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Chapter Text

The room was still dark when Zero woke, head spinning and lungs gasping for air that didn't exist. Sweat soaked his sheets and flames ate at his skin, his body thrashing uselessly away from an intangible attacker. He spasmed and jerked, his head thrust back into the pillows, hands clamped on his throat where the burning was the worst. His fangs dug into his lips, filling his mouth with blood. He choked, coughing blood, struggling to take in a deep breath. His mouth full of wet copper, Zero closed his eyes and scrambled to focus on something, anything, other than his traitorous body.

It went on like that for maybe fifteen minutes. It felt like an eternity. Finally the pain receded, flowing back from whence it came. Minute by minute he managed to wrangle his body back from what had possessed him. He suck in deep breaths and winced as the air caught in his sore throat.

He tried to breath more gently, forcing his chest to move in conservative, controlled increments. He opened his mouth, spitting out the blood in coughs and moans. His eyes (his red eyes, he was willing to bet) slipped shut from the weariness—the deadness—he felt in his aching limbs. Exhaustion ate at his body and his mind.

And it wasn't even that bad this time, Zero thought ruefully. Grimacing, he tossed an arm over his face and shifted so that he could see the glowing numbers on his alarm clock. 5:42 AM. Fuck.

Deciding that moving wasn't all that prudent, Zero stared up at the ceiling, content to watch the pre-dawn light paint everything in eerie blue. Zero relished the peace. Peace was rare.

The last few months had been a new kind of Hell for Kiryuu Zero. He had sunk himself into rebuilding Cross Academy, but with the reconstruction slowly finishing Zero was more often left without distraction. The attacks had come as though to fill his spare time. They appeared randomly, searing him with physical pain unlike anything Zero had ever felt, locking his body stiff with agony. Somewhere in the midst, his eyes turned red and his fangs sprung forth like he was in the grip of bloodlust. But Level-D bloodlust was something he didn't experience anymore, of course. Not since Ichiru’s sacrifice. He just had the pain. Blinding, breathless pain.

You win some, you lose some . Zero understood that. He wouldn't even be that concerned if the attacks didn't make his seal behave weirdly. Zero could cope with pain; he was practically designed for it. But the pulsing, crackling, straining against his skin; the pulling, like the ink wanted to jump off his neck if not shatter entirely, made Zero's heart stand still. It was like something was pushing against the binds of the seal's magic. It was different from the tearing, rending sensation he felt when his sanity slipped.

Zero had decided that the attacks were residual from whatever freaky vampire shit he'd encountered fighting Rido. Since he'd done his damnedest to keep everyone from finding out about them, no one had been given the chance to burst his bubble. He tried not to think about it. Hence, Zero only had one other theory: either Rido had cursed him, or Kuran Kaname had finally grown the balls to work some freaky vampire shit of his own. Perhaps they both had, as a final Kuran family bonding activity.

A vision of Kuran Jr. wearing a blue wizard's hat covered with silver moons and stars, standing over a black cauldron, swam into his mind. There were dancing dishes, nursery rhymes, and a wooden wand involved.

Snickering, Zero slowly hauled himself up from his soft blue sheets. They were gross with blood and sweat, and needed to be changed. First, though, Zero needed to stand. He managed to on shaking legs, his humour lost to the lingering muscle aches. Yet, slowly, he did manage to rise to his full six-foot height. He winced as his body rebelled against the action, his stomach rolling, before slamming his hand down on the alarm clock, three minutes away from ringing.

Sighing, Zero let himself have one last, long breath. Then he hit the lights, balled up the sheets for the laundry, and consigned himself to preparing for another day. The process was easier than many would have expected. Unlike Yuuki's room, back when she'd lived in the Day Class dorms, Zero's room was tidy. Some—Cross—had said to the point of obsession. Not actually, Zero would maintain.

Zero was, perhaps, slightly obsessive by nature. After all, his most memorable childhood moment was stabbing a Pureblood with a butter knife in an attempt at revenge-fuelled genocide. But he didn’t much care about neatness. You just had to look at the way he dressed (or his life) to realize that. Rather, Zero just didn't have a lot of stuff. You didn't need a lot of stuff when you figured you were going to die before you finished high school.

