The breakfast spread between them remained largely untouched.
Kristen had managed to force down a few bites of honey-glazed pastry and a handful of strawberries, but his appetite was a fragile, uncertain thing, easily startled by the predator lounging across from him.
Julian, for his part, seemed perfectly content to simply watch him eat.
The vampire had refilled his glass twice now.
The liquid inside was dark, almost black, and thick enough to cling to the crystal in slow, viscous streaks.
It wasn’t wine.
Kristen had known that from the first moment he’d sat down, but he’d been too busy wrestling with his own tangled mess of shame and confusion to comment on it.
Now, however, the silence had stretched long enough that the question pressed insistently against his teeth.
“Is that blood?”
Julian’s lips curved into a slow, indulgent smile.
He lifted the glass, swirling its contents with an elegant flick of his wrist, and held it up to the golden morning light streaming through the tall windows.
The liquid glowed a deep, translucent crimson.
“Very observant, my darling Alpha.
I was beginning to wonder if you’d worked up the courage to ask.”
Kristen’s jaw tightened.
“It wasn’t about courage.
I was just hoping I was wrong.”
“And yet here we are.” Julian took a deliberate sip, his crimson eyes never leaving Kristen’s face.
A single drop of blood clung to his lower lip before his tongue darted out to catch it.
“Would you like to try some?
I’m told werewolf blood is something of an acquired taste, but I’ve always found it quite—”
“No,” Kristen cut him off flatly.
“I don’t want to try your fucking blood.”
“Pity.”
The word hung in the air between them, light and mocking, and Julian settled back into the emerald velvet sofa with the boneless grace of a contented cat.
He didn’t push further.
He simply continued to drink, watching Kristen over the rim of his glass with an expression that was almost…
peaceful.
It was strange.
Unsettling.
For a few long minutes, neither of them spoke.
The only sounds were the distant ticking of a grandfather clock somewhere deeper in the chateau and the soft clink of Julian’s glass meeting the low table.
It wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but it wasn’t hostile either.
A temporary ceasefire.
A resemblance of peace.
Kristen found himself studying the vampire with a different kind of attention now.
Less defensive.
More curious.
“You’ve evolved,” Kristen said finally, his voice quieter than he’d intended.
“My mom told me some of it.
The daylight walking.
The bloodlust buffer.
But I’ve been…
out of touch.
With what you are.
What you’ve become.”
Julian arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow.
“Are you asking me to educate you, little wolf?”
“I’m asking you to explain why my pack has been living in terror of monsters that don’t even appear to be the same species we thought we were fighting.”
For a moment, Julian simply stared at him.
Then, slowly, he set his glass down on the table and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
The movement brought him closer to Kristen, close enough that the chill radiating off his skin brushed against Kristen’s bare arms.
“How delightfully curious you are,” Julian murmured.
“It’s rather endearing, really.
Like watching a puppy discover its own reflection.”
Kristen’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m not your—”
“You’re not my pet, yes, yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear.” Julian waved a dismissive hand.
Consider it a wedding gift.”
He settled back again, crossing one long leg over the other.
When he spoke again, his voice had shifted into something smoother, more measured—the tone of a lecturer addressing a particularly slow student.
“During the era of the Oracles, when your kind was at the height of its power, vampires were…
not what we are today.”
Kristen frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we were weak,” Julian said, and there was something almost bitter flickering behind his crimson eyes.
“Pathetically, laughably weak.
The histories your pack has passed down—the stories of vampires as terrifying, bloodthirsty demons—were carefully cultivated myths.
Propaganda, if you will.
Spread by my ancestors to keep your kind afraid and, more importantly, to keep you from looking too closely.”
Kristen’s breath caught in his throat.
“That’s not possible.
The elders said—”
“The elders of your pack know nothing,” Julian cut in smoothly.
“They never did.
This secret was guarded at the highest levels of the vampire clans.
Only the ruling bloodlines were permitted to remember the truth.”
He paused, taking another slow sip of blood before continuing.
“Back then, we couldn’t touch even the smallest ray of sunlight without turning to ash.
A single beam through a cracked window was a death sentence.
Our bloodlust was uncontrollable—we had to feed five, sometimes six times a day just to maintain basic motor function.
And during the feeding itself?” His lips twisted into a cold, humorless smile.
“We were completely vulnerable.
Sluggish.
Distracted.
A human child with a sharp enough stick could have killed a feeding vampire in the Oracle era.”
Kristen stared at him, his mind reeling.
This couldn’t be true.
Everything he’d been taught, everything the pack had believed for generations—it was all built on a lie?
