The night reeked of blood.

High above the burning forest, the Vampire King stood motionless, his crimson eyes reflecting the flames. His kingdom had seen countless wars, rebellions, and betrayals, but none of it touched him—not truly. He was untouchable. Cold. Unfeeling. A monster wrapped in shadows.

That was his curse.

Centuries ago, a witch had stolen the one thing that made him more than a beast—his heart. Not his life, not his strength, but the very pulse of emotion that made him capable of love. For a thousand years, his chest had been silent, his veins filled only with hunger and rage.

The curse was sealed with a prophecy:

“When the King’s heart beats again, his reign will end. His mate will either save him… or destroy him.”

He had mocked those words, laughing as he tore through armies, slaughtered witches, and burned kingdoms to ash. He had made his throne from the bones of those foolish enough to remind him of the prophecy. And still, the silence remained within him. No heartbeat. No weakness.

Until tonight.

The air quivered with screams as rogue vampires burned around him, their bodies reduced to ash. He had come to crush a rebellion, nothing more. Another pointless war. Another display of his dominance. But as the smoke curled into the night sky, something unexpected flickered in the corner of his vision.

A girl.

She stumbled out from the wreckage, her arm torn and bleeding, her breaths sharp and uneven. Too fragile. Too human. She didn’t belong here—among the shadows and death. Yet her eyes met his through the chaos, wide and terrified, but bright with defiance.

And then it happened.

A thud.

He froze, clutching his chest. His heart—silent for a thousand years—beat once. Then again. A painful, searing pulse that shook him more than any blade ever had.

The Vampire King staggered back, his breath ragged, his crimson gaze locked on her trembling form. His soldiers noticed nothing, too busy tearing through the rebels, but he knew. He felt it.

“She’s the one,” he whispered, his voice raw, cracked, as if unused for centuries.

The prophecy. The curse. The very words he had spent lifetimes denying—alive before him.

The girl’s blood dripped into the soil, mingling with the ash. The sight ignited something inside him, something he didn’t recognize. A need to claim her. Protect her. Destroy her. He didn’t know which was stronger.

The forest roared with fire, but all he could hear was the hammering in his chest. All he could see was her.

The witch’s words whispered like venom in his ears.

“His mate will either save him… or destroy him.”

For the first time in a thousand years, the King felt fear.

Not of death. Not of war.

But of the fragile girl whose very existence could bring his kingdom to its knees.

And as her gaze locked with his once more, he knew one truth.

His downfall had just begun.

The rain always made me restless.

It drummed against the windows of the laboratory, heavy and unrelenting, like the sky itself was warning me to go home. But I stayed, hunched over the microscope, ignoring the ache in my shoulders. The blue glow of the computer screen painted shadows under my eyes.

Most of my classmates had been smart enough to choose safer projects—topics their professors would approve of, things that made sense: cancer research, DNA sequencing, agricultural genetics. Practical. Predictable.

But not me.

I was obsessed with the strange. With myths. With the fragments of old stories my grandmother used to whisper about blood that wasn’t quite human. “Be careful, child,” she would murmur, her wrinkled hands clutching her rosary. “Some bloodlines carry secrets better left buried.”

I should have dismissed those stories as superstition, but instead, they stuck. They burned. They became questions I couldn’t stop chasing.

And tonight, I had found something.

The blood sample on the glass slide wasn’t normal. I had run the test three times, convinced it was contamination. But the results were the same. An unidentified marker—one that didn’t belong in any database. It was too clean, too deliberate, as if nature itself hadn’t designed it.

I scribbled notes furiously, my heart thudding with a mixture of excitement and dread.

If I was right, this wasn’t just a mutation. It wasn’t even human.

Thunder cracked outside, making me flinch. My reflection in the darkened glass looked pale and drawn, my hair sticking damply to my cheeks. I realized suddenly how late it was. Midnight had passed hours ago.

With a sigh, I packed up my notes, tucking them against my chest like they were treasure. The night guard would already be annoyed that I was still here.

