Familial Bond Vampire 단편 소설 & 소설

I was Vampire Lord Bastian’s exclusive blood thrall. My blood was an addiction he just couldn't kick. But six years ago, an accidental blood pact left me pregnant. Yet, he never once allowed our half-blood son, Liam, to call him "Dad." After he blew off Liam’s birthday—again—for his pureblood companion Ophelia, I severed the pact. I took my son and walked out of his immortal life for good. The ever-so-elegant ancient vampire finally snapped. He tore into my empty lab, roaring, demanding to know where Liam and I had gone. But this time, neither Liam nor I would ever look back.

Adrian Mohr and I had been together for seven years. We'd tried to register our blood bond eight times and failed every single one. The first time, his father said the Mohr clan's nighttime shipping routes had been targeted by vampire hunters, and Adrian needed to attend an emergency family meeting. The meeting ran from dusk until the following dawn. He never showed up before the registry closed. The second time, my mother said she'd found hunters' silver markings outside our front door and insisted that leaving the house would expose the entire family. She blocked the doorway and even threatened that if I insisted on going, she would pull back the blackout curtains and step into the sunlight. The third time, my best friend, Claire Donovan, called me in tears, saying hunters were following her and she was hiding in a bell tower, too afraid to come down alone. I rushed to her side, and by the time we confirmed the area was safe, the registry had already closed for the night. ... The ninth time, we took care of everything ahead of schedule and got into a car with UV-tinted windows, heading to the registry through the underground tunnel. We had barely crossed one intersection when a black sports car shot out from a side street and slammed into us. The side window shattered, and a sliver of silver-coated glass lodged in my left shoulder. For most vampires, a crash like that was nothing, but silver suppressed healing. The wound burned immediately, and the bleeding wouldn't stop. Lillian Hart stumbled out of the sports car in a panic. She was my sister, a newly awakened vampire. She rushed to our car door, her face drained of color. "Oh God, I didn't mean to! Adrian, Eve, are you hurt?" Adrian grabbed her wrist first, checking whether she'd touched any silver. Only after confirming she was completely unharmed did he turn back to me. "Eve, looks like we won't make it to the registry today either." "Yeah. I guess not." I pressed my hand against my still-bleeding shoulder

“You don't deserve to be a daughter of this House,” my mother hissed, her eyes burning crimson in the firelight. “If you can't support your sister as our heir, get out.” I should have seen it coming. In House Ashenveil, family came first—unless you were me. Vera Darkthorn. The disappointment. My perfect younger sister, Iris, got the love, the title, even Kane, the man I was supposed to bind myself to. I got an empty chapel on the night of my blood-binding. Even the man who had sworn himself to me never showed. So I left. Now I'd built a life among Berlin's underground vampire courts, where power was the only currency that mattered. I'd learned to fight. To lead. To make vampires twice my size lower their eyes with a look. Then word came that Iris was dying, and suddenly my family wanted me back. “Come home, Vera.” My father's voice rasped through the phone. “Your sister needs you.” I almost laughed. After everything? But I wasn't the helpless daughter they'd discarded anymore. This time, I knew how to use my fangs. And when your own blood comes hunting for you, you don't run. You go for the throat.

My sister, Cecilia, discovered by chance that she shared an uncanny resemblance to the Vampire Prince’s human wife, Isabella. She had been crushing on Alistair since forever. She was eager to take Isabella’s place. It was no secret that Alistair only saved Cecilia back then because she looked so much like Isabella. I tried to talk some sense into Isabella. It was bad enough that she refused to take my advice, but she came up with a plan to lure Isabella out and hire men as vampire hunters to ambush her. She would play the heroine, swooping in to save Isabella and catching Alistair’s attention. Catching on to her scheme, I knocked her unconscious and stopped her before her mission was set in motion. I implored her, desperate to get through to her. Alistair wasn’t some fictional hero from the romance novels on her shelf. He was the Vampire Prince who had lived for half a millennium. Her little antics wouldn’t escape his eye. Once Alistair discovered what she had done, she and the rest of our family would pay dearly. Cecilia, her head down and her eyes teary, told me she understood. That night, she drugged me and threw me into a dungeon filled with feral blood servants before locking the door. These creatures that failed to turn swarmed me. Their fangs tore into my throat, draining every last drop of my blood. Before I breathed my last, I looked through the bars and saw the resentment burning in Cecilia’s eyes. “Since you destroyed my dream, don’t blame me for ruining you, Nora.” When I opened my eyes, I was back to the day Cecilia hired men to abduct Isabella. This time, I wasn’t going to get in her way.

