Chapter 4

Dante

My hand tightened around her throat, the heat of my palm meeting the fragile pulse beneath her skin. Her breath caught, and I could feel the frantic beat hammering against my fingers like a trapped bird.

“Who the hell are you?” I hissed, my voice low and sharp, every word laced with a fury I didn’t bother to hide. “Who sent you?”

She didn’t flinch. That was the first thing that threw me off. Any normal human would have been crying, trembling, begging. But Ivy just stared at me with those glasses, her chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven breaths.

How the hell did my Crimson Stone end up inside her?

The thought slammed through me like a wrecking ball. It didn’t make sense. She was supposed to be just some quiet friend of my daughter’s. A background presence. She wasn’t supposed to be this… involved.

My pulse pounded in my skull. Did she use her little act to get close to me? To make me lose control? To make me… kiss her?

No. That wasn’t possible. She was a new human.

But then, like the universe hated me, Rosa’s voice rang out from downstairs

“I’m home!”

Shit.

I didn’t think. I grabbed Ivy, pulled her hard against me, and shoved us both into the walk-in drawer. Clothes and hangers pressed against our faces, the scent of fabric softener and dust mixing with the sharpness of my panic. She stumbled into me, our bodies too close.

Rosa’s footsteps echoed through the house.

“Dad? Where are you? Ivy!”

Ivy’s lips parted, probably to speak, but I clamped my hand over her mouth before she could make a sound. Her breath was hot against my palm.

Then my phone vibrated in my pocket. Of course.

I didn’t pick up.

Rosa’s voice floated up the stairs. “I think I just heard a noise… Why’s no one home?”

The creak of the floorboards told me she was moving closer. I slid my arm tighter around Ivy’s waist, dragging her deeper into the shadows of the closet. She stiffened against me but didn’t fight. Her body was tense but steady. No trembling.

Interesting.

Then, after what felt like forever, I heard a voice downstairs—another one, a male voice, Rosa's boyfriend.“Let’s leave now.”

A moment later, the sound of footsteps faded. Silence wrapped the house again.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and pushed the door open. The light spilled into the closet, brushing against Ivy’s face. Her hair was a little messy, her glasses slightly crooked,

“You’re not scared?” I asked, half expecting her to bolt.

She lifted her chin, defiant. “No. I don’t care what you are. My mind’s fixed.”

A sharp laugh escaped me before I could stop it. There it was again, that iron in her voice. And beneath her collarbone, her chest. I could see the faint, pulsing glow of my Crimson Stone. It was real. It was in her.

“Even if I’m not human?” I stepped closer, and she instinctively moved back, bumping into the bookshelf behind her.

Her throat worked as she swallowed, but she didn’t look away. I smirked, leaning down just enough for my breath to fan across her cheek. “Stand still,” I muttered. “I’m going to take what you stole from me.”

My hand shot up to her neck again, my instincts screaming to pull the stone back, to drain the energy the way I always had. But it didn’t work. It didn’t move.

A sharp frustration burned up my spine.

What the hell?

The real truth was, I wasn’t human. I hadn’t been for a very, very long time. Nine hundred and ninety-nine years of feeding, draining, hunting that's been my job, trying to become human. I’d found a way. A cursed, bloody way. My Crimson Stone was my anchor, the thing that kept me alive.

Sleeping with women and draining them, some end up dying. Mrs Tessa was supposed to be the last woman to be used by me, instead of becoming human, it was trapped inside Ivy.

Shit! I'm so pissed!

I took a step back, studying her. The girl didn’t cower. She didn’t run. She just watched me, jaw tight, like someone watching a storm roll in.

“It seems you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into,” I said slowly, letting my voice sink into the quiet like a blade.

“What do you mean?” she shot back, but the slight flicker in her eyes gave her away. Fear. It was faint, but it was there. Her bravado had cracks.

I stalked forward. Her back hit the shelf. Books rattled. My hand landed flat against the wood beside her head, caging her in. She flinched, but held her ground.

“I mean,” I said, my voice dropping to a near-growl, “I’m not human.

Her breath hitched. For the first time, I saw her mask falter.

Her fingers tightened on the hem of her dress. “You’re… lying.”

I tilted my head. “Am I?”

She tried to sound tough, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her. “I’m not scared.”

I couldn’t help it—my lips twitched. “Oh, sweetheart… everyone’s scared.”

I lifted a strand of her hair and brushed it aside. Her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, fast and loud. Her eyes darted down, then up again,

And then… I let it show.

My claws extended first, sharp, black, glinting faintly in the light. Her eyes widened. Then the fangs followed, sliding out slowly like knives unsheathing.

She stumbled back a step, bumping the shelf again. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to cry. She clenched her jaw so tight it trembled.

“It’s not real,” she whispered, almost to herself.

I stepped closer, my fangs near enough to graze the air between us. Her shoulders pressed hard against the shelf, hands balled into fists at her sides. Then her eyes squeezed shut, and she let out a shaky shout.

Gotcha.

A grin tugged at the corner of my lips. “See? Who says they’re not scared.”

She shook, her chest rising and falling too fast now. Fear finally showed itself in the tremor of her breath, in the slight quiver of her knees. And yet, even like that, she lifted her chin.

“I don’t care what you are,” she spat, her voice cracking halfway. “All I want is what I said.”

One bold girl.

“Even if you end up like Mrs Tessa” I asked, my voice low and calm, the kind that makes the hair on your arms rise. “Dead?”

She met my gaze dead-on. “I don’t care.”

I studied her for a long moment. She wasn’t bluffing. Whatever was pushing her, whatever kind of desperation this was, it was stronger than fear.

A slow, dangerous smile pulled at my lips. “Wow.”

The words of the curse echoed in my head like a prayer I hated: If the Crimson Stone enters a human and cannot be removed, the vampire must be bound to that human until it’s reclaimed. Through intimacy. And the human never survives it.

I needed the stone.

She wanted something from me.

This could be… useful.

“Alright then,” I muttered. “You want something from me. I want something from you. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a deal...

Her brows furrowed. “Yes, so you'd break it...

I was about to answer when—

“Break what? What are we breaking?

Rosa’s voice.

She appeared at the doorway, holding a soda can, looking between us like she’d just walked into the world’s weirdest soap opera.

Ivy froze. My spine stiffened. Rosa’s gaze flicked from me… to Ivy… to how close we were standing. Her brow arched.

Crap.