Rheon Fated Blood
Rheon
Fated Blood
I’ve killed humans before. Quickly, mostly. Sometimes slowly—when the rage curled too tightly in my bones to be ignored.
But never like this.
Never trembling with the weight of her breath beneath my palm. Never holding my kill and wondering if it would shatter me to lose her.
I should’ve ended her the second she lunged. But then she looked at me.
And everything fell apart.
Her blade was fast. Sharp. Blessed in ancient rituals that stank of Guild dogma and iron-blooded cruelty.
She moved like a shadow taught to hunt light — fluid, dangerous, cold. But her eyes burned.
She was alive in a way most hunters aren’t. Not dead inside. Not dull and righteous.
She wanted to kill me, yes. But she wanted to understand me first. That made her worse.
That made her fascinating.
I matched her strike for strike, and every time our bodies clashed, I felt something strange coil around my ribs.
Recognition.
And desire.
Gods, she smelled like moonlight and ruined prayers. I could’ve ended it twenty different ways. My shadows moved with a will of their own. I summoned a spike of black flame — meant to stun, not kill. It tore into the earth beside her, and she didn’t flinch.
She threw her body forward instead, her blade grazing my shoulder — and then slicing into my jaw.
Blood welled down my neck. I tasted it.
She made me bleed.
And still I didn’t stop her.
Why?
Because the second her blood mixed with mine — the second that sacred heat sparked between us — my chest ignited.
The mate mark had been dormant for six centuries.
I’d all but forgotten it — a scar burned into my skin when I was still young enough to believe in fate. Nothing had ever awakened it.
Until now.
Until her.
It blazed beneath my skin, searing through every nerve, every breath, every cursed fiber of my being.
She collapsed backward, gasping. Her hand flew to her chest. I saw the shimmer of silver beneath her torn shirt — her mark.
And my soul cracked open.
The moment I touched her; my curse didn’t just react—it sang. And I knew I’d never be whole again without her.
We weren’t strangers. We were a prophecy waiting to unfold.
She didn’t plead.
She glared at me — wounded, bloodied, and still ready to fight if she had to. But I saw the crack in her armor. The flicker of confusion behind the hate. She had felt it too.
Her pulse was tangled with mine now.
And yet she didn’t know why.
I did.
The gods — the cruel bastards who forged our kinds in fire and shadow — had chosen her for me. Not a demon. Not a consort. Not a sacrifice.
A hunter.
A girl whose ancestors made a pact with my father and never told her. The blood bond. The mate spark.
It had finally come home.
And she had no idea who she really was.
I raised my hand one last time. Not to strike. To touch her.
She flinched, expecting death.
Instead, I brushed her cheekbone with my thumb — wiped the blood from her temple.
Her skin burned beneath my touch. So soft. So defiant.
“What do you do when the thing you’re supposed to kill... feels like it’s already inside you?”
And I said the one truth I could manage:
“You’re mine.”
Then I vanished into the shadows.
I didn’t go far. I stood beneath the trees behind the temple and listened to her stagger away. I memorized the rhythm of her breath. The weight of her presence.
She was not just the hunter sent to kill me. She was the only thing in this world strong enough to break me.
And she would. Eventually.
But not tonight.
I’ve walked this world for over six hundred years, drenched in war, in betrayal, in silence. But now I’ve seen her.
And I can’t pretend to be untouched anymore.
They told me love was a weakness. But they never warned me how hard it would be… to walk away from the one person fated to ruin me.