Outside of Zero’s personal trauma, hunters were ultimately trained to be spartan. His uniforms were all neatly folded and tucked away in his closet. A desk sat beside the closet and played host to his school stuff. A portable music player lived on the bedside table beside Zero's cellphone. They were neighbors to the digital alarm clock, though he rarely ever used it anymore between his insomnia and the attacks. His secret pride and joy, a slightly beaten-up guitar, rested against the window seat. Pressed against of the only available wall space was a shelving unit stuffed with books—not sleeping much left Zero with more free time than most people.

Anything of his that was irreplaceable was in a black backpack under his bed. He displayed none of those things. They were too precious and—too much. He couldn't look at those things everyday. His parents' wedding photo, still in the original frame; Ichiru's first knife, carefully maintained; Yuuki's last Christmas present to him, a photo collage of happy memories. A few other bits that Zero couldn't make himself throw away. Those items were tucked between a change of clothes and accompanied by close to three thousand dollars in cash. A minor armory of weaponry filled the rest of the pockets, with ration bars and the bare minimum of medical supplies. A passport and papers with his face and a different name were sewn in under the lining.

It was a go-bag. It was everything he needed to disappear. It wasn't a part of his hunter training. Hunters were trained to rely on the Association. A hunter who disappeared was a dead hunter, one way or the other. The bag was all Zero. Not that Yagari would have disapproved, Zero imagined. But then, most hunter masters weren't like Yagari. They weren't as suspicious of the Association. They didn't have Kiryuu Zero, hunter prodigy and Level D vampire, as a student.

(Zero recognized that he was probably responsible for most of Yagari's paranoia. That didn't mean that he wasn't grateful for it. Or guilty about it. But that wasn't something Zero liked to think about. So, he didn't.)

Yet despite Zero’s hard-won nihilism, years of living with Kaien Cross meant that his room did have some personality. There were a couple pictures of himself, Cross, and Yuuki from before Rido; one of himself and Yagari, wearing matching glares; Kaito and Zero, eleven and smiling.

Ichiru had taken the photo. Cross hadn't known that when he'd snuck in and hung it up. Even he wasn't that socially inept. But Zero hadn't taken it down. He didn't examine why.

Less explosively, there was also a film poster for a parody horror movie, Vampires Suck—Kaito's fault.

Zero's lip quirked, looking around his room. There was evidence here that he had a life outside of Cross Academy, vampires, and killing vampires. Not a big life, but some kind of life. What would the Night Class say if they found out about that?

With that amusing thought to entertain him, Zero showered and dressed. He checked the mirror to confirm that his eyes weren't still red and left his room with his tie undone and his vest abandoned on his bare mattress.

Moving silently, Zero made his way up to the roof of the Day Class boys' dorm. He had an hour until class and the roof was one of the few places he could find some quiet when his room felt too small. That was because, Zero reasoned, the door to the roof was supposed to be locked. No one had yet figured out that someone might have used his vampire strength to snap the lock in half.

Rido had left chaos in his wake. Zero was prepared to do much more difficult things than break locks to find some quiet in that chaos.

Careful to avoid the roof’s edge, where a do-gooder might notice him and whip Cross into a panic, Zero sat down at the threshold and leaned back against the door. Up here, the birdsong was loud and cheerful. A lingering summer breeze ruffled the treetops. The tallest ones dappled shade over the roof, granting a little respite from the sun. It was pleasant.

Sitting there surrounded by all that pleasantness, Zero pursed his lips and let his mind go to his list of problems. Priority one was the Association—it was in an uproar over the President, increasingly obvious vampiric corruption, and the conflicts associated therewith. There was an election coming up to decide a new president, but until then Cross and Yagari were only just keeping the hunters functioning. There were rumours of a schism between the older generation and Zero's floating around. It was up for debate whether there would be a revolution, a coup d'état, or a complete immolation.

Kiryuu Zero: hero or vermin? Was a polarizing point of division.

If the hunters were on fire, then vampire society was already in ashes. More than a hundred human deaths had occurred in Rido's attack, not including the hundreds of Level Ds Rido had created. There could be even more than that; what was left of the Association theorized that at least thirty percent of his Ds had escaped. All of those deaths and missing persons had to be covered up. That alone would have been enough to keep the Senate busy for months, bullying the human governments into turning a blind eye. But apparently the Kurans hadn't been done screwing up the world.

