Fifty years became one hundred. One hundred became two hundred.
Kieran stopped asking Marcus for updates. Stopped hoping. Stopped feeling much of anything except the nightly curse pain and the constant ache of the severed bond.
He was hollow. A shell of the vampire he'd been. Ancient, powerful, and completely, utterly broken.
Sometimes he'd stand in the sunlight's path, letting it burn his hand, testing his own will to survive. But each time, he'd pull back. Because somewhere, Adrian's soul existed. And when it returned—if it returned—he needed to be there.
That was the only thing keeping him tethered to existence: the possibility of Adrian.
But as decades stretched into centuries, even that hope began to fade.
By the time four hundred years had passed since Adrian's death, Kieran had become a legend among vampires. The Ancient One who'd lost his eternal mate. The cautionary tale about the dangers of bonding too deeply.
No one approached him. No one dared.
He existed in isolation, waiting for a resurrection that might never come.
The curse continued. Every night, pain. Every night, reminder of his incompleteness.
But now, instead of motivating him to search for Adrian, it just confirmed what he already knew: he was alone. Fundamentally, eternally alone.
And even if Adrian's soul returned tomorrow, even if he was reborn as a human infant somewhere in the world, what then?
Wait twenty years for him to grow? Introduce himself and hope Adrian would fall in love with a hollow, damaged vampire who'd long since forgotten how to be human?
The hope that had sustained him for over a thousand years was dying.
And Kieran realized with creeping horror that he was dying with it—not physically, but in every way that mattered.
He was becoming what he'd always feared: a true monster. Not because he killed humans or terrorized the living, but because he'd lost the capacity to love, to hope, to feel anything except pain.
Adrian had been his humanity. His light in an immortal darkness.
And without him, Kieran was just darkness. Empty, cold, eternal darkness.
As the four-hundredth anniversary of Adrian's death approached, Kieran stood on a clifftop, watching the sun prepare to rise.
One step forward. That's all it would take. One step into the sunlight, and centuries of suffering would end.
Adrian's soul would be unprotected. But maybe that was mercy. Maybe without Kieran's interference, Adrian would live a normal human life. Fall in love with someone ordinary. Grow old, die peacefully, move on to whatever afterlife existed.
Maybe the kindest thing Kieran could do was let him go.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
The horizon began to glow with the promise of dawn—death for vampires, but also beauty. Kieran hadn't watched a sunrise in over fourteen hundred years.
Maybe it would be fitting to end where he'd begun. In sunlight. In warmth. In something other than endless night.
He stood at the cliff's edge, waiting for the sun.
VOLUME 3 ENDED
—————————