LOVE ME LIKE A CURSE
> “Stay still, Little Thorn… I want to taste you slowly.”
His voice was velvet and ruin. His mouth, a weapon. And I—fool that I was—leaned closer.
Before death wore a suit and called itself a lover, I used to believe in beauty.
Before the blood. Before the runes. Before I painted the image that killed my parents—I believed my art could save me.
Now I know better.
I was just weeks from graduating when the painting came to me like a fever. I didn’t choose it. I didn’t plan it. My hands moved, possessed, dragging symbols I’d never seen and a face I’d never forgotten—his.
Eyes red as wine. A crown pierced with thorns. And a girl in the center… me. Offering herself.
I signed it with a mark I didn’t recognize. I sold it to a stranger.
And days later, my parents were dead—no wounds, no reason, just... gone.
The police said stress. I say fate.
Now I’m being hunted by a world I didn’t know existed. Vampires with ancient courts and older grudges. Symbols that whisper in my blood. And Lucien D’Aragon—the vampire who says I summoned him with my brushstroke. That I belong to him.
He says I’m his prophecy. His ruin.
His Little Thorn.
But I’m not just prey.
Something is waking in me. Something hungry. Something I was never meant to survive.
If I give in, I lose everything.
If I fight, I might finally learn the truth.
About my art.
About my bloodline.
About what really happened that night.
And why he keeps whispering that I was painted for ruin...
but made for him.
Read
Chapter: CHP-50THE NEXT DAY-AFTER WORK --- The day dragged itself into evening the way tired dancers slip from stage—graceful from a distance, ragged when you’re close enough to hear the breath between movements. By the time I shut down my computer and pushed back from my desk, most of the floor had emptied. A few stragglers hovered, their screens glowing faintly, but the earlier buzz of excitement had thinned into silence. When I stepped into the hallway, someone was leaning against the wall near the elevators. Julian Cross. I hadn’t seen him since the day we went for a coffee date. He looked up the moment I appeared, like he’d been waiting. His tie was loosened, the top button of his shirt undone. “Heading out?” he asked, pushing off the wall. “Trying to,” I said. “You?” “I figured I’d walk you, figured maya left before you today.” The words were simple. Too simple. But something in the way he said them—like it wasn’t a question, but a decision already made—pulled a flutter
Last Updated: 2025-09-27
Chapter: CHP-49[A GIRLISH CONFESSION]The applause still rang in my ears long after Lucien D’Aragon had walked out of the atrium. I’d gone back to my desk, packed my things with deliberate calm, and told myself it was only a staff meeting. People met their CEOs every day. Nothing world-altering about it. Except my hands had shaken when I zipped my bag shut. And Maya had followed me out the door, still babbling about his suit, his voice, his eyes, like she’d just witnessed a miracle. By the time I left the office and slipped into the chill of the evening, the city lights already sparking awake, I had almost convinced myself it wasn’t worth replaying in my head. Almost. But the problem with convincing yourself something doesn’t matter is that you have to keep repeating it. Over and over, like a bad mantra. And by the time I stepped into the apartment, I was exhausted from my own denial. --- The living room greeted me with its usual chaos: Rhea sprawled sideways on the couch, one leg draped over the armrest, scrol
Last Updated: 2025-09-26
Chapter: CHP-48 [THE HOLLOW VEIL FESTIVAL]The city did not belong to mortals tonight. Its towers drowned in shadow, its avenues veiled in smoke, its silence broken only by music that was not meant for human ears. From the spires to the catacombs, the night stretched wide and black as silk—and within it, the vampire breeds emerged in their truest forms, cloaked not in disguise but in hunger. Once each century, the Hollow Veil was lifted. Once each century, the hidden clans were permitted to walk openly beneath the same moon, to bleed together, to drink together, to remember that all their lineages—fractured, bitter, estranged—were carved from the same wound. The streets glowed faintly with lanterns, filled with oils. >The Stryga breed: shrieked their laughter from rooftops, wings snapping as they swooped down to snatch goblets from passing hands. Their revels were violent graceless, but none dared stop them. The Hollow Veil festival permitted indulgence. >The Morrakai: pale as drowned corpses drifted barefoot through
Last Updated: 2025-09-22
Chapter: CHP-47[THE COURT BETRAYED]Setting: The Bone Orchard --- The field stretched endlessly under a starless sky, its earth cracked and pale as old scars. White trees clawed upward in jagged silhouettes, their bark not wood but bone—calcified remnants of the First Brood who defied Vaelros Seraxa. Each tree leaned as if in pain, branches frozen mid-scream, their roots burrowed deep into the soil where ancient blood still seeped. No Elder dared walk here, for the Orchard remembered betrayal. It remembered the Crown That Bleeds. And here, Seraphine came alone. She had already decided tonight. The debate had only given her permission to move faster. There were three obstacles: the covenant of the Elders, the Warded Vault, and the impossible truth that a Second Rite required more hands — not merely accomplices, but anchors: blood-pledges from those of the old line. She would not ask. She would take. First, the Vault. No one who sat in the high circle believed the Vault would be breached again. Over generatio
Last Updated: 2025-09-16
Chapter: CHP-46 [THE SECOND RITE: THE CRESCENT OATH]Setting : Old Elder Vampire Court --- The Elders gathered once more in the cavern, their faces hollowed by the flicker of flame, the echo of silence stretched taut between them. The first ritual had ended in nothing. Days passed. Weeks even. No mark. No prophecy stirring. No sign of Ysolde’s return in flesh or spirit. And so suspicion had spread like rot. Cassian’s gaze swept the circle, his voice cutting the tension like a blade: --- “It has been weeks,” He said, “And yet—the girl walks free of us. No mark. No oath. no sign that the prophecy has been sealed. Tell me, was our ritual a farce? Was our blood wasted?” Across from him, Seraphine lifted her chin with serpentine grace. “Not wasted,” she hissed. “But perhaps… resisted. The blood remembers what it chooses to remember. Perhaps the girl’s veins defy us.” Valerian tapped his clawed fingers against the armrest. If the mark did not appear, then it was not the prophecy that faltered. It was us.” “The first rit
Last Updated: 2025-09-15
Chapter: CHP-45[ HIM ]When I walked into D’Aragon Enterprises the next morning, the first thing I noticed was how much heavier the air felt. Not tired-heavy, not stale from recycled vents or too much perfume drifting through the lobby, but charged. The kind of atmosphere that made people straighten their posture without realizing why. I wasn’t imagining it. Clusters of staff lingered longer than usual by the elevators, their voices pitched higher, their gestures sharper. Someone had spread the word already. A meeting. A big one. And not just any meeting. The CEO wanted to “see the old faces and new faces that ran his empire.” "LUCIEN D’ARAGON." I told myself I shouldn’t care. People like him lived galaxies away from people like me. I worked in one of the tucked-away creative wings, where pixels and deadlines mattered more than boardroom politics. My orbit wasn’t meant to brush against his. And yet my stomach tightened anyway. Maybe because my night had ended with Julian’s smile still burned behind
Last Updated: 2025-09-12
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