Chapter 7- Are you mental?

With a blur of motion, James was moving to kneel at Grace’s side, studying her delicately carved features.

The slender nose, the full lips that were the colour of summer roses. Her pale, creamy skin sharply contrasted with the golden curls of her hair that spilt across the stone floor in a river of silk.

Just like the first time he’d seen her in the pub the other night, the sight of her beautiful curls and beautiful-addictive scent lured him in.

It wasn’t just her beauty. A vampire can see and feel better than any other creature. He understood the outer shell was meaningless; it was his soul that was pure and innocent. It was her inner essence that reached out to touch the monster within him.

James grimaced, squashing his renegade blast of awareness.

This hybrid female vampire was destined to become the mate of a powerful pureblood vampire. And he was the last pure-bred of his kind.

Hybrid vampires were extremely rare, especially those of human lineage. Grace was a mistake. Her mother, a human, was not supposed to have conceived her because vampires were creatures with little more than a fictitious heartbeat. Louie wasn't supposed to impregnate her mother, but fate had other plans. And, as a pure-bred vampire, James' blood was powerful enough to change humans into his kind, although they weren't as powerful as him and couldn't walk in the sun. However, Lily was the first of the hybrids to be born, and James wondered if her enemies were already aware of her existence.

He hoped not. He made a promise to Louie that he would protect his child and teach her the ways of the undead. Not to make her become a target of vampire hunters.

James hissed in shock. The web of magic he’d spread over her had been disrupted when the darkness had filled the room. So why couldn’t he sense her curse? This woman was not only left to wander the world without even a single idea of what she really was, but she was cursed, and like him, this woman was doomed to never find her life mate.

Why? And who would curse an innocent hybrid?

"Grace?" Holding up his hand that still glowed with flames, he leaned forward, barely resisting the urge to brush his mouth over the soft temptation of her lips. "Grace, can you hear me?"

Nothing happened for a tense minute, and then the long, luxuriously thick lashes slowly swept upward.

James felt another punch to the gut. Her eyes were magnificent.

They were flecked with shimmering dots of colour and were so delicate and lush that anyone could have fallen for their alluring innocence. Like the finest gems.

His vampire roared in pleasure, the heat of his beast thundering through the air. Dear goddess, he’d never come so close to losing control. And he wasn’t even touching her. This woman was pure kryptonite. 

Thankfully, unaware of his blistering reaction, Grace studied him with a strange calm.

"Who are you?"

She squinted... and furrowed her forehead. Then the realisation set in, and she gaped at him, 

"What the heck!?" She tried to shake her head but was halted by the tremendous and thunderous pain. "Fuck!"

HE smirked.

"What the hell are you doing here?" She grumbled.

"I'm your neighbour, and we share the same balcony."

She gawked for a moment and rolled her eyes. "Unbelievable! That is purely crazy, a coincidental shit of fate.

"So, are you following me?" He teased her.

"Hell no!"

Alright. "So do you remember what happened just a few minutes ago?" James muttered.

"No. I was sleeping…" Her gaze wandered over his face, her nose flaring as she breathed in his scent.

"What are you doing here? You can't just run into someone else's room just because you heard a scream," she halted, "Are you trying to... Are you a thief?"

"Are you mental? This building is mine!" James jerked back, his bemusement shattered by an icy chill. Quite an accomplishment for a vampire who had flames dancing through his veins.

"I prefer to be called James, not a thief," he said in clipped tones.

She continued to study him, either indifferent to his irritation or just oblivious to it. "So how did you manage to open a glass door? It was luck from the inside?" She muttered.

"I have a master key."

"Master key." She tested the name on her tongue before she gave a slow nod. "Why was I on the floor again?"

"Technically, I don't know," he said, with an annoyed tone.

With a grace that marked her as a vampire, Grace was suddenly rising from the floor. The nightgown that she’d been wearing when she slept rustled like a musical instrument in the silence, the scent of exotic spices teasing at his senses.

James straightened, stepping away from her slender body.

"Headache… my ears are buzzing like I was drugged."

"Hmmp?" he muttered. He didn't have any idea what happened either, but he knew it was magic.

Grace moved to inspect the room. Her delicate features were not impossible to read in the darkness. "What the hell happened?" she muttered under her breath.

James stiffened.

She moved to stare at the heavy wooden chairs that were pushed against the wall.

"It wasn't there earlier, I mean before I slept," she explained.

James’s irritation changed to annoyance. Okay, his vampire might be desperately in lust with the female. And there might have been a strange tug of connection that was even more troubling.

But he wasn’t her servant. And he wasn’t going to be treated as if he was.

"Then what did you do to the room?" He asked.

"What are you talking about?" She glanced over her shoulder, her pale eyes swirling with pinpricks of colour. "I fucking have no idea."

James scowled. 

She continued her circuit of the room, absently stroking her fingers over a marble statue that looked as if it’d been plundered from an ancient Greek garden. It probably had.

She remembered it sitting beside the living room on the other side of this grand apartment.

