Chapter 1 Mate?!

Dahlia's Pov

I thought I was dead.

That was my first thought when I opened my eyes and found myself lying in plush red sheets.

I looked around, trying to understand where I was and how I had gotten there. The room was unfamiliar, dimly lit, and far too luxurious to belong to any place I had ever stayed.

Then a sharp headache struck.

A moment later, hunger followed. For what, I didn't know.

As I struggled to make sense of my surroundings, a rich, velvety voice broke through my confusion.

"Take it easy. You shouldn't move too much.”

I turned toward the sound and immediately froze.

Cassian.

The Vampire King and the man I hated most in the world.

He sat calmly in a chair beside the bed. Somehow, I hadn't noticed him when I first looked around.

The sight of him brought everything rushing back.

The war, the bloodshed.

All the horrors he had unleashed upon humanity.

Humans lost the war.

And I, their commander, had fallen first.

I remembered standing before my soldiers, refusing to retreat. I remembered fighting until the very end, taking as many vampires with me as possible before darkness claimed me.

I died.

So what was this?

Was this the afterlife?

Had Cassian somehow found a way to torment me even after death?

Another possibility surfaced in my mind.

I shoved it away immediately.

No.

That wasn't possible.

He couldn't..

"Calm down, Dahlia."

His voice interrupted my thoughts.

"You've been through a great deal. You must be exhausted. And hungry. You need to feed.”

Feed.

The word was a key, turning in the lock of my worst, most unthinkable nightmare. The second option I’d violently shoved down now came back, undeniable and horrific.

I lunged at him.

"How dare you!"

I didn't have a weapon so he caught me easily.

“Let me go!” I screamed, thrashing. “You turned me! You hated me so much you couldn’t even let me have peace? You had to turn me into a vampire so you could torture me forever?!”

“Hate you?” He sounded genuinely confused. His grip was iron, but his voice was soft, trying to soothe a wild animal.

“Dahlia, I watched you fall. I saw you take a dozen of my best warriors with you, protecting your people with your last breath. I saw the light leave your human eyes. Letting you die there, in the mud, after everything would be a waste. A human life is a cruel, fleeting spark. All your dreams, your fire, extinguished in an instant. But as a vampire..”

"No! I would rather kill myself than spend eternity listening to your lies."

I tore myself from his grip and rushed toward the nearest door. I could see the balcony beyond it.

I threw the doors open and froze.

A wall of dense fog stretched endlessly before me.

The cold struck immediately, biting through my skin.

Far in the distance, I could barely make out the silhouette of another mountain peak.

My breath caught.

We were high above the world.

On a mountaintop.

The dark stone walls on my sides told me exactly where I was.

Cassian's castle. The vampire's fortress.

He had brought me back to his kingdom.

I felt him step beside me.

A moment later, his hands settled around my waist as he gently pulled me back inside.

"There is no escape from here," he said quietly.

Everything I had known was gone.

I struggled again, tried to elbow him, to stomp on his foot, but he simply turned me towards him.

For a moment, I stared.

His expression was unexpectedly gentle.

The only things that revealed the monster beneath were his unnaturally pale skin and red eyes.

Everything else about him was devastatingly beautiful.

I immediately looked away.

I refused to be fooled by appearances.

Cassian guided me back toward the bed.

"I know you have questions," he said. "And I know you hate me right now. But everything will make sense, I promise. But first, you must feed. The hunger will soon become unbearable.”

“I won’t,” I hissed, even as my stomach clenched and my jaw ached. I ran my tongue over my teeth and felt sharp, elongated points pressing against the inside of my lip. Fangs. Anger washed over me. “I will not drink blood. I am not a parasite.”

“You are alive,” he corrected, his tone firm. “And you will remain so.”

“I’d rather starve”

“You will not starve,” he said, and for the first time, his voice held a note of command. It vibrated in the air between us. “I will not allow it.”

Slowly, he lifted one hand.

Maintaining eye contact, he extended his fangs and bit into his own wrist.

Blood immediately welled from the wound.

The scent hit me like a physical blow.

Every instinct inside me erupted at once. My throat burned, and the hunger becoming unbearable.

I turned away.

"No."

"Dahlia."

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I am Dahlia Vance, Commander of the human troops. I do not yield.”

“Dahlia,” he tried again, his voice low and hypnotic. His free hand came up, his fingers surprisingly gentle as they turned my face back toward him. He brought his bleeding wrist closer. A single drop fell, landing on the red sheets between us. “Drink. And then I will tell you everything. The real truth.”

The temptation was too much. I fought it with every fiber of my being, my body trembling with the effort. I shook my head, a frantic, pathetic motion.

He waited patiently, his wrist hovering even nearer. An inch from my lips, the intoxicating scent torturing me.

I don’t know when I broke. There was no conscious decision. One moment I was holding my breath, muscles locked in rebellion, and the next, my lips were parting, closing over the wound on his wrist.

It was nothing like I’d imagined. It raced through my veins like a shockwave. A low, helpless moan vibrated in my throat as I swallowed. I drank greedily, my hands coming up to clutch his arm, holding him to me.

Above me, Cassian let out a soft, shuddering groan. “Yes,” he breathed, his other hand coming to cradle the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair. “Take what you need. Take all of it.”

As the hunger began to subside, something else happened. It was as if the final part of my transformation had been completed.

A bond. Recognition and belonging. A possessive, desperate hunger that had nothing to do with blood. And love that felt like it had been carved into my bones before I was born.

Mate.