#michael corvin

“This is one of the places we use for interrogations,” Selena said. She pushed through the set of wooden double doors. “This should be safe.”

A fluorescent light flickered automatically above them as Michael followed her inside. The room didn’t look like an interrogation room. At least, not the police kind that Michael had seen on television. This place looked more like a lab. Cold, white walls. Sleek metal tables covered in beakers, silver instruments that could poke you just from looking at them. Michael took tentative steps inside. The place was shivery cold and the fresh rainwater on his t-shirt didn’t help. Not even the fresh red blood staining his neck offered him any warmth.

Selene opened the blinds then approached a metal fridge behind one the tables. Michael’s eyes widened when he saw the content: Sloshy red blood bags, like the kind he saw at work after a blood drive. Selene pulled one out then tossed it to Michael, who caught it between his hands. He examined the label on it.

“Ziodex Industries,” he read.

“We own it,” Selene said, shutting and locking the doors to the room. “First there was synthetic plasma, now this. Once it’s approved, it should be our newest cash crop.”

Michael stared down at the bag. He’d seen plenty of blood bags in his (he now realized, brief) medical career. It looked so real. Color, texture. Anyone could have mistaken it for the real thing.

“It’s cloned blood,” he said.

He wanted to ask Selene if they had ever tried using it as a substitute in a real body. He thought of everything something like this could do. The diseases that could be cured, the lives that could be saved. No more asking for blood donations. They could simply make healthy blood substitutes and give them to people in need.

But Selene was distracted by some security footage on two monitors. She clicked between several areas, all thankfully empty. Michael instead gazed his eyes along the sharp, pointy instruments that were strewn about the tables. The first dead giveaway that this was not a normal lab or medical room. Clearly, vampires did not have the same cleanliness and sanitation standards that hospitals did. Many of the instruments were haphazardly laid about where anyone could accidentally cut themselves. Several of them were still caked with blood. If this was in a normal surgeon’s room, the whole place would be shut down and the doctor fired.

Michael felt tempted to clean, sanitize and organize them. His old medical school habits kicked in. But then he noticed some small items in a tin tray, bloodier than anything else on the table. When he looked closer, dread dropped into his stomach: bullets.

“What are these for?” Michael asked.

Selene glanced over at the table, then turned back to the keyboard.

“Lycans are allergic to silver,” she said. “If we don’t get our bullets out quickly, they die during questioning.”

The image flashed across Michael’s mind. He thought of the Lycans, one of them strapped to the table. A vampire interrogator, maybe even Selene herself, pinching silver bullets out with a sharp pair of tweezers. The blood, the singeing skin, the screams and growls. It sent a shiver across his whole body.

“What do you do with them afterwards?” he asked.

Selene paused before she answered. She lifted her gaze from the monitors to him and spoke very plainly, like she was explaining the weather.

“We put the bullets back in,” she said.

~

The two of them remained hidden there for what felt like hours. Michael was exhausted and cold, his mind feeling heavy like it had been filled with concrete. Over the course of only a few days, he’d survived a shooting, been taken hostage, and brought to an interrogation room. To finish it all off, vampires and werewolves were real. The myths he always dismissed as fiction were alive around him and he still couldn’t convince himself he wasn’t dreaming.

During all of this, he clung to Selene. The only source of stability he could find throughout this nightmare, even as a part of him seemed repulsed by him. Well, maybe not him. His lycanthropy. This dark thing that pulsed in his veins. He hoped, at least.

At some point during their hiding, the two of them had started talking. Selene told him about the elder vampires, about Viktor, and how he saved her from that attack in the stables. Her mother, her sister, her nieces are all dead. And maybe it was because he was too tired to restrain himself, his heart too softened by Selene’s story, but he told her about his wife. The crash that sent him spiraling into the city.

“I came over here to move on,” Michael said. His voice hovered just above the edge of sleep. “To forget.”

He was seated on one of the interrogation chairs, with chains dripping from its side. Selene stood by the window, arms crossed in contemplation. He felt Selene’s eyes watching him. For a moment, it was just like in that subway station when they first locked eyes. She looked at him not as prey, not as another creature for her to press a pistol into. Her blue gaze was gentle, something warm flickering under a wall of ice. A heartbeat under a frozen lake. 

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Michael said with a shrug.

Now look where it got him. He had become a pawn in a war that would have felt impossible to him just days ago. His body curled with something ancient he may have gone his whole life completely, blissfully unaware of. What a fool he was.

Selena gave him a long look, like she was reading his mind.

“And have you?” she asked. “Moved on?”

Michael lifted his eyes to meet hers. Something almost resembling warmth passed between their eyes.

“Have you?” he asked.

A long beat of silence stretched between them. The warmth in Selene’s eyes froze over, and Michael could practically see the layer of ice return around her. Looks like he had answered both their questions for them. Selene turned her gaze back to the window. The dark evening  blue was alighted by a stroke of lightning. Moments later, thunder shook the walls.

He changed the subject.

“Who started the war?” he asked.

“They did,” Selene said. “Or at least, that’s what we’ve been led to believe.” She glanced over at him again. “Digging into the past is forbidden.”

It seemed like a lot was forbidden to the vampires. For immortal creatures that ruled absolutely and relished even the darkest pleasures, they seemed to enjoy stifling each other. He couldn’t imagine that sort of thing with Selene. She didn’t seem like the kind of person meant to be kept down by some higher power. She was someone who held chains, never chained herself.

It was the thing about her, even more than her icy beauty, that made Michael’s heart flicker in his chest.

Suddenly, Selene leaned back away from the window and started heading towards the door. Michael watched her grab her pistol off the table.

“I should be heading back,” she said.

Michael rose out of his chair.

“What about me?” he asked.

Selene stood close to him, close enough he could smell her. A scent of rain water and copper. She looked at him, her face so close.

“Viktor will know what to do,” Selene said. “I’ll come back.”

Michael’s heart hitched in his chest and he shook his head.

“I’m not staying here alone,” he said.

“You will if you want to live.”

“No, I want to go with you.”

Michael tried to steady his voice, tried not to make it sound like he was begging. But he was despite Selene’s icy, commanding tone. In part, he was frightened to be without her. This new underworld was still a dangerous and unfamiliar place to the new Lycan, and he was afraid what could become of him without his guide.

But also, he wanted to help her. Despite his helplessness, Michael’s heart lurched at the thought that Selene could get hurt, and he would be too far to save her again.

Selene looked at him. Michael tried to read her thoughts across her ghostly blue eyes, but he could find nothing. Then, she shifted closer to him,close enough he could feel cold radiating off of her, where a normal woman would feel warm. She pressed her lips to his, and Michael didn’t resist. The kiss was cold and chaste as snow, over before Michael’s heart finished a single ricochet in his chest.

Then, he felt something else cold. Around his wrist.

He heard a loud metallic click and glanced down at his hand. Selene had closed a handcuff around his wrist, locking him to the handle of the chair. His heart ricocheted again, but this time with fear. He pulled against it, but it didn’t budge. Michael glanced up to see Selene approaching the doors.

“What are you doing?” he said.

Selene paused and turned to him. She gave him a deadly serious look, dark enough to dim the blue in her eyes.

“When the full moon rises tomorrow, you will change,” she said. “You will kill and you will feed. It’s unavoidable.” A flicker of pity crossed her eyes, as brief as a snowflake. “I can’t leave you to roam around. I’m sorry.”

Selene turned to leave, but then paused. She loaded up the gun in her hand and sauntered over to him. For a brief moment, Michael’s whole body tightened, watching the gun for what she was about to do with it.

“A single round won’t kill you,” she said. “But silver prevents transformation. At least for a few hours.” 

She placed the gun in Michael’s uncuffed hand. He felt a strange electricity run up his arm. The kind you got from holding such a weapon for the first time. The hyperawareness of the damage your untrained hands could do.