On the day my twin sister and I came of age, everyone gathered around Seraphina to plan her future. My brother, Adrian, handed her the transfer papers for a casino. "Budapest is where you belong, Seraphina. I have a hotel there, so I can help you get started." Julian smiled as he offered a different proposal. "Don't listen to him. Come to Tokaj and run the winery with me. Within two years, I'll make sure every vampire noble knows Vardi blood wine." The argument got heated. Mom and Dad only laughed. "Seraphina, with both of them looking after you, we have nothing to worry about. The future of the Vardi family is in your hands." And me? I was the eldest daughter of the Vardi family, yet I stood at the very edge of the crowd, almost invisible. No one seemed to remember that I had come of age, too. I was supposed to receive a share of the family business as well. Julian finally remembered I existed. He reached over and ruffled my hair. "Don't be impatient, Vivian. Once Seraphina settles in, you can come work for us." Adrian spared me a glance, as though doing so was a favor. "She doesn't even need to do that. She can find something to keep herself busy. The family business isn't her concern." My eyes burned. My nails dug into my palms. Again. It was always the same. Ever since we were children, the sweetest, freshest deer blood had gone to Seraphina first. Adrian carried it to her. Julian practically held the glass to her lips. I stood at the corner of the table, staring at the empty glasses they left behind. I never got so much as a drop. I should have stopped caring years ago. But after tonight, I had no patience left. If none of them cared about me, why should I keep playing my part in their picture-perfect family? I closed my hand around the enchanted daylight ring in my pocket. Then I booked a flight to the sunniest town at the southern end of Crete. Starting today, I was done being a Vardi.

My best friend Seraphine had not one drop of blood left in her body when they found her. Her skin was translucent. There were two dried trails of blood from the corners of her mouth, like she had wept herself empty long before the end. She left one note. One sentence: "Vera saw his face." From that day forward, I became the Covenant's greatest sinner. Because I knew who did it. But I said nothing. For ten years, I said nothing. Then Lucian came back. He was the one who had turned us, raised us, given us the only home we had ever known. He set the Soul Prism in front of me. "Tonight," he said, "you give me the killer." His eyes hadn't changed. That was the worst part. After ten years of exile, of stones and fire and nights that never got warmer, I looked at him and he was still exactly who he had always been to me. "Or you disappear from this world along with him." He didn't know. The reason I had chosen exile and starvation and a Blood Oath that had been eating my soul core alive for a decade — was him. All of it, always, had been for him.

My adopted sister, Clara, framed me. She claimed I forced beast blood down her throat. The terror, she said, gave her a heart attack. So my three beloved vampire brothers sealed me away. They trapped me in the observatory in the highest tower, bound by a blood curse. I pounded on the door, helpless, explaining and begging them to let me out. Damien, my eldest brother, the head of our family, pierced me with a look of cold disappointment. Then he turned his back on me. "There's a limit to your selfishness, Lilith. Clara is a fragile human. She has a heart condition! Did you force that filth on her? Were you trying to kill her? I don't want to see this cruel side of you again. Stay in here and think about what you've done." Ethan, the rock star, and Julian, the gothic architect, couldn't even look at me. Their voices were tight with anger and exhaustion. "We put up with your tantrums, but not so you could hurt our family! You've let us down, Lilith. Stay in there and figure out what you did wrong." Then they carefully lifted the "unconscious" Clara and disappeared down the hall. But they didn't know. The observatory was only meant to open at night. But it malfunctioned. When morning came, the dome didn't close. Deadly sunlight streamed straight in. My power evaporated. My screams turned to silence. I burned to ash. Three days later, my brothers returned with a "recovered" Clara. Only then did they remember me. They had no idea the sun had already executed me.

Five years ago, I married Cassian, the vampire I had grown up with. We had known each other since we were children, and both clans were glad of the match. I believed we would stay beside each other the way we had promised when we were small. Then Cassian fell in love with a human maid. By that time, I was already carrying his child. He turned on his own clan for her anyway and ran off with her to the human world. Everyone was laughing at me. I stayed behind in the vampire territories alone, pregnant, calling Cassian more times than I could count and sending people out to find him. He never came back. In the end, he refused even to hear any news of me. He only had someone deliver a message. "Stop chasing after me." My health got worse and worse in those years. I lost the baby too. It took me a long time to finally let go of that marriage for good. Then, five years later, Cassian came back. He had brought her with him. When he saw my son standing beside me, he actually frowned and asked, "How could you raise my child like this? He's four and he looks two." I stepped in front of my son, my voice flat. "Look closely, Cassian. He isn't yours." His face darkened. "You're still trying to lie to me?" I smiled. "He's the son I have with my current husband."

In the fourth year of my secret crush on James, he sired me. It was only that night I realized the man I had been pining for wasn't just a regular gallery owner and businessman—he was a Vampire Prince. That was also the night I got pregnant with our son, Finn. But it's been six years since we forged our Blood Bond, and he has never publicly acknowledged our existence. He wouldn't even let Finn call him "Father." On Finn’s sixth birthday, he missed the party yet again, choosing to stay by his female assistant Elsa's side. He didn't return until the dead of night, offering a half-hearted, "Sorry, I'm late." This time, I didn't cry. I didn't argue. I calmly pulled out the bond dissolution papers and tricked him into signing them. Then, I took my son and fled back to the human world, vanishing from his life entirely. The usually cold, ruthless Prince lost his mind, turning the world upside down to find us. But this time, Finn and I are never looking back.