The Billionaire Vampire Would Kill To Keep Me

Chapter 10: Claimed

I woke up immortal.

I knew it before I opened my eyes. The castle was too loud and too quiet at the same time. I could hear Caspian's heart beating downstairs in the library — steady, strong, beating for me. I could hear the new flowers in the greenhouse growing. I could hear my own blood, but it wasn't just red anymore. It hummed gold.

I sat up.

Caspian was asleep beside me. Actually asleep. In 312 years, he had never slept during the day like a human. But his arm was thrown over his eyes, his black shirt unbuttoned, his chest rising and falling slow. Guarding me even in sleep.

My skin was glowing. Faint gold under brown, like sunlight under water. My braids were longer, thicker. My eyes — I grabbed the mirror on his nightstand.

Gold. Not fully, but flecked with gold, like someone poured honey into brown. Eternal Healer eyes.

"Caspian," I whispered.

He woke instantly, silver eyes snapping to me. Then softening.

"You're awake. How do you feel?"

"Different. Like... like I drank all the sun in Lagos."

He sat up and cupped my face, his cold thumb tracing the gold fleck in my eye. Reverent.

"You did it," he murmured. "You survived the crypt. No one has in a thousand years. Do you know what that means?"

"That I'm now very tired and need jollof rice?"

He laughed, that rare, real laugh that made his whole face young.

"It means you are fully mine now. The transformation is complete. My blood, the crypt, the court kneeling — your human body has accepted immortality. You will not age. You will not die. You are Thorne."

The way he said my name — Thorne — made my stomach flip.

"Is that why I feel... hot?" I whispered. "Not temperature hot. Like... buzzing. Like my skin is too tight."

His eyes darkened. He knew exactly what I meant. The bond. After last night, after I healed the crypt and he carried me home and held me all night without touching me like that, the bond was screaming.

"It's the mating heat," he said, voice low. "When a vampire king finds his eternal queen, after she is proven worthy, his blood calls to hers. To... claim. Fully."

My mouth went dry. "Claim how?"

He leaned closer, but didn't touch. That gentleman control again, shaking at the edges.

"Amara, if I touch you now, I will not stop. And I have waited 312 years to not be a monster for one night. So tell me to leave. Tell me to go sit on that cursed floor again. And I will."

I looked at him — this powerful, ancient, cold king who sat on the floor for me. Who brought my dead herbs back to life. Who let me bite his neck. Who banged his fists bloody on a crypt door because he couldn't bear me crying.

Three weeks ago I was a broke nurse in Lagos whose mama said no man would marry me because I was too stubborn and too curvy.

Now a vampire king was asking permission to love me.

I didn't tell him to leave.

I reached out and touched his cold cheek with my glowing hand.

"Don't be a gentleman anymore, Caspian Thorne."

Something in him snapped.

He pulled me into his lap in one smooth motion, one hand tangled in my braids, the other on my waist, holding me like I was precious and like he would never let go. His forehead pressed to mine, breathing hard.

"Are you sure, little healer? Once I claim you as my queen properly, there is no undoing it. You will feel me in your soul for eternity."

"I've felt you in my soul since the night you saved me from the Nkisi," I whispered. "So claim me."

He kissed me.

Finally. Really kissed me.

It wasn't cold. It was like winter catching fire. Slow at first, then desperate, like he had been starving for 300 years and I was water. I kissed him back, hands in his black hair, gold light spilling from my skin onto his, making him glow.

He lifted me, laying me back on that huge black bed, hovering over me, caging me in, his silver eyes never leaving my gold-flecked ones.

"My queen," he whispered against my lips. "My Amara. Mine, forever. You said it."

"Meam Aeternum," I whispered back, remembering the burned sheet.

He groaned and buried his face in my neck, fangs grazing but not biting, just breathing me in.

Outside, the castle bloomed. Every dead vine, every dead tree on the estate burst into white flowers at once — because the king had finally claimed his queen, and the eternal winter was over.

And in the Vampire Court far below, Vivienne felt it and shattered her white dress's mirror with a scream.