tear it asunder. You’re not helping, dangling the thing like meat held to a starving wolf trapped in a ditch. 

He must be quite the sight. Nefarious kingpin, flaring pupils, gritted teeth, about to pounce on a scrap of string. 

“Put that away,” he rasps, his throat thickening as he unfolds his arms and leans forward, his desk croaking beneath his might. The remaining threads of his dignity fray with each flick of your wrist.

“Why? Seems like you like it.”

“I don’t.” 

He’s fooling no one, because the moment you wiggle the wand again, his eyes snap to it with predatory proficiency.

“Hmm. Sure,” you purr, cocking your head to one side, drawing the string just out of reach when his fingers twitch with the urge to smack that bloody toy out of your hand.

Every nerve is trained on the damned thing. Instinct calls to him, clawing up his spine, luring his tail into a slow, calculative swish. You delight in his internal conflict, stepping back with a derisive chuckle, toy in tow.

The wheels of his chair scrape against the floor as he stands. The tendons in his neck jump. He rounds his desk, the silence stretched tight until his ears ring. His body shouts for him to move, while his mind wills him to scrape his pride off the floor. 

Sadly, instincts win. 

Like a creeping feline, he steps forward. One step transitions into another. One more.

You back away, two of your steps equating to one of his, the feathers dancing between you like a vibrant lure, beckoning him, antagonizing him. 

“Here, kitty kitty,” you sing-song, husky. Patronizing. You don’t fear death. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be toying with it. 

It’s comical how his pupils dilate until the reds of his irises are mere outlines. His ears cant forward, attentive. He swipes once when he’s close enough, the whistle of his nails severing the thickened silence. 

You’re surprisingly quicker, snatching the wand back, a laugh surging from your chest. It becomes a dance. A knife fight without the hiss of serrated silver, but each move is critical and premeditated. 

A scowl takes possession of his features. Laser-focused, Sylus swings again, putting his previous effort to shame with a move that could split flesh if he were honestly trying. 

But you’re too good at this game, drawing the toy away when his nail barely grazes the tip of a shimmering feather. 

By the third strike, he’s backed you into an armchair near the door. You realize it a moment too late when your calves meet glacial leather, and you tumble back with a sharp intake of breath.

The string loops itself around your wrist in the commotion, and the toy dangles uselessly, swinging like a pendulum. 

Sylus gives you little time to regroup. He moves in streaks of red, white, and black, caging you between the pressure of his body and the plush of the seat. His hands brace on the chair’s arms until his nails bite into leather, leaving you nowhere to run.

Angling down, his eyes burn like torches clutched in cold darkness, his stature framed the retreating sunlight. So close, he blots out anything in the room that isn’t him. 

His tail lashes wildly behind him, spurred by adrenaline. Your chest swells with the effort of breathing, your blood throbbing in your neck, deafening to his enhanced senses. That scent returns, so sickeningly sweet, so tempting, it evokes the quietest little sound from his person. Something akin to a trill.

He watches your throat bob as you swallow. Goosebumps flare across your skin. Your pupils dilate, your face flooding with warmth, and your mouth cracking open. It would take nothing to conquer the space between you and just—

No. No. Get it together. 

Remembering himself, he parts through the nebula of his thoughts, shaking his head. Energy ripples like tarnished lightning around him. Before you know what’s about, Sylus uses his Evol to snatch the toy from your hand and chuck it. It slides helplessly across the floor, disappearing under his desk. 

When your gaze flits back, he’s close again. So much so, his breath is dizzying, feathering across your cheeks, stirring your lashes. You blink drunkenly, sketching a sluggish line between his eyes and mouth. 

It’s when your scrutiny continues further north that he regrets getting so close. Giving you time to think. He knows that look in your eye. Feels how your body tenses, how your fingers flex near your lap. 

“Stop,” he warns, though it holds no bite. No threat.

You’re usually so good at following orders. And yet, with your eyes shining curiously, you reach up. Up, until your fingers close around the tip of a warm, shaggy ear. 

He winces when you test its texture, gentle like you’re handling a butterfly’s wing. He grunts something guttural and bitten-off, his ear flittering beneath your attention. 