After the bleeding had begun to slow on the Rido Incident, Kuran Kaname had decided to prove just how powerful he was. According to the reports, Kuran had walked into the Senate chambers unopposed by the Senate's elite security force. The entire assembly had been gathered to debate what to do with the future. They hadn't gotten very far when Kuran blew them up in a flurry of sparks and ash.

So. Now there was no ruling vampire authority except for Kuran and a handful of competing Pureblood courts. No central authority meant that a sea of piranha-like nobles now thought that they had carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they wanted. The hunters, scrambling already, once again became the only line standing between humanity's vulnerable neck and the vampires' fangs.

Zero had gleaned that the most popular theory on both sides of the hunter schism was that Kuran was on a warpath against all of the major organizations in the "Vampire World," including—gasp!—the Association. The panic was immense.

Zero, upon first hearing this theory, had actually laughed out loud. He laughed right there at the official oak table he and the other Association councilmembers had been gathered around, Cross sending him a wide-eyed look while Yagari kicked him under the table. It’d been unprofessional as hell, but Zero hadn't been able to help it. The council’s fears were ridiculous.

Kuran didn’t give a flying fuck what the Association did. So long as they didn't interfere with his plans, the Pureblood prick would pretend that they didn't exist. Kuran wasn't impulsive. He wasn't stupid. He was reckless, but not with his own life or the lives of his court—especially his precious sister. He wouldn't slaughter the Association, because they were useful; they did the grunt work of hunting down Rido's Ds and keeping the idiot nobles mostly in line. So long as the Association was needed for those duties, they would be tolerated.

Zero had tried to explain Kuran to the council. He really, really had. But outside of Cross and Yagari, no one was willing to trust his word.

Zero was only on the council because the Association had needed to do something to recognize his part in killing Rido. It was too big a deal to ignore. But they couldn’t give actual influence, power, to a level-D. So they gave him a seat on the council where they could watch his every move and vote down any ideas he had that conflicted with their own views.

When they finished dismissing Zero’s analysis this time, the council descended instantly into panic. The squawking and finger-pointing eventually culminated in the decision that Kuran had to be put somewhere the Association could keep an eye on him. Amazingly, they’d recognized that there was no hunter capable of bringing Kuran in. Except maybe Zero. But no one had been stupid enough to suggest that plan with Zero sitting right there, glaring at them.

Instead, in all its brilliance, the council had decided to order Kuran to return to Cross Academy.

Zero had watched Cross and Yagari try to dissuade the other councillors. Zero hadn't tried at all. He knew that no one could order Kuran to do anything that he didn't want to. He had, very obviously, killed the last people who had tried. For a moment, Zero had considered that the council had just gone from ignorable to signing their own death warrant. From Cross and Yagari's expressions, they had thought so. But Zero had quickly dismissed the idea.

According to the rumours, the Kuran Princess was unhappy in her castle. Kuran, apparently, was also in an exceedingly bad mood. Zero suspected that the dream couple was going through some rocky waters. Waters that, Zero theorized, Yuuki was liable to think could be fixed by returning to the couple's original nesting grounds.

Kaname would do whatever he could to make Yuuki happy. If that meant appearing to submit to the Association’ stupid plan, Kuran would make it work. Zero had long thought that his devotion to her was Kuran’s only redeeming feature.

Zero breathed deep and easy, trying to let the sweet early September air clear out his cluttered mind. In the months since the attack, Zero had been working to let go of his anger at the Kuran couple. Yuuki had chosen Kuran because there was no other choice to make. Zero had never had any place with her but for what her brother had allowed. He could not hate her for following her nature.

Kuran Kaname was another animal entirely. But Yuuki’s happiness depended on him. For that alone, Zero could numb his hatred against her brother.

Besides, the school was more important than his personal bullshit. With the Night Class coming back under Kuran's command, Cross Academy was once more the only institution worldwide hosting both vampires and humans. It was a bastion of politics, drama, and often violence, but it was also a crucial example of coexistence in a world barely clinging to the concept. It was Cross's legacy and his child as much as Zero and Yuuki had ever been.

Loath as he was to admit it, Zero owed it to Cross to try and keep the place in one piece. Protecting the school had quietly, conveniently become his mission in a reality that felt increasingly…unreal. Dull. With Rido in ashes, Zero's personal world had descended into a fog that only cleared to let the pain attacks in. He felt like he was functioning on autopilot. That's what happened, Zero guessed, when you made it to your senior year unexpectedly alive. He couldn’t think of another reason for the numbness.