“If I don’t return in time,” Selene continued. “Do yourself a favor. Use it.”

With that, Selene turned to leave out the double doors. In the split second before she could, Michael dropped the gun and used his free hand to grab Selene’s arm. The death dealer was not pleased to be stopped. She turned her disgruntled gaze towards him, her eyes paling to a milky blue.

“I’m not separating from you,” Michael said.

He tried to grit his teeth and sound commanding, but he could only sound like he was begging. His grip was strong on her arms but it also trembled. 

“No,” Selene said. “I’m separating from you.”

“You can’t.”

“No, you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

Selene’s voice grew louder, sharper. Michael trembled under her gaze, but he stood his ground. Selene’s voice was sharp as a switchblade and she leaned close to Michael when she spoke to him.

“I am a death dealer, you are some newborn Lycan,” she said. “I am the hunter, you are the hunted. I will come and go as I see fit. You will stay in your cage as I say.”

Her eyes bore daggers into Michael’s. But still, he kept his gaze to hers.

“I’m not staying anywhere without you,” he said.

A thick silence hung between them. Selene glanced down at where he was grabbing her. The hair on his arm had thickened, and his nails had begun to elongate into claws, just sharp enough to almost split her leather sleeve.

She looked at Michael.

“So this is how it will be,” she said.

In one sharp movement, Selene ripped his hand from his shoulder and slammed it down on the other handle of the chair. Michael croaked in pain, and didn’t have a moment to react before Selene cuffed his free hand to the other handle of the chair. She pushed him back until his ass hit the chair, then pressed a boot down on him. Maybe she had been aiming for his chest, but instead it landed right between his thighs. Michael let out a long, groan of pain.

“Don’t mistake my mercy for kindness,” Selene hissed. She leaned down closer to him, pushing the weight of her boot down on him. Michael croaked in pain, in his body freezing and clenching against her hard leather bottom of her foot. “Don’t forget that I am a hunter. If you prove yourself stupid enough to get us both killed, I will withdraw my mercy.”

Michael trembled beneath her like a mouse in an owl’s claws. His pain ruptured from his crushed cock up his body. But he could feel his blood pulsing, pulsing down between his thighs and throbbing under Selene’s boot. He blushed for a moment, wondering if she could feel it.

“If you don’t stay here,” Selene said, her voice nearly growling. “They will try to kill you. And they won’t kill you like a human. They will kill you like a Lycan. And that means, you will understand just what silver does to your kind.”

Her eyes flicked over to the table next to the metal chair. There was a tray of bloody silver bullets, extracted from an old interrogation target, along with the tweezers the vampires had used. She reached over and picked it up, pinching them between her fingers.

Michael shivered on the icy metal chair.

“Please…” he whimpered just above a whisper. “Please…Selene…”

She leaned over him, close enough he could feel her breath on his lips. It made him shiver more than the cold ever could.

“As pretty as your pleas are,” she said. “They won’t persuade me.”

The silver bullet glinted in the light at the end of the tweezers. Michael’s wide blue eyes stared at it and he tugged on his chains with both hands.

“I know this all still seems unbelievable to you,” Selene said. She pinched a silver bullet between the tweezers and turned her eyes back to Michael. “But this is all real. And if you don’t start understanding the danger that a Lycan like you can face, then what I’m about to do will be the most merciful thing you could experience.”

Michael trembled as Selene leaned closer to him. He was stronger than her. His lycanthropy surely gave him the ability to fight her off. So why didn’t he? Why didn’t he push her foot off his beating cock and make a run for it?

Selene’s eyes scanned over Michael’s body until it landed on his upper arm. The pale flesh extended out of his short blue sleeve. She leaned over, and despite Michael’s squirming, she pressed the silver bullet tip to his skin.

Michael released a bloodcurdling scream. The pain was unlike anything he’d experience, sharp and metallic as a hot poker. He imagined the patient he’d performed surgery on, if they hadn’t had anesthesia in the process, and this was much worse. The one pinch as Selene pressed the bullet down on his tender flesh filled his eyes with tears.

Selene, meanwhile, simply watched him. She had tortured and killed plenty of Lycans in her time. But something about Michael felt different. Maybe it was because he had just been human and blissfully unaware of the war mere days ago. Maybe it was because something about this handsome man seemed more handsome when he was crying in pain.

When she finally pulled it back, there was a small brown singe on Michael’s arm. A wisp of smoke escaped it, like a ghost leaving a corpse. Michael whimpered as the heat was gone but the pain still lingered.

“Fuck…fuck…” he whimpered.

The pain was electric through his body, but what he felt more than it was Selene’s cold blue eyes on him. Her boot was still pressed down between his thighs, and he couldn’t tell if the pain was from her pressure or something else. Selene picked another bullet off the tray, and pressed it down on Michael’s arm, a few inches below the first.

He screamed again, louder. And louder again when Selene pressed down the third. She knew he got the point now. He had both hands cuffed to a chair, he wasn’t going anywhere whether he got it or not. But Selene couldn’t quite help herself, pressing one more bullet into his flesh. Not deep enough to blood, but certainly deep enough to hurt. She never considered herself a sadist. And yet, watching the handsome Lycan whimper beneath her sent a strange rush of pleasure through her.

Michael. The name of an archangel. He looked heavenly, but Selene could see the rot spreading from the bite on his shoulder. She had long learned to suppress any empathy she had for anyone if they were Lycans. She took her human heart and pressed it down into something cold and vampiric. She tried not to let it come back as she watched Michael wince and whimper beneath her.

She made her way through five bullets, leaving a constellation of burns down her companion’s arm. Michael was helpless beneath her, whimpering and hissing between his teeth as pain alighted his body. How he was able to bear it he didn’t know. But a small voice in his head said it had to do with his torturer. If anyone else had been doing this, he may not have endured it. But something about Selene, her eyes licking his body as it squirmed in agony, made his suffering almost feel like a show he wanted to put on for her entertainment.

Selene, He’d say her name if he could find words. Selene. Selene. Selene. How was it that she looked even more beautiful when he saw her through tears of pain?

Finally, the vampiress removed the final bullet from his skin. Michael’s arm was dotted with burn marks that had only just avoided bleeding. They almost resembled runes from some strange ritual, like Michael had been sent as a sacrifice to a beast.

Selene set down the tweezers with the bullets. She looked at Michael with a stare that could have frozen boiling water.

“That’s only what happens when we press them to the skin,” she said. “Imagine those things lodged inside of you from a shotgun. Buried in there, down to the bones, then pulled out.”

Michael shivered at the thought. But even as he winced to imagine the pain, he felt that flush of blood run down his body again. What if it was Selene’s pistol filling him up with silver? What if it was her hands pulling and pushing the bullets in and out of his body?

A bright flash of lightning alighted the windows, and a loud roll of thunder shook the walls of the room. Selene suddenly remembered where they were and just how much time had passed.

“I have to leave now,” she told Michael. “You are going to stay here and you are going to stay safe. No objections. Do you understand?”

Michael was limp and shaking on the chair. He swallowed and nodded his head.

“Yes,” he said in a soft voice. “I understand.”

With that, Selene stepped out of the interrogation room into the hall. As she locked the door behind her, a shiver ran up her spine. She might feel flushed in the face if she had any warmth left in her body.

This whole time, she feared she may eventually have to kill the newly turned Lycan.

Now, her mind raced with what she could do with him if she kept him alive a little longer.

~

Several days later.

To his relief, Michael found a first aid kit in one of the warehouse’s bathrooms. He gripped it top and bottom with both hands, then ripped it from the wall. The place must have been abandoned, considering the rust and rot that covered every inch of the place. Mold goring in the urinals. Rainwater leaking from the roof. Dust and asbestos falling from the new formed hole in the wall.

