Morning came quietly. Pale light filtered through the narrow windows, resting over stone and skin alike. Lexi woke first, stretching beneath heavy furs, listening not for breath, but for presence. Michael stood near the window, already dressed, watching the world beyond the glass.
She studied him for a long moment before speaking.
He turned when he felt her gaze, the faintest smile tugging at his mouth.
"You're awake."
"I've been awake," she said softly. "I just… didn't want to break the moment."
He crossed the room unhurriedly. Whatever he meant to say lingered on his tongue but she reached it first.
"Michael," Lexi said, sitting up and pulling the furs around herself, "what are you?"
The question wasn't fearful. It was honest and full of curiosity.
"I tried not to ask," she admitted. "Believe me, I did. But I know the supernatural. I've lived it. Bled for it." Her eyes lifted to his. "And you walk in the sun. So not a vampire."
Silence settled in and felt heavy.
He studied her with a neutral expression, weighing truth the way one weighs a blade. Finally, he spoke.
"I am not a vampire," he said. "Nor a wolf—though they follow me."
She frowned slightly. "Then what does that leave? A witch"
"An anomaly," he replied calmly. "Something that was never meant to continue existing… but did."
She searched his face for deception and found none.
"I am a hellhound—" he said to her and she began instinctively, testing the word.
Michael frowned, correcting her at once.
"The hellhound and witch hybrid to be exact."
Her brows lifted.
Lexi swallowed. "So you're immortal?"
"Yes."
"And killable?"
There is as a pause after that question.
"Unclear."
That earned a small, incredulous laugh from her. "Of course it is."
He stepped closer, resting one hand against the wood beside her.
"You're not afraid?"
"I should be," she said. "But I'm not." Her gaze softened. "You saved me. You let me choose. You didn't burn that vampire for me—you handed him back."
A flicker of warmth passed through his eyes.
"So," she finished quietly, "whatever you are… you're not a monster. You're my friend."
Michael inclined his head slightly.
"Careful, Lexi. People have died making that assumption."
She smiled anyway. "Then I'll just be the exception."
—————————————————
She wanted to turn after that. Not immediately but the idea settled in her bones the moment she understood what he was. Immortality. Time without an ending. A life unbound by decay.
Michael tried to dissuade her. "Immortality isn't what you think," he told her one night, firelight flickering softly along the walls. "It's not freedom. It's accumulation. Loss stacked upon loss until even memory becomes heavy."
She listened, truly listened. Then, she shook her head.
"I've already lost enough as a human," Lexi said. "At least this way, I get to keep something."
He argued once more. Then he stopped.
Choice mattered to him.
She turned and became a vampire not because of him, but despite him. And for a time, it worked. They stayed together. Traveled. Watched centuries shift like tides.
Until a few years later, when Lexi's younger brother was killed.
The grief was violent and Immediate. And when the consequences of her nature came crashing down around her, she was forced to flee.
She stayed with Michael after that. Until one evening, standing at the edge of a road leading nowhere and everywhere, she told him she wanted to see the world on her own.
He didn't argue.
He had walked every city on the planet some before they were ever named. Exploration no longer held meaning for him.
But he looked at her and said only this:
"You'll have a purpose in the future, Lexi Branson. One you don't see yet but one that will matter."
She smiled, hugged him once, and left.
Michael watched her go without regret.
Some stories were never meant to end beside him.
Christmas, 1917
Outside Monterey
Snow should have softened the world but Instead, it turned the mud black. Michael stepped out of the forest and into Monterey with the weary resignation of someone who had survived far too many winters to care about the sentiment attached to this one. Two and a half centuries had passed since he'd last allowed himself to linger on memories and on people but Christmas had a way of dragging ghosts to the surface whether one invited them or not.
Normally, he would have spent the day elsewhere. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere without blood soaking into frozen earth.
But his wolves had reported killings.
And not just killings but ripper killings.
Michael exhaled slowly as he moved through the village streets, boots sinking into slush and rot. Monterey looked like a place that had been flayed with doors torn from hinges, windows shattered, bodies dragged rather than laid to rest.
His enhanced hearing picked up whispers long before faces appeared.