Sighing, Zero rested his hands on his knees. The sun was growing warmer and firmer in its insistence. Zero's eyes itched. The part of him that was vampire, a part that seemed to grow everyday, flinched at the light.

For a long moment he focused on pushing the deep, throbbing ache in his bones off to a dark corner in his mind. Then, when he felt that he had as strong a grip on himself as he could manage, he focused on summoning enough energy to leave the roof and drag his ass to class. It was not easy, but he managed. Nothing was ever easy. But somehow Zero always managed.

He had no reason to break his record now.

Chapter Text

The Kuran estate was large. It was ancient. Thousands of years had crumbled away outside its doors. Wars and revolutions had brushed up against the gates and been turned away. Vampire kings had walked its halls in the night, their spouses and children able to sleep safely behind its wards in the day. Each new generation had left a mark on the luxurious manor house or the hundred acres of grounds. The result was a beautiful collage, the imperial Japanese roots melding with the Western influences. Sakura tress and rose blossoms bloomed together, their petals beautiful by day or night.

A long, serpentine driveway wove up through the trees from the main road, bleeding into the gates. The gates were tall, menacing iron constructions forged in protective magic. Past the gates was a courtyard with an artisanal fountain—marble angel women, frozen in play amidst the water. Their wings were gilt and glimmered in the light. Beyond their cheerful guardianship was the main house: dominating white pillars reached into the sky, holding up a roof that necks had to crane to see. A set of marble steps led up to the rich ebony doors. A gilt sun and a moon were carved on the doors, each celestial symbol curving around a mirrored pair of 'K's. They were strange carvings to have on the doors of the manor house. The Kuran coat-of-arms bore none of those symbols. Yet, the doors remained just the same, a story for another time.

Behind the huge, beast-like wings of the manor, hidden from view, was every variety of attraction and time waster. A Japanese rock garden with stones older than some Pureblood families was the cornerstone of the eastern gardens, while a rose maze dominated the west. A pool house lounged in the middle, and beyond were stables, maintained though they had lacked horses since those bought under Kuran Juri and Haruka had died. All was locked away behind an intricately woven net of wards that kept the estate inaccessible to most. Only Kuran blood or a Kuran invitation could allow someone entry.

This place was where Kaname had whisked Yuuki away to after Cross Academy. Their ancestral home. Not the small manor Juri and Haruka had died in, but the home Kaname had chosen long, long ago. Back in days beyond memory, when winter was the only season and vampires were nameless, wandering creatures. This land was the land that Kaname had staked for his own. He had lain the foundation himself, woven the wards from intent and his own power alone. When he went to Sleep, his heirs had ruled from the Kuran Manor. He had ruled from the Manor, before the endless prowl of time and sorrow had eroded him too thin.

This place was where he had planned to start over fresh with Yuuki, to start fixing some of the things that had become damaged as his plans had bloomed and grown. He had brought her to the place that he had founded before he had known that he would live to see the next year. And he had expected a fresh start. Kaname knew he was many things, many bad, bad things. But he had never thought that he was a stupid man. Now Kaname knew that one could both be so, so old and still be very, very stupid.

Kuran Kaname stood in the conservatory of his once and forever home. He hadn't come back here since Juri and Haruka had died. His most recent memories of the place were foggy, seen through childish eyes. But his older memories, they were clearer. The doors had been unadorned when he went to Sleep. The fountain hadn't been there. The Kurans he knew didn't believe in angels. Perhaps it was just an aesthetic choice? But there was a feeling around the figures that made Kaname think otherwise. Some descendent of his had believed that angels played in fountains, and they had believed that angels like that deserved to be at the Kuran Manor. They must have lived in a happier time.

Kaname should have gone to bed. The sun had crept up on him, purposeful but silent. The west garden was painted in stunning color, thousands of rose breeds eternally blooming in tandem with the aid of magic. The roses were familiar to Kaname, but the magic was not. Did the magic damage the plants? Could they cope with the seasons anymore? Perhaps they had forgotten how to be plants. If the magic were gone, maybe they would just blow away into dust. Sometimes, Kaname thought that blowing away, dust to dust, would be nice.

He had thought Yuuki was nice, once upon a time. As a child, the second time around, he had worshipped her. She was beautiful and bright, warm like sunshine on his skin. She was so different from the dark and the Sleep and the insanity that had felt just too close to the surface, some nights. Juri had made him swear to protect her and Kaname hadn't hesitated to agree.

