I woke in the middle of the night not because of the city's noise, but because of a memory from a century ago, when I had made a vampire kneel in a pool of his own blood.
I opened my brown eyes and found myself asleep on the living room couch ... my house, I mean, our house. On another chair, I glanced at Lucas, the pureblood vampire I should have hunted, but could no longer do so because, in reality... I had become the monster I used to prey upon.
Lucas stopped what he was doing. He closed his laptop, looked at me, and raised both eyebrows.
I turned my face away from him.
Even after all these years, I still couldn't move on from being human. More importantly, every time I looked into Lucas's eyes, I couldn't see anything except hatred for the creature who had turned me into the monster I despised.
"Don't forget tomorrow morning," I said, looking away. "Deliver the order to Mawar Merah Street at the intersection."
Lucas glanced at me, then grunted.
The two of us lived from place to place. The longer we stayed in one location, the more people's suspicions grew—our faces hadn't aged at all since they first met us.
The people around us knew us as a married couple who had gotten married a year ago, since we'd also moved here around that time. But no one knew the truth: we were actually strangers forced to live under the same roof for a century.
"I know," Lucas replied flatly. His voice was low and soft, yet it cut through the silence of the living room without needing to rise. "Four bottles of extrait de parfum scented with sandalwood and bergamot. The owner of that perfume shop is paying double for an on-time delivery."
He stood and smoothed his wrinkle-free black linen shirt. His movements were so fluid and soundless—a hallmark of a pureblood that always made the hairs on the back of my neck rise whenever I watched him for too long.
"Besides," Lucas added as he walked toward our tiny kitchen, "you don't need to remind me as if I'm your servant, Valerie."
"You are supporting me, aren't you?" I shot back coldly. I rose from the couch, feeling the familiar chill creep through my toes as they touched the wooden floor. There was no heartbeat in my chest, no warm breath leaving my lips. Only the emptiness that kept reminding me this body was nothing more than a walking corpse.
Lucas stopped beside the mixing table. Dozens of dark glass bottles filled with oil extracts and essential oils stood lined up there. In the eyes of our neighbors and the local residents, we were a young couple running an exclusive custom perfume business—Niche Perfumers who worked behind closed doors and accepted only special orders.
The perfect job for two creatures of the night. Lucas's supernatural sense of smell allowed him to blend the most complex fragrances, scents ordinary humans could never create, while I... I handled the finances and logistics, making sure we stayed off every digital radar.
"I support you," Lucas said, turning to face me with his calm yet piercing blue eyes, "because if I let you walk around alone with hatred that vast, you'd turn yourself over to the Hunters within days. And I won't let the blood I gave you go to waste."
His emphasis on the word blood made my jaw clench.
"You can kill me now if you want," I challenged, taking one step toward him. "One silver stake through my heart, and your burden is over, Lucas. You'd be free."
Lucas didn't move. He merely looked at me with the corners of his lips slightly raised—not a mocking smile, but the weary look of someone who had heard the same words for decades.
He was close enough now that I could smell him beneath the perfume oils—sandalwood, cold rain, and something darker underneath, like smoke trapped in old velvet. I hated that I knew that scent better than my own. I hated that my eyes went, without permission, to the pale line of his throat above the open collar of his shirt.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
"You're staring, Valerie."
"I'm calculating where to put the stake."
"Mm." The corner of his mouth lifted a fraction higher. He didn't step back. Neither did I. For one long, silent second, the space between us felt less like distance and more like a held breath—the kind neither of us had needed in a century, and both of us still remembered how to hold.
Then he turned back to his bottles, and the air in the room let go.
"We've had this conversation in Prague in 1940, in London in 1980, and I'm sure I don't want to repeat it in this city," he said softly. He picked up a glass dropper bottle and let clear liquid drip into his new blend. "Get ready. We need to clear out the basement tonight. Someone from one of the Hunters just hacked the CCTV network in the next block."
My dead heart seemed to stop for the second time. Our personal tension evaporated at once, replaced by a very familiar fear.
"How close are they?" I asked, my sarcastic voice shifting into the firm tone of a former hunter.
"Close enough that we need to pack up this house before sunrise," Lucas answered calmly, as though fleeing a deadly threat were simply part of our daily routine. "So tone down that hateful look, my wife. We have a lot of work to do before moving to another city again."