Chapter 3

The dinner finally ended. I stood alone in the echoing hall, the taste of ashes in my mouth.

"Elena. You're accompanying us."

Vincent’s voice echoed from the top of the grand staircase.

I looked up. He was helping Lilith into a cloak lined with rare white fur, his hands careful, almost tender, a courtesy he had never extended to me.

The sight was a physical ache.

"Of course," he said, his eyes finding me, cold and flat. "You remain my chief operative. It is time you understood your new primary duty is to her security."

An armored limousine, windows blacked out, idled in the courtyard.

I moved toward the front passenger seat out of long habit.

"The back, Elena," Vincent said, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Lilith slipped into the middle row of the spacious vehicle, Vincent following closely.

I was left with the rear bench seat, facing them like an unwelcome spectator.

The city slid by in a blur of darkness. The silence inside the car was oppressive.

After a few minutes, Lilith sighed, a delicate sound. "The gathering with the Elders were so taxing," she murmured, leaning her head against Vincent's shoulder. "And the refreshments at dinner were… lacking in vitality. I feel quite drained."

Vincent was silent for a long moment, staring out the window.

Then, without looking at me, he spoke. “Elena. Your wrist.”

A cold dread seeped into my veins.

In ten years, he had never allowed another to taste my blood. It was intimate, it was possessive.

“Vincent,” I whispered, the protest automatic and weak.

“Do not make me repeat myself.”

Slowly, numb, I pulled back the cuff of my sleeve, exposing my inner forearm.

Lilith watched, her pale eyes now sharp with avid interest.

“Be precise,” he told her softly. “The essence is potent.”

Lilith took the lancet, her movements elegant.

With a faint, almost clinical smile, she pierced a small, precise point on my wrist.

A violent shudder racked my body. It wasn’t the sting of the cut.

It was the profound, soul-deep violation of watching him offer my life, the very substance he guarded so jealously, to her like a passing delicacy.

Lilith leaned back, a sigh of pleasure escaping her lips.

“Truly remarkable,” she breathed, her eyes fluttering. “Like captured dawn. No wonder you kept this human for so long”

Vincent said nothing, merely watching her reaction with a slight, satisfied curve of his mouth. The shared secret, the intimate transaction performed over my body, was a betrayal more complete than any physical blow.

The attack came moments later, as if the universe itself responded to the sacrilege.

A barrage of blessed silver pellets and UV flash grenades shattered the night.

“Ambush! Hunter squad!” Marcus, who was driving, roared, wrenching the wheel.

The heavy car swerved violently.

Lilith screamed, a sound of pure terror, and crumpled against Vincent’s chest.

I reacted on pure instinct, pushing my own devastation aside.

I pulled a pistol loaded with magnesium rounds from hidden holsters, returning fire through the narrow gunport.

Shadows moved with predatory speed in the darkness.

“Get us out!” Vincent shouted, his body curving entirely over Lilith, forming a living shield. His attention was solely on her. “I got you, my heart. You are safe.”

The limousine spun out of control, metal shrieking as it slammed sideways into a concrete bridge support.

Through the cracked window, I saw them.

On the overpass, three figures stood in a firing line.

A sniper’s nest, armed with the one thing that could pierce the car’s armor and poison a vampire’s blood with agonizing, slow corruption.

Time stretched into agony. The first shot rang out, a sharp, high-caliber crack.

The reinforced window where Vincent’s head had been a moment before spider-webbed, a crater of molten glass and metal forming around a buried silver slug.

In that frozen fraction of a second, Vincent made his choice.

He enveloped Lilith completely, pulling them both down below the fortified line of the seats.

Then, with a brutal, deliberate motion, his leg shot out.

His boot connected with the door release mechanism right beside my seat. The damaged door blew outward.

At the same instant, a second shot and a third tore through the cabin.

One ripped through the headrest of the seat I had just occupied. The other grazed the edge of the open doorframe, sending a spray of molten silver shrapnel into the space where I was half-kneeling.

The combined force of the explosion and the impact hurled me.

I landed hard on the asphalt, the breath knocked from my lungs.

A searing pain lanced through my shoulder and side from where several fragments of silver-laced metal had embedded themselves.

The bond that tied me to Vincent, that made my blood valuable, also made me acutely vulnerable to what harmed him.

“No!”

I looked up, gasping, to see Vincent emerge from the opposite side of the smoking vehicle, Lilith cradled against his chest, unharmed.

He didn’t glance at the snipers, nor at me. His only focus was the woman in his arms.

He murmured into her hair, then moved with vampiric swiftness, carrying her away from the wreckage.

He never looked back. Not a glance toward the flaming ruin where I lay broken.

…...

Consciousness returned as a slow, painful tide.

I was in the clan’s subterranean infirmary, the air cold and sterile.

Tubes snaked from my arms—one drawing blood, another feeding it back in vampiric purification cycle meant to accelerate healing.

For a human body, it was exquisite torture.

“You survive, Miss Rossi,” intoned Dr. Aris, the ancient clan physician, as he monitored the machines.

“Marcus grabbed you. You will bear scars from silver bullets, but you are functional.”

“Vincent?” My voice was a ragged whisper.

“The Lord is with Lady Lilith,” he replied, his face a mask of neutrality. “She was… really unsettled by the attack.”

A soundless, bitter laugh choked me.

“The monitor,” I gasped, gesturing weakly.

With a faint sigh, he activated the screen on the wall.

It displayed various secure locations within the estate. My trembling hand found the remote and switched the view to Lilith’s chambers.

She was reclining on a divan, wrapped in silks.

Vincent sat at her side, holding a crystal goblet filled with a deep, familiar crimson.

My blood, drawn fresh, glowing faintly under the soft light.

He was bringing it to her lips, sip by careful sip.

“My fearless love,” she whispered, her hand stroking his jaw. “You saved me. You faced the silver bullets for me.”

“I would let it reduce me to ashes before it touched you,” he vowed, his voice thick with a tenderness that was a knife in my heart.

Then, he drew a small, ornate casket from his pocket. My own heart, battered and bleeding, seemed to stop entirely.

He went down on one knee before her. He opened the casket. Inside, it rested a diamond ring of staggering size and antiquity.

“Lilith,” he said, looking up at her, his entire being laid bare in that gaze—vulnerable, ardent, true.

“Bind your eternity to mine. Not for alliance, or power, or legacy. Marry me… because my endless nights were empty until you. I love you.”

Lilith’s hands flew to her mouth.

“Yes,” she breathed, the word a promise. “For all eternity, yes.”

He slid the ring onto her finger, sealing the vow with a kiss.

I stared at the screen until the image dissolved into static.

So, he was capable of this.

He was capable of sacred vows, of tender care, of self-sacrifice.

He simply reserved all of it for her. And he had used my body as a shield, my blood as a courting gift.

He just don’t think I’m worth of it.