The onsught had finally stopped, but its memory g to everything, the lingering dampness on my body, the ist that hovered in the air.

  I was still reeling from what had happened in that secluded er of the park, the raw iy of Yuki’s fession, and the way her ued strength had rendered me helpless.

  Yuki’s eyes had fshed with something dark aermined as she had pressed down, her grip firm enough to pin me against the cold, hard frame of the pavilion.

  Her lips curl into a satisfied smile, her breath warm against my skin.

  “You’re mine, Markus.”

  She murmured, her voice ced with something terrifyingly possessive.

  Before I could react, she moved. Fast, too fast. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, holding me in pce, her body pressed flush against mine.

  My pulse quied, panic creeping up my spine as I felt the weight of her against me, pressing in, closing the distance again.

  Her eyes, dark and unreadable, locked onto me, and I barely have time to draw in a breath before sharp pai my neck.

  A strangled gasp ripped from my throat as her fangs sank deep, deeper than I expected, deeper than I could bear.

  My entire body jerked, but she held firm, log me in pce. My breath caught, and the world spun as a burning, seariion spread from where she bit, tearing through me like fire.

  It hurt. God, it hurt. But the pain wasn’t what terrified me.

  It was her.

  The bite… it was ever ing.

  Like setting my fate on stone.

  The way she g to me, trembling but relentless. The way her nails dug into my skin, like she was afraid I’d disappear if she let go.

  The way she made a soft, desperate sound against my throat, whimperi ecstatic.

  Her fingers fisted the fabriy shirt, holding on as if this was the only thing keepiethered to reality. Her breathing was erratic, shallow and shaky, her body pressed so tightly to mine I could feel the rapid pounding of her heart against my chest.

  I struggled, but my limbs felt weak, drained, useless against her unnatural strength. “Yuki-” My voice broke, barely more than a whisper.

  She didn’t stop.

  I felt her lips quiver against my skin, the warmth of her breath ced with something close to sorrow. She was g.

  Finally, after what felt like ay, she pulled back. A sharp breath hitched ihroat, and when I forced myself to look at her, I almost wished I hadn’t.

  Her lips were stained with red, parted as if she wao say something but couldn’t. Tears streaked down her cheeks, glistening uhe dim light. She looked ruined. Like she had just done something she couldn’t take back.

  Her trembling fingers brushed over the fresh wound on my neck, barely toug, as if she was afraid she’d break me. “I love you,” she whispered, her voice raw, stripped bare.

  “I love you more than anything, more than life itself. I’ll o go for a long time… And when I e back…” She paused, and something in her gaze sharpened, darkened.

  “I will cim you.”

  The words sent a cold chill through me, settling deep in my bones.

  I wao speak. I wao say something, anything, but I couldn’t. I could only watch as she lifted her hand, smearihumb across her lower lip, where my blood lingered like a mark of possession.

  She leans in, presses a fleeting, fevered kiss against my lip o time.

  Then, she let go.

  Before I could say anything, before I could stop her, she stepped bato the shadows. The darkness swallowed her whole. A single blink, and she was gone.

