The blood-threads shoot toward her, a web designed not to hurt but to hold. To keep. To ensure she can never leave this space where losing her remains possibility rather than certainty.
She moves faster than I expect—dragon blood has enhanced her speed. Fire erupts from her hands, burning through my blood-threads with heat that makes the air scream. The scent of burning blood fills the space, copper and carbon and something sweeter that might be dragon magic responding to threat.
The smell only encourages me.
"Burn them all," I tell her, producing more threads faster than she can destroy them. "I have centuries of blood to spend, and forever to replenish it."
But that's a lie. Already, the blood loss is affecting me—vision blurring at edges, movements becoming less precise. Vampire regeneration is fast but not infinite. I'm spending myself faster than I can heal.
I don't care.
Better to die keeping her than live watching her leave.
She seems to realize this, her expression shifting from defensive to desperate. Her next move isn't fire or magic but purely physical—she tackles me with force that sends us both sprawling across floor that might or might not exist.
"Stop!" She pins my wrists, her own magic manifesting as bonds that burn against my skin. "You're going to kill yourself wasting blood like that!"
"Death is no different from losing you," I snarl, struggling against her hold with strength that's diminishing too quickly. "I'd rather be lifeless than let you escape."
We wrestle across the non-space, vampire strength against whatever she's become. I summon darkness—not Cassius's controlled shadows but the hungry void that vampires can call when desperate. She counters with light that burns like small suns, dragon fire mixed with something uniquely hers.
Each attack nullifies the other. Darkness swallows light. Fire consumes void. We're too evenly matched, or perhaps too perfectly opposed.
Then she does something I don't expect.
She stops fighting.
In one deliberate motion, she draws her own wrist across my fangs, deep enough that blood immediately wells—hot, rich, carrying that intoxicating mix of her original scent and new dragon undertones.
The smell hits my vampire senses like physical force.
I've been starving myself in this trial, feeding on my own blood in endless loops of loss. The hunger I've been suppressing through will alone comes roaring to the surface, transforming me from predator to something more primal.
Need.
Pure, desperate need.
"Drink," she commands, pressing her bleeding wrist toward my mouth.
I recoil, some last vestige of control warning this could be trap, could be joke, could be cruelty designed to break what remains of my sanity.
"This is trick?—"
"This is me saving you from yourself," she interrupts, and her free hand tangles in my hair, gentle but insistent. "Drink, Atticus. Please."
The please breaks me.
My fangs sink into her wrist with no more thought than drowning man accepts air. The first pull of her blood is ecstasy—not sexual but existential, like remembering how to exist after forgetting I was real.
She tastes of flame and shadow, copper and starlight, dragon power and something essentiallyherthat no enhancement could change. My hands clutch at her arm, pulling her closer, needing more contact than just fangs in flesh.
"That's it," she murmurs, and her voice is soft, soothing. "Take what you need."
What I need is more than blood.
I pull her fully against me, abandoning her wrist to seek the more intimate connection of throat. She doesn't resist, tilting her head with trust that makes my chest tight with emotions I can't name.
My fangs pierce the delicate skin where neck meets shoulder, and the sound she makes—part pain, part something else—vibrates through me like struck bell.