Michael was shaking as he hurried back to the garage, where just minutes ago he and Selene had sent a truck barreling through the wall. They were both still shaking from the chase on the road, with that bat-looking thing that tried to kill them. But that didn’t matter now. They were far away, hidden, and Selene had a burn scar on her face.

As soon as he saw it, the charred flesh on her hands and head, his doctor instincts took over. He asked her to wait in a large shipping crate that would block out any excess sunlight. He covered the windows in dark gray paint and immediately went looking for bandages.

When he returned to the crate, he found Selen inside, already having cracked on a few snap lights. Michael set the metal kit down and opened the lid. Thank god, no expired supplies. Bandages and bottles of medicine. Good to know there was something in this place that hadn’t completely crumbled to dust.

“Alright, let me see,” Michael said.

He took Selene’s hand and examined the wounds. The leather of her gloves had been burned open and the skin was bright red. But the signs of burn wounds that he had seen in the truck were gone. What should have looked like a brush with fire now only looked like a rash.

“See?” Selene said. “No need.”

Michael peeled the gloves off Selene’s hand and, indeed, her hand looked like it was already healing. The red coloring was seeping away quickly to Selene’s normal pale flesh. He looked at her, then carefully moved a strand of hair from the side of her head. There had been black char marks there just minutes ago. Now, there was hardly even any scarring.

After years in medical school, Michael was used to seeing every matter of wound. He saw things in the emergency room that took days, weeks, years to fully heal, and even then, scars were inevitable. But Selene now looked good as new.

It was one of those flickers of a moment where Michael remembered what his life was now. He was a hybrid. The woman in front of him was a vampire. After what should have been a normal life, he had been pulled into a war of creatures he long dismissed as folktales. It frightened him. Gripped him like he was frozen from the inside.

But then Selene looked at him again. Those pale, inhuman eyes that had seen more than a human lifetime’s worth of things. This woman who sacrificed everything to keep him safe from danger.

If he had stayed in his old life, he would have just been a ghost. Floating through the world, lost in grief for a dead woman. Now, he had a woman who could never die.

Michael’s hand lingered on Selene’s face, his fingertips in her soft black hair. Selene looked at him, pressing her hand over his. It dawned on them both that this was their first time truly alone together since the Ziodex lab. Not running, not driving away in a pursuit. It was just them, and the warm glow of the artificial light.

Michael’s thumb brushed along her cheek. As cold as snow, but as strong as ice. Selene pressed her cheek into his palm, against the warm blood that rushed just under his skin there.

“You’re so cold,” Michael said.

“And you’re so warm,” Selene said.

Her eyes flicked down Michael’s body. He was bare-chested under the leather jacket, and her hands found the open zipper. Michael shivered as Selene brushed her cold hands down his burning chest.

The jacket peeled off his shoulders and hit the floor. Selene’s hands moved from Michael’s shoulders down his arms. As she brushed down past his elbow, he suddenly winced a little. Her eyes flicked down. In the dim light, along his pale skin, Selene caught several brown spots dotting down his arms. Burn marks.

Her mind brought her back to that night they first escaped together. The hours spent in the interrogation lab, when she had him cuffed to that metal chair. A set of silver bullets still dry with Lycan blood.

Michael followed her eyes to the spot, and ran his hands over the burn marks. To a normal human, they may have resembled burn marks from a cigar or perhaps bullet wounds. Someone might ask if he used to smoke or if he was ever in combat. But only someone who knew the truth of the immortal underworld knew. Who knew the effects of silver on Lycan skin.

Selene’s hands hovered over the burn marks. She wanted to touch them, to heal them, but she could see Michael twitch at the mere thought of it. Guilt pooled in her stomach and made her heart squelch.

“I was cruel to you before,” she said. “‘I’m sorry.”

It was at that moment that Selene realized just how much she had changed over just a few days. The older version of her would have killed Michael on the spot the moment he was no longer relevant to her. She had no qualms with torturing him with bullets if it meant getting him to behave. Now, she could barely touch the burn marks she left on him for fear of hurting him anymore.

Michael was quiet for a moment, then gently took Selene’s hand.

“I forgive you,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about it anymore.”

Then, to Selene’s surprise, he pressed her hand down on the mark. He winced in pain, but he didn’t let her move her hand.

“I…like it, actually,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s because of the lycanthropy or what…but…I liked it when you hurt me.”

Michael gently pressed her fingertips down on the marks. Even after all this time, they still felt a little hot to the touch.

“Pain feels good when it’s from you,” he said.

There was something in his voice, hot like the first sizzle before something starts to cook. He wasn’t just trying to reassure her. There was something tantalized in his voice, like someone remembering the best meal they’ve ever had. Lycanthropy didn’t give one a masochistic streak. If it did, Selene could have long figured that out by now with all the tortures she carried out. But maybe it wasn’t the lycanthropy alone. Maybe it was just Michael Corvin, and the lycanthropy had merely amplified something primal in him that had already been there when he was human.

Selene held Michael’s elbow in her palm. Gently, slowly, she pressed her thumb down on a burn mark just down his arm a little. Michael sucked in a breath, his body going stiff. It was just a light touch. Selen pressed down a little harder. Michael groaned against the creep of pain up his body, but he did not resist.

For as much as she hunted and tortured, Selene did not take pleasure in hurting his targets. Rage and vengeance is what kept her going with the task. But Michael stirred something in her that was new in all her centuries of life. He was strong, but he was all too willing to be made weak for her. It sent a thrill through her.

Selene moved her hand up his arm to shoulder then up the back of his neck. She pulled Michael closer and pressed her lips to his.

It was their first kiss since the interrogation room. But this time there was no deception. Michael surrendered into her kiss, a soft moan in his throat. Selene held his face close, growling like she was hungry. The sound she made when she sunk her teeth into a new kill those early days of her vampirism, back when Viktor still had her convinced that Lycans were the enemy.

Well, fuck Viktor. She was about to devour a Lycan the way no Elder would be pleased with.

She broke the kiss, then reached for the emergency blanket Michael had found. She tossed it on the floor, and before Michael could have a chance to resist, she had him on the ground. She straddled his hips, pinning him to the ground, as her mouth devoured him. Selene used her teeth when she kissed, and Michael winced against every knick.

Their clothes came off in a quick, desperate succession. Selene’s boots were tossed in the corner and her leather bodysuit was draped like a shadow across the floor. Michael wanted to touch her, run his hand up her pale stomach to her black bra, but Selne took both his wrists in her hand. She pulled his belt from his jeans, then used it to tie his wrists together then pin them above his head.

“It’s best we keep you restrained,” Selene said. “I’ve never fucked a Lycan before. I’m not sure what happens to them during sex.” She tightened the belt around Michael’s wrists and his breath hitched against the pressure. “But just in case you were to start changing, it’s best to take precautions.”

Michael had doubts that a cheap leather belt could hold against Lycan strength, but he kept them to himself. He felt an euphoric rush when Selene had his hands tied above his head. It was a similar feeling he had back in the interrogation room. Helplessness that frightened him but also made him feel almost a little high. It was the serenity of a prey animal quietly accepting its fate as it sat in the jaws of a predator.

Selene removed his trousers, leaving them both down to their underwear. Michael’s cock tented his black boxers and he flushed red. Selene’s face hovered over him.

“The only lovers I’ve been with the past few centuries have all been vampires,” Selene said. She took his face in her hands, his cheeks squishing under her fingers. She inspected his face like he was something she just caught. She smirked.  “I forgot…just how warm they can be when they’re not dead.”

Michael’s face turned cherry-red, and Selene chuckled.

“Just like that,” she said.

She pressed her mouth down on his again. As Selene savored the taste of Michael’s mouth, her hand crawled down his body to pull down his boxers. Michael shivered as an icy breeze brushed over his burning erection. He whimpered against Selene’s lips as she pulled her underwear down from her hips.

Then, Selene reached over to her bodysuit and rummaged around in her pockets. Michael heard a metallic clinking sound. He watched his lover gather a few glinting silver bullets in her palm.

“During interrogations,” she said. She pinched a single bullet from the pile. It winked at Michael in the light. “I always focused on asking questions. I never really took a good look at the exact effects silver burns have on Lycan flesh. It was never my job.”

She set the rest of the bullets down on the blanket in a neat pile. Michael’s body tightened and twitched as Selene held the bullet just over his chest.

“I’ve always been curious,” she said. “To get a closer look.”

She pressed the silver tip against Michael’s shivering skin. Immediately, he hissed between his teeth and his back arched in pain. His hands pulled against his restraints, but Selene’s knot was unbreakable.

Selene watched the sickle of the hard silver against hard flesh. She watched the pale color turn to dark brown, the smell of the burning flesh close to her nose. She expected the process to be faster, thought she’d need to pull away quickly before it reached Michael’s organs and bones. But the silver seemed to have slower effects when it wasn’t being fired from a pistol.

Finally, she removed the bullet and Michael sucked in a gasp of relief.

“Still hurt?” Selene asked. 

There was a playful lilt in her voice, but part of her meant it. Michael was cute when he squirmed, but the death dealer had no intentions of fucking a dead man. Michael shivered and whimpered against the pain.

“No…” he said. “Worse.” He swallowed. “More. Please.”

A hungry glint crossed Selene’s eyes. She looked down to the scarring on Michael’s neck. The place where she first sunk her teeth into his flesh and fed from him. No. She wasn’t going to cover such a mark with a burn. She wanted to look at it. She wanted the world to look at it.

So she moved the second bullet to the other side of Michael’s neck, and stuck it down. Michael cried out louder this time, scrunching his neck against the pain. A wisp of smoke curled from his milky flesh.

“I should cover you all over,” Selene said as she set the bullet aside and took a third one. “I should mark you everywhere until no one will be able to look at you without knowing what I’ve done to you. What you let me do to you.”

She pressed the third bullet to his chest again, this time on the left side just above the nipple. This one hurt the worst, and Michael released a strangling cry and squeezed his teary eyes shut. It was just like back in the city. Worse. His body burned for relief from the pain but not as much as his cock throbbed for it.

Selene planted a trail along his body. His torso, his neck, his arms, his thighs. Pain that singed even long after the burns had cooled. All the while, Selene felt Michael’s bulge under where she sat, pulsing every time the silver met his skin.

She tossed aside the last bullet. It landed on the floor with a clink. By this point, Michael had tears dripping down his pink cheeks. Selene wiped them with her thumb.

“Still with me?” she asked.

Michael pursed his lips and nodded. The poor man had been tortured enough, and Selene was wet between her thighs and getting impatient. She took his cock in her hands and slid herself on top of him.

The Lycan’s shuddering breath echoed on the walls around them. Selene steadied herself with two hands to Michael’s shoulder as she began fucking him into the floor. It was cold and solid, but Michale wasn’t deterred. His hands clenched her hips to keep her on top of him. Turns out, the vampiress was as cold on the inside as she was on the outside.

“Fuck…” he croaked. “Oh, fuck…”  

Selene swerved her hips in a steady rhythm. She couldn’t tell if his girth was always there or if it was a side effect of the lycanthropy. She’d never fucked a Lycan or saw one naked long enough to know. But he filled up inside her perfectly, like he was made specifically for her. Her hands pressed against the burns on his chest and he winced.

“Oh, fuck me…” he whimpered. “Please…fuck me…”

Michael fisted his hands into the blanket beneath them. The hair on his arms thickened and blackened, his skin turning a bluish hue, his teeth sharpening. Selene’s prediction was correct. In the primal state of sex, one’s human side fell to the animal.

No worries. If there was anything she was an expert in, it was managing dogs.

She pressed a hand down on his chest, but below his neck. Then, her hand smoothed up and cupped his throat, pinning him down to the ground. Selene could feel his growl rumble just under her palm. His teeth glinted wet.

“I ought to put a collar on you…” Selene said between labored breaths. She could feel it rising slowly in her, like a distant rumble of thunder. “I thought to put you on your knees and make you hump my legs like a dog.”

“Yes…” Michael whispered as her hands closed around him. “I’m your dog…I’m your dog…”

Selene’s nails sunk into the flesh around Michael's windpipe. She tossed her hand back, black hair spilling between her shoulder blades, as a sharp climax climbed up her body. Michael bucked his hips up to meet hers, pushing himself deeper into her silky folds. He wanted all of it. Burning pain, searing pleasure. He wanted to feel all of it as long as it was from her.

The sound of their climax shook the walls. Hot and sharp as a lightning strike, Michael’s body burned under Selene’s and Selene tightened her grip on him like a boa constrictor around its prey. She pressed herself down on top of him, riding him viciously through the climax. She parted her lips and punctured her teeth into his neck. The old scar broke open and blood strickled onto her tongue.

Selene lapped at his neck even after her hips started moving, after every drop of both of them was gone. Michael sighed, eyes fluttering shut. He lay still as his lover fed from him. His body was limp and spent, even more helpless to stop her.

Once she was finished, Selene sat up and wiped the red from her lips. She looked down at Michael’s.

“Sorry,” she said. “I should have asked.”

Michael shook his head. Selene lifted herself up off of him and grabbed a bandage from the first aid kit. She patched up his neck.

“If I keep biting you there, I’ll decapitate you one day,” she said.

Michael huffed.

“Maybe you should try elsewhere,” he said. “On my arms…on my thighs…”

An impish smile glinted on his lips. Selene smirked and finished securing the bandage in place.

“Burns and bite marks,” Selene said. “What on earth will be left of you?”

“Nothing. I’ll live in your stomach forever."

Selene curled up at Michael’s side. The Lycan took several minutes to collect himself, allowing the lingering pain and pleasure to settle away. Selene lay at his side, tracing lines between his burn marks like she was drawing constellations.

Selene pressed a kiss to his forehead, and brushed a gold hair from his face.

“You know,” she said. “As much as I love to hunt, it’s always over too quickly. It’s rare that my prey is ever left alive after I catch it.” She unlocked his cuffs. Her voice became low, like a confessional. Like she was telling a secret. “But when it is…I find I enjoy putting the pieces back together just as much as the chase itself.”

Michael wanted to curl into her touch. He wanted to feel her hands again. To break him or heal him, he couldn’t care less.

“Put me back together,” he said. “And you can break me as many times as you want.”

“Mama…I can’t sleep…”

Selene’s eyes fluttered open at her daughter’s whisper. She turned her head on her pillow to see Eve standing by her bed. Despite having grown into a teenage body, Eve carried herself that moment like a much smaller child.

“Now, why is that?” Selene said 

She sat up and gestured her daughter closer. Eve sat down on the bed and let her mother take her into her arms. According to the clock on the wall, it was nearly five in the afternoon. The whole castle would be waking soon once the sun started to set.

“I haven’t slept all night,” Eve said, resting her pale cheek on her mother’s shoulder. “I’ve been…seeing visions.”

“Visions?” Selene said. She pushed a long strand of black hair from her daughter’s face. “Not dreams?”

Eve shook her head.

“Visions,” she repeated. “When I’m between that place between asleep and awake.” She looked Selene in the eye. “I think it’s something with our thread.”

“Thread” was Eve’s word for the link she shared with Selene. The telepathic link that connected vampiric mother and daughter. The one that brought them back together after years separated. She likened it to a thread connecting to points. It may grow longer or shorter, but it always keeps them connected no matter the time or distance.

“Do you feel it weakening?” Selene asked.

Then thought frightened her. After losing Eve for years, Selene didn’t want to lose the one thing that tied them back together, her one way of finding her again. Then again, maybe it was just an adjustment. Perhaps since reuniting, the link no longer needed to be so pronounced, sensing how the two were together again.

Eve shook her head again.