It’s instinctual. Doesn’t hurt. In fact, it feels…good. 

The sensation drags his lids down. Lures out a shaky breath, and the strain in his body relents under your touch.

Emboldened, you tweak the other ear, massaging it with equal childlike adoration. You seem to be enjoying yourself. Lost in the warmth, the fluffiness, the betrayal of his body. 

Meanwhile, he’s trying to compose himself. But it’s difficult to keep his back straight with you knowing just where to scratch. 

“Mmm. Found your weak spot, bossman.”

A retort, bitter and electric, curls his tongue. But then, you drag your nails from the base of his ears to their tips just right, and his knees almost give. 

Damn you for being so good at this. Who told you to be good at this?

Sylus—the demon who fears no one. Typically, the most dangerous man in any room he enters. The end of days. Judge and executioner—reduced to a twitching puddle of nerves at your feet. 

Something snaps inside him. In the blink of an eye, his composure returns. He grabs your wrists, ignoring the surprise on your face, drawing your fingers from his ears mid-scratch. The treacherous little things jerk, already missing your touch, a glacial shiver worming around his spine. 

“Enough,” he husks around a scowl. He’s let you claim victory long enough. 

You blink owlishly, swallowing.

When he’s satisfied you won’t get any more bright ideas, Sylus stands to full height, smoothing his hands down his waistcoat, wiping the sweat from balmy palms.

His jaw is tight enough to shatter diamonds when he strides across the room to reclaim his chair. It’s so quiet, he can hear the particles in the room shifting. Still hear your blood roaring in your neck. 

Everything in him burns to draw you into his lap. To bury his face into your chest, inhale that bewitching scent, and let you play with his ears. But he’s let you have your fun. He’s let everyone get away with mocking him for far too long.

Recovering, you scoff, sitting up and crossing your legs with that rehearsed smirk, trying to dispel the tension. “Too much?”

Sylus huffs, halfway to a laugh, pivoting in his chair towards the window.

No, he thinks against the brilliance of the setting sun. It wasn’t enough. 

But he’ll never say that out loud. Not when your ego’s already swelled so much.  

—

Sylus sent you on a recon mission the following day. Something low-intensity and boring. Penance for making him feel things. Vexing him with some cheap toy you found in a bargain bin. A pink one, at that.

In your absence, he noticed the hours ticking by more slowly. Agonizingly slow, like time had stilted itself just to mess with him.

He tried to bury himself in intel, research, contracts, schedules. Anything to occupy his hands, to keep his mind busy while his skin blazed with the remnants of your touch. He still had his people reaping through the underground, chasing down the source of his ailment. 

But in the stillness, he discovered himself restless. A bowstring fastened too tightly. An overstimulated feline stroked a touch too long. 

His new extensions belied his condition, swiveling and ticking at every stray sound that wasn’t that of your voice. Your laughter. Your heels nearing his office, and you sliding in with snark on your lips.

The most eventful thing he’d encountered was the twins poking around to check on him, biting back their mirth. His Evol surged in warning. Lips quirked when they scurried out like spiders bared to the light. 

Once they were gone, the agitation didn’t leave him. It wound tighter. And as he drummed his fingers on his desk, staring at the black screen of his phone, waiting for something—a text, a phone call, anything—he concluded that he was missing something.

Missing you.

In his three days spent in misery, you had been the only thing to calm him. You were like catnip. Antiseptic over nicked skin. You lay his animalistic urges to rest while also calling to them.

Sighing, he deflated in his chair, wishing he could find the bastard who concocted this weird status ailment faster. 

—

A conglomerate of sounds greets him when the elevator dumps him onto Lux’s base floor. 

The beat rocks the marble beneath, thudding through his body, flattening his ears against his head beneath the baseball cap he shoved them into. His tail flicks defiantly beneath slacks and a leather jacket. 

Scarlet lights glaze over the Saturday night crowd, bodies dancing, shadowed by dense fog. It smells of liquor, perfume, and sweat. Laughter pricks his ears as he presses through the throng of people towards the private booth overlooking his club. Patrons part like fish when they recognize that swagger.

