đź“– Chapter One: The Unlucky Shift
The sound of the squeegee on the beer-sticky floor was the only thing holding my world together.
It was 3:17 AM. The Blue Note was finally quiet, and the air, which usually choked with stale whiskey and sweat, now smelled momentarily clean—citrus bleach and ammonia, my perfume of choice after a double shift. I tightened the knot of my worn, navy coat over my cleaning scrubs and leaned heavily on the mop handle, relishing the ache in my back. My platinum-blonde hair had escaped my tight bun and hung in damp, pale wisps around my face.
I'm twenty-five, and I work the closing shift, then clean afterward, desperate to hoard every spare dollar I can. I keep my head down, my big blue eyes focused entirely on the grime, trying fiercely to be invisible.
But invisibility has never been my thing.
I've always called it my "bad luck." Others might call it a quiet curse.
Men—and sometimes, things that felt less than men—always seem to find me, follow me, and fight over me. It's not about words or compliments; it's about escalating, unhinged violence that swirls around me like a storm cloud.
Just last week, two normal-looking guys got into a bloody brawl right outside the bar door over who got to "help me with my groceries." The police, predictably, showed up, and I was the one answering questions. It's always the same: fights, property damage, irrational aggression, all centered on me, even when I'm just trying to pay attention to the floor.
I finished the last corner of the bar, scrubbing the dark mahogany counter until my arms burned. I hated the sticky residue that never seemed to fully lift. Be quiet. Be clean. Be invisible. That was my mantra.
I touched the silver locket under my shirt—the only thing my late grandmother left me. I rubbed it quickly for luck. It never seemed to work, but the habit was a small comfort.
Part 2: The Alleyway and The Offering
My last duty was the trash. I wrestled two overflowing, heavy black bags out the back door and into the alleyway. The steel door was heavy, built to keep the city's worst out, but tonight, I felt like I was trapping myself.
The alley smelled of wet stone and overripe garbage. The only light came from a single, sickly yellow security bulb that flickered and buzzed above the dumpster pad.
I set the bags down, pausing immediately. I was dead tired, but there was one last thing to do.
I crouched down next to the oil-stained dumpster, reaching into my pocket for the small, saucer-sized container of milk and the day-old salmon slivers I'd slipped into a Ziploc bag.
"Hey, Midnight," I whispered.
A scrawny, coal-black stray cat, my secret friend, emerged cautiously from the boxes. Midnight rubbed against the dumpster leg, purring loudly enough for me to hear over the low city hum.
"Eat up, you know the drill," I murmured, setting the food down. "Stay out of trouble, okay? We both have enough of that."
It was a small, quiet moment of peace—the cat's purr, the damp air, the feeling that, for just a minute, I wasn't being watched.
I stood up, shaking off the exhaustion, my mind already rehearsing the three blocks I had to walk home. That was the exposed part, the worst part: the fear that someone, or something, would notice the pale girl with the platinum hair.
I turned away from Midnight, pulling my thin coat tight around my chest, ready to rush out of the alley.
And then the air changed.
It wasn't a sound or a scent. It was a cold, massive absence. The buzzing of the yellow light seemed to cut out for a fraction of a second, the chill deepened to an unnatural cold, and the subtle noises of the distant city seemed to vanish entirely.
My heart vaulted into my throat. Here we go, I thought, my stomach clenching with familiar dread. Another one.
I didn't dare turn around, didn't dare make eye contact. I lowered my head and tried to quicken my pace toward the alley mouth.
A sound, impossibly quiet, yet devastatingly clear, registered behind me. It was the soft thud of a heavy object landing on concrete. Not a jump, not a slip, but a precise, weighted drop from an impossible height.
I froze mid-step, my breath hitched. This was different. This wasn't a drunk. This felt intentional.
A shadow, immense and utterly cold, engulfed me.
Before I could even manage a gasp of terror, I was seized. My back slammed against the cold, rough brick of the alley wall with stunning force, knocking the air right out of me.
A hand, encased in butter-soft black leather, snapped to my throat. The grip was precise, terrifying, a bone-crushing closure. I looked up, unable to move, unable to breathe, into a face that belonged not to a man, but to a beautifully carved piece of nightmare.