When he had returned to her at Cross Academy, she hadn't seemed to have changed. When he had let himself fall in love with her beyond his brotherly prerogative. When he had thought that he had, finally, found his mate.

Kaname snorted. He was a stupid, stupid man.

Closing his eyes, Kaname tried to place where things had faltered. It was a familiar exercise. The answers he came to no longer shocked him. Instead, they made anger flood his veins.

The truth was that things had never really been… right, between Yuuki and himself. Kaname's life with Yuuki was not an agony; Kaname knew agony intimately. They were old fellows. Yuuki was unerringly pleasant to be around. She was beautiful in the way exceedingly few women, even vampires, were. Beautiful like the rose garden, like sunshine, like warmth and smiles and joy. And Kaname was starting to resent her for it.

At first, life had been sweet. With the Senate no longer present, Kaname could do as he pleased. Kaname didn't feel badly about that at all. His descendants had created the Senate, and after watching their idiocy for the last eighteen years, Kaname had decided that his descendants had been tragically mistaken. Corrupt, disruptive, and quarrelsome, the Senate was a useless crutch for minor nobles and ambitious commoners to assert some sort of power. Kaname had been disgusted by them. Killing them had been the highlight of his week.

Even better than destroying the Senate, however, was that Kaname had won Yuuki. Kaname had always thought of her as his girl, but he had feared Kiryuu's influence, that Kaname had lost her to time—just like so many other things that he hadn't anticipated Waking to find missing. But that hadn't happened. Yuuki had chosen him. Kiryuu could no longer touch her. She was all Kaname's for the rest of time and nothing could have made him happier. Or, at least, that was how life had been for the first few weeks. And then it had all unravelled.

Kaname frowned. Was that true? No, maybe that time had only just seemed sweeter. In truth, ever since he'd left Cross Academy things had seemed to lose their pleasure for Kaname. Yuuki's smile no longer seemed as awe-inspiring, and her innocent attitude had begun to grate on his nerves. Was she really that naïve, that clueless? Yuuki could never see the weight of the situation at hand. She always thought that the problem would just… turn out right, in the end. Like life could never do her wrong.

Life could do lots of wrong, to the virtuous and the good and the bad and monstrous. But Yuuki didn’t see life that way. Weeks of conversation, just the two of them alone together, had made that clear to Kaname. Despite the blood spilled at Cross Academy, Yuuki still had the eyes of a child.

Kaname closed his own eyes, exhausted by his thoughts. He had been running scenarios for many hours, now—perhaps days. His conclusion didn’t change. Yuuki, though beautiful and bright, could not show Kaname the power that he needed to be present to let his guard down. He didn’t even want her to; his princess didn’t deserve to see the suffering power like that always required. But he still couldn't place what remained of his faith in her. He could never trust that she could endure. She was always delicate, in Kaname's mind. A priceless object to protect. And because of that admittedly toxic view, Kaname could never love her like she deserved.

This strange dynamic was poisoning them both, Kaname knew. He was pulling increasingly away from her as the depth of his mistake became clear. In turn, Yuuki became more anxious and lonely in his absence. Kaname needed to remedy the situation. But how, exactly, to fix it?

The crux was that Kaname knew who he was meant for. Kaname had given him blood, even—though not in a way he particularly liked to remember. Kaname never liked to remember how much he'd hurt him. Not that the nightmares let him forget.

They always started the same; a black canvas for a slowly forming shape. The shape became clearer and more obviously human. He was tall and lithe, toned beneath his porcelain skin. His face was beautiful, cheekbones as sharp as knives and cherry blossom lips. His hair fell in silver waves to the nape, with messy, unkempt bangs to his brow. Silver glinted at the top of his ear and a black design on his neck peaked through his hair when he moved. His fingers were long and slim and made for music, though callused at the knuckle from pulling at a gun trigger. And then, last but the part that always hit Kaname the hardest, his eyes would come into focus.

They were like purple fire, flickering and deadly. Hard like diamonds and rough like unrefined amethyst. They glittered coldly: caution and confusion and disgust and disdain gathering in their depths when they sighted Kaname. His mouth, full like Cupid's bow, would pull into a hard line. His hands, before hanging carelessly at his sides, would curl around a gun, the one he was never without. He would stare at Kaname silently for a moment, before mouthing silently words that Kaname never wanted to hear.