Even dressed down, there’s no mistaking the enigmatic man who exudes power. He might be a cat hybrid monstrosity, but his aura speaks for itself.

With his senses sharpened to a fine point, everything agitates him right now. 

It’s too loud and too bright. There are too many people, and the stench curling around his nose is offensive. But he’s here to keep up appearances. To ensure that one of his most promising business ventures runs smoothly. 

As much as he would like to, he can’t hide forever. 

He makes it to the isolated box, framed by an iron rail, decked with red velvet and opulence. The lights are lower here, the bass less intense. Gratefully, no one can see him from up here unless they’re flying a drone. 

He comes here to be antisocial. Occasionally, to conduct business. To keep tabs without engaging, like a ghost forced to watch the physical plane thrive without its interference.

A waitress pushes through the curtains at the booth’s entrance to offer him a drink. She’s all sultry smiles and a cocked hip beneath the feathered accents of her costume. He waves her off, leaning against the railing. The girl’s the last thing on his mind as he frowns at the gaudy centerpiece of his venue. 

A massive, ornate, round birdcage, suspended from the ceiling by chains, and rooted to the floor by a thick column, greets him—an addition you talked him into getting some years back. 

Like most things these days, he’s learning to regret past decisions. 

Because at the cage’s center is you. Swaying, swiveling, and gyrating beneath Lux’s customary sanguine hue as the nightlife writhes beneath you like a beast.

And of course, you’re swathed in black. Iridescent feathers reminiscent of a bird’s wings sewn into your costume. You’re already temptation, but peacocking around the cage like that…

A crow. His crow. A meal waiting to be caught, savored, licked clean until not a morsel is left behind—the irony isn’t lost on him.

Innocent Birdcage. Tch. Whose idea was that?

Ah. It was his, wasn’t it?

He’s gotta do a better job at thinking these things through.

The music melds into something slower. Sexier. Perfect timing. 

He manages to tear himself away from the banister when you slip out of that godforsaken birdcage for a break. 

Dropping onto the sectional after discarding his jacket, he tips his head back until it meets the backrest. He exhales through his nose. Studies the sheer, intricate drape of the fabric hung overhead. He wills himself to relax and enjoy the music and bourbon left sweating on his table. 

But he’s antsy. He’ll find a cure. Be back to his old self in no time. He just has to keep digging. 

Thankfully, his inner turmoil is interrupted when the curtains at the booth’s entrance sweep shut. An ear perks beneath his cap, his attention aimed at you while he sinks into a lax slouch. 

He doesn’t stand to greet you. Rarely does. You come to him of your own volition, dragged in by the sheer force of his gravity.

“Enjoy the show?” 

Inwardly, he scoffs, giving your costume a once-over. 

If only you knew how much. 

You’re half-shrouded in shadows when you step further into his domain. A black panther stalking through familiar terrain as you near him, your hips swaying beneath the tawny wash of lights overhead in time with the music. He wonders who the prey truly is in this moment.

Sylus tracks your every step like it’s his sole purpose. Every flutter of those damned feathers, every click of your heels. His pupils thin as you close in, tail moving in a languid swish, smacking against the sectional.

It’s subtle, but his breath catches when you slip onto his lap, your knees sinking into the cushions, bracketing him in. 

You descend like he’s your throne, draping loose arms about virile shoulders. And he doesn’t deter you, fastening his hands to your waist to keep you steady, neither pushing you off nor pulling you closer. 

Tilting his chin up, he drinks you in through hooded lids. Those gorgeous eyes he can’t hide anything from. Your brazen lips that keep him in check despite who he is. A face that could bring any man to his knees. All his. Only his. 

You carry with you a scent that both dismantles him and keeps him balanced on the sharpened edge of a knife. Slows his heartbeat. Quiets the maelstrom toiling in his head while also empowering it.

He wants more of it, this dizzying push and pull. The warm weight of your body pressing into him. Consuming him. Those intoxicating pheromones wafting off your skin, mingled with your sweat and perfume. 

Finally, he tugs you closer, mooring you against him. And the laugh you release makes his ears knock against the cap. 