“If that’s true,” Kristen said slowly, “then why didn’t we—”
“Wipe us out?” Julian finished for him, his smile sharpening into something almost predatory.
“Why didn’t the mighty werewolves, blessed by their Moon Goddess, simply exterminate the vampire scourge when they had the chance?”
He leaned forward again, and this time there was nothing playful in his expression.
“Because you were busy, my dear Alpha.
Busy building your communities.
Busy expanding your territories.
Busy fighting amongst yourselves over bloodlines and borders and which pack had the strongest Alpha.
The wolves of the Oracle era could have eliminated us in a single season.
It would have been laughably easy.
But they were so focused on their own glorious civilization that they never bothered to look down at the parasites scurrying in the shadows beneath their feet.”
Julian’s voice had dropped into something cold, a bitterness that sounded centuries old bleeding through his usual mocking composure.
“And by the time your kind remembered we existed, it was far too late.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
Kristen’s hands had gone still on his knees, his pastry forgotten on the plate beside him.
His mother’s face flashed through his mind—Rachel, standing in the office with tears streaming down her cheeks, telling him the vampires had evolved beyond anything they could fight.
If she knew this…
if she knew that their ancestors could have ended this threat before it ever began…
She would be absolutely furious.
The thought was almost enough to make him laugh.
Almost.
His mother had spent weeks negotiating a treaty with monsters that, five hundred years ago, could have been wiped out by a well-timed dawn raid.
Every wolf who had ever died at a vampire’s fangs, every single one of them had died because their ancestors had been too proud, too distracted, too busy to finish a war they didn’t even realize they were winning.
And now Kristen was paying the price for that arrogance.
Married to a monster.
Sleeping in a dead man’s bed.
The irony was so bitter it made his teeth ache.
But then another thought struck him, colder and sharper than the first.
His mother hadn’t told him about the alliance until the very last minute.
She and his father had negotiated for a month in secret, hiding the truth from him, letting him run through the forest with his friends like everything was normal while they bartered his future away behind closed doors.
They’d only told him when the vampires forced their hand—when Julian’s “letter” nearly killed him and his friends at the border gates.
If she could keep that from him, what else was she hiding?
“Kristen.”
Julian’s voice cut through his spiraling thoughts like a blade.
Kristen blinked, his gaze refocusing to find the vampire studying him with an unreadable expression.
“You’ve gone somewhere very far away,” Julian observed.
“Care to share?”
“No,” Kristen said hoarsely.
“I don’t.”
“Suit yourself.” Julian glanced down at his wrist, where a sleek silver watch glinted against his pale skin.
“However, I would suggest you pull yourself together.
My father will be arriving shortly.
We’ll meet him in my office.”
The words hit Kristen like a bucket of ice water.
“Your father?
The head of the clan?”
“The very same.” Julian rose from the sofa in a single fluid motion, smoothing down the front of his waistcoat.
“He doesn’t live here, if that’s what you’re worried about.
The estate is mine.
He merely visits when coven business requires it—and meeting his son’s new spouse certainly qualifies.” His tone was light, but there was a tension in his jaw that hadn’t been there before.
“I’d recommend changing into something more appropriate.”
Kristen looked down at himself—at the gray shorts and black tank top he’d thrown on after his shower.
It was practical.
Comfortable.
It was his.
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice coming out harder than he’d intended.
Julian paused mid-step.
He turned back slowly, and for just a moment, Kristen saw it—a flash of brilliant, burning crimson in his eyes.
Not the lazy, amused red of their breakfast conversation.
This was something sharper.
Something genuinely angry.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
Kristen’s wolf stirred uneasily in the back of his mind.
‘Careful,’ it warned, its voice uncharacteristically serious.
‘Don’t forget—the predator kills prey with the same teeth it uses to nip playfully at its young ones.’
But Kristen held his ground, lifting his chin in quiet defiance.
He was tired of submitting.
Tired of being dressed up and positioned and told what to do.
If Julian’s father wanted to meet him, he could meet him as he was—a wolf in borrowed territory, not a doll in vampire silks.
The moment stretched.
The anger in Julian’s eyes flickered, warred with something Kristen couldn’t name, and then it vanished.
Julian’s expression smoothed back into that perfect, neutral mask, as if the flash of temper had never happened.
He said nothing.
Not a single word.
He simply turned on his heel and walked toward the doorway, his footsteps utterly silent on the marble floor.
He paused at the threshold.
“My office.
One hour.
Don’t be late.”
And then he was gone, leaving Kristen alone with the remnants of breakfast and a sinking realization that he had just won a battle he didn’t fully understand—and that the war was only just beginning.
He looked around in silence.
“Well, where the hell is your office, dip shit!”
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