“No,” she said. “It’s like…there’s something pulling on it.” She pinched her fingers together and pulled them back to demonstrate. “Like something took the middle of the thread and is pulling it. Making a triangle shape.”

Selene visualized what Eve was describing, and it sent a pool of dread into her stomach.

“There must be some third person intervening,” Selene said.

Selene remembered when Eve found her. The way the little girl, now a young woman, walked across the ice that surrounded the Nordic Coven’s castle. The way she appeared from the mist like a ghost, calm, like she knew her mother would be there waiting for her. Selene had felt the pull of thread strongest then. A strong tug, like your very heart and mind was trying to puppet your body in one direction.

But Selene wasn’t feeling such a thing now. If Eve was, it meant not only was this interference close, but it seemed to affect Eve more. It didn’t make any sense. The thread was biological, physiological, bound between parent and offspring. There was no one else alive who could access it.

At that moment, her daughter gasped and gripped her head. She dropped her face down like she was in pain. Selene pulled Eve closer and rubbed her hands over his inky black hair.

“The visions are back again,” Eve said. She squeezed her eyes shut, tight enough she may generate tears. “There’s something dark…something in the snow…”

Selene held Eve’s head close to her chest and rubbed her hair.

“There’s a figure running across the ice…” Eve said. “I can’t see his face…”

His. A man running through the snow and ice. Selene’s heart dropped and glanced towards the covered window. Ice and snow surrounded them. Whoever this male figure was, he was heading their way.

“Does it still hurt?” Selene asked.

Eve shook her head.

“It only hurts when I first feel it,” she said. “After that it just feels…weird. Almost numb.”

Selene nodded. She kissed her daughter on the head then slipped out from under her duvet.

“Stay in here,” she told Eve. She wrapped the furry blanket around her daughter’s shoulders. “Keep the door locked. If you need help, call David or one of the others. Okay?”

Eve looked a little frightened, but she nodded. This was the thing about her daughter that Selene always wondered at. Eve shivered and shook at danger, but Selene had also seen her rip out throats with her hybrid teeth. The elder vampiress could never imagine how a young girl could be both so frightened and fearsome at once.

“Okay, mama,” Eve said.

Selene kissed her daughter’s forehead one more time, then left her bedroom, locking the door behind her.

~

It had been overcast the past several days. One of the benefits of living with a coven in a colder climate was the lack of sunlight. Sometimes, they would only see grey clouds for weeks at a time, which meant they could step out of the castle even during the day. Now as the sun was surely setting behind the falling snow, the world was ashy white and dark grey.

Harsh snowflakes bit at Selene’s face and she made her way across the ice. She’d thrown a long white coat over her leather suit, but the fur trim did little to warm her from the elements. Her boots thread carefully over the thick ice, crunching loud against the eerie quiet of the early morning arctic.

Selene squinted against the icy wind that sliced at her face. The mist obscured the horizons, so all Selene could see was the frozen ground that disappeared into it. She searched for what Eve had described. A dark, man-shaped figure making its way towards their home.

She also searched her mind for what this figure could possibly be. The shared collective memories between vampires didn’t overlap with the link her and her daughter shared, so it couldn’t have been anyone else from the cove. Even if they could, none of them had left the fortress in weeks, why would anyone be seen approaching it from miles away?

It had to be something dangerous. Someone, perhaps, who wanted to find Eve. Why else would they tamper with their link? Selen tightened her grip on the pistol on her holster. A strain of aggression weaved its way through her. She had once lost Eve for years, she wasn’t about to let someone take her away.

Her jaw clenched tight, against the cold and her own protective anger. She felt like a lioness whose cubs had been threatened, and she was ready to fight tooth and claw for her young. Who on earth could it be? An old ally of Marius? Another Lycan seeking to take down the new reigning Elders? There was no one alive who could access her thread to her daughter. The only person who possibly could was—

Then she saw it. Just past the blurry mist of snow, Selene spotted an ashy dark shape moving towards her. It was exactly what Eve must have seen in her vision. Selene pulled her pistol from his holster and pointed it at the figure.

“Who are you?” she growled into the cold. “Why have you come here?

She stood hard as stone between the figure and the castle. Her finger itched on the trigger to pull, to take out this thing by the legs before it could get any closer to where her daughter was. But as the shape drew nearer, it began to take a shape. It walked on all fours, dark hair splitting from its body, teeth whiter than the snow.

A Lycan. Selene knew it in her bones. Some Lycan who was still deadset on finding the hybrid child and taking her blood. Not while she was here. Selene lifted her pistol towards the creature.

“Don’t come any closer” she growled over the whistle of the wind. 

Aim ready, Selene stalked closer to the creature as it ran across the ice towards her. She was ready for a fight. She was ready to shoot and tear and rip with her teeth. The creature grew closer until Selen could hear its claws clacking against the ice. Its eyes became visible, glowing like sprites in the air.

But then, the creature seemed to slow down. As it drew closer to Selene, it seemed to halt its speed. Selene expected the thing to lunge at her. Instead, it stopped just in time for only the ice to slide it forward and stop right at her feet. The Lycan huffed its breaths, steamy air escaping its muzzle, staring at Selene with a look she wasn’t used to seeing on Lycan. There was no aggression, no anger, no bloodlust.

Selene stood there, pistol pointed to the beast’s face, but she couldn’t bring herself to shoot. Something about the way the Lycan looked at her dumbfounded her. The thing almost looked…frightened.

The vampiress mustered some steel into her voice.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Tell me now why you’ve come to our coven grounds.”

She held the Lycan’s gaze with a vice grip. She tried to read its thoughts across its eyes, but she couldn’t find anything. The look in its face almost resembled begging, someone desperately trying to tell you something but unable to verbalize it. The creature was quiet, and shivering despite its inky fur.

“Tell me why you’re here,” Selene growled again, moving her gun closer to the Lycan’s wet nose. “Or I will bury you in the ice.”

The Lycan was silent for a moment, then realized a high, dog-like wince in its throat. Then, the creature started to change. Its fur retracted into its flesh. Its bones crackled as its body shrunk in stature, from a towering monster to something Slene didn’t need to tip her head back to look at. Its beastly growls softened into an undeniably human whimper.

Selene watched the Lycan turn into its human form, and as it did her eyes widened and her heart twisted in her chest. The beast sprouted human features that sent a flurry of memories, sights and touches, into her mind. Shaggy blonde hair. Strong but delicate hands. Blue, blue, eyes.

His name fell from her lips.

“Michael,” she said.

Without his Lycan muscle and fur to shield him, Michael was completely naked in the arctic cold. He shivered and twitched and his pale flesh flushed red against the freezing wind. Selene stared for a moment that seemed to stretch on for eternity. Was this a dream? Was she seeing a ghost?

But then she heard Michael whimpering against the cold. He clutched and clenched his body as his teeth chattered. His body was sprinkled with wounds. Bruises, cuts, the beginnings of frostbite.

“Selene,” he said.

That was it. His name on her tongue yanked Selene from her thoughts back into reality. The man in front of her trembled with cold and exhaustion, his knees shaking like he may collapse. This was real. He was real.

Selene ripped her coat from her shoulders and threw it around Michael’s shoulder. She began ushering him quickly towards the castle. The Nordic Coven’s homeland was the kind of cold that could kill you if you were exposed to it directly for too long. Between the temperature, and who knew how long Michael must have been running through the mountains to find them, she knew he was close to death. Michael struggled to walk, leaving Selene to hold him up on his feet every struggling step to the castle.

The two of them burst through the front doors of the fortress. The rest of the castle was starting to stir awake. Lena and several others were in the entrance hall, still dressed in their sleeping robes. They all froze and starred as Selene dragged Michael inside.

“Selene,” Lena said. “Your daughter told us—”

“Bring him upstairs,” Selene barked at them. Michaelc collapsed on his knees at her side. His lips were turning blue. “A warm bed, medicine, bandages. Now!”