"You took us back in time," James murmured, clearly annoyed by her innocence.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Grace asked. "Are you crazy?"

"What do you remember?"

"I-I remember waking up in your h-hotel suite earlier, I mean in the m-morning, then I went to... Gabriel’s apartment... I fell asleep."

"Just like that?" he asked. He had a theory now.

"Yes…"

"Well, the thing is, that happened three months ago, Grace." He muttered, now understanding what truly happened.

"What?!"

"Yes, that was three months ago."

"I don't believe you."

James hissed in shock. Was she serious?

"OK, let me tell you everything. You might want to sit on the bed." He said this with a smirk and began telling her his own version of what happened over the last three months.

As far as he could remember, when he returned from the party, he found Grace in the next room, in Gerald's apartment. He had been watching her sleep for the whole night and when morning came, Grace did nothing but watch Korean movies and eat ice cream the whole day, and the next day, it was Monday. Of course, James had made Dean and Kean watch after her in the control room. Gerald’s apartment was covered in CCTV.

Then, she went to her office. Grace's colleague persuaded her to assist and accompany the billionaire and their soon-to-be CEO on their impromptu rounds at the hotel premises while the bosses held an urgent meeting.

But to her surprise, she ran into him, the man she had sex with and assumed to be married to; the same man who was now smirking at her, none other than himself. He remembered how Grace was so embarrassed and couldn't look at him. Then she led him to the storage room where a small mishap occurred, resulting in a small fire. She ended up drenching him.

Then her boss, the old man, fired Grace for the unfortunate incident. Of course, it was from his metal pushing. Then, knowing that Grace was now jobless, he asked to see the latest executive overall hotel reports, but none of them met his high standards. Finally, the old man suggested giving Grace her unfinished report. He finished reading the whole paper and asked to meet the person who had made it. The old man was forced to lie that Grace Lim had left early and was on leave.

But Grace was a force not to be reckoned with because, in the parking garage, she sought revenge on her boss, who fired her without giving her time to explain. She destroyed the old man’s car. But Grace got the wrong car. She ended up destroying his car instead. Then he made her pay for the clean-up and repairs to avoid getting reported to the police and to keep their assumed marriage a secret. Of course, he didn't tell her that it was not a real marriage but rather a ritual to protect her.

Then he told her to meet him in his mansion the next day and deal with the consequences.

The next morning, however, she didn't have enough money, so she went back to see her grandmother at the small kitchen stall and hoped to borrow some, but the old woman was in dire need of a medical check-up after she was assaulted by a local gang. She ended up not talking about her money problems. Instead, her grandmother gave her a cake since it was her birthday. Coincidentally, it was also his birthday. But nobody remembered it except for his head chef. After all, he was a vampire, and his birthday was just a nuisance to his existence, but Grace, who arrived at his mansion. He thought he would do everything to teach her the life of the undead, but to his surprise, something awakened in his non-existent bond. For centuries, he was cursed to never feel nor sense the scent of his life mate, but he felt something towards his best friend's daughter, and it scared him to death because he couldn't risk the enemy finding out about it and knowing of his weaknesses, so he decided to ignore the mate bond to save Grace’s life.

After telling her that he had no one and that it was his birthday, James ended up pretending to be sad when Grace appeared in his mansion with a cake in her hand. The two ended up eating the cake without a word being said, then he made her go home. And James ordered his men to take precautions in dealing with Grace and to look after her twenty-four seven. 

The next day, Grace received a call that the hotel had been purchased; their job was saved; she was invited to the celebration; then she was re-hired to be his personal assistant. But she demanded a pay raise, which she got.

Then her friends booked a room at the hotel to celebrate. Grace got drunk and thought she should thank him. After her friends left, she drunkenly climbed out of her balcony and landed on his balcony.

When Grace realised that he was not drunk, she pretended to fall into a drunken sleep. After all, she still owed him money for his car clean-up and damage.

At that time, he called for one of his warriors, Dean. He ordered him to do a background check on Grace Lim’s friends and her grandmother, as he thought maybe the old woman was a spy for the hunters and was following him.

While they were talking outside the room, Grace took the opportunity to disappear by climbing the balcony again, but something happened. She noticed the changes in her five senses, which were heightened, and then she screamed when she was assaulted by an unknown man and she was kidnapped.

He went back to the room and searched for her. In the car, while escaping from the kidnappers, she bit the kidnapper's arms and savoured his blood, which awakened his hybrid vampire bloodline. She accidentally killed her captors and dropped her necklace. He watched what happened from a distance, and was amazed by her strength and power, as he picked up the necklace and hid it for future plans to lure the woman back to his lair.

Back at her apartment, she questions her sanity, but he appears from the shadows and erases her memory of that night, but not without giving her an amazing dream of them making love.

The next Monday, he asked Grace if the necklace was hers. She said yes. She hoped he would give it back to her because it was very important. It was a remembrance from his unknown father. But he told her that she had to earn his trust before giving back the necklace. Weeks passed; the two became cats and dogs, ignoring their attraction to each other.

