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A roar shattered the air. Mathias exploded through the doorway, tackling the rogue with vicious force. They crashed across the room, furniture splintering. Sunlight poured through the open door, catching Mathias full across his back and shoulders as he shielded Carson.
“Get out!” Mathias bellowed, voice laced through with pain.
The rogue laughed wildly, slashing with claws before fleeing into the shadows of the hallway. But the damage was done. Mathias staggered in and slammed the door shut. Blisters rose instantly on his exposed skin—angry red welts bubbling into weeping sores where the sun’s bite had landed. The scent of scorched flesh filled the apartment, metallic and acrid.
“Mathias—” Carson reached for him, horror and need colliding as the vampire crumpled to his knees. Blistering skin cracked and oozed, the proud sire reduced to trembling vulnerability in the fractured daylight bleeding through the blinds.
“Blood,” Mathias rasped, eyes black with agony and hunger. “Yours...I need it to heal.”
Carson didn’t hesitate. He dropped beside him, offering his wrist. Mathias struck with desperate precision, fangs sinking deep. The pull was immediate—that familiar euphoric haze flooding Carson’s veins even as the essence of sun-heated skin flowed the other way. Mathias drank sparingly at first, then deeper, his body absorbing the life Carson gave. In return, a trace of vampire spirit seeped into the bite, crossing lines Carson could no longer define. Prey. Lover. Vessel. Partner.
The blisters began to recede, raw skin knitting with unnatural speed. Mathias pulled back with a groan, lips stained dark, and crushed his mouth to Carson’s in a bloody kiss. The subtle tastes of iron and salt exploded between them, shared and sacred. Cool hands, still trembling from the sun’s assault, stripped Carson with rough urgency. They tumbled to the floor, bodies fusing next to the narrow shaft of avoided light.
Mathias moved with pained reverence, entering Carson in one claiming thrust that drew a shattered cry from both. Each stroke deepened the exchange—blood and seed, hunger and soul—until Carson lost track of where he ended and Mathias began. The high crashed over him in waves, drowning all thought as he begged with wordless moans.
In the aftermath, they lay tangled, Mathias’ healing skin pressed to Carson’s sweat-slick chest. The vampire’s heart beat strong and steady against him, borrowed life pulsing through the link. Carson traced a fading blister with gentle fingers, the metallic tang lingering on his tongue, the blurred edges of his own identity settling into something new and terrifying.
He wasn’t just prey anymore. He wasn’t fully human either. The lines between lover and sustenance, salvation and ruin, had distorted beyond recognition—and part of him craved the fog and the pain.
***
Mathias
Mathias held Carson close, one hand stroking slowly down the man’s back as the last waves of their shared ecstasy ebbed. Carson was still only semiconscious, eyelids fluttering, breaths shallow and warm against Mathias’ throat. The bond between them thrummed with shared exhaustion and lingering pleasure, but beneath it, Mathias felt a sharper warning. It was a discordant note vibrating through their connection.
The rogue.
He had sensed the intruder the moment it crossed the threshold of Carson’s apartment, the feral’s hunger slicing across the bond like a jagged blade. That was how he had arrived in time—the soul-mate link had screamed, pulling him from the shadowed underbelly of the city with brutal urgency. Now the creature had retreated into the dim hallway instead of fleeing into daylight, still lurking, still dangerous.
Mathias pressed a final kiss to Carson’s temple. “Rest, love. I’ll be right back.”
He rose fluidly, leaving Carson curled on the blankets, dazed and pliant. The rogue’s scent trail was easy to follow—sour sweat, rotting desperation, and the sharp tang of madness. Mathias found him crouched in the shadowed hallway, fangs bared, eyes wild with the fractured hunger of a failed turning.
“You dared touch what is mine,” Mathias said, voice low and lethal.
The feral hissed, lunging weakly. Mathias caught him by the throat with one hand, lifting him off the ground as if he weighed nothing. The rogue’s claws scrabbled uselessly against his arm.
“There is only one penalty for attacking a soul mate,” Mathias continued, dragging the creature towards the window at the end of the hall where afternoon light still streamed through a gap in the blinds. “The sun has always been the most honest judge among our kind.”
The feral’s eyes widened in terror as Mathias shoved the blinds aside. Golden light spilled across the hallway floor. The rogue howled—a raw, inhuman sound of complaint—as the first rays touched his skin. Blisters rose instantly, skin cracking and blackening. Mathias held him there, unflinching, until the creature’s struggles grew frantic and then feeble.
With a final shove, he pushed the feral fully into the light.
The howling intensified for a few terrible seconds, then choked off into wet, sizzling sounds as the rogue collapsed into a blistering husk. Smoke curled upwards. Within moments, only ash and charred remnants remained on the ground.
Mathias stood motionless for a long beat, the jealous bitch sun warming his own exposed skin just enough to sting. A reminder. A warning. Then he turned away, returning to Carson.
Mathias walked into the apartment, the acrid scent of charred flesh still clinging to his body. Carson lay where he had left him, curled on the blankets, chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm. The bond hummed with lingering exhaustion and trust. Mathias knelt beside him for a moment, brushing damp hair from his forehead, before rising to face the two figures who had arrived in his absence.
Gina and Zeke stood just inside the doorway, having sensed the disturbance through the camp ties.
“A rogue,” Mathias said without preamble, quietly. “Feral. It came for Carson. I dealt with it.”
Gina’s dark eyes sharpened. “Another one? We’ve seen a slight uptick lately—ferals skirting the edges of our territory, testing boundaries. Skittish. Desperate.”
Mathias nodded, jaw tight. “It may be time to locate the sire responsible. This cannot continue.”
Zeke shifted, his steady presence a quiet counterpoint to the tension. “Sires,” he corrected gently. “There are at least four distinct scents among the ferals we’ve encountered recently. This wasn’t the work of a single reckless vampire.”
