CHAPTER 4
570 Words
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Chapter Four: The Bond They Couldn’t Burn
The mark on my neck burned for days after Valerian touched it.
Not with pain.
With memory.
A memory my body had never forgotten — not even when my mind tried to.
His scent haunted my pillow.
His voice curled in the corners of my thoughts.
And every time I blinked, I saw the gold in his eyes and the way the night bent around him like it was afraid to touch his skin.
Valerian wasn’t just a vampire.
He was something older.
And now I knew why they were afraid of me.
Because I was the one thing he’d choose — over his throne, over their war, over his own cursed blood.
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I tried to stay away.
Tried to focus on normal things.
But what was normal when fate had already written your bones into someone else’s prophecy?
What was normal when the stars whispered your name alongside his?
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He came back the next night.
Of course he did.
The window creaked open — like it had five years ago — and there he was, standing in moonlight, soaked with rain.
He looked at me like he’d been starved.
And maybe he had.
“Don’t speak,” I said.
But he did.
“I never stopped looking for you.”
I turned my face away, throat tight. “You didn’t even know me.”
“I felt you,” he said. “Every full moon. Every time the curse broke, even for a second — I felt your heartbeat call mine.”
I hated how much I wanted to believe him.
I hated how much of me already did.
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He took a step forward.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “The Council is watching. But I had to see you. Touch you. Just once more.”
I crossed the room before I could stop myself.
My fingers found the front of his shirt. Cold. Wet. Real.
“You remember now?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“No.” His voice cracked. “Only pieces. But the bond is stronger than the curse. Every time I’m near you, I remember more.”
“And if you stay away?”
“They win.”
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A storm rumbled outside. The wind shrieked past the windows.
We were quiet for a long time.
And then he pulled the necklace from his neck — the one I’d given him in secret all those years ago. The one I thought he’d forgotten.
It was still there. A cracked silver pendant shaped like a crescent moon.
My breath caught.
“You kept it?”
“I died with it once,” he whispered. “They brought me back, but they couldn’t take this from me.”
The mark on my neck flared again, hot like fire, and his eyes turned wild.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “Not yet. But I’ll come back for you. I swear it.”
I reached for his hand. Held it. Let the bond hum between us like a song only we could hear.
“Then don’t be late,” I said. “Because next time, I won’t let you go.”
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He vanished into the storm.
But his promise stayed.
And so did the bond.
And the war waiting for us on the other side of dawn.
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- Writer
