ONE NIGHT STAND WITH MY STEPFATHER

Elena's POV

By the time I'd thrown on a change of clothes and rushed out to Adrian, the cars were almost ready to leave.

"Adrian, wait!"

I ran to his car, out of breath, and knocked on the window several times before he finally frowned and rolled it down.

"What is it?"

His cold, handsome features tipped down at me, my breathless reflection caught in his blood-red eyes. Even when seeing me put him in a foul mood, he still looked effortlessly elegant.

The skies over the Prince's domain were always overcast, and just then the rain came down without warning.

This was the one halfway-decent outfit I owned, and the silk was already speckled with rain.

I gripped the front of my dress, went quiet for a moment, and forced myself to speak.

"I... I need thirty million. Could you lend it to me? Just for now."

The moment I said the word "lend," something in his face soured.

The servants and the nobles in his retinue began to murmur.

I couldn't look at him. I stared down at my shoes, the ones I hadn't had time to change, and tucked my feet under my hem.

The truth was, I didn't want to ask him for money in front of everyone either.

But I had no other way.

Adrian hadn't come to see me in a long time. The manor was enormous, and if he intended to avoid me, it would be effortless for him to steer clear of his powerless fiancée in name only. If the Prince hadn't decided to take his heir south to tour the domain, it would have been months before Adrian summoned me to his study and dismissed me with a few empty consolations.

"There's nothing you lack in the manor. What do you need thirty million for?"

His question caught me, and I froze.

"A gown for some banquet? Jewelry?"

He let out a cold laugh the moment the words left his mouth.

"It's not as if you ever go to banquets."

The looks around me turned amused and mocking.

I'd been his fiancée for years, yet nearly every vampire and human noble knew my situation.

At the banquet the hunters attacked, my mother had thrown herself across the doorway to hold them off, so I could drag a gravely wounded Adrian out the back.

After she died, my father quickly took a new wife, and then they had a daughter.

And through all of it, I stayed beside a badly traumatized Adrian, day and night.

It wasn't until the anniversary of my mother's death, when I slipped home and saw my infant stepsister through the window, that I understood everything.

As a boy, Adrian depended on me completely. He couldn't eat a thing if I wasn't there.

The Prince and Princess weren't pleased that I was human, from a middling family, but for their son's sake they tolerated it.

Under the pretense of honoring my mother's spirit, they brought me into the Prince's domain to raise, when I was only ten.

To the outside world, they said only that Adrian and I were too young to be betrothed but fond of each other, so it was good for us to keep each other company.

Back then, the Prince and Princess pulled me aside every day to ask after Adrian. They praised me, told me I was a good child who'd done so much for them.

And Adrian always shielded me, never letting the servants gossip.

He said that once he grew up, he would turn me, so I could stay with him for eternity.

But then, he gradually recovered.

The hallucinations stopped haunting him. The mark on his chest, where a silver bullet had grazed him, slowly faded.

And so I, his human fiancée, became the single most unwelcome thing in the whole domain.

If they broke the engagement now, the entire royal line would be branded ungrateful.

But if he actually married me, my standing would never be worthy of a Prince's wife.

Back and forth it went, until I was twenty-five and still unwed.

I knew the vampire nobles were all waiting to watch me humiliate myself.

So after Adrian recovered and began avoiding me on purpose, I stopped going to banquets altogether.

With no one to shield me, I might well run into my father and stepmother’s family.

Going would only hurt.

Head down, listening to the laughter around me, I felt strangely numb.

Adrian's cold smile still lingered on his lips, sharp and cruel.

I just drew a slow breath and made myself speak again.

"I want thirty million. I... I saw a ruby brooch. I want to buy it back."

That ruby brooch was the antique my mother had been wearing the day she died.

She'd told me it had come down from her grandmother, and that on my wedding day she would give it to me.

She never got the chance.

Adrian was a vampire, sharp-minded, and he forgot nothing.

Fifteen years ago, my mother had been wearing that very brooch when she gave her life for him.

He knew that at her burial I'd cried and cried, saying the hunters had taken the brooch, that my mother would never rest easy without it.

My eyes searched his face, and I looked up, hoping.

He'd always hated it when I brought up my mother. He thought I was trading on a debt.

But he would understand. He would remember that this had always been the wound I couldn't close.

I pressed my lips together, not sure how to make him remember.

Adrian saw the plea in my eyes and stared for a moment, then blinked.

I clasped my hands and prayed he would smile, gently, just once, the way he had as a boy, and tell me he'd give me anything I wanted.

He had said it once. He'd held me at my mother's grave and said it.

"I'll find that brooch for you, Elena. I promise. Just stop crying, and I'll give you anything."

But he didn't look at me the way I'd imagined, with that tender, aching care.

"Elena. Don't be greedy."

Cold disdain filled his eyes.

"Yes, your mother died saving me fifteen years ago, yet I agreed to marry you."

"You're only human. Don't presume on that."