BLOOD & RHYTHM

Chapter 10: Confession

After Dorian left, the manor felt different.

Quieter. Heavier. Like the walls themselves were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen. Alexander led me to the study—a different room than the music room, smaller and more intimate, with books stacked everywhere and a fire that crackled like it had been burning for centuries.

He poured himself something dark from a crystal decanter. Whiskey, maybe. Or blood. I didn't ask.

"I need to tell you everything," he said finally, his back to me. "No more secrets. No more half-truths. You deserve to know what you're involving yourself in."

"Okay."

He turned. In the firelight, he looked almost human—except for his eyes. Those were never quite human, no matter how carefully he masked them.

"I am what you think I am. A vampire. Born—no, *made*—in 1589, in a small village in Transylvania that no longer exists. I was twenty-seven years old when I died, and I've been this way ever since."

I sat in the armchair by the fire, gripping the arms so tightly my knuckles went white. "How did it happen?"

"A woman. A noblewoman, passing through our village with her entourage. She saw me working in the fields and..." He smiled bitterly. "She wanted me. Not for love—for entertainment. She turned me without asking, without warning, and when I woke up hungry and terrified and *wrong*, she laughed."

"God."

"There is no God for creatures like me. Not anymore." He took a long drink from his glass. "I spent the first century of my existence as her plaything. Her pet. Her weapon. I did terrible things, Luna. Things I can never undo. Things that haunt me still."

I wanted to go to him. Comfort him. But something held me back—fear, maybe, or the weight of his words settling on my shoulders.

"When she finally tired of me, she set me free. Free to wander. Free to kill. Free to become the monster she'd made me." He set down his glass, his hands gripping the edge of the sideboard. "And I did. For two hundred years, I was everything she'd created. I killed without remorse. Fed without restraint. Took what I wanted and destroyed the rest."

"Alexander—"

"I need you to understand." His voice cracked. "I need you to know what I am before you decide to stay. I've killed hundreds of people. Thousands, maybe. I've drained entire villages. I've done things that would make you sick to hear, and at the time, I felt *nothing*."

I rose from the chair. My legs were shaking, but I crossed to him anyway.

"Then what changed?"

He looked at me, and the pain in his eyes was almost too much to bear. "Elena."

The name from before. The human he'd loved.

"She was... good. Truly good, in a way I'd forgotten existed. She saw me—really saw me—and didn't run. Didn't scream. She looked at the monster and found the man underneath." His voice dropped to a whisper. "For the first time in centuries, I felt something. Shame. Remorse. Love."

"What happened to her?"

"I told you. The Council killed her. Made me watch." His hands came up to frame my face, cold and gentle. "And I've been alone ever since. Alone and empty and so *tired*, Luna. Tired of existing. Tired of pretending. Tired of being a monster with no one to remind me I was ever human."

Tears streamed down my face. I didn't know when I'd started crying.

"Until you," he whispered. "Until your music. Until your blood. Until you looked at me with those eyes and refused to run."

"Alexander—"

"I've drunk from you. I've tasted you. And it was nothing like the others. With them, it was hunger. Need. Base instinct. With you—" He shook his head, wonder in his eyes. "With you, it was connection. Intimacy. The most profound experience of my existence, and I've had four hundred years to compare it to."

I should have been terrified. Should have pulled away. Should have run, like any sane person would.

But I didn't.

Because in his eyes, beneath the centuries of pain and regret and loneliness, I saw something I recognized.

Myself.

The same desperate need for connection. The same fear of being alone. The same hope that maybe, just maybe, someone could see past the masks and love what was underneath.

"I'm scared," I admitted.

"You should be."

"I know." I reached up, covering his hands with mine. "But I'm more scared of walking away. Of always wondering what could have happened. Of spending the rest of my life alone and empty, the way you spent yours."

"Luna—"

"I don't care what you've done. I don't care about the past. I care about *now*. About you. About us." I took a shaking breath. "I'm not Elena. I'm not going to let the Council take me without a fight. And I'm not going to let you push me away because you're afraid."

For a long moment, he just stared at me. Then, slowly, something broke in his expression.

"You're remarkable," he breathed. "Absolutely remarkable."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true." He pulled me closer, wrapping his arms around me, holding me like I might disappear. "I don't deserve you."

"Maybe not." I pressed my face against his chest, feeling the cold that never warmed, the stillness where a heartbeat should be. "But you have me anyway."

We stood like that for a long time, wrapped in each other, while the fire crackled and the night stretched on. And for the first time since I'd met him, I felt Alexander relax. Felt the tension drain from his shoulders. Felt him *breathe*.

"I have one more confession," he murmured against my hair.

"What?"

"When I said I've drunk from you—I left something out."

I pulled back, looking up at him. "What?"

"I didn't just drink your blood. I..." He hesitated. "I tasted you. In it. Your essence. Your soul. Everything that makes you who you are." His eyes met mine, intense and vulnerable. "And now I'm connected to you. Bound to you. I'll always be able to find you, feel you, know when you're in danger. It's... it's a vampire thing. When we drink from someone we truly care about, it creates a bond."

"A bond?"

"Nothing you'd feel physically. But for me—" He touched his chest, over where his heart should beat. "I'll always know where you are. Always feel what you feel, to some extent. Always be drawn to you, no matter how far apart we are."

"That sounds..." I searched for the right word. "Intimate."

"It is. More intimate than anything else I can offer. And I should have asked permission first. I should have—"

"Alexander." I put my finger on his lips, silencing him. "I'm not upset."

"You're not?"

"No." I smiled. "I like the idea of being connected to you. Of you always being able to find me. It's... romantic. In a terrifying, slightly obsessive kind of way."

He laughed—a real laugh, surprised and warm. "Only you would find vampire bonding romantic."

"Only you would make me want it." I rose on my toes and kissed him, soft and slow. "Now stop apologizing and hold me."

He did.

And for the first time in four hundred years, Alexander Volkan wasn't alone.

Neither was I.