When he set the fork down, he leaned back slightly, still watching me.
The memories came rushing in then, his hand on my cheek, the heat of his mouth on mine, the sharp, dizzying sting of his teeth breaking my skin.
“You bit me,” I said quietly.
His gaze didn’t flinch. “I did.”
I swallowed. “That is weird…why?”
He studied me for a long moment, his gaze heavy, almost dissecting me. It wasn’t hesitation, it was calculation, like hewas weighing exactly how much truth I could take without shattering.
“Because I am a Vampire,” he said at last, his voice as steady as steel. No drama, no theatrics just a truth dropped between us like a blade.
The word hit something deep in me, something that made me want to laugh, deny, call him insane… but couldn’t. Not after the way he’d moved through that warehouse. Not after the way his eyes seemed to see through me.
“And because,” he continued, leaning in just enough for the shadows to sharpen along his jaw, “the second I saw you chained in that room, I knew you were mine.”
My breath caught.
“My bite starts a bond,” he went on, his voice dropping lower, darker, like the words themselves carried weight only I could feel. “It’s not superstition. It’s not a fairy tale but it ties you to me. It makes it impossible for anyone else to claim you.”
His eyes locked on mine, unblinking, unyielding. “It keeps you safe.”
The sentence should have sounded like a promise. A vow. Instead, it landed like a lock clicking shut.
Safe. The word was sharp and sweet all at once, like honey poured over glass. I wanted to push it away, to shove him back and demand answers he had no right to keep from me. But my body… traitorous, reckless thing that it was… leaned toward him. Like the pull of gravity had shifted and now he was the centre.
My pulse thundered in my ears, he said it started a bond, that his bite ties me to him and that no one else could claim me. My mind tried to wrap around it, to find the cracks in the logic, but the memory of his mouth on mine, the sting of his teeth breaking skin, the strange heat that had rolled through me after…it all came back in a rush.
Fear coiled tight in my chest. Not the kind I’d felt with the Irish, the cold, the hopeless dread of knowing I was powerless. This was different. This was heat and danger and something that felt too much like want.
I should have been afraid of him. Hell, maybe I was. But under that fear, curling in the shadows of it, was something worse, an ache. An ache to be closer. To touch him again. To know what it meant to be “safe” by his definition. And that terrified me more than anything.
I forced out a laugh, thin and shaky, my voice sharper than I intended. “Do you hear yourself? Do you even know how insane you sound? A vampire? Really? What are you going to tell me next, that you sparkle in the sunlight?”
His eyes didn’t flicker. He didn’t smirk. He just stared at me, unblinking, a predator’s patience coiled in his silence.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I snapped, though the tremor in my voice gave me away. “You’re not a vampire. Those don’t exist. They’re fairy tales. Myths. Stories meant to scare kids into behaving.”
“Do you want proof?” His voice was low, a dare hidden in its depths.
“I want you to admit you’ve lost your damn mind,” I shot back, but my pulse hammered in my throat.
He leaned in, slow enough for me to notice, fast enough that I couldn’t step away. His mouth tilted, and then…he opened it.
Fangs. Not teeth, not canines sharpened into points. Fangs. Long, gleaming, lethal. My breath hitched hard in my chest, the sound embarrassingly loud in the silence between us.
“You’re lying,” I whispered, but it sounded weak, even to me.
“Do I look like I’m lying?” His lips pulled back in the faintest ghost of a smile, but there was nothing kind in it. It was hunger and it was truth.
The air thickened, pressing against my ribs, and the word echoed through me, relentless.
The word twisted in my head. “You…you said mine…what does that even mean? ‘Mine’?”
“It means,” he said, his voice like steel wrapped in silk, “that no one dare touches you, no one hurts you. You will never go hungry, or sleep on cold floors. You definitely won’t get sold to the highest bidder. You’re mine now to protect, to keep. To feed if you need it, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you from me.”
Every word landed with the force of a vow carved in stone, heavy and inescapable. His tone didn’t leave room for doubt or argument, it wasn’t a proposal, it was a fact he’d decided for both of us.
