The Princess

Chapter Ten – April’s POV

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have looked like if Karlheinz had never taken me in.

If I had grown up anywhere except this mansion.

If I had learned who I truly was before my heart became wrapped around six impossible boys.

But when I close my eyes… all I see are them.

My brothers.

My protectors.

My tormentors.

My entire world.

I wasn’t born a Sakamaki—everyone knew it. I was the crimson-haired child suddenly dropped into a family of pale, dangerous sons who didn’t understand what it meant to have something fragile living among them. Reiji analyzed me like an experiment. Ayato poked at me to see if I’d cry. Kanato screamed whenever I touched his toys. Laito smiled too sweetly, and Shu ignored me so thoroughly I thought I was invisible. Subaru tried to pretend he didn’t want me anywhere near him.

But they never pushed me away.

That was the curse.

I grew up in their arms, even when those arms shook with hunger or anger or something darker. I learned every tone of their voices, every shift of their moods. I learned which doors creaked at night, which footsteps meant trouble, which meant comfort. They were rough, selfish, sometimes terrifying… but they were mine.

I wasn’t a sister by blood.

But I became one by existence.

Still… that title always felt too small.

Sister.

How could I be “just” that, when Reiji’s eyes softened only for me? When Ayato dragged me everywhere and called me “his?” When Kanato clung to my dress, shaking whenever I left the room? When Laito whispered things no brother should whisper? When Shu’s lazy gaze sharpened whenever someone else got too close? When Subaru’s hands trembled every time he almost touched me?

I was raised with them—yet never belonged fully to them.

A contradiction wrapped in crimson hair.

Growing up in this mansion wasn’t gentle. There were nights of Cordelia’s shrieks, the sting of her hatred like needles against my skin. There were days Beatrix brushed my hair softly, calling me daughter with a voice I still ache for. Christa smiled at me even when her own mind wavered, clinging to my hands as if I anchored her.

I wasn’t a Sakamaki by birth.

But the mothers—two of them—loved me as their own.

Only Cordelia saw me as a threat.

And maybe… she wasn’t wrong.

I was the pretty human girl Karlheinz treated like a secret treasure. The one who calmed the sons he created for chaos. The one who made him smile when nothing else did. The one who drew the brothers together and pulled them apart all at once.

I grew up believing I was normal. But there was nothing normal about this family. Nothing normal about the way they watched me. Nothing normal about how my heart answered each of theirs in different, impossible ways.

Being their “sister” meant being loved.

But being loved by vampires meant being consumed.

And now that I am older, now that I finally understand myself, the word sister feels like a chain. A barrier. A lie wrapped in innocence I no longer feel.

Because they don’t look at me like that anymore.

And I… I don’t feel like that anymore either.

I don’t know what we are.

I don’t know what I am to them.

All I know is this:

The Sakamaki mansion raised me.

The Sakamaki sons shaped me.