~

The whole castle became a flurry of activity. Under Selene’s steely orders, the vampires of the Nordic Coven carried Michael upstairs to one of the master bedrooms. Michael’s body sprouted and shed fur in minutes, his claws growing and retracting, his body fighting against the natural forces trying to kill him. The vampires placed him in a large bed of plush pillows and thick duvets, wrapping him in layers of clothes. A group of members with healing knowledge surrounded his bed, patching and covering every wound.

Selene stood over all of it, directing the activity with the fierce urgency of a sergeant. The whole time, she did not leave Michael’s side, and one dared asked her to. At some point in the chaos, David entered the bedroom.

“Selene,” he said. She did not look at him. “What’s going on?”

Selene didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed firmly on Michael as a flurry of healers worked around him like honeybees around a blossom. 

“I found him out on the ice approaching the castle,” she said.

“Who is he? Is he another Lycan threat?”

Selene watched as a healer tied bandages over Michael’s bicep, which bloomed with a blue and purple bruise. 

“Lycan, yes,” she said. “A threat? No. Far from it.”

“I can’t see how he can be a Lycan and not a threat,” David said. He wrapped his fingers around the knife handle on his belt. “We should wake up. Get some answers from him—”

Selen turned and pressed a hand to David’s chest before he could take a single step closer to the bed. David froze, and stiffened under Selene’s bullet-sharp gaze.

“If you so much as graze a hair on his head, I will decapitate yours and put it on a pike by the gates,” she said.

David stood stiff as a board, then slowly unlatched his fingers from his knife. Selene glanced over her shoulder at the bed.

“His name is Michael,” she said. “He was…he is Eve’s father.”

David’s eyes widened.

“This is the Michael you told us about?” he said. “I thought Marius killed him.”

“I thought so too,” Selene said.

She moved her hand from David’s chest and turned to the bed. The healer finished wrapping Michael’s chest, snapping the last piece with her teeth then smoothing it down on his shoulders. Whatever Michael did to get here, it took him through Hell to the other side. His body was a tapestry of injury, but he was alive. Despite it all, his chest rose and fell with breath.

“I know Lycans have not been kind to us in recent years,” Selene said. “But Michael is good. He was good as a man, he is good as a hybrid.” She glanced over at David. “Anyone who even thinks of hurting him will be exiled under the ice. Understand?”

David clenched his jaw, then nodded.

“As you wish,” he said.

~

There comes a point in a struggle where one starts to move mechanically. You forget what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and you simply keep moving. Michael had already reached that point before he made it onto the ice. Months of searching, months of tracking, until he finally caught wind of a castle where a coven of Nordic vampires lived. Recently, these vampires had elected three new elders. One, a former death dealer named Selene.

Michael had been in a bleeding, frostbitten haze across the ice. It wasn’t until he reached the castle and found Selene there, as if she somehow knew he was coming, that he temporarily broke from his miserable, persistent stupor. Then, promptly passed out.

As he hovered in the dark behind his eyes, he expected to be dead. Not even immortality would be able to save his sorry life. He took comfort, at least, in knowing that he reached her first. He had a chance to see her face one more time before his body gave out.

But then, he opened his eyes.

He was warm all over. It stung a little, residential pain from the frostbite leaving his body. But he wasn’t on the ice anymore. His eyes fluttered open and the senses returned to his body. He was in a large bed, one of silk and furs, next to a crackling fireplace. For a moment, he wondered whether there was a heaven for dead Lycans. But then, he realized he wasn’t alone.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into the fireplace. Her hands were threaded tight together and her foot tapped the floor as her leg twitched. Michael stared at the back of her short black hair.

He was alive. She was here.

“Selene,” he said in a weak voice.

He tried to sit up, then winced against an eruption of pain across his body. Selene whipped her head around, then hurried over closer to him.

“Lay still,” she said. “Your wounds are still healing. Not to mention you’re exhausted.”

If she had a heartbeat, it would have been knocking at her ribs. Selene’s body trembled, her mind racing, waiting as it had all day for this all to reveal itself as some dream. But it wasn’t. She pressed a hand gently over his bandaged chest, held his dark blues with hers. He was real. Living, breathing, real.

She took his face in her hands and pressed her mouth to his. Michael moaned deep in his throat and sunk into her kiss. Selene tried to be gentle, but she was hungry for him. Not sensually, but soulfully. This was the desperate hunger of getting back what you thought was gone forever. She curled her fingers in his hair to keep him close. She wanted to sink into his skin.

When their kiss broke, both were breathless. It took all of Selene’s willpower to not  fall into the bed with him, pull him close and never leave the room again.

Instead, she started with her first question.

“I saw a vision that the Lycan Marius had killed you,” she said. “How did you survive?”

It took Michael a moment to answer. His body was stiff and his hand instinctively brushed over his throat, wrapped with a pale scar from a knife.

“He almost did,” he said. “I blacked out, and he tossed me into the snow to bleed out.” He swallowed. His body slightly shivered, as if the memory were enough to take him right back to that horrible day. “But despite their efforts, I managed to regain consciousness and escape. I licked my wounds—literally.” 

He chuckled, then winced at a flare of pain at his side.

“I found somewhere to hide long enough until my throat healed. Even then, I was almost certain I was going to die.”

“But you healed yourself,” Selene said. A small smirk quirked at the side of her mouth. “You’re a doctor. Of course you could.”

Michael gave Selene a small smile, then squeezed her hand again.

“Once I could walk, I kept my head down for a while. Avoided Lycans where I could. Ate whatever animals I could find.” He pursed his lips. “Then…I heard somewhere that a coven of Nordic vampires had elected three new Elders.” His eyes glinted at her. “One of them was called Selene.”

Michael paused for a moment to look at her. Her black hair had wisps of silver. Her eyes seemed lighter and color yet deeper.

“That’s when the visions started,” he continued. “I thought they were hallucinations from the blood loss. Or maybe just dreams. I thought I was finally losing my mind. But they kept happening. I kept seeing you, in a castle, somewhere deep in the icy mountains.”

Selene leaned forward.

“It was a link,” she said. “Sometimes, when vampires are related, a telepathic link can form between them.”

Michael gave her a look.

“But you and I are not related,” he said. “Not by blood.”

Selene pursed her lips. She wanted to explain to him that the relation was not between him and her, but him and Eve. But she wasn’t ready to tell him that. Michael had just woken up. He needed time to adjust before she dropped such a revelation on him.

So, she just shrugged. Thankfully, Michael shook his head and continued.

“I kept the image of it in my mind,” he said. “I asked around anyone I could trust, until I managed to find directions to the Nordic Coven’s castle. I traveled for weeks, then months, taking so many detours and dead end trails.” He licked his lips. “Until I finally made it here.”

Selene’s heart squelched in her chest. She pulled Michael into her arms and held him tight. His arms circled around her, and the vampiress was hit with a flood of serenity that nearly brought her to tears.

“And now you’re here,” she said. “You’re safe here with me. And I will never let you separate from me as long as I live.”

She heard Michael chuckle.

“Eternity is a long time to stay together,” he said. He squeezed her. “And it’ll still feel shorter than the time we were apart.”

Selene closed her eyes and nuzzled her face into the crook of his shoulder. For several minutes, they lay in each other’s embrace, listening to the winter winds whistle outside. In the silence, Selene sunk into Michael, savoring the touch of him, like she might lose again any moment. 

Immortals were not built for grief. For those they knew in their human lives, perhaps, but never for each other. Their relationships were designed to last eternity, only ending by a choice to separate. An immortal widow mourning an immortal lover was an abused thought. Yet after she learned the truth of Michael’s death, a veil had fallen over her she knew would last until forever.

Until now.