This is your fault.

Seconds later there was a gunshot and Kiryuu Zero's body would crumple in on itself. The gun would fall from his pale hand and the world would spin. Kaname would wake up with Zero's name on his lips and tears in his eyes. He would not sleep again for the next two or three days before exhaustion caught up with him. The guilt haunted him.

It was his fault. His fault for hurting Zero, for using him, for pushing him to the edge. His careless cruelty was the reason his mate would die. The thought paralyzed him.

When Kaname had gone to Sleep, there had been no angels at the Mansion. Now, he was terrified that he had ruined the one fate had sent for him. The thought was almost enough to break Kaname right then and there in the conservatory. The knowledge that he would have felt it through the strained bond built through their blood exchanges if Zero had actually pulled the trigger was the only thing keeping Kaname from falling to pieces.

His ignorance was astonishing. Certainly, all his plots had featured Yuuki as the prize, but the cornerstone had always been Zero. How would he react? What would he do? How would he be influenced? The fixation, so common to mated pairs, was there—crucially missing, however, was care for the consequences. Distance and the dreams, time and consequence, had corrected him.

Somehow, Kaname's wires had been crossed. His instincts, his only recourse for so many years, had guided him awry. Had this been a final plot of Rido's, a last punishment for Kaname's disobedience? That creature had tried to shackle him, sacrificing his own nephew to Wake Kaname in the first place. Kaname had believed that he had already combatted Rido's insane evil, but perhaps not. How else had Kaname so mistreated his angel? Zero had been broken and haphazardly thrown back together countless times for the convenience of others, and yet he had never bowed at their feet like the slave they wanted him to be. But Kaname—Kaname had almost broken him beyond repair. His own mate.

The honorable thing to do would be to leave Zero alone. Kaname was poisonous, venom-fanged, a monster who should have been left alone to his slumber. A serpent in the garden. Kaname was many bad, bad things, and that was exactly the problem. Try as he might, his self-control was never good enough. That was why he had selfishly Slept, instead of died.

That was why he would have Zero now, at any cost. The Association and Yuuki’s whims were already bringing him back to the Academy. He only needed to settle on a plan…

Roses bloomed in deep reds and pinks from the ornate marble flower box perched outside Yuuki's window. Annoyingly, the ardent blossoms were so full and thick that they interrupted her line of sight. Her attempts to peer through the diamond-leaded glass into the conservatory were useless. She could only just barely see through the main window. There, her fiancé's blurry shadow paced, worrying and not telling her a thing about why.

Letting out a deep, troubled sigh, Yuuki finally dragged her anxious attention away from the window, defeated. The early morning light was playing havoc with her newly vampiric eyes and giving her a headache. Besides, she thought with irritation, it wasn't like she was going to find anything out anyway. Kaname almost never talked when he went to the conservatory. When he did, it was in whispers pitched too low for even her sometimes-agonizingly sensitive Pureblood hearing to pick up. The whispering drove her nearly as mad as the depressed look on his face.

Yuuki sighed again and started picking at the intricately tied ribbons at the neck of her nightgown, mind and heart at an utter loss of what to do. It seemed that the manor had turned Kaname quiet and mournful. He rarely ever smiled and he always seemed pained when he spoke, as though he was trying to heal some great wound that no one, not even she, could see.

In her opinion, he had nothing to mourn over. Still, Yuuki had tried her hardest to help him. She had made herself available to him in every way. She tried to always be near him, at his elbow, in case he wanted to talk. She always smiled at him when he walked in the room, trying to show how pleased she was just to be near him. She tried to sooth him with her touches, always reaching to hold his hand, to brush her lips chastely against his. She wore only the clothes that he had bought for her, devoted herself to her Pureblood lessons, read the same books he did—or tried to, at least.

None of her gestures had any influence. Kaname was, as ever, out of her reach. Watching him through her window as he stared blankly at the sun, such an air of loneliness around him as she had never seen before... she couldn't help but wonder if this wound was not meant for her to heal. Frustrated, she drew the drapes closed.

