CHAPTER FIVE
Rain fell in silver sheets against the city, cleansing nothing only deepening its secrets. Xavier stood beneath the awning of an old warehouse, watching the streetlight flicker like a warning. The journal was tucked under his coat, and a pistol laced with blessed silver rested against his hip.
He wasn't here to kill her.
Not yet.
Not tonight.
The message had come anonymously, a location and a time, scrawled in a hand he didn't recognize but somehow trusted. He knew who had sent it.
Seraphina.
He stepped through the warehouse doors into darkness. The scent hit him first, not blood, not rot but jasmine and rain and something older. A memory perhaps. Then she stepped from the shadows like a whispered curse.
No makeup. No red lips. No silk. Just Seraphina, barefoot, in a simple black dress that clung to her like mourning.
"Xavier," she said, like the name tasted bittersweet.
"I shouldn't be here," he said.
"And yet you came."
He didn't answer. Their silence buzzed with danger, tension, heat.
"I needed you to see me," she said, voice trembling at the edges. "Not the stories. Not the prophecy. Me."
She stepped closer, slow and careful, like a predator trying not to scare its prey.
He didn't move.
"I've taken lives," she confessed. "Not all of them deserved it. Some begged. Some didn't."
"Why tell me?"
"Because I want you to know the truth before you choose whether to destroy me or not."
Xavier studied her face. She didn't flinch. Didn't pretend. And that honesty… it pierced deeper than any weapon.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
She looked away. "No. I only regret that I can't remember the last time I felt like more than a monster."
They stood close now, breath mingling. Her fingers brushed his wrist not feeding, not seducing. Just touching. Real.
"You feel like fire," she murmured.
"And you feel like drowning," he whispered back.
Suddenly, glass shattered above them. Xavier spun, pistol drawn.
Lucien.
The vampire landed like smoke and shadow, fangs bared, fury in his eyes. "You're not supposed to be here."
"Stand down, Lucien," Seraphina said.
"He's the hunter! The prophecy"
"I know what the prophecy says," she snapped. "But I decide who I am."
Lucien glared at Xavier, venom in every word. "He'll kill you."
Xavier didn't lower his weapon. "Not tonight."
Seraphina stepped between them, a queen without needing a crown. "Enough."
Lucien vanished into mist, but the message lingered danger was rising, and their time was running thin.
She turned to Xavier again. "Do you believe monsters can be loved?"
He looked at her for a long, breathless moment.
"Yes," he said. "Because sometimes, we all are."
Then, against logic and fate, their hands touched again.
And for the first time in centuries, Seraphina's heart trembled not from hunger, but from hope.