He’s caught between a pout and a scowl as your fingers close around the brim and you knock his hat off. Your smile grows with it. White hair and ears spring free, unfurling like moth wings. Twitching, agitated, looking temptingly soft.

A gruff sound emerges from his throat when you pinch his new additions, stroking from base to tip in that way that makes a shiver coil around his spine. 

He slow blinks at you, arms tightening around your waist. He's a content cat showing surrender. Bleeding trust. At least until you give him a reason to take it back.

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” he rasps. Yet his body betrays him, and he’s angling more towards your hand when you nudge a tender spot. 

He’s been understandably tense since this whole debacle began. He has no clue where it ends—if it will end. Right now, you’re the only thing tempering him. Soothing him when all he wants to do is turn this city to ash. 

But then, his eyes flick to your mouth. Back up. His tail gives him away, swishing and curved at the end in a question mark, like he’s eyeing down his preferred human. 

You pick up on the shift. Drop your hands to his shoulders, pressing closer. That smile doesn’t die, teeth gleaming in the lowlight. But your eyes, shadowed by your lashes as you pan in, reveal that your thoughts are in sync. 

Your breaths intermingle, hot and dizzying. Your voice cracks, heavy, thick with seduction. “What’s wrong, bossman? Cat got your tongue?”

His eye twitches at the jab. You have this uncanny way of killing the mood. 

But your arrogance doesn’t stop him from slipping his fingers around your nape, into your hair, and luring you closer. Closer until the wisp of space between your mouths is conquered, and you both exhale through your noses, your shadows dissolving into one.

The first kiss is a tease. A test and a question. A languid brush of lips that sends pins and needles spiraling to his extremities. He studies your face for any signs of discomfort when he pulls back. Any indication that he jumped the gun. 

But you couldn’t be more into it, drawing him back for another kiss. This one is more confident than the former. Longer, like you’re both sampling something sweet. He leans away, eyes swimming, almost disbelieving you’re all his. The gorgeous little bird that landed on his shoulder some years back, refusing to leave. 

Not that he would let you.

He takes possession of your lips a third time, slower, like the idle push and pull of waves displacing the sand. 

Time is but a construct here. There’s no rush to taste you. To suck your breath into his body and cycle it through his lungs like it’s his own. To capture each pretty noise you make while offering his own in kind. 

One hand drags down your side, over the feathers that vex him, ending its excursion at the downhill slope of your backside. 

Your fingers tangle in his hair, a palm dropping to his chest for leverage. To feel his heart rabbiting against it. The heat of your body seeps into him. Irresistible sin nestled on his lap, sipping from him like a spring.

The tone transitions when your tongues meet. Wet, carnal, claiming. You both know this song and dance. Both know where it leads. 

What you have is unspoken. Your bond doesn’t need a brand. To anyone who knows you, he is yours, and you are his. A king and his unknowing queen. Bonnie and Clyde. Adam and Eve. 

His fingers crook against the meat of your ass. Your mouths move in sync as you bear down on his lap just right, initiating a ritual you’re all too familiar with. He stirs against the stitching of his trousers, pressing hot and swollen against your inner thigh. 

Yet, tonight, he doesn’t want sex. 

It’s been the furthest thing from his mind as of late, and he’s not sure if it’s a symptom of his affliction or something deeper. 

When your kiss breaks with a sticky click, he pants, pupils constricted, eyes half-slit. His lips are moving before he can make sense of what he’s saying.

“Can we just…” It hangs in the air between you, rivaled by the pulse of the music down below. The chatter of patrons unaware of what’s taking place in this shrouded corner of intimacy. This pocket of dizzying heat.

He’s not good with feelings. Not the greatest at expressing himself with meager words. He can silence a room with a simple command. A cut of his eyes. But when it comes to you—when it comes to asking for something that isn’t your body, his name in your mouth, your soul—he’s tongue tied. 

So, he pulls you into the circle of his arms, nuzzling against your chest, your heartbeat mollifying beneath his cheek. He exhales something grounding and content, his tail whipping out to wrap around your waist. Hold tighter where his arms can’t without breaking you. 

“Just for tonight,” Sylus murmurs, letting his eyes droop as your pheromones overhaul his senses. “Be my sedative.”