His eyes were obsidian—flat, lightless, and utterly devoid of anything resembling human emotion. His dark, floor-length wool coat swallowed the poor light, making him seem like a creature composed entirely of night.
I was pinned, frozen, before the terror even registered. All I could see was the cold focus in those dark eyes, the terrible certainty that my life was over.
"Please," I managed, a tiny, ragged whisper escaping past the pressure on my windpipe.
The killer leaned in, his mouth a hard, controlled line. I thought I saw his jaw clench, as if preparing to deliver a final, dismissive word before extinguishing me.
But the word never came.
Instead, a devastating, visible shudder racked his powerful body. The cold focus in his eyes shattered. For a single, agonizing moment, they widened—not in fear, but in pure, overwhelming shock.
The crushing pressure on my throat eased, his fingers twitching. The hand that had been poised to kill me now gripped my shoulder, hard, almost convulsively, as if he needed my fragile body to hold him steady.
A sound ripped from his chest—a low, terrifying noise that was part growl, part broken gasp. His handsome, terrifying face was suddenly contorted in a silent war. He stared at me, the predator instinct warring with something primal, something utterly foreign that had just slammed into his ancient existence.
His dark eyes, which had been so flat, now flickered with a raw, agonizing confusion. He had intended to kill me, but he was paralyzed by the devastating, chemical certainty of the Mate Bond.
He had failed the mission. He had been claimed.
His grip on my shoulder was like iron, but the pressure on my throat had completely vanished. I gasped, sucking in a ragged breath, my lungs burning with the sudden influx of air. My eyes, still wide with terror, were locked on his. The flat, obsidian darkness of them had been replaced by a swirling, agonizing chaos, like a storm trapped in a tiny space. He was breathing—or doing something that sounded like it—in short, harsh rasps. He was fighting something internal, something monstrous.
My mind, usually so quick to analyze dangers (a survival mechanism I'd honed over years of dealing with aggressive men), was a static-filled mess. I couldn't comprehend what was happening. One second, I was a dead girl. The next, my killer was writhing, clutching my shoulder as if I was the anchor keeping him from flying apart.
Before I could even process this impossible shift, another sound cut through the tense silence of the alley. A low, guttural hiss. It wasn't human. It was hungry.
My killer's head snapped up, his focus instantly shifting from his internal battle to the new threat. His obsidian eyes, still fractured, now burned with a terrifying, primal fury. He didn't turn his whole body; it was just his head, like a snake sensing prey.
And then I saw it.
At the very mouth of the alley, silhouetted against the faint glow of the city street, was another figure. This one was shambling, less precise than the first. Its movements were jerky, its clothes ragged, and its eyes—even from this distance—glowed with an unnatural, ravenous light. It looked like a monster, pulled straight from a nightmare. It wasn't like him, tall and impossibly controlled. This thing was pure, unadulterated menace, a feral beast driven by an undeniable hunger.
The realization hit me like a second physical blow: this thing was coming for me. My cursed blood. My bad luck. It hadn't stopped just because one monster was having an existential crisis.
The thing hissed again, a sound that scraped against my nerves, and it took a lurching step forward.
My killer didn't hesitate. Not for a second.
He moved with a speed that defied logic. One moment, he was gripping my shoulder, his face a mask of internal torment. The next, he was a blur, a dark streak across the grimy alley bricks. He wasn't running from the monster; he was running at it.
I blinked, trying to catch up with what my eyes had just seen. He was already at the alley mouth, between me and the shambling horror. The feral creature lunged, its hands reaching, its mouth open in a silent snarl.
My killer met it with brutal efficiency. There was no hesitation, no wasted movement. A flash of a black-gloved hand, a sickening, wet crunch that echoed far too loudly in the confined space, and then the monstrous figure crumpled. Its body hit the pavement with a wet slap, unmoving. Dead. Just like that.
I stood there, pressed against the brick wall, my breath still ragged, watching the body of a second monster lying motionless at the feet of the first. My body was shaking so violently my teeth chattered. My mind, blessedly, was still trying to reject what it had just witnessed. No. This isn't real. I'm just tired. I'm hallucinating.