"A monster—"
"He tore their heads clean off—"
"Not human it's a vampire I'm sure of it'"
Michael stopped one man mid-sentence, fingers closing around his collar just long enough for a subtle pulse Cede to afflict the man and compel him.
"Tell me," Michael said calmly, eyes glowing faintly, "about the vampire."
The man spoke without hesitation and told him about a savage and blood-drunk entity plaguing them. A creature that gorged until it forgot where hunger ended and instinct began. Heads torn free. Bodies stacked like refuse.
Michael released him with a sigh.
"Well," he muttered, surveying the carnage ahead, severed heads littering the road like obscene decorations, "someone's clearly gotten ahead of themselves. Christmas excess usually starts with pudding, not decapitation."
He followed the sound of scratching chalk or charcoal against wood into a ruined home at the edge of town.
Inside, a man stood before a wall.
Names covered it. Dozens. Then hundreds. Written carefully. Reverently. As though each stroke might absolve something.
Michael smiled faintly.
'So this is you huh.'
"Are they your victims?" he asked mildly.
The man turned to show Stefan Salvatore and he looked exactly as Michael expected with his haunted eyes, blood still staining his mouth, guilt clinging to him heavier than the snow outside.
Michael couldn't help himself.
"Tasteful decor," he added. "Very reflective. Really ties the room together."
"Leave," Stefan said tiredly, already turning back to the wall. "Or you'll go up there with them."
Michael tilted his head, studying the names.
"Let me guess. Writing them down makes it better? Like a ledger?" He glanced back at Stefan. "You kill them, then memorialize them. Efficient. Morally questionable. But efficient."
Stefan's jaw tightened.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, I do," Michael replied. "You're a ripper who thinks guilt earns him the right to keep killing. You carve them apart, then pretend this—" he gestured at the wall "—is penance."
Stefan spun on him. "You don't get to judge me."
Michael's smile sharpened. "I'm not judging. I'm observing."
He stepped closer, voice lowering.
"Tell me, Stefan, what would Lexi think if she saw you like this?"
That did it as Stefan blurred forward trying to catch the intruder of guard.
Michael smiled at the successful provocation.
He then vanished sideways in a flicker of motion, reappearing behind Stefan in the same breath. His hand closed around Stefan's throat, and with one brutal motion, he slammed him into the wall hard enough to crack stone.
Michael held him there effortlessly.
"I've been watching you," Michael said calmly, flames tracing faint cracks along his skin. "Your blood addiction. Your cycles. The hundreds of lives you've ruined because your mother decided restraint was optional."
Stefan clawed weakly at his wrist.
"I'm not a saint," Michael continued. "Most wouldn't call me good. Or evil. I just… am." He leaned closer. "And I don't enjoy waste."
Stefan's resistance broke.
"It's horrible," he choked out. "All the bodies. All the lives I've taken. They didn't deserve it." His knees gave out as Michael released him, and Stefan collapsed to the floor. "You're strong enough so do it. Kill me. I deserve it. I was made this way. I crave blood every second of every day."
He looked up, eyes glassy.
"I'm a monster. Please."
Michael stared at him.
Then sighed. "Ohhhh kay," he muttered. "This just got uncomfortable."
He rubbed his face briefly. Of course. The tortured one. Eternal suffering. Self-flagellation masquerading as accountability. Vampiric melodrama at its finest.
Pitiful didn't even begin to cover it.
Stefan wasn't evil. He was drowning, suffocating under a hunger he'd never been taught to control.
Michael extended a hand.
"I'm not going to kill you, mate."
Stefan froze, staring up at him.
"It's not your fault," Michael said evenly. "That doesn't excuse what you've done but it explains it." His lips curved into something almost amused. "And lucky for you, I specialize in broken things."
He laughed then low, confident and unapologetic.
"I'm going to fix your little problem. Completely transform you from this moping excuse of a vampire into a capable one."
Michael's gaze hardened, but his voice softened.
"In time, you'll see you're not the monster you think you are. And that you're worthy of a life."
He kept his hand extended. Stefan hesitated only a moment before taking it.
Michael pulled him to his feet.
And just like that, in the middle of a blood-soaked Christmas in Monterey, Stefan Salvatore's long road to recovery began.
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