He doesn’t need to elaborate. 

You fill in the blanks, and with a fond laugh, relax in his embrace. You pet through his hair and over his quivering ears, cradling his head to your bosom like something to be handled with care.

The moment doesn’t need to evolve into something beyond this. Not yet. It’s richer for its tenderness. 

Tenderness that doesn’t last long thanks to your mouth. 

“Sylus, are…are you purring?”

On second thought, maybe he should fuck the snark right out of you tonight.

—

It’s quite in his penthouse.

A rare sort of serenity unbroken by the twins barging in to run him ragged or you poking fun at his new additions.

Additions he’s still sporting, by the way.

It’s day four of trails leading to cold destinations. 

Useless things about after-market drugs and strange side effects. Eyes drooping. Faces melting. People biting off chunks of flesh and sprouting scales in place of skin. 

None of his intel leans towards the creator of his ailment. No symptoms that sound remotely similar to what he’s suffering.

Lowering his tablet, Sylus sighs for the umpteenth time. He's strained his eyes too much. Pinches his nose, feeling another migraine barging in. He’s beginning to lose hope. Accepting he may never boast that commanding aura ever again.

Not without being called cute and fluffy. 

Behind him, the city bleeds neon. A smeared sprawl of skyscrapers and industrialism, blurred by the rain battering against the floor-to-ceiling windows. He’s a stark and shouldered cutout against it, one arm draped along the sectional’s backrest, thumb absently stroking your shoulder. 

You’re suspiciously quiet beside him. Bathed in a warm halo of light, courtesy of the spotlight mounted in the ceiling. You chuckle every so often, tucked safe and cozy in the sectional’s corner, occupied by something on your phone. Adjacent play, you call it, the two of you existing without engaging in the same task.

He calls it peace. 

He doesn’t miss you watching him in his periphery like you’re waiting for a chance to pounce. His ears prick each time he feels it, every nerve tightened by what you might do. A distraction doesn’t sound so bad right about now.

Like a provocation, his tail sweeps over your leg. Warm, twitching, licking over your thigh, snaking around your ankle like the contact moors him to the Earth. 

Thankfully, you don’t keep him in suspense for long. Before he can move, he has a face full of you, the cushions squeaking beneath your weight distributed on all fours. So close, the cloying scent of your pheromones congeals in his system.

In a flash of teeth and bad intentions, you’re moving again. Plucking the tablet from his hand to set it on the glass top coffee table beside a glass of whiskey left untouched. You proceed to bully your way into his lap, arms wreathing his shoulders, warmth drawing him in like a predator seeking solace from the snow. 

It’s instinctual how his hands fall to your waist. He seeks out your eyes, fringed by bowed lashes, casually leaning against the sectional like he wasn’t ready to tear his hair out moments ago. 

“What are you up to?” he asks, the tension from earlier melting into something soft. “What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”

“Getting my fix. You called it recharging, right?”

Sylus huffs a laugh. It’s short-lived, for he flinches slightly, a strained noise pulled from his throat, when your fingers clasp around his ears and massage. 

He’s gotten used to being your stress ball. So, he allows himself to sink beneath your touch. Lets you have your fill. You’re the only one he’d let touch him like this. See him like this, one hand slipping from your hip to the small of your back, drawing you impossibly closer until your chests move as one. 

He pulls a laugh from you when he bands his arms around your waist, nuzzling his cheek into your bosom. So warm here. So soft. 

He inhales, and his eyes slip shut on a breath out as if he’s surrendering to the one person who feels like home. His tail sweeps over the notches of your spine. He doesn’t intend to let you go. Not when you feel like this. 

When your fingers spill from his second set of ears down to his shoulders, he cants his head until his chin rests against the bulk of your chest. He ingests you with hooded, drunken eyes, a pout threatening his lips. 

Him. Pouting. Oh, he’s down atrocious. 

“Why did you stop?” he prods, surprised by the beseeching texture of his voice.

Your palms frame his cheeks. You duck low to brush your noses together, and he can taste the smile cresting over your face. “Had my fill. I’m good now.”

He pins you with a flat look, ears deflating. “I haven’t.”