He turned, slowly, his dark form once again framed against the faint city glow. He wasn't breathing hard, despite the impossible speed and violence. He looked… feral. Dangerous. But the agonizing chaos was back in his eyes, now mixed with a chilling, cold rage.
And that rage was directed at me.
He stalked back towards me, his movements fluid, silent, predatory. Every step was deliberate, closing the distance, trapping me against the wall again. My heart hammered against my ribs, so loud I was sure he could hear it.
He stopped directly in front of me, far too close. I could feel the residual cold radiating off him, the faint scent of something metallic, something like iron and damp earth. His obsidian eyes bored into mine, and I saw a new kind of fury there – the fury of something profoundly inconvenienced.
"You," he hissed, his voice a low growl that vibrated through my bones, a sound that was less human and more ancient predator. "You did this."
I couldn't speak. My mouth was dry. I just stared at him, my blue eyes wide and probably reflecting every ounce of terror I felt.
"This… thing," he continued, gesturing vaguely between us with a gloved hand, the motion somehow more threatening than a direct attack. "This weakness. It is because of you."
His hand shot out, not to my throat this time, but to my arm, wrapping around it like a vice. His fingers were long and surprisingly cold, even through the soft leather of his glove. He began to pull me away from the wall, roughly, without an ounce of gentleness.
"I was sent to finish you," he snarled, his voice a chilling whisper that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. "Quietly. Cleanly. And now… now look." He tugged harder, pulling me towards the alley mouth, away from the dumpster and the still body of the cat, Midnight. I stumbled, my feet scrambling to keep up.
"What… what are you?" I finally managed to croak, the words barely a whisper. My throat felt raw.
He stopped, momentarily. He looked down at me, his eyes flickering with something that might have been amusement, if it hadn't been so cold and venomous.
"What I was," he corrected, his voice laced with bitter self-loathing, "is a solution. What I am now, because of you, is… compromised." He spat the word out like a curse. "And that will not stand."
He resumed pulling me, forcing me to walk past the crumpled body of the creature he had so casually destroyed. I averted my gaze, fighting down the urge to vomit. The blood on the pavement was black in the dim light.
"Where… where are you taking me?" I asked, my voice trembling. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, to run, but his grip was unyielding, and the sheer, terrifying power he radiated was paralyzing.
He didn't answer immediately. He dragged me out of the alley, past the narrow, trash-strewn entrance, and into the slightly wider, but still deserted, side street. The world here felt a little less isolated, a little less like a death trap, but only marginally. The distant streetlights cast long, strange shadows.
He stopped next to a sleek, impossibly dark car that seemed to materialize from the shadows themselves. It was an older model, but immaculately kept, blending perfectly into the night. It had no discernible plates, no visible distinguishing marks. It was a ghost of a car.
He opened the passenger door, not with a flourish, but with a harsh yank. He pushed me towards it.
"Get in," he commanded, his voice tight with controlled fury.
I hesitated, my gaze darting around the empty street. Run. This is your chance. Scream. But my body felt disconnected, leaden. I knew, deep down, that running from this thing would be pointless. He had moved like smoke.
"If you make a sound," he continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl, his obsidian eyes burning into mine, "if you even think of trying to escape, I will ensure your death is slow. Do you understand?"
I nodded, my breath catching. The warning was clear. He might be
"compromised," as he called it, unable to kill me outright, but he was still a monster. And he still had countless ways to inflict pain.
I slid into the passenger seat, my eyes still fixed on him. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would burst through my chest. The car smelled faintly of old leather and something cold, something ancient. He slammed the door shut with a heavy thud, the sound echoing in the silent street.
Then he walked around the car, his floor-length coat swirling around his ankles, and got into the driver's seat. The engine purred to life, a low, quiet hum that vibrated through the floorboards.
He glanced at me, his face grim, his jaw tight.
"You are a problem," he stated, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror. "A catastrophic problem. And now, you're my problem."
He put the car in gear, and we moved away from the alley, away from the familiar grime of my life, and into the silent, terrifying unknown. My platinum hair, already damp with sweat and fear, clung to my temples. I knew my life, as I knew it, was utterly and completely over. I was a prisoner, bound to a killer by a force neither of us understood, speeding into a nightmare I couldn't escape.