They started arguing over silly things. But they both couldn't ignore the passion in each other’s secret gaze. Regardless, in the office, James noticed the physical changes in Grace, her once boring look becoming something his inner demon would savour as he attempted to lure her and slowly made her open her eyes to his world, which led them into having passionate love making on many occasions, which ended up erasing her memory and leaving Grace confused if what happened to them was just a dream or if she was just daydreaming about her handsome boss making love with her.

But he has his own reason for not tasting Grace’s blood; he didn't want more death on his hands. After all, for centuries, when he fed on a woman, they all ended up dead. After all, her friend. Honey died when he fed her that night at the mansion party. Of course, he didn't tell her that.

So that's why he erased Grace’s memories every time they made love. He didn't want her to know that it was just a mere lust, a primitive need and that his longing was nothing but sex. After all, he was cursed to be like that for eternity, to never feel love and genuine passion, that he was made to suffer, and the urge to erase his lover's mind after passionate sex was something he couldn’t help.

Nevertheless, he couldn't help himself but be wary. Grace was now targeted by hunters, knowing that she was protected by the last pure-bred vampire. To keep her away from outside chores, James ordered her around for days, ordering her to do some impossible errands on different occasions that made Grace question her own job description. He made her work overtime, made her work even on weekends, and made her do overtime at his mansion for petty reasons, which left her exhausted to the bones. But she was a fighter and she never backed down. She had to earn her keep and the bossy billionaire's trust, take back her necklace and earn a living.

A few days later, James caught her napping in his private suite during work. He told her to go out to freshen herself up and ordered her to call someone to clean the poolside. But something hit them and they fell into the water. Grace, having the scare of her life, unable to swim, held James tightly and ended up kissing him on the lips, which ended up biting him and tasting his blood. Then, later on, they turned into something else, as their mate bond slowly resurfaced from the curse, fighting its way out, but their sensual moment was halted when she accidentally kicked his groin. He was not proud of it.

Back in his hotel suite, James had caught a fever, which had never happened to him in his thousand or so years of existence. He asked for help from an old friend, and the man told him that his curse was getting worse and the only thing that could save him from his impending doom was the blood of his lifemate. But he was in huge trouble because he didn't believe he ever had a life mate nor that the woman even existed.

In the mansion, still very sick, James assigned Grace to some mundane office job to keep the woman on his side and never leave the mansion. Still, she was wondering about James’s true intention of giving her a hard time and ordering some impossible soup to cure his fever, so she went to her grandmother's small food stall for help.

However, her grandmother, Flora, was no ordinary human. She was a sorceress. She made a powerful potion soup to help cure Grayson’s fever and told the man that she was the Master Hunter’s wife. The leader of the vampire hunters, the powerful sorcerer from thousands of years ago, who killed James' family, his siblings, and the king and queen of vampires in the kingdom of Nork. Flora was hiding from her own kind, the hunters, and was living like an ordinary human for centuries to avoid being caught by her evil husband’s men, who would use Flora’s blood to awaken the powerful sorcerer from his imprisonment in the sea of death.

However, the hunters weren't able to resurrect their master even with the blood of his wife because, for a long time, living like an ordinary human and not using her magic, her power began to fade, and the only way to awaken the Master Hunter was to get another blood from Flora’s bloodline, which turned out to be her granddaughter, Grace Lim. But the hunters were in for a big surprise because Grace was half-vampire, which either could kill their master or gave him tremendous power to defeat the last pure-bred vampire and his brotherhood. So, with a risk to take, they ended up hunting for Grace Lim.

Grace gaped at him the entire time, unable to comprehend what James was trying to say."

You've been hunted but vampire slayers-"

"Are you seriously out of your mind, Mr. Grayson? Do you think I'll believe that nonsense?" She raised her brow. "Honey's dead? My grandmother is a sorceress. I am a hybrid vampire and you, a leader of some... cult?" She shook her head, "…are you mental?"

"No, I'm not crazy. In fact, you took us back in time?" he muttered in disbelief.

She moved toward the carved headboard that was a part of her bed, her brow furrowed as if she was troubled by the sight of it.

"I don't believe you."

"Look at your phone; see the date. See all the messages. Emails. Everything. See it for yourself.

It took her ten minutes to scroll through her phone, and there it was, emails and messages exchanged between her and James. Picture of Honey’s burial. Her grandmother's picture from the hospital. 

Oh My God. "How?" She began pacing. How is this even possible? So I'm a vampire? I-I have fangs?" She asked and went to the mirror and opened her mouth as wide as she could possibly open it but found nothing in there that was out of the ordinary. Then she gasped. The woman in the mirror was nothing she could remember. She was…"You 

are more than beautiful, I know. Do not freak out." James smirked at her.

Grace gaped. Her once untamed hair was so soft and smooth, her freckles were gone... Everything was... unnatural. She was paler than normal, and yes, she could see without her glasses. "My God! Am I dreaming?"

"Sadly not, dear," he smugly added. She stared at the wall, seemingly lost in her thoughts. "So you…. saying I turn back time?"

"Yes."