I pulled my jacket tight and stepped into the storm.

The campus was silent. The kind of silence that presses against your lungs, thick and unnatural. Streetlights flickered weakly, their glow fractured by the rain. My sneakers splashed against puddles as I crossed the empty quad.

That was when I heard it.

Footsteps.

At first, I thought it was just an echo of my own. But the sound was too sharp, too deliberate, falling in perfect rhythm with mine.

I slowed. So did they.

I quickened my pace. The footsteps matched.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I gripped my notebook tighter, my throat dry. Don’t panic, I told myself. It’s probably another student. Or security. Or… anyone normal.

But when I turned my head, my breath froze.

A man was following me.

He stood half-hidden beneath the swaying branches of an oak, but I could see enough. His eyes glowed faintly, catching the lamplight in a way no human eyes ever could. His posture was too still, too predatory, like a shadow waiting to pounce.

And when his lips parted, I saw the glint of fangs.

My chest seized.

This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. Vampires aren’t real.

But the stories my grandmother told me clawed their way back, filling my head with her warnings. Monsters in the dark. Blood-drinkers who walked among us unseen.

The man stepped forward, the rain sliding over his pale skin. His nostrils flared as he inhaled.

“Your blood…” His voice was velvet and steel, sending a shiver down my spine. “…it isn’t human.”

The words punched the air out of me. I stumbled backward, my notebook nearly slipping from my hands. He shouldn’t know about my research. He shouldn’t even exist.

Before I could think, before I could scream, he moved.

Faster than my eyes could follow, he lunged.

I bolted.

My feet pounded against the wet pavement as I tore across the quad, my breath ragged and panicked. The storm blurred everything into streaks of shadow and light. I didn’t know where I was going—just away. Away from him.

But he was faster. I could feel him behind me, the air shifting as his presence closed in. His footsteps were silent, but his hunger was deafening.

“No!” The cry ripped from my throat, drowned by thunder.

I rounded a corner, desperate, my lungs burning. The library loomed ahead, but I knew I’d never make it inside. My legs trembled, my vision blurred—

And then I slammed into something solid.

Not something. Someone.

The impact jolted me, and my notebook spilled from my hands, scattering pages across the wet ground. I staggered back, blinking up—and the world tilted.

A man stood before me. Tall. Broad-shouldered. His presence swallowed the storm itself.

He wore a long black coat that clung to him in the rain, his hair dark and unkempt. But it was his eyes that rooted me in place—eyes that glowed crimson, ancient and merciless, burning with a power that made my knees weak.

The predator chasing me froze in his tracks. His face drained of color. And then, to my shock, he dropped to his knees.

“Your Majesty,” he whispered, his voice trembling.

Majesty?

I turned my gaze back to the man before me, my stomach knotting. Who was he?

He looked down at me, and in that single moment, I felt as though he saw everything—my secrets, my fears, even the strange pulse of my blood. His expression was unreadable, carved from stone. But then, something flickered in his gaze. Shock. Recognition.

He stepped closer, the rain parting around him like the world itself bowed to his presence. My chest tightened, my breaths shallow.

And then his lips parted. His voice was low, dangerous, commanding.

“You.”

One word. That was all. But it landed like a curse, like a sentence I couldn’t escape.

The rogue vampire on the ground trembled harder, pressing his forehead to the mud as if afraid to breathe in this man’s presence.

But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. My notebook lay forgotten at my feet, its precious pages dissolving in the rain.

Why did this stranger—this King, if that trembling vampire spoke the truth—look at me like I was something more than human?

And why, in that moment, did I feel my entire world shatter… only to begin again with the sound of a single word?

“You.”

Rain trickled down my face, cold and sharp, but I couldn’t move.

The man before me—no, not a man, something else entirely—held me captive with a single word.

“You.”

It was like lightning had struck. His voice was deep, resonant, carrying centuries of command, as if the storm itself bent to obey him.

