Eternal shadow of the heart Episode 2

Vlad’s POV

I had been watching her for nights, and yet the first time I actually spoke to her, I felt a strange tremor in my centuries-old heart. She was alive in a way most humans never were curious, fearless, bright even in the darkest corners of the city. And that frightened me.

I should have stayed away. I had spent hundreds of years avoiding attachments, avoiding the inevitable pain that came with them. Love for me wasn’t a choice—it was a weakness, one I had long ago learned to despise. But Isabella… she pulled at something I thought long dead, something I could not ignore.

“You should stay away from me,” I had said the night she crossed my path again, standing too close to the edge of the canal where the shadows swallowed everything. My voice was low, almost a growl beneath the calm mask I forced onto the world.

She turned to me, her wet hair plastered to her cheeks, her eyes glowing with that impossible combination of fear and daring. “I’m not afraid,” she said softly. “Not of you, not of anything.”

Her words pierced deeper than any blade. I clenched my fists, fighting the urge to reach for her, to pull her into the darkness where no one could touch her but where I could consume her completely. I had to remind myself: she didn’t know what I was. She didn’t know the truth.

I should have told her. I should have said: I am not like you. I am the night, and the night hungers. I am a vampire, cursed with immortality and a thirst you cannot imagine. Being near me is dangerous, deadly even.

But how could I warn her without scaring her away? How could I tell her the truth and not push her into someone else’s arms before I could claim her for myself?

“I… I don’t belong in your world,” I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. “Some darkness follows me. I cannot… I will not let it touch you.”

She tilted her head, as if she could see into the depths of me. “Maybe I’m not afraid of darkness,” she said. Her words were simple, but they carried weight boldness I hadn’t seen in any human for centuries.

I wanted to reach for her, to bring her into my arms, to let her feel the cold and the fire that existed inside me. But restraint is the only friend a vampire has when the heart rebels. I backed into the shadows, invisible yet ever-present.

Every fiber of my being screamed at me to keep her close. Every instinct I had honed over lifetimes told me to run. But I stayed, watching, waiting, because I could not would not let her slip away.

Isabella didn’t know it yet, but she had just stepped onto a path from which there would be no return. And I… I was the darkness waiting to claim her.

Continue reading Episode 3