I kept my gaze fixed on him.
Blankly. Quietly. Maybe if I looked long enough, he would disappear.
He didn't.
Something about him seems off. Not wrong. Just... off. Like a painting that's almost perfect, but something in the eyes doesn't match. Too still. Too clean.
He was gorgeous. Unreal, even. He possessed the kind of beauty that should only be found in magazines or mirrors, but there he was. Just in front of me. So sharp, it hurt to look at him for too long. His presence pulsed—powerful, artistic, precise. But there was something beneath it all. Something I could not identify. Something hungry.
His eyes—golden, firelit—held me too long. I forgot the seconds. I lost track of my own breath.
I had seen men similar to him before. The kind that seek out broken girls and feed on their flaws. Who whisper comfort in the darkness, only to later press their weight against your ribs. They do not love you. They study you. Devour you. That was not a new game for me.
So I looked away. Down. Into the trembling beer glass in my hand. My reflection swam in it—tired, pale, soaked.
He sat beside me.
God, I didn't want this.
Not tonight.
Not after Ezra. Not after blood and rain and running until my lungs blistered.
The bar hummed with dim warmth—low music, stale smoke, quiet chatter. But everything between us was silence. And it thickened, like fog, until I couldn't take it.
I turned to face him.
Wrong move.
He didn't smile. Didn't blink. Just stared. Not like a man stares at a woman—but like someone looking through a memory.
Then he spoke, voice low and effortless:
"You smell like you're afraid of something."
My body tensed.
The words landed cold. Too cold. Not flirtation. Not teasing. Observation.
He smells fear?
What kind of person says that?
I felt it in my spine. A tight, crawling ripple beneath the skin. My voice came out soft, careful:
"There's more to it than fear."
A half-lie.
Inside, I was shaking.
He studied me for a moment longer. Then, another question. Just as calm. Just as strange.
"Were you chased?"
My heart stopped.
How did he know?
I looked down, instinctively, as if some part of me was exposed. My coat still covered everything. The wound. The blood.
"Your knee," he said, without waiting for me to speak. "It's bleeding. Bruised. You fell."
I blinked.
There was no way he could've seen it.
The coat—thick, long, soaked—hid everything. But he was right. I had fallen. Glass had sliced through my jeans. The pain had numbed with the cold, but the blood was still there. Still fresh.
Who the hell was this man?
I didn't want to answer. Didn't want to give him more ground than he already took. So I shifted.
"What's your name?" I asked, trying to take back the narrative. Trying to feel human again.
He didn't answer.
Just watched me. Eyes half-lidded. Distant.
My fingers tightened around the glass. I didn't know what he was thinking. I didn't even know what I was thinking.
But I stayed.
And he stayed.
I leaned closer, without meaning to. My hand brushed his knee. He didn't move. I expected him to recoil, or flinch, or even lean in.
Nothing.
I pressed slightly, for support. My legs were weak. The alcohol had hit me, so does the exhaustion had. If he moved, I would've collapsed, I was not in my right mind.
Still, he didn't move.
I didn't know why I leaned in. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe I just wanted to feel something that didn't look at me like I was broken.
But as I moved closer, everything inside me screamed. Not in fear. In warning.
This isn't safety. This is surrender.
And still—I let it happen.
His skin looked perfect up close. Unnaturally so.
His eyes flicked over my face. I couldn't tell what he was seeing. What he was looking for.
And then—
I kissed him.
Soft. Hesitant. Like a question I didn't know I was asking.
His lips were cold. Not from the rain. From something else.
He pulled back.
I did it again. I couldn't control my self.
This time slower. Deeper. As if I needed to drown in it.
He didn't kiss me back. But he didn't stop me either.
When I pulled away, I searched his face. His expression hadn't changed. But something inside him had.
He was angry.
Not loud. Not obvious. Just… wrong. He exhaled through his nose. Quiet. Controlled.
The second kiss left me breathless—but not from passion. From panic. My body remembered things my mind tried to bury. How easy it was to give too much. How silence sometimes felt like safety until it turned into a cage.
I pulled back.
I shouldn't have done that. I didn't even know his name.
What did I just do?
Darian Ashthron's POV
She walked past me like smoke. Wet, shivering, blood under her coat.
I could smell it—iron and fear and something else. Something sweet.
She sat at the bar like she didn't belong anywhere. That caught my attention. Her blood did the rest.
I approached.
She was trying to keep it together. I could feel her emotions—tangled, frantic, bleeding out of her in waves. Guilt. Fear. Anger. Shame.
I liked that.
It was honest.
She stared at me like I was a riddle she didn't want to solve. But she was too tired to walk away. Too lonely not to try.
I told her what I smelled. What I saw. I always do.
She asked my name.
I didn't give it. She wouldn't remember anyway. They never do.
But she stayed.
Then she touched me.
That was unexpected.
Her hand on my knee, her breath near mine—fragile and sharp. I didn't move. I didn't need to.
Then—she kissed me.
Twice.
Her mouth was soft. Warmer than I expected. Her blood hummed beneath her lips—an echo in my senses. It wasn't just blood. It was power layered in silk. The kind that shouldn't exist. The kind that tempts monsters into losing their names.
The second one wasn't shy. It was full of broken things. Things that wanted fixing. Things that wanted saving.
But I don't save people.
I devour them.
And this one?
She was too close. Too vulnerable. And something inside me didn't like that. Something snarled. Not in hunger. But in resistance.
I wanted to leave.
I wanted to push her away. Not because I feared her—but because something inside me stirred that I couldn't allow. A flicker. A memory I buried long ago. Before war. Before silence. Before I became what I am.
No one has ever touched me like that and lived.
But I didn't stop her.
She looked at me with eyes that begged for something—anything.
I could give her what she wanted.
I could feed.
Or ruin.
Or both.
Tonight was already different.
And it was about to begin.