Chapter 4
Nadia
I’d officially lost it.
Somewhere on the floor was a shattered wine bottle. I’d actually thrown it at him. A naked man had appeared out of a fucking stone coffin, and my brain’s first survival instinct was to waste a perfectly good cabernet.
I flung myself behind a wicker chair and peered over the edge. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my teeth. My brain was still buffering. My only weapon was gone.
He was still standing there, looking mildly inconvenienced, not a drop of wine on him.
Tall. Pale. Built like an Olympian. Tousled dark hair. A face both infuriating and unfairly symmetrical. If brooding were an Olympic sport, he would win. His eyes had that faint glow again, steady and impossible.
I crouched behind the wicker chair, trying to piece together my decision-making timeline.
Step one: see naked man.
Step two: throw wine.
Step three: regret everything.
Finally, he spoke, and his voice was low and rich and absurdly composed. “You enter an ancient chamber uninvited and speak first? In my day, that was considered rude.” His head tilted slightly. “Which century is this? And who dares disturb Lord Cristian D’Archeval?”
He said it like a threat wrapped in perfect grammar.
My mouth acted before my brain caught up. “Oh, hell no.”
Then I remembered he was naked. Completely, confidently, biblically naked.
“Oh my god,” I squeaked, dropping back behind the chair and covering my eyes. “Why are you naked? Why are you here?”
He made a small sound—half sigh, half confusion—and said, “You are the one trespassing in my resting place, madam.”
“Madam?” I repeated, still shielding my eyes. “Okay, we’re in a period drama now. Great.”
I decided running was the move. I popped up, made for the door, and immediately slammed straight into a wall.
“Ah!” I stumbled, stars bursting behind my eyes. Before I could hit the floor, a strong hand caught my elbow.
It wasn’t rough. It was careful—light pressure, no pain.
He steadied me, then let go as if my skin had burned him.
His hand was surprisingly warm, unlike the fictional vampires I had read about.
Well, I assumed he was a vampire, given the paleness, ungodly body, and the fact that he’d emerged from a freaking coffin.
“You’re bleeding,” he said. His nostrils flared slightly, but his voice stayed calm. Too calm.
Of course I was bleeding. In front of a vampire. Why wouldn’t that happen to me? Classic Nadia: human disaster, now conveniently prepped for consumption.
I screamed again. Apparently, my brain had entered loop panic mode.
He blinked once, expression unreadable. “There is no need for that.”
“No need? You came out of a coffin! You’re naked!”
He tilted his head. “You disturbed my rest.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry your nap got interrupted by me discovering your crypt!”
My heart hammered, but something was off.
The longer he stood there with his hand on my elbow, the less panicked I felt.
Which made no sense. My brain should’ve been setting off fireworks labeled Fight or Flight, but instead, it was like someone had turned down my internal volume. My pulse slowed. My breathing steadied.
The closer he stepped, the calmer I became.
Weird. Really fucking weird.
He frowned slightly, studying me as though I were the ghost. “Who are you?”
“Nadia,” I said, my voice shaking despite myself. “Nadia Yates.”
The second it left my mouth, my brain screamed: Why would you tell the scary coffin man your real name? I should’ve said something fake. Like Tiffany. Or Mildred. No one murders a Mildred.
“Nadia.” He repeated it quietly, tasting the syllables as if trying to decide if they meant something.
Oh great. He was memorizing it. Probably to etch it onto a tombstone later.
I swallowed hard. “You?”
“Cristian D’Archeval. Where… am I?”
“Boston.”
His brow furrowed. “Boston. I do not know that realm.”
I blinked. “Realm? It’s… Massachusetts?”
He looked blank.
“United States?” I offered.
“Where is that?”
I exhaled, rubbing my temple. “Oh boy.”
He hesitated, then said, “What year?”
“Twenty-twenty-five.”
He went perfectly still. His expression didn’t change, but something in the air did. His chest stopped moving. His eyes unfocused.
“I overslept,” he said finally. “By a few lifetimes.”
I stared at him. “A few what?”
He lifted his gaze, composed again. “I was put to sleep in the year 1650.”
My jaw dropped. “So, you’re over four hundred fucking years old?”
His brow creased. “Your language has evolved poorly.”
“Oh, bite me.”
I winced. Wrong choice of words, Nadia.
His expression didn’t change, but there was a glint of something feral behind his eyes that made me wish I’d said hug me instead.
“I was born in the late-sixteenth century.”
I pressed my palms to my cheeks. “Right. Definitely drank too much. I need food. I’m hallucinating. You’re a dehydration dream.”