And, as if to punish you, he roots his nose into the slope of your shoulder. You laugh against the feel of it, hands on his biceps as he dips you back, seeking more of your supple skin.

You barely have time to gather yourself before a row of incisors—another consequence of his sickness—sink into your shoulder, and you trade those bewitching giggles for something breathier. More indulgent. He almost purrs, the blistering heat of him jumping against the inner span of your thigh.

It isn’t deep, his claim. It’s enough to warn. A brand for anyone who might look at what’s his and mistake it for easypickings. It’s still primal in nature, and the danger of it makes your voice thicken in your throat while your head tips back to allow him more passage. 

He drinks you in, how you yield to him, his eyes controlled burns as he releases you from his maw. His tongue licks over the raw indentations left behind, an apology for being too rough.

You stiffen at the coarse texture of it, breath tight. He bristles, too. Reels back, thinking he’s hurt you too much. But you don’t let him leave, threading your fingers in his hair, keeping him close, craning your head to the side to ingest him with those feverish eyes and the upward cant of your lips. 

As if you’ve permitted him, he licks you again with his rasping tongue. Your thighs instinctively tighten around his waist. The sound you release is addictive. Halfway ragged. His girth pulses again, blisteringly hot against the front of your bottoms, and his hands mold around the globes of your ass to grind you against it. 

When the mood crescendos into something more devious, the universe reminds him that he is the bane of its existence.

Because the elevator chimes, slicing through the tension like a warmed knife through butter. 

Of course, it’s them. Their timing is impeccable, Luke and Kieran’s. It always is, like they have some sort of distress beacon that sounds every time Sylus experiences a modicum of peace. 

Their voices reverberate off the hallway walls, their cacophonous laughter growing louder, accompanied by the sound of their footsteps.

“Boss?” Kieran tests. 

Sylus’ body grows rigid beneath you. His ears flatten, his lips pulling into a snarl, and his tail fluffs up. His Evol flares at the sheer audacity of these two. He’s going to have to host a PowerPoint presentation on what manners are. 

You shift to climb off of him, but he doesn’t let you; instead, he holds tighter, palms flexing on your ass, like you’re a meal he refuses to share with the pack. 

The twins round the partition, and their voices die when they find you twined together. Sylus turns his head just enough to glare over your shoulder, and if looks could kill, he’d have two slots that needed filling.

“Do either of you possess any decorum?” Sylus dryly mutters, the feathered wisps of his power billowing from the floor around their feet.

Luke jumps back, hands up in surrender. “W-Wait, boss! We got another lead!”

Kieran interjects to save their hides, cringing back from the energy threatening to turn them to soot. “This—this one sounds promising!”

Sylus’ ears straighten, his hold on you slackening the slightest bit. Still, he doesn’t let you go. His Evol retreats slightly, coiling around you like protective wings. 

“I’m listening.”

They dribble out their findings, and suddenly, Sylus doesn’t feel so hopeless. 

“We’ll get the car ready,” says Luke, breathing a sigh of relief that they haven’t been throttled. 

Kieran follows on his brother’s heels, whispering, “He’s worse as a catboy,” before the elevator swallows them whole. 

“Want me to come with?” you ask around a smirk, still warm in his lap. 

Peering up at you, his fingers smooth over your cheek to brush some hair away from your face. You capture his wrist with delicate hands, holding his palm to your face, turning your lips inward to kiss it.

You’d follow him through hellfire, and he knows it. But he wants to preserve you like this—soft, amiable, wordlessly his. 

“No. You stay here.”

He holds you close for a moment longer, letting the sounds of the rain play around you. 

A few more minutes won’t kill him. 

—

The warehouse reeks of rotting iron and mildew. A place hidden amid the docks on the outskirts of the city. Sylus is pissed it took him this long to find something in plain sight. Even more so, given the direction this interrogation has taken. 

His nose scrunches against the offending smell salting the air, his ears catching the sway of metal chains dangling from the ceiling. The seabirds sing outside, chorusing with that of ocean waves thrashing against the pier, contrasting the weighted atmosphere inside. 

A tawny light bulb winks overhead, a moth battering itself against the bulb, casting its ominous shadow over the body fastened to a chair.

