Chapter Seven
1611 Words
The Weight of Wanting
Luna woke before dawn with the scar burning.
Not pain exactly; more like someone had pressed a hot coal against the center of her palm and then blown on it, over and over. She sat up in bed, heart racing for no reason she could name, and stared at the faint crescent glowing softly in the dark.
A moment later her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Damien.
She answered without speaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, voice rough. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Something’s… wrong.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I felt it too.”
Neither of them asked what “it” was. The blood oath had grown teeth in the last few days, sharpening the tether between them until distance felt like a physical ache. It wasn’t constant, but when it flared it stole the breath from her lungs and, she suspected, made the centuries feel suddenly heavy on Damien’s shoulders.
“I’m outside,” he said.
Luna was on her feet before the words finished leaving his mouth. She pulled on jeans and the first shirt her fingers found, didn’t bother with shoes, and slipped out the back door of the cabin like a teenager sneaking past curfew.
He was waiting at the edge of the tree line, just beyond the ring of motion-sensor lights that guarded the compound. Moonlight silvered his hair and the sharp angles of his face. He looked… tired. Not the aesthetic weariness vampires sometimes wore like cologne, but genuinely tired, the kind that came from carrying too much for too long.
She walked straight into his arms.
They didn’t kiss. They simply held on, foreheads touching, breathing each other in. The burning in her palm eased the moment their scars lined up, like two magnets finally allowed to click together.
“Better,” she murmured against his collar.
“Much,” he agreed.
They stood that way for a long time, long enough that the sky began to pale in the east and a few early birds tested their voices. Eventually Luna pulled back just far enough to study his face.
“Tell me what happened.”
Damien exhaled; unnecessary for him, but old habits died hard.
“Victoria’s supporters tried to break her out tonight. They failed. Three of them are ash now. Cassian handled most of it, but…” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I had to be the one to deliver the final death to one of them. Adrian. He was barely a century old. I turned him myself in 1937. He used to quote poetry when he was nervous.”
Luna’s heart clenched. She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers so the scars pressed together again.
“I’m sorry.”
“It needed doing,” Damien said, but the words sounded hollow even to him. “He chose his side.”
They started walking, slow and aimless, along a deer path that wound deeper into the forest. The compound was still asleep; no one would notice her absence for another hour at least.
“What about you?” he asked after a while. “How bad is it at home?”
“Elias moved out of the main house,” she said quietly. “He’s staying in one of the outer cabins now. Says he needs space to think. Jonah’s holding the enforcers together, but half the pack still flinches when I walk into a room. The pups keep asking if I’m going to start drinking blood.”
She tried to make it a joke. It fell flat.
Damien stopped walking and turned to face her fully.
“Look at me.”
She did.
“This is the part they don’t write songs about,” he said. “The part where the grand romantic prophecy feels like tearing your own heart out one chamber at a time. I spent centuries learning how to be alone, Luna. I was good at it. And now the thought of going back to that—”
He broke off, jaw tight.
Luna reached up and touched the corner of his mouth, gentle.
“I don’t want to be the reason your people suffer,” she said. “But I don’t know how to fix this without losing you in the process. And that’s not an option anymore.”
Damien caught her wrist and pressed a kiss to the inside of it, right over her pulse.
“Then we don’t fix it yet,” he said against her skin. “We just… keep choosing each other, every day, until the rest of them catch up or the world ends. Those are the only two outcomes I’m willing to live with.”
She laughed, soft and shaky. “You make it sound simple.”
“It is simple,” he said. “Terrifying. But simple.”
They found a fallen log and sat, shoulders touching, watching the forest wake up around them. Somewhere an owl called its last before seeking daylight shelter. Dew glistened on fern fronds like scattered diamonds.
Luna rested her head on his shoulder.
“I keep thinking about the full binding ritual,” she admitted after a long silence. “The public part. Standing in front of both our people, bleeding into the same bowl again, saying words that can’t be unsaid. I’m not afraid of the pain. I’m afraid they’ll look at me like I’m choosing you over them.”
Damien was quiet for a long time.
“When I was human,” he said finally, “I was the second son of a minor lord. My older brother was the heir, the golden one. I spent my whole life being told my duty was to support him, never to want anything for myself. When I was turned, I thought immortality would finally let me choose my own path. Instead I just found new people to put first; my maker, then the clan, then the idea of peace itself.”
He turned his head to look at her.
“You are the first thing I have ever wanted badly enough to be selfish about,” he said. “And I’m sorry if that makes me a bad leader. But I’m done apologising for wanting you.”
Luna’s eyes stung. She blinked hard.
“I’m not sorry,” she said fiercely. “I just wish it didn’t have to hurt so many people we love.”
They stayed there until the sky turned the colour of fresh cream and the first patrol would be stirring back at the compound. Damien walked her to the edge of the wards, stopping just outside the invisible boundary.
“I have to go to ground soon,” he said reluctantly. “Sunrise.”
“I know.”
He brushed a thumb across her cheekbone. “Tonight?”
“Tonight,” she promised.
He kissed her then; slow, deliberate, the kind of kiss that felt like a vow all by itself. When they parted, the scar on her palm was warm and steady, like a tiny hearth fire.
She watched him disappear into the shadows the way only vampires could, then turned and walked back to the compound with her head high.
Elias was waiting on her porch.
He looked like he hadn’t slept. His eyes flicked over her; bare feet, rumpled clothes, the faint flush high on her cheekbones that had nothing to do with the dawn air.
“You were with him,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
Something shattered behind Elias’s eyes, but his voice stayed level.
“The pack’s calling a formal circle tonight,” he said. “To discuss the oath. They want you there. They want… clarity.”
Luna nodded once. “I’ll be there.”
Elias started to leave, then stopped.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Luna,” he said without turning around. “I’m trying to protect what’s left of us.”
“I know,” she said softly. “But some things are worth protecting more than tradition, Elias. I’m starting to believe this is one of them.”
He walked away without another word.
That night the pack gathered in the clearing under a star-drunk sky. Luna stood in the center and spoke; not as their alpha commanding obedience, but as one of them asking for faith.
She told them about the scar that burned when Damien was hurting. About the way the ground itself seemed to exhale in relief when they were together. About the dreams that weren’t dreams anymore; visions of an eclipse that swallowed everything unless two hearts beat in the same rhythm.
She didn’t ask them to love Damien. She didn’t ask them to forgive centuries of blood.
She asked them to trust her.
When she finished, no one cheered. No one applauded.
But no one challenged her either.
Jonah stepped forward first and placed his hand over his heart in the old gesture of loyalty.
Mara followed.
Then, slowly, the others.
Elias was the last. He met her eyes across the fire, and for a moment she thought he would walk away.
Instead he inclined his head; not submission, but acknowledgement.
It was enough.
For now.
Far away, in the city, Damien rose at dusk to find a single white jasmine blossom on his pillow and a text from Luna:
They didn’t say yes.
But they didn’t say no.
One day at a time, bloodsucker.
He smiled, tucked the flower into the pocket over his silent heart, and went to face his own clan.
One day at a time.
- Writer