Without waiting for his reply, I started for the stairs, still holding my head. “I need carbs.”
He followed, soundless, two steps behind. I could feel him watching the shadows warily. I wasn’t entirely sure it was a good move to turn my back to a vampire, but something deep in my gut told me I was safe. And my gut was rarely wrong.
No matter how insane it was at the moment.
When we reached the kitchen, I pulled open the fridge, desperate for a hit of quick dopamine in the form of sugary chemicals. Cristian hovered in the doorway as if he was deciding whether the room was safe.
I grabbed the milk, cereal, and a bowl. “Okay, snack time. Brain reboot.”
He stared, transfixed, as I poured the milk. “What manner of alchemy is this?”
“It’s breakfast. Or dinner. Or a cry for help.”
He crouched slightly to study the cereal box like it was an ancient relic. “You eat… these?”
“Yes,” I said through a mouthful. “They’re called Cheerios.”
“Curious,” he murmured, then reached out and poked the fridge. “It hums.”
“That’s the fridge,” I said.
“The… what?”
Okay, I guess we were doing a whole… introduction to the twenty-first century crash course, then. Great. Better than murdering me.
I opened the door to show him. The light inside blinked on.
He recoiled. “It lives,” he said quietly.
“It refrigerates,” I corrected. “Big difference.”
He didn’t look convinced.
Then Alexa chimed in from the counter in her mechanical voice: “It’s Monday. Don’t forget to take the trash out.”
Cristian froze. Every muscle locked. His gaze whipped toward the device. “Who speaks?”
I sighed. “Alexa.”
He pointed. “You keep her imprisoned in the box?”
I tried not to laugh. “She’s not real.”
“She spoke.”
“She’s programmed.”
“She is captive.”
I groaned. “You know what, sure. I’m a witch, Alexa’s my familiar, and this fridge is our portal to hell.”
He nodded, looking genuinely thoughtful. “That explains much.”
While he investigated the appliances like an overcautious archaeologist, I sat at the table and ate my cereal in numb silence. When I looked up again, he was still there. Still impossibly tall, still naked, still watching me like I was the strangest part of this entire situation.
I swallowed another spoonful. My mind cleared a bit now that I had something to soak up the wine in my stomach, and I started to accept this was in fact not a hallucination.
“I really need to get the hell out of this house,” I muttered.
He tilted his head, serious as ever. “That would be unwise.”
Was that a threat? Screw the house-sitting money. Screw the fact that people were subletting my apartment. I was leaving. I didn’t care if there was a naked vampire, a curse, or an ancient family of ghosts judging my Target cardigan—I was getting in my car and driving far, far away.
My keys were somewhere. Shoes were optional. The door was right there.
I made it three steps before the weirdest feeling hit me.
It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t reason. It was… wrongness. Like walking out of the kitchen mid-cup of coffee and realizing you’d left the stove on. My hand was already on the doorknob when my chest tightened. Not sharp—just deep, like my heart was tugging a string I couldn’t see.
I froze.
Behind me, Cristian’s voice came, calm and irritated in that unbothered vampire way.
“You can try,” he said, “but it will not work.”
I turned slowly.
He was standing a few feet away, still gloriously unclothed and somehow looking like I was the one being indecent. “Excuse me?”
“You cannot leave.”
“Can’t or shouldn’t?”
“Both,” he said flatly. “We are bound.”
I blinked. “Bound? What do you mean, bound? Please specify before I panic.”
He turned away, perfectly casual about being both undead and undressed. “You woke me. That… links us.”
“I’m sorry—what?”
He started walking toward the hall, unhurried, and I scurried after him. “No, no, you don’t just drop a ‘we’re bound’ bomb and then stroll away. What does that even mean?”
He stopped so suddenly I nearly plowed right into him. His back was to me, his shoulders rigid. When he spoke, his tone was even, but something about it felt carefully edited.
“You woke me,” he said again, quieter now. “That act created a tether between us. The link will not break easily.”
“Tether,” I repeated, like that would help it make sense.
He looked at the wall instead of me, jaw tight. “It means you should not run off before I understand the parameters of our situation.”
I laughed, because that’s what my body did when my brain short-circuited. That trait hadn’t endeared me to many people—hopefully it wouldn’t offend the vampire too much. “Right. Sure. I’ll just… not run away from the undead stranger I apparently have a soul cord with.”
His gaze dropped to my feet. “You should not be walking barefoot on cold stone.”
I blinked at him. “That’s what you’re focusing on?”
He said nothing. I decided to ignore it, because my list of “unprocessed trauma events” was getting long.