“I’m telling you, man,” his victim pants. A petty criminal-turned-chemist who got overzealous with the chemicals. A Great Value Walter White. His voice is wet with blood, a sheen of sweat coating his skin, manic eyes, split lips. Through the panic, he has the gall to laugh like the threads of his life aren’t in Sylus’ hands. “There isn’t a cure.”

Sylus bristles over folded arms, one of his accursed ears flattening, the other shifting towards the side.

The warehouse lies in ruin around him. The scorched remnants of men—guards stationed to protect this swine—pile on the floor, tables overturned, concoctions mingling together amid shards of glass. He’s half a mind to set this place on fire, but only once he’s extracted what he needs.

His prey chuckles again, trading it for an anguished cough. He’s the textbook definition of a lowlife who scraped by without getting killed. Bowing forward in the restraints of Sylus’ Evol, one of his eyes swollen shut, he smirks at Sylus, as if he isn’t staring down ruin made corporeal. 

“I’m not that advanced yet, man. I just got lucky when I made that shit. It’s different for everybody. That’s why it’s hard to make an antidote. Never seen a cat, though. Kinda cute.”

A vein visibly pulses on Sylus’ temple. He tightens one of the cords of his power near his hostage’s ribs, and the lunatic coughs up specks of red. 

“It’ll wear off eventually,” he strains out in a last bid for his life. “Sometimes it takes hours. Days. Few months, even.”

Months? 

The word stains the air, winding around Sylus’ neck like a noose. 

He doesn’t have months to spare.

Sylus doesn’t move at first. His only tell is the tight flex of tendons in his neck. The steadying breath roiling in his chest. He’s every bit the quiet executioner he’s built up his reputation as, neither screaming nor throwing things. 

Blasphemous whispers fill the decaying warehouse, accompanied by the smoky billow of Sylus’ Evol. Sinuous tendrils materialize from the floor like the Kraken wrapping its tentacles around a ship. They lift their victim skyward, wreathing around the man’s throat until his laughter chokes into garbled, strained silence. 

He’s done here. Found the answer he’s spent the past week seeking, though it’s not the one he wants. 

With a flick of his wrist, and all before the man has time to scream, Sylus tears him and the chair in half, the sound of mangled flesh reverberating off metal, followed by viscera painting the walls in debauched shades of red and pink. 

The body blackens to ash before it hits the ground, but Sylus doesn’t savor the foul taste of his life force. 

Did he overact? Possibly. But to know he’ll have to wait his ailment out—if it even does wear off—makes his blood boil beneath his flesh. 

With a rigid jaw, Sylus stuffs his hands into his pockets. He makes his dramatic exit with his tail twitching and his coat fluttering theatrically on his shoulders behind. 

The twins stand at the mouth of the carnage, stunned to silence beneath their masks. 

He presses past them, tossing a terse, “Burn it down,” over his shoulder before walking towards the car. 

—

He’s miffed by the time he makes it back to Lux. Understandably so. He’s still fucking cute. Who wants to be cute when he has an organization to run? Weapons to sell? Opposition to scare shitless?

The doors of Lux yield to him, clattering against the walls with the force of lightning splitting a tree in half. He’s a spring condensed under extreme pressure. An immeasurable cosmic storm threatening to rip the fabric of spacetime. 

It’s thankfully empty inside. Music dulled and crying, glasses clinking behind the bar. 

His staff scuttles about, gasping when they get a look at the poltergeist that’s been haunting the halls, hiding in his office. Their eyes widen upon spotting the ears on his head. The whip of his tail. Everyone’s cleverly tight-lipped. No one wants to die. Not even when he’s adorable and fluffy.

The rhythm of his loafers clicking against the floor interrupts your conversation with the bartender. You’re seated at the counter, temptation spilled onto a leather stool, biting back a smile as he closes in. 

Amusement lances through your voice. Amusement that makes his tail tick. “No luck?” And as if to drive the figurative knife deeper, you imitate his ears with your index fingers atop your head.

Leave it to you to still be a gremlin in the face of hellfire and brimstone. Someone could use an attitude adjustment. And he could use some exercise.