Selene sat up and took Michael’s hand between both of hers. She kissed each of his knuckles, the taste of his skin returning to her memories. She wanted to stay, but she needed to check on Eve. Selene had been in this room for hours, and she needed time to figure out how she was going to bring her daughter and her daughter’s father back together.

“I need to check on something,” Selene said. “Get some rest. I'll come back to see you again before sunrise.”

Michael squeezed her hand.

“Don’t leave me alone for too long.”

~

Michael was in and out of sleep in the following days. Even with the strength of a hybrid, his body needed the time to recover. He awoke every few hours it seemed, for healers to change his bandages and to feed him blood by the spoonful. Then, it was back into the abyss.

Until one night, he woke up to someone sitting on his bed. His eyes fluttered open and caught black hair and a pale face. His heart hitched, thinking it was Selene. But as his sleepy vision adjusted, he saw the face was smaller, like angular. It was a young girl, no older than fifteen or so. She wasn’t Selene, but she looked very much like her. Perhaps what Selene may have looked like in her youth all those centuries ago.

Michael lifted his head off the pillow.

“Hello,” he said.

The girl must have been a vampire. Why else would she be in a place like this? She didn’t seem like a prisoner. It was a sad thing to imagine, being made immortal at such a tender age. The girl stared at him, unresponsive.

“My name is Michael,” he said. “Has it been a bit unusual since I got here?”

Again, the girl did not respond. She just stared at him with an expression that Michael couldn’t read. Confusion? Fear? Curiosity?

“Can you tell me your name?” Michael asked.

The girl parted her lips to speak, but someone else answered.

“Eve, you’re not supposed to be in here.”

Selene was standing at the door with a stern look. The girl now called Eve quickly moved off the bed.

“You said I could meet him when he was better,” she said.

“He’s still bedridden, does that seem ‘better’ to you?”

The girl wilted under her mother’s gaze. Her fingers fiddled with a long strand of her inky hair.

“I’m sorry, mama,” she said. “I just wanted to look at him.”

Mama. Michael’s eyes widened and his gaze flicked between Selene and Eve. He thought he was only seeing things when he mistaken the girl for Selene. But no, aside from height and hair length, the two could have almost been sisters. The black hair, the pale skin, the blue eyes. Everything the girl had was undeniably Selene’s.

“And now you’ve woken him,” Selene said. She opened the door and pointed outside. “Go downstairs and help in the kitchen. He’ll need food soon.”

The girl nodded and did as her mother said, retreating out into the hallway, but not before throwing another curious glance towards Michael. The door shut behind her. Selen let out a long sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You’re a mother,” Michael said.

Selene shook her head and pursed her lips.

“I hope once you were fully healed we could all sit together to talk about this,” she said. “But I guess timing is really on our side, is it?”

Selene sauntered over to the bed and sat down by Michael. She took his head, threading her cold fingers with his warm ones.

“When I was frozen in that lab all those years ago,” she said. “I was pregnant.”

Michael’s entire body froze where he lay. It escaped him sometimes just how long he and Selene were separated. The years between them stretched between them like horrible hands pushing them apart.

“Before then, you were the only man I had slept with,” she said. “Which means the girl’s father could only be…”

Selene pursed her lips, like she still couldn't quite believe it herself. Michael felt an emotional swelling in his chest. It crawled up past his heart to neck, then throat, and then to his face. He squeezed his eyes shut as tears started to well.

“I’m sorry this is how you had to find out,” Selene said. She reached a hand to Michael’s face to thumb away a tear. “It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

“No, it’s not that,” Michael said. He sniffled and rubbed his eyes. “Years ago, Samantha and I…we used to talk about it all the time. Becoming parents one day. After the accident…I didn’t know if I’d ever find someone again I could have that with. But now…with you…”

A sob escaped his throat and a tear escaped each eye. He cleared his throat to collect himself.

“I need to talk to her,” he said. “I need to know everything about her. You said her name was Eve?”

Selene nodded, a smile escaping onto her lips.

“Yes,” she said. “In mortal years, she’s a teenager. According to what we understand about vampiric children, she will grow until physical maturity and then stop all together.”

“So…there’s still some time for me to watch her grow up?” Michael said.

Selene nodded, her own eyes threatening to tear up.

“Yes,” she said. “Though not too much. It’s scary how fast she’s becoming a woman.”

Michael collapsed both his hands around Selene’s. She moved closer to rub her free hand along his back as he choked back sobs. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, then he kissed her thumb knuckle.

“I want to speak to her tonight,” he said. “When the healers come to check on me, bring her to me. I want to talk to her.”

“Michael, you’re still healing—”

“I will crawl down the stairs if I have to,” he said. His tone was steely. But then he looked Selene in her eyes and he seemed softened. His words came closer to begging. “Please, Selene. I’ve wanted to be a father for so long. I never thought I’d get to be. Now I discover I’ve been one for years and I didn’t even get to be there for it. I can’t wait any longer.” He kissed her hand again. “I want to meet our daughter. Please.”

~

Later in the night, when sunrise was threatening the horizon, Selene went upstairs with her daughter in tow and followed by two healers with bowls of blood. Eve squeezed her mother’s hand, sensing a tension in the room that almost frightened her.

She’d ask her mother a hundred times who this man was, why his presence had created such a stir throughout the castle. Why he had created such a stir in her mother, who often seemed as strong and immovable as a stone statue.

Michael wasn’t asleep when they entered his room. For the past several days, they needed to wake him when it was time to feed. Now, he looked like he had been lying awake for all the hours after Selene left.

His eyes immediately landed on Eve. The girl wasn’t quite sure how to react to him. Last she saw him, she'd been watching him sleep. When he woke up, they both seemed mutually curious about each other. Now, he was looking at her like he was itching to run over to her.

The healers politely left the room and shut the door behind them. A thick silence hung between the three of them. Eve looked between Selene and the man on the bed.

“Who is he, mama?” she asked.

Selene swallowed and took her daughter by the hand. She led her over to the bed and sat her down atop the duvet, close to Michael.

“Eve,” Selene said. “Do you remember what I told you about your father?”

Eve nodded.

“You said he was killed,” she said. “By that Lycan Marius.”

“Yes. I saw it in a vision when I drank Marius’s blood.” Selene pursed her lips. “But my vision didn’t show me the whole story. It turns out, he had survived.”

Selena reached over and took Michael’s hand.

“Eve, this is Michael,” she said. “He’s your father.”

The girl’s sapphire eyes grew wide and she looked at him. Michael offered her a gentle smile.

“It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Eve,” he said. “Your mother has told me all about you.”

Eve was silent for a minute, a thousand thoughts racing through her head. Selene ran a hand down her daughter’s back.

“He managed to survive Marius’s capture,” she explained. “He’s been searching for us for months. He was the reason for those inferences in our link. In your visions.”

Selene spoke slowly, allowing the information to arrive in her daughter’s mind. It was so much for a girl to take in at once, but she needed to hear it. She’d been waiting days, years, to hear it.

“The link is formed between those related by blood,” Selene said. “That’s how he was able to access it and find us. You both share the same blood.”

Once again, Eve was silent. Then, she moved closer to him, gazing intently at his face. For so long, her father only existed in the many stories her mother told. In her mind, he almost didn’t seem real. A character in a fable. A spirit in a ghost, which he might as well have been. But now he was alive before her, flesh and blood.

Even leaned close to him.

“You’re a Lycan like me?” she asked.

“I’m not just a Lycan,” he said. “I’m a hybrid. Part Lycan. Just like you.”

Something burned in Eve’s chest. She’d lived among only pureblood vampires for so long. The only Lycans she’d known had tried to hurt her. There was part of her that always yearned for someone like her, someone with her unique condition.

She leaned a little closer and whispered, “Can I see your Lycan teeth?”

A grin crept onto Michael’s face. He sat up a little straighter in bed, then dropped his head down and pursed his lips. Before he even looked at her, Eve saw the dark hairs on his arms thicken. When Michael lifted his head, his human teeth had elongated into sharp canines. Teeth made for biting. Teeth made for tearing flesh. 