Yuuki felt tears build in her eyes as she slid down the wall. She pulled her knees up to her chest when she hit the soft, rich carpet. Her beautiful silk nightgown ruffled around her as she rested her head on her knees. She was surrounded by beauty, but misery haunted her. When they had first arrived at the manor, Yuuki had been so happy. Although Kaname had not said it, he had seemed to love her immensely. He had always replied to her touches with gentle kisses, held her hand and run his fingers through her hair.

Now it seemed like a dark cloud covered the entire estate. Kaname wasn't cold, but he never sought her out. If not for meals, she could go days without seeing him. He was a ghost Yuuki didn't know how to resurrect.

Tired of her thoughts, Yuuki padded over to her bed. Pulling down the blush sheets, she prepared for a troubled, solitary day. She flopped on the bed, buried her face in the pillows, and swallowed frustrated sobs. Here was yet another reminder of her inadequacy. She and Kaname had just a few months left until their wedding, but passing butterflies had more interest in her body than he did.

She had first thought him gentlemanly, but she heard the servants' whispers. Vampires were passionate creatures. They wore human faces and adhered to human conventions, but they were not human. Mated vampires couldn't keep their fangs off each other, let alone their so much less personal bodies. Kaname wasn't being a gentleman—he just didn't want her. This time, the sob snuck out.

He had wanted her, once upon a time. Yuuki had felt it. Somehow, this echoing manor had stolen that fire. But Yuuki would fix that. She might not be able to make the manor a proper home for them, but there was no denying their passion at the Academy. That was why she had been so agreeable when the Hunter Association had asked her and Kaname to return. She knew that if she and Kaname went back to the place where they had first fallen in love, they would be able to find what had first brought them together.

Yuuki smirked. She heard Zero's voice drifting through her sleepy head. He had been right—vampires did always have an ulterior motive.

Chapter Text

Dark storm clouds kept starlight from touching the all-black luxury car as it glided up the driveway to Cross Academy. Ambitious moonlight occasionally glanced off the paint, but only momentarily before the clouds again prevailed. The car pulled up to the school in almost-perfect darkness, diminished only by the school's warm glow. The breaks engaged noiselessly. The headlights shut off and the locks popped like gunshots in the tense silence.

Standing on the steps of the Night Class's dorms, haloed by the building’s lights, Cross Kaiden and five prefects stood in loose formation. Behind the headmaster, four prefects stood in a line. Each wore a pleasant smile and stood stick straight. Their hands were locked behind their backs. They wore no weapons openly. They were young. But every single line of their bodies was taunt, like tethered hunting dogs awaiting the whistle.

The headmaster himself had a large grin on his face. He bounced on his feet, just barely holding himself in place. He was the dictionary definition of the happy father, waiting for his girl and her fiancé to come home. He was loose-limbed and joyous; the kind of happy that only parents ever were. Even to skilled eyes, he looked nothing more than that.

At the headmaster's shoulder was a statue. His eyes were keen and alert, but flat, fixed on the black car. A light breeze ruffled his silver hair, the only part of him that moved at all. He was perfectly poised, but not straining. Lax. Effortless. Almost imperceptibly, his fingers tightened around his gun. It glinted from its place of careless concealment at his hip. Of the six people on the stairs, he alone seemed to care not at all about the people in the car.

Abruptly, Zero grimaced. He did not like the feeling he was getting from the car. He did not like the feeling he was getting from anyone present. There was too much hatred and mistrust between those approaching and those waiting for anything to go smoothly. Not that anything at the school went smoothly, ever. Fuck.

Zero rolled his shoulders and fought down the impulse to draw his weapon. The hunter kids, supposedly here for additional backup, weren't helping matters.

Standing behind the headmaster, the new prefects bled murderous intent like a cut throat. Zero half-thought one of them might start shooting just for the hell of it—like Zero, with that butter knife as a kid. Zero didn't know why the headmaster had insisted that they be here. If Kuran lost his patience, he'd rip through them like tissue paper. Maybe that was the point. If they were going to be Cross Academy's new prefects, the kids needed to learn how to behave when something went wrong.

Still. This night was not the best one for a training exercise. The moon wasn't right.

The clouds had cracked since Zero had last looked up. Casting a quick look at the sky, he glared at the eerie light that hung there. It was just a sliver, almost eaten up entirely by the darkness. Looking away, Zero couldn't help but mumble a little hunter prayer under his breath. He'd always found the moon comforting, up there all alone but still going strong, but tonight… Tonight, it just looked creepy.