He feels the bartender’s eyes on him. His gaze flicks to her, a soundless threat tucked beneath raging reds. The bartender wisely shuts her mouth, turning away to wipe down the opposite counter. 

He doesn’t give you room to fix your mouth around another quip. With a growl in his throat, he hefts you from the barstool over his shoulder, carrying you like the spoils of a slaughter. 

A startled laugh spills out of you, a protest enmeshed with excitement. You kick and squeal as your world swings, and he’s walking you towards the elevator without another word. 

His frustration is palpable. He needs somewhere to vent it. And who better to relieve the stiffness between his shoulders and teeth than you?

Your playful thrashing results in a swat to your ass as he mounts the lift. You fall limp, crossing your arms against his back, still laughing that entrancing laugh, warm and pliant over his shoulder.

When the elevator dumps the pair of you on the top floor, he shoves into his penthouse like a fierce gale, you in tow. His stride is relentless. Quick as he crosses the living room, and clears the hall, kicking the door to his bedroom open.

You bounce when he unceremoniously drops you onto the leather, pin-cushioned chaise at the foot of his bed. He doesn’t grant you the luxury of a breath in, already climbing over you. He moors you down beneath the weight of tension left spooling for a week, claiming the taste of your lips in a kiss of teeth and heat and passion.

Your legs fall open, beckoning him in. And he slots himself against you with the ease of a jigsaw piece, his hands mapping out the contours of your body. He takes possession of your hips to trap you like you’d ever run, and he drags his teeth through the downy flesh of your lips before he parts for air.

He’s feverish. He’s angry. He’s frustrated. He breathes ragged like something feral, lost in the entrancing swell of your lips. The push and pull of your breath. 

You draw him down via hands at his cheeks, noses brushing, lips hovering with the promise of another kiss. “What can I do to make you feel better?” 

And the way you offer yourself to him like a virgin bestowed upon a God…he groans low in his throat. Strained, his mouth hinging up as he pants.

“That depends on how attached you are to your clothes.”

You chuckle, voice sticky, your heels digging into the backs of his thighs. “I can buy new ones.”

That’s all the permission he needs, dissolving your attire with his Evol until you’re naked and unguarded beneath him.

—

Morning announces itself in the form of a blinding shaft of light cast over his face.

He blinks against its brilliance, groaning, his tone smoky from disuse. He postures himself to rise with his palms flat on the bed, but your body, warm and doughy against his cheek, steals the fight from him. Your fingers are busy, tenderly sorting through his locks, threatening to draw him back into the inky chasm of sleep. He deflates on an exhale, winding his arms tighter around your middle.

Shifting slightly, he realizes that his muscles are stiff. His back still stings from the raw abrasions you adorned it with in the throes of passion. When he moved inside the milky mess of your cunt, the ridges on his cock—courtesy of his ailment—raked against those sensitive nerve endings meshed deep inside. 

He could easily heal them, but where’s the fun in that?

“Notice anything different?” you ask.

His bleary eyes flit to you, ingesting the smile on your face. A rare thing, not masked by devilish intentions. He squints comically, not yet catching what you’re insinuating. 

You crook your pointer fingers on your head. “No ears. No tail.”

It takes him a moment, but the notion finally sinks in. He tries to flex his phantom appendages, but they’re gone. 

Sighing dramatically, your head drops back against the headboard, your throat marred with petals of pretty blue. Bruises you’ll proudly wear for a few days. 

“Shame. I liked them. I miss your ears already.”

Sylus levels you with a glare before he nuzzles once more into the safety of your belly, clinging tighter like a child to his mother. He lets his eyes slip closed, exhaling something content. 

He flinches when you gently pinch the helix of his ear. “Planning to stay in bed all day, kitty?”

“Quiet,” he murmurs. “Let me get more of my sedative in peace.” 

Your body shakes beneath him with a laugh. Your fingers ease into his hair once more, soothing him. 

Before he disappears behind the veil of slumber, you disrupt the comfortable silence with a joke that would make his cat ears jerk if he still had them. 

“Wouldn’t it be funny if sex were the cure all along?”

Sometimes, he wishes you didn’t think so much.