Just like hers.

Tears suddenly welled in Eve's eyes. She hooked her arms around her father’s neck and pulled him into a hug. Michael immediately took the girl in his arms and held her close to his chest as she wept into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry I did not get to see you for so long,” he said. “I’m here now. And there’s nothing that could take me from you.”

The girl sniffled and sobbed, clinging to her father like he'd vanish if she let him go. Selene curled onto the bed next to them, holding close to her husband and daughter. As the sun began to rise behind the boarded windows, the new family snugged together in a warm bundle of tears.

~

At some point, the three of them had all fallen asleep in the big, overstuffed bed. Selene’s eyes fluttered open, sensing someone was watching her. She turned her head to see Michael, awake, blue eyes nearly glowing in the dark. Eve was asleep between, sighing softly in her precious little sleep.

“How long have you been awake?” Selene whispered.

“Only a few minutes,” Michael said. “You look so peaceful when you’re asleep.”

“And you drool when you do.”

The two of them chuckled. Michael turned his attention back to Eve. He traced his fingertips along her dark hair, brushing strands away to see her moon-like face. Eve was growing quickly, but in her sleep she may as well have been a small girl again.

“She looks just like you,” Michael said. “Your hair…your eyes…everything.”

“I can find plenty of you in her too.”

“Don’t need to.” Michael looked at Selene. “That’s how it should be. You’re the one who’s been looking after her all this time. She should look more like you.”

Eve made a soft noise in her sleep. Selene and Michael paused, waiting for her to wake up. Instead, the girl sighed and turned on her side, nuzzling into her father's chest. Michael hooked an arm around her and pulled her close. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“I know what you mean,” Selene said. “But she’s yours too. I can see plenty of her in you. I’ve been looking a lot.” She scratched her daughter back gently. “She has a bit of your nose, the shape of your eyes.” Selene smirked. “When she shows her canine teeth, they look exactly like yours.”

Michael grinned.

“Hopefully a bit smaller,” he said.

“For now. Wait until she’s physically matured. Then the daughter might surpass her father.”

Michael chuckled. “I hope so.”

Selene and Michael looked at each other. Then, Selene leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his mouth. Michael cupped the back of her head to hold her close. For the first in what was too long, he felt all the things life was supposed to make you feel. Peace, joy, hope for what was to come. The walls of the castle could echo with the love that beat in his heart for his daughter and her mother.

The words escaped him as soft as a breath.

“Marry me.”

Selene opened her eyes and broke the kiss. Surely, she misheard something.

“What?” he said.

Michael held her gaze with his.

“Marry me,” he said. “We’ve been separated for so long. We have a daughter together. I want this to be us for the rest of time.”

He took Selene’s cheek in his hand. Warm flesh against cold.

“I’ve been away for too long, missed too much,” he said. “I get to be Eve’s father. Now, I also want to be your husband.”

Selene felt a long twist in her heart. Suddenly, desires she had not touched since she were a human came stirring up from their centuries-long slumber. The desire for family, the desire for a home. She thought these wants had died along with her mortal life. But Michael’s warm fingertips sprung them back to life.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes…yes, you will marry me.”

She wanted to kiss him again, clutch the man who would be her bridegroom. But then Michael and Selene felt a stirring between them. Eve rolled back onto her back under the duvet.

“What’re you two talking about?” she mumbled. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Selene and Michael looked at each other. A silent agreement passed between them, and Selene petted her daughter's head.

“Nothing, darling,” she said. “We won’t wake you again. Go back to sleep. Tomorrow, we’re going to visit the seamstresses and get you fitted for a new dress.”

Eve made a sleepy groan sound then curled up on her side. The next morning, she would be awoken to a large, celebratory breakfast, and the news that she would be a maid of honor.

~

Weddings were a rare occasion for vampires and Lycans. They lived forever and rarely reproduced, meaning weddings could happen centuries apart. So when they did happen, they were a great cause for celebration. For the following days, every voice in the castle rang out that the Elder vampire Selene had taken a bridegroom.

Lena took over most of the preparations. This was not just a wedding between two immortals. It was a wedding between the descendant of Corvinus and an Elder vampire. It was an occasion that called for utmost festivities. They cleared a ballroom for the ceremony. Heaps of meat and blood pudding were made to fill a banquet. Seamstresses spent hours making dresses for Selene and Eve and a new suit for Michael. Crystals shaped like the moon and stars were suspended from the ceilings and everything else decorated in white roses.

Selene decided to fargo a white dress, so the seamstresses used up all their black silk and lace to make her a gown. Off the shoulder with a heart-shaped necklace, a billowing skirt, and long black velvet gloves. Eve was made a smaller dress from the same material as her mothers, decorated with white ribbons and roses. For Michael, the seamstresses decide to fashion him something reminiscent of what Corvinus would have worn in more medieval times. A white linen shirt, a tunic of black damask fabric, a leather belt and boots. It was a far cry from the simple black suit he wore to his and Samantha’s wedding, but then again, his new bride was a far cry from Samantha.

On the day of the ceremony, Selene stood outside the ballroom doors in her ebony finery. Despite her happiness, there was a twinge of sorrow in her chest. Whenever she had pictured her wedding day, she imagined her family there. Her parents. Her sister. Her nieces. They should have all been there, seated in the audience, dressed in their own Sunday best. It was enough to send a glint of tears into her eyes.

“Mama?”

Eve's voice brought Selene’s attention to her side. Her daughter’s face peered up at her from the other side of the back veil.

“Yes, darling?” Selene asked.

“Are you okay? You seem a bit distracted.”

Selene felt the start of a cry sitting in her throat, but she swallowed it. She did have her family here. Her daughter was at her side. Her husband was waiting on the side of the door. Why would she waste tears on a past family when her new one was right in front of her?

Selene pulled Eve closer and lifted her veil to kiss her daughter’s head.

“Nothing, darling,” she said. “I’m just in awe of what a woman you are becoming.”

A slightly embarrassed grin crossed Eve’s teenage face. At that moment, the sound of a piano rang out from the ballroom and the crowd hushed. Eve went first, carrying a small bouquet of white roses to match her mother’s. Then, the music shifted, and Selene stepped through the double wooden doors onto the aisle. 

The crowd rose as Selene floated by. Moonlight flooded the hall through the tall arching windows, bathing the place in pale silver. Selene kept her fingers curled around the bouquet in her hands. The audience of vampires around her whispered at her beauty, but Selene kept her eyes on Michael. He was impossibly handsome in his black mask and crisp white shirt, his blonde hair slicked neatly back.

Michael, meanwhile, stood frozen without a breath in his lungs. Selene was always beautiful, but now she seemed to radiant like a moon beam. He smiled even as he felt a buckle in his legs. What was it about a woman like her that could render a grown man into a blushing schoolboy?

He took her arm when she made it to the front. David has been appointed as the minister for the ceremony. Vampire ceremonies did not resemble human ones. But this matrimony was not for the eyes of a god. It was for them, for the centuries long community and home that awaited them for the nights to come.

“Do you, Selene,” David said. “Take Michael Corvin as your husband, for now and for the rest of your immortal life.”

“I do,” Selene said.

“And do you, Michael Corvin, take Selene as your wife, until there is no more earth for you both to walk on.”

“I do,” Michael said.

A smile beamed on David’s face. He closed the book of vows in front of him.

“Then by the power invested me and this immortal coven,” he said. “I pronounce you both, wife and husband.”

The audience erupted into applause. Eve squealed and jumped up and down as she clapped her hands. The wife and groom turned to each other, and Michael leaned close so he could whisper in Selene’s lips.

“For eternity,” he whispered.

Selene smiled and took her new husband’s cheek in her hand.

“For eternity,” she said.