Blood and Bond

The air in my chambers was thick with a tension that had nothing to do with the approaching dawn. It was the quiet hum of anticipation, the thrum of a predator’s heartbeat against the fragile shell of a mortal’s. Angie lay beside me, her breath a soft, rhythmic whisper against my chest, a sound that had become more vital to me than the beating of my own dead heart. I traced the delicate curve of her collarbone with a fingertip, the skin so impossibly soft, so achingly alive. It was a dangerous indulgence, this proximity, a constant test of the control I had spent centuries honing.

My gaze drifted to the heavy velvet curtains, the only barrier between her fragile existence and the predatory world that circled us. Lysandra. The name was a venomous hiss in the quiet of my mind. She smelled Angie’s presence, felt the shift in my ancient, solitary existence. She sensed the vulnerability, the chink in my armor that this mortal girl represented. And she would not hesitate to exploit it.

Angie stirred, a soft sigh escaping her lips. Her eyes fluttered open, those luminous pools of hazel that held a universe of innocent wonder, now tinged with a dawning understanding of the darkness that clung to me. “Ash?” she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep.