Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Iam not watching the security feed.
I am reviewing tactical reports at my desk, as I do every night. The fact that one of the monitors happens to display a tracker moving through East Atlanta is coincidental. Routine. The kind of standard oversight any commander would maintain for a solo operative in neutral territory.
The lie tastes bitter even in my own mind.
Celeste left the compound at precisely 9 p.m. Dark jeans, leather jacket, hair pulled back in a way that exposes the line of her neck. I watched her cross the grounds from this very window, her stride confident, her shoulders squared against whatever the night might bring.
She looked like a warrior going to war. She looked like she belonged here.
She looked like something I have no right to want.
I force my attention back to the supply reports. Donor retention rates. Blood quality metrics. The endless administrative machinery that keeps my network running. Numbers and logistics and problems I know how to solve.
Not like the problem currently moving through the Decatur streets, her tracker blinking steadily on my screen, a rhythm I'd memorized without meaning to.
My phone buzzes. I reach for it too quickly, and the eagerness of the motion irritates me.
Celeste
On site. No issues.
Her words are professional. Efficient. Exactly what I'd expect from any operative reporting in. There's no reason for my shoulders to loosen at the sight of them, no reason for the knot in my chest to ease.
I type back:
Understood. Report any concerns immediately.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Celeste
Will do.
I set the phone down and stare at it like it might offer more. Like she might send another message just because. Like I'm a lovesick fool instead of a six-hundred-year-old vampire who has survived wars and betrayals and centuries of solitude.
This is beneath me.
I stand abruptly and move to the window, putting distance between myself and the screen.
The grounds are quiet, security patrols moving in their established patterns, everything functioning exactly as it should.
I built this. Every safeguard, every protocol, every layer of protection.
An empire of control that has kept my people alive for decades.
And none of it matters if she doesn't come back.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it, and I let out a breath that's closer to a growl than I'd like to admit.
When did this happen? When did a fledgling vampire with eight months of experience and a talent for insulting me become the axis around which my thoughts revolve?
I know the answer. I just don't want to examine it.
It was the alley. The first moment I saw her, dying and defiant, while she mustered the strength to call me a CEO vampire. To say I didn't look scary. Something cracked open in my chest that night. Something I'd kept sealed for three hundred years.
I thought I could contain it. Train her, use her skills, maintain appropriate distance. I am excellent at distance. I have made distance into an art form, a fortress, a way of life.
But she keeps slipping through the walls.
The way she challenged me in the training room, refusing to back down even when I pushed too hard. The way she fought beside me during the attack, moving like she'd been born for battle. The way she sees through every mask I wear and doesn't flinch at what's underneath.
I press my palm flat against the cold glass of the window and watch the fog of my unnecessary breath cloud the surface.
Catherine, I think, and the name is a wound that never fully healed.
Three hundred years ago, I loved a woman. Turned her to save her life. Watched her go feral from contaminated blood. Killed her with my own hands when she attacked innocent humans.
I swore I would never feel that way again. Never let anyone close enough to hurt me, or to be hurt because of me. The walls I built after Catherine were meant to be permanent. Unbreachable.
Celeste breached them without even trying.
My phone buzzes again, and I'm across the room before the second vibration ends.
Celeste
Complication. Guy at the counter watching us. Too interested. Might be nothing.
My entire body goes rigid. I can feel my fangs pressing against my gums, an instinctive response to perceived threat. To someone watching her.
Describe him.
The seconds between my message and her response stretch into small eternities.
Celeste
White male, early 30s, hasn't touched his coffee in 15 minutes. Keeps glancing over.
Can you get a photo without being obvious?
The image arrives moments later. Casual angle, her phone positioned like she's just scrolling, but the man at the counter is clearly visible in frame.
I pull up the file on Clara's referral. David Preston, the donor who vouched for her. The photo matches.
The relief that floods through me is disproportionate. Absurd. He's not a threat. Just an overprotective friend who should have notified Elena but didn't. A minor breach of protocol, nothing more.
My hands are shaking.
I stare at them, these hands that have killed hundreds, that have held power over life and death for six centuries. Shaking. Because for thirty seconds, I thought someone might be watching her with hostile intent.
David Preston. The referring donor. He's in our network. Not a threat, but find out why he's there.
I set the phone down and grip the edge of my desk hard enough that the wood creaks in protest.
This is a problem.
Not her. She's not the problem. She's capable, intelligent, learning faster than anyone I've trained in decades. She held her own against attackers her first week here. She provides tactical insights that my inner circle, with their centuries of experience, had missed entirely.
The problem is me.
The problem is that I can't think clearly when she's involved. Can't calculate risks objectively. Can't maintain the cold detachment that has kept me alive and kept my people safe for longer than most vampires have existed.