  The silence she left behind was deafening.

  ~~~

  A voice… faint, distant.

  “...#kus…”

  It barely reached me, just a breath of sound lost in the night. But it was enough.

  The moment cracked opey seeping ba, and suddenly I was barely standing, alorembling. The bite throbbed, the air felt heavy, and then.

  Then I heard it, her footsteps.

  “Markus?!”

  Nora’s voice rang through the park, louder now, cutting through the quiet like a jagged bde. It carried something raw, something close to desperation. She was looking for me.

  I couldn’t move.

  I barely had time to think before she emerged from the trees, breathless, her eyes wide and searg. Then she saw me.

  She stopped dead iracks.

  Everything in her seemed to freeze. Her breath, her body, her expression. The color drained from her face, leaving her pale and hollow, as if someone had reached inside her and pulled something vital away.

  Her gaze swept over me in pieces, taking in every detail.

  The way my clothes were stretched and rumpled, as though I had struggled. The way my lips were wet, parted slightly, as if something had just been taken from me. The way I barely stood… shaken, unsteady, like a man on the edge of breaking.

  And then her eyes nded on the mark.

  I saw it then, the moment realization struck.

  Her pupils shrank, her chest rose and fell, but she made no sound. Nothing. Not a single word.

  She just stood there, staring, as if she had been hollowed out from the inside.

  I wao speak, to say something, anything, but my throat closed around the words. I saw the way her fiwitched at her sides, how her lips parted ever so slightly before pressing shut again.

  It was worse than if she had screamed.

  Nora, someone who was always like a fire, like a kindling warm fme, someone who was always gy, someone who was always chirpy, someone fierce.

  Always burning with passion and… something alive…

  But now… now she looked like something fragile, something cracked, something on the verge of shattering.

  The dawn stretched between us, cold and unyielding.

  Still, she said nothing.

  Her hollow eyes tched onto me, wide, unblinking. A darkness sat behind them, vast and ing, yet unreadable.

  y, no- something was there, something so thid yered that it was impossible to grasp.

  A pit opened in my stomach.

  I swallowed, trying to steady myself, but the sileretched, pressing in on my ribs. The longer she stood there, unmoving, staring, the heavier it became.

  Then, she stepped forward.

  A single, slow step.

  I flinched.

  It wasn’t her voice, wasn’t her touch, just the sheer presence of her closing in, something about it g the edges of my mind, like I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to.

  But then she moved again, and her arms ed around me.

  Warm.

  Too warm.

  Soft, steady, firm, but suffog.

  Her embrace pulled me in, slow, lingering, curling around me like ivy creeping up a fotten wall.

  My body te first, caught between instind reason, but she only held tighter, pressio her as if she could somehow mold us together.

  Not a word left her lips, yet I could hear her. In the way her firaced over my back, over my shoulders, the way they dragged down my arms… retrag every pce Yuki had touched.

  Her breath ghosted over my skin, slow and steady.

  Her firailed up my neck.

  They stopped at the bite.

  I felt her exhale.

  Then, she moved again, her hands gliding down, finding my lips, her thumb dragging over them… wet, glistening, still parted from the remnants of Yuki’s st words.

  I stopped breathing.

  It wasiness in her eyes.

  It was too much.

  A storm of something indescribable, something deep and spiralling, something terrifying in its iy.

  I didn’t know if she wao e or e me.

  A breath.

  Then a voice.

  Soft. Sweet. It startled me.

  “Did it hurt?”

  Nora’s whisper curled around my ear like silk, smooth, careful. Too careful.

  I barely had time to react before she held me tighter.

  Too tight.

  Her hands, once warm, grew colder, pressing into my back, my arms. Steady, unyielding.

  “It’s over now,” she murmured, her voice light, airy, like a lulby. “I’ll protect you.”

  My breath hitched.

  Her grip didn’t loosen.

  She led closer, a gentle hum vibrating against my chest, a sound too soft, too soothing, as if I were something fragile, something broken.

  Something to be fixed.

  “I’ll purify you.”

  The words barely left her lips before she smiled. At least, I thought it was a smile.

  It was hollow. Empty. A shape more than an expression, somethi to fort, but it didn’t. It couldn’t.

  My vision blurred at the edges. My body sagged.

  I caught something, just for a sed… her antennae shifting, shuddering. A fine dust drifted, weightless, dissolving before I could grasp what I was seeing.

  Then… nothing.

  A veil of bess slipped over me, slow, creeping.

  The world dulled, distant.

  I was still there, but I wasn’t. My limbs, heavy. My mind, sluggish. Thoughts melting before they could form.

  I felt something.

  Hands.

  Not Yuki’s.

  They warag, taking. Not gentle, not harsh… just present. Stripping me of something, but I couldn’t tell what.

  I wao move.

  I couldn’t.

  Then… I felt it.

  Something pressed against my lips.

  Soft. Wet.

  And then…

  It slipped inside.

  I tried to move.

  Tried to wrench myself free.

  But my body refused to listen.

  The thing wrestled in my mouth, w its way in... burrowing, tussling against my tongue, as if it wao bee its new oct.

  A sharp jolt shot through my limbs, a desperate attempt to fight back, but it was all for nothing.

  Every muscle, every nerve, everything inside me felt muted, weighed down as if I were sinking into something inescapable.

  I thrashed, or at least I thought I did. My mind screamed for trol, but my body, weak… almost useless, it could only tremble.

  Then that soft thing escaped from my mouth.

  I gasped, or I tried to.

  A sed ter, it was back, pressing in, filling the space it had left behind. A siing rhythm, an invasion that felt wrong, that left me raw with helplessness.

  Again.

  And again.

  Like clockwork, a relentless cycle.

  A loop with no end.

  No escape.

  I was trapped in it, my mind caught between the haze of unsciousness and the sharp, burning awareness of what was happening to me.

  And then-

  The first pull.

  A wet, slow sug at my nape.

  I froze.

  My breath stilled as something warm, damp, tched onto my skin, lips, teeth, something primal.

  Then it moved.

  Trailing lower.

  To my back.

  A sling dest.

  A beast, a thing, g me, dragging its mouth over me like I was something to be devoured.

  A shuddering breath left me, my body jerking in pce.

  But it didn’t stop.

  It only grew more intense.

  More ing.

  “You’re trembling… I’ll take care of everything.”

  It spoke.

  And I-

  I could do nothing.