My heart hammered against my ribs, screaming at me to run, but my legs refused.

The rogue vampire who had chased me still knelt in the mud, trembling like a cornered animal. He didn’t dare lift his head.

The stranger—the one called Majesty—slowly shifted his gaze to him.

“What were you doing with her?” His words were low, lethal.

The rogue flinched. “F-forgive me, Your Majesty. I—I didn’t know…”

“You didn’t know what?”

“That she was—”

In a blur, the King moved. One moment he stood still, the next his hand was around the rogue’s throat, lifting him effortlessly into the air. Rain dripped from his long fingers as the vampire clawed at them helplessly.

“You touched what is mine,” the King said, his voice cold, final.

The rogue’s eyes bulged. “I—please—”

With a sickening crack, his body went limp. The King released him, letting the corpse hit the mud with a dull thud.

I choked on a breath. My stomach lurched. He had killed him—so fast I barely saw it happen.

And then… he looked at me.

That gaze burned through me, sharper than the lightning that split the sky.

Every instinct screamed to run, but my body betrayed me. My feet stayed planted. My throat dry. My pulse loud enough to echo in my ears.

He stepped closer, and the air seemed to shift around him. Heavy. Suffocating.

“What are you?” His question was not gentle. It was demand, like a king demanding tribute.

“I—” My voice cracked. “I’m human.”

His lips curved—something between amusement and disbelief. “Human?” His eyes glowed brighter, crimson flames against the dark. “Do not lie to me. Your blood betrays you.”

Panic surged through me. He knew. Somehow, he knew what I had found in the lab tonight. The marker that wasn’t human.

I stumbled back, my heel slipping in the mud. “Stay away from me.”

But he only advanced, his movements fluid, predatory. “You think you can order me?” His voice was silk over steel. “Do you even know who I am?”

I shook my head, though part of me already guessed.

“I am Kael Draven, King of the Vampires.” His tone carried centuries of blood and power. “The one mortals whisper of in nightmares. The one your kind has hunted—and failed to destroy.”

My knees weakened. King of the Vampires. My grandmother’s stories hadn’t just been stories. They were warnings.

And now I stood in front of the very monster mothers used to frighten their children into obedience.

He closed the distance until he stood a breath away. Rain rolled down the sharp planes of his face, his crimson gaze unrelenting.

“Your blood called to me,” he murmured, almost to himself. “For centuries, I have walked this world without feeling, without a single beat in my chest. But when I saw you…” His hand brushed the space above his heart. “…it stirred.”

I froze. What was he saying?

“You are the one,” Kael whispered, his voice roughened with something I couldn’t name. “The curse… ends with you.”

Curse? My head spun, trying to grasp his words. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He tilted his head, studying me with unnerving intensity. “Perhaps not. But you will.”

Lightning split the sky, illuminating his face in sharp contrast—inhumanly beautiful, terrifyingly cold.

“I won’t let you go,” he said softly, but the softness only made it more dangerous. “Not now. Not ever.”

My chest tightened, fear and confusion tangling until I could barely breathe. “You can’t—”

His hand shot out, fingers curling around my wrist. His grip was firm, unyielding, but not crushing. Heat spread from his touch, crawling up my arm. My pulse thundered, and his eyes darkened, as if the sound itself consumed him.

“Your heartbeat…” His voice dropped, reverent and dangerous. “Do you know what you’ve done to me?”

I shook my head, too overwhelmed to answer.

For a moment, his expression flickered—something raw, almost vulnerable. But it vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by cold resolve.

“You will come with me,” he declared.

“No!” I yanked against his grip, desperate, but his strength was absolute. It was like fighting against iron chains.

“Yes.” His voice brooked no argument. “You are mine now.”

The word mine echoed in my skull, heavy and final.

The rain poured harder, drowning the world, but all I could hear was the thunder of my own heart.

And his voice, dark and inescapable, sealing my fate.

“You are bound to me, little one. Whether you wish it or not.”