Dark Heart, Gentle Hands
Chapter 25: My human boyfriend

Chapter 25: My human boyfriend

Alaric’s POV

The iron-bound doors groaned open at my touch, spilling torch-light across the marble like liquid gold. The audience hall my hall l was already packed, a living tide of vampires bound to my name. They stood in serried ranks beneath the rib-vaulted ceiling, eyes catching firelight like a thousand amber blades. Curiosity glittered on a few faces, boredom on others; here and there, a wiser pair of pupils gleamed with unease. Good. Let the caution bloom. Tonight, fear was the only language I intended to speak.

I refused the carved obsidian throne rising at the far end of the dais. Too distant, too ceremonial. Instead I stopped at the foot of the steps, folding my arms, letting the hush thicken until even the torches seemed to crackle more quietly. I held every gaze I could catch, peeling away composure the way one strips bark from a branch slow, relentless, inevitable.

"I’ll keep this simple," I said, voice carrying in the cavernous space like a drawn blade. "Someone hurt my human."

The reaction rippled outward: startled brows, the sharp breath of gossip suppressed, soft murmurs flaring and dying like sparks in bone-dry tinder. I let it wash over me. Let them know. I would never hide Enzo as though loving him were a weakness.

"His name is Enzo," I went on, pacing a few measured steps that made boot-heels echo off stone. "Call me sentimental, call me soft call me what you like. I care only that one of you crossed a line."

Silence greeted me. No movement, no voice, only the scent of old brick, candle wax, and faint apprehension. Pathetic. If they thought my mercy with Enzo would stretch to them, they had mistaken tenderness for impotence.

"He can scarcely stand," I said, softer now, the words heavy with memory. "Bruises blooming across his ribs, a fractured wrist, nights so knotted with terror he begs me not to let the dark in. I carried him to the bath with his heart pounding like a trapped bird, and every tremor of it pounded through me in return."

Nothing. A frozen forest of statues in fine coats and ancient velvet. They all stood like the nonliving things that they were.

A bitter laugh escaped me low, ragged at the edges. "And yet none of you knows anything."

I walked the line again, slower. Bodies shifted, shoulders squared too deliberately, throats swallowed nothing. Guilt had a scent all its own, metallic and sour beneath the perfume of blood and immortality; I hunted it the way wolves once hunted on the moonlit moors.

"One last chance," I murmured, but the quiet sharpened the threat. "Step forward. Own what you’ve done, or I will pry the truth out myself." And I wasn’t joking, I don’t joke.

My nostrils flared. And there like a thread of smoke through winter air I could smell Enzo’s scent, clinging to a leather coat three paces left of center. I turned toward the owner: Philip, spawn of the Baltic wars, arrogance stamped into every line of his posture. His expression strove for serenity, yet the pulse at his throat betrayed a quickening beat.

I crossed the space between us unhurriedly, each footfall a promise. He held his ground barely. I watched the flicker in his eyes: first disdain, then uncertainty, finally a flash of worry smothered beneath bravado.

"The last time we caught humans patrolling our territory you called me weak you told me I was growing soft," I reminded him, stopping with only inches to spare. My voice felt cold enough to frost glass. "You said I’ve changed, you said I wasn’t who I used to be."

"I merely spoke the truth, Sire," he said, a tilt to his chin he hoped looked regal.

"Is that so?" I inhaled, deep and unashamed. Enzo: warm skin, lavender soap, the coppery tang of dried blood. It clung to Philip’s sleeves like a fingerprint. "Because I can still smell him on you."

The color drained from his cheeks, but he rallied a sneer. "Scents linger. It proves nothing—"

"It proves everything." My words dropped to a whisper meant only for him yet loud enough to carry. "It proves everything little vampire, I’ve you forgotten how old I am? I’ve you forgotten I am an original? The first to ever walk the earth? I’ve you forgotten I made you? All your sense stems from me, whatever ability you think you have, mine is stronger. I know Enzo’s scent, I don’t need a soothsayer to tell me the scent I smell on you belongs to Enzo."

Philip’s shoulders tightened; his hands flexed as though weighing either apology or attack. He managed neither, eyes sliding off mine.

"You beat a defenseless man half to death," I said, keeping my tone level. "Not for trespass. Not in hunger. Merely to remind me who I once was."

I stepped close enough for him to feel a century of power humming beneath my skin. "Here is your reminder instead: the first vampire who ever walked this earth does not answer to fear. He inspires it."

Philip opened his mouth. I silenced him with a slow shake of my head. "You called me soft," I said quietly. "Allow me to demonstrate the opposite."

I pivoted, addressing two guards whose armor bore my sigil. "Dungeon. Now."

Steel-shod boots clanged as they moved. Philip’s composure cracked at last; the scent of panic burst into the air. Hands seized his arms. He struggled, but eternity’s strength lay in my guards’ grips.

As they dragged him toward the shadows yawning at the rear of the hall, I raised my voice one final time, letting it roll across the gathered court like thunder over open sea.

"The rules stand," I declared. "No innocent blood spilled. No harm to what is mine. We don’t harm innocent humans. Remember that law, or share his fate."

The doors slammed shut behind Philip’s retreating form. And in the echoing quiet that followed, every vampire present understood precisely how thin the line was between my mercy and my wrath.

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