The underground estate did not feel like a home; it felt like a beautifully decorated tomb.
Inside Valerius’s private study, the air was cold, carrying the faint, sweet scent of old velvet and rain.
Scarlett stood frozen in the center of the room, her silver eyes fixed on the massive security display.
On the screen, the storm was twisting over the iron gates.
Standing under the purple shadows of the High Council enforcers was Lucas.
A sharp wave of relief hit her chest so hard it made her dizzy.
He was alive.
The boy who had shared her dark cell in Sector 4, the only human who remembered her real name, had survived.
But right behind that relief came a paralyzing fear that turned her blood to ice.
He was here, at the gates of a monster.
A suffocating guilt choked her—Lucas had marched into hell just to find her, completely unaware that she was no longer the girl he used to protect.
Go back, Lucas…
please, she thought desperately, her mind banging against her own mental walls.
You don’t know what he is.
Suddenly, the temperature in the room dropped.
Scarlett didn’t hear any footsteps, but she felt the sudden, heavy pressure in the air.
Valerius was standing right behind her.
His long, pale fingers slowly slid up her neck, his touch freezing against her skin.
He didn’t grip her tightly, yet she felt entirely pinned down, like an antique butterfly trapped under a glass display.
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear.
“Your pulse is frantic, Scarlett,” Valerius murmured.
His voice wasn’t angry; it was smooth, quiet, and terrifyingly calm.
“Three hundred and twenty beats per minute.
A human heart cannot sustain that speed for long.
Why the sudden panic?”
Scarlett forced her voice to remain steady, refusing to let her trembling show.
“He is an assassin from Sector 4.
A ghost from the execution cells.”
“Then he should not have come here,” Valerius whispered.
He gently turned her chin around, forcing her to look straight into his pitch-black eyes.
In the dim red emergency light, his gaze was an endless abyss, completely devoid of any human warmth.
“For three centuries, your mind has been a perfect, silent sanctuary for me.
I chose you for that peace.
But right now?
Your thoughts are scratching against your neural block.
You are remembering the warmth of his hands.
It is a very loud, unpleasant noise, my love.”
The absolute confidence in his soft tone was far more terrifying than any loud threat.
He slowly traced her bottom lip with his thumb, his dark gaze locked onto her silver eyes.
Every breath you take in this world happens because I allow it,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, possessive vibration.
“Do not waste your thoughts on dead things when I am standing right in front of you.
Stay here.
Watch how easily the past fades away.”
He pressed his thumb slightly harder against her lip, leaving a dull ache, before turning around.
His long black combat coat flared behind him like shadow wings as he stepped out.
The heavy iron security doors slammed shut with a deafening metallic thud, locking her in absolute darkness.
The ancient stone walls sealed her into a suffocating quiet.
Scarlett gripped her hands into tight fists, her chest heaving in the dark.
For three hundred long years, her frozen neural network had accepted this eerie, forced stillness without a fight.
But tonight, looking at the screen, the illusion was shattering.
She didn’t understand the strange, deep pull she felt toward the human boy, nor did she know why her own mind felt like a locked cage.
For the first time in her remembered life, she hated the silence.
For the first time, she desperately wanted that door to rip open.
Outside, at the massive gates, High Justice Julianus Thorne stood elegantly under a black umbrella.
His violet eyes glowed with an ancient, cruel authority as he tapped his obsidian skull cane against the wet concrete, sending ripples of gravity magic through the puddles.
Lucas stood beside him, his amber eyes sharp and scanning.
His tactical leather jacket was soaked, but his posture was perfectly steady.
His fingers were wrapped tightly around the hilt of his hidden plasma dagger.
The heavy iron gates groaned, parting slowly.
Valerius walked out into the pouring rain.
He didn’t carry an umbrella, but the raindrops froze into tiny ice crystals before they could even touch his pale face.
“Valerius,” Julianus spoke, his smooth voice cutting through the thunder.
“The High Council has issued the mandate.
Deliver the human anomaly to us.
The Syndicate needs her intact.”
Valerius stopped ten paces away, completely ignoring his uncle.
His black eyes were fixed entirely on Lucas.
The cold fury inside the vampire king was absolute.
This human boy had occupied a piece of his quiet sanctuary’s memory, and that was a mistake that carried only one penalty.
“You must be Lucas,” Valerius said, his voice a chilling whisper against the wind.
“And you must be the monster holding her,” Lucas replied, his voice raspy but fierce.
He didn’t step back.
“Her name is Scarlett.
She is a hunter weapon, not your property.
I am taking her back.”
Valerius’s eyes didn’t flash with anger; they simply turned darker, swallowing the ambient light.
“A brave statement for a mortal.”
But Lucas was a top-tier assassin trained in the dark cells.
His survival instincts triggered instantly.
Instead of dodging backward, Lucas anticipated the forward strike.
He lunged low, activating his silver plasma dagger mid-air.
Slash!
The blinding blue energy blade sliced through the pouring rain.
Valerius appeared right in front of him, but Lucas’s lightning-fast counter-attack caught the vampire king off guard.
The plasma blade grazed Valerius’s high collar, tearing the black fabric and leaving a thin, smoking singe mark across his pale jawline.
For a single second, the courtyard went dead silent.
The elite enforcers gasped.
No human had ever managed to touch Valerius Thorne.
Valerius paused, his fingers slowly touching the faint burn on his jaw.
He looked at the ash on his fingertip, his expression completely flatline, though the air around them suddenly turned heavy enough to crush the lungs of ordinary men.
“Impressive,” Valerius murmured.
Before Lucas could pull his dagger back for a second strike, Valerius moved at a speed that defied the laws of physics.
His pale hand blurred forward, striking Lucas squarely in the chest.
Crack!
The sound of fracturing armor and bone echoed through the storm.
Lucas was launched backward, his body slamming violently against the reinforced iron gates.
He fell into the mud, coughing up a dark splatter of blood, his plasma dagger flying out of his grip.
Valerius walked over slowly, his boots not even splashing the muddy water.
He stopped right above Lucas, looking down at him like an insect.
He raised his sharp, dark fingernails, aiming directly for the boy’s throat.
Inside the locked study, the violent impact against the outer gates shook the stone walls.
Scarlett slammed her hands against the cold iron door, her heart tearing in two.
And then, through the thick, reinforced walls of the estate, she heard it.
A muffled, agonizing cry of pain.
It was Lucas’s voice, crying out through the rain.
That single, broken sound shattered something deep within her hidden neural pathways.
The star-shaped scar on her wrist exploded with a blinding, forbidden crimson light.
The silent neural block in her mind—the wall that Valerius loved so much—did not just crack; it completely disintegrated under the sheer force of her agony.
A massive wave of pure, unrefined crimson mana blasted outward from her chest, ripping through the darkness of the sealed room.
The silence has been broken!
Valerius’s cold confidence met Lucas’s lethal assassin skills, but the pureblood king’s strength proved monstrous.
However, hearing Lucas’s cry of pain has triggered something forbidden inside Scarlett, completely destroying her neural block!
Question for the readers: Valerius fought to keep his world quiet, but now Scarlett’s mind is a roaring storm of raw emotion and power.
How will the obsessive king react when he realizes his perfect ‘silence’ is gone forever?
And can Lucas survive the wrath of the Thorne family?
The dark romance friction has officially exploded!