I've sent operatives on dangerous missions hundreds of times.
Watched them leave, knowing some might not return, and accepted that calculus as the cost of leadership.
I've made hard choices, sacrificed pieces to protect the whole, and done what needed to be done without letting sentiment cloud my judgment.
But I can't do that with her. The very thought of her in danger makes something feral rise up in my chest, something that doesn't care about strategy or acceptable losses or the greater good. Something that would burn the entire city to ash if it meant keeping her safe.
That terrifies me more than Konstantin ever could.
My phone buzzes.
Celeste
Confirmed. Clara was nervous about meeting alone, asked him to come. He should have notified Elena but didn't think of it. Not a setup, he actually verified her story from his end.
I exhale slowly. Read the message twice. Let the professional tone of her report anchor me back to something like rationality.
She's fine. She handled the complication perfectly. Identified the anomaly, reported it properly, waited for intelligence before acting. Good instincts. Sound judgment.
She doesn't need me hovering over her like a protective shadow.
But I want to be there anyway.
Another message arrives.
Celeste
Clara checks out. Genuine interest, understands the terms, has reasonable motivation (needs money for nursing school). David confirmed his original referral. No red flags. Recommend bringing her into vetting pipeline.
Professional. Concise. Solid assessment.
I should feel satisfaction. Pride, even. I'm training her well, and she's exceeding expectations. This is exactly what I wanted when I brought her into the inner circle.
Except it's not what I wanted at all. What I wanted was to keep her close.
What I wanted was an excuse to spend hours in the training room with her, correcting her stance, my hands on her body under the guise of instruction.
What I wanted was to watch her grow stronger and know that I was part of it.
What I want is her.
The admission settles into my bones like poison, or perhaps like medicine. I've been denying it for days, constructing elaborate justifications for my behavior, telling myself that my interest is strategic, protective, professionally appropriate.
It's none of those things.
I want her in ways I haven't wanted anyone in three centuries. I want to know what sounds she makes when she comes undone. I want to trace every scar on her body and learn the story behind each one. I want to wake beside her at sunset and see her face before I see anything else.
I want to tell her about the weight I've carried alone for six hundred years. I want her to know me. The real me, not the vampire lord or the gatekeeper or the mask I wear to survive.
And that wanting is exactly why I should stay away from her.
I've already shown her too much. The way I watched her fight. The way I growled at Julian for touching her. The cracks in my control that everyone in that room saw, even if she didn't understand what they meant.
That makes her dangerous. Not to my network or my position or my strategic interests.
To me.
Celeste
ETA 30 minutes. Going for a walk. Need to clear my head.
She needs to clear her head. After a successful mission, after proving herself capable and competent, she needs time to decompress. To process. To exist as something other than an operative completing an objective.
I understand that need. I've felt it myself, though I stopped indulging it centuries ago.
Be careful.
Celeste
Always am.
Always am. Like safety is a habit she's cultivated. Like danger is something she navigates daily without thinking about it.
She does. She has been. For eight months, alone, surviving a world that wanted to kill her long before I found her dying in that alley.
She doesn't need my protection. She's been protecting herself just fine.
But I want to protect her anyway. Want to stand between her and every threat, want to bare my fangs at anyone who looks at her wrong, want to wrap her in the safety of my power and never let anything touch her.
The intensity of the wanting should alarm me.
Instead, it just feels inevitable. Like something I've been walking toward my entire existence without knowing it. Every battle, every loss, every century of isolation. All of it leading to a woman with dark eyes and a sharp tongue who looks at me like I'm worth seeing.
I close the security feed before I can talk myself out of it.
If I'm going to understand what's happening to me, what she's doing to me, I can't do it from behind a screen. Can't analyze this from a safe distance like it's a tactical problem to be solved.
I need to face her. Talk to her. See if whatever I'm feeling survives actual proximity or if it dissolves into nothing when confronted with reality.
I leave my study and head toward the compound entrance.
The night air is cold against my skin as I step outside. I don't feel temperature the way humans do, but I register it, file it away as sensory data. The chill of autumn settling into winter. The smell of fallen leaves and distant rain.
The tracker on my phone shows her approaching the gate. Seven minutes out. Six.
I should go back inside. Wait for her report through proper channels. Maintain the professional distance that a commander should maintain with an operative.
I don't move.
Five minutes. Four.
I stand in the shadows near the main entrance, hands clasped behind my back, and wait for her like a man awaiting judgment. Like a condemned prisoner who walked willingly to the gallows.
Whatever this is, whatever is building between us, I need to understand it before I act on it. Need to know if it's real or just the desperate reaching of a man who's been alone too long.
But standing here in the dark, counting down the minutes until she appears, I'm starting to suspect that understanding won't matter.