Prologue.
> The first time she saw him, Evelyn was bleeding out on asphalt, her lungs full of smoke and her soul slipping into silence. He knelt beside her like a shadow in a suit, whispered her name like he owned it, and tasted her blood like it was a promise.
She should've died that night. Instead, she woke up cursed—tethered to a stranger who wasn't entirely human, and marked by a bond older than death.
Now the hunger isn't just his. It's hers too.
Chapter 1: Blood and Asphalt
Evelyn Cross didn't remember the moment her car hit the guardrail.
All she remembered was the sound—metal shrieking, glass exploding, and then a silence so thick it pressed on her ribs like a second death.
Rain poured hard and fast, drowning the city in silver and smearing her blood across the pavement. The streetlights above flickered, casting warped reflections of her twisted car onto the slick asphalt. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed and then… faded.
She blinked. Once. Twice.
She shouldn't have been alive. Her bones screamed. Her lungs burned. Her body refused to move.
But she wasn't alone.
A man stepped into her blurred vision—tall, inhumanly still, dressed in black. His face was sharp, elegant, unreal. Not beautiful. Not kind. Dangerous. Like a weapon forged in some ancient place where mercy was extinct.
He crouched beside her, tilting his head like he was studying her last breath.
"You weren't meant to survive this," he said softly, voice velvet and shadow. "But fate has other plans."
His fingers brushed her jaw. Cold. Steady. Gentle.
Then she felt it—a searing pulse behind her eyes. Her heart clenched, stuttered, then beat again, this time slower... deeper... like it was syncing to a rhythm that wasn't hers.
He leaned in. Close enough for her to see the red in his eyes—not just a trick of the light, but real, glowing like coals buried beneath centuries of ash.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to choose you."
His lips grazed her skin.
And then darkness.
Three Days Later
Evelyn woke in a hospital bed with a heart monitor beeping beside her and no memory of the crash. The nurses called it a miracle. The doctors said her injuries didn't match the wreckage. The police asked who pulled her from the burning car.
She didn't have an answer.
Only a recurring dream of a man with eyes like blood and hands like ice… whispering her name like it belonged to him.