His senses tingled. Chills rolled over his skin. He tasted Purebloods on his tongue, smelled them overwhelmingly on the air. He'd had three months of clean breezes and now they were back, crawling over his senses like skittering spiders. In the dark corner behind his hunter instincts, the vampire fought to wake up; Zero refused him. A constant tug-of-war, a careful balance—this was the kind of night such balances tipped.

Zero closed his eyes just briefly, barely longer than a standard blink. He had worked so hard to keep the scales as they were. He had bled. He had almost died, and others had died. He could not hesitate. He could not slip. Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze solidly on the black car. He wouldn't slip: not now, not ever.'

Kaname let a silent sigh escape past his lips as the driver did the unneeded and called out their arrival. Relief or anxiety? Kaname couldn't tell. For the last forty-eight hours, Kaname had been locked in cars and planes and luxurious hotel rooms with only Yuuki and his servants for company. He had done so much paperwork to get away from the first that he was nearly all caught up. As he had entirely ignored his paperwork in Rido's wake, that was quite the statement.

Cross Academy would be a relief, he eventually decided. The school was the perfect place to gather his court and keep Yuuki occupied, simultaneously. Kaname had plans that would grow much more easily in the Academy's cradle than anywhere else. Yet, the Academy was indisputably Zero's territory. And Kaname wanted to court him, not piss him off.

Skilled as he was at it, Kaname didn't enjoy walking through minefields.

Gritting his teeth, Kaname gathered his courage and pulled open the door. When he stepped out, his natural elegance and politely distant mask hid any thoughts he might have had. His eyes, however, unerringly sought Zero, unintentionally—and so unprepared.

Zero's face could have been carved from marble for all the emotion he displayed. His violet eyes glinted like amethyst in the moonlight. A look of mild distain moved across Zero's lovely face as their eyes connected; for an instant, Kaname felt like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar. His soft lips were pulled into a tight line of restraint. The hand he had resting on Bloody Rose tightened. He was lit entirely in golden light, stationed on the dorm's steps like a sentry. A guardian. A knight.

Kaname ruthlessly supressed the tremor that built in his hands as he took Zero in. Gods, he looked so like how he always did in Kaname's nightmares. Struggling to get away from that thought and Zero's hard stare, Kaname catalogued the hunter's body. He devoted each detail to mind, glutinous for changes made during Kaname's three-month absence.

His gut turned hot. Zero looked good. At his worst Zero was a rabid creature that stalked Kaname’s memories, hissing with hate and madness, an emblem of Kaname’s failures. But that broken boy was gone from the man in front of him. Instead, he stood every inch the reaper.

His face was colder than before, more controlled. The snarling youth had grown into a lethal killer, beautiful and brutal. Not unlike a vampire prince, Kaname's inner beast cooed. He would look so lovely Night Class white. The blood red tie at his throat would be the only color, that and his violet eyes. Bloody Rose would stand out even more obviously to any vampire who saw him, a symbol of Zero's incredible power: he was the only vampire to command a hunter weapon in thousands of years. Wearing white, he would emphasize his status—and his association with Kaname.

The proud hunter would never suffer to be described as such, of course, but it was becoming quietly recognized in vampire society that Kiryuu Zero fell under Kaname's purview. Kaname had killed Zero's maker, fed Zero his blood, used Zero to protect the sealed Kuran princess; no vampire, Pureblood or otherwise, would dare to make overtures to Zero now that Kaname had made his will that they do not clear. And there were those who would have, Kaname knew. Zero's hunter status had long made him a valuable pawn in the minds of many vampires, but Cross's guardianship had proven too much of a hurdle. Now, Zero's unheard-of battle prowess, exemplified by his slaughter of Kuran Rido, made Zero an even greater temptation. Kaname had been forced to make his possession known, subtly scaring off the circling wolves.

They thought that Kaname wanted to use Zero, again. Perhaps Kaname would install him as Yuuki's protector once more? Kaname wanted to laugh. The poor fools—but then, Kaname had once been as ignorant. Time had cured him; the nobles and notables who whispered such inaccuracies behind their manicured hands had not been so fortunate.

Throughout their silent exchange, Zero didn’t drop his eyes. Before, Zero would have done so with a snarl, as though disgusted by Kaname's face. But he was only cold, now. Calcified. Kaname longed to try and shake his resolve, to make Zero shiver with Kaname's touch.

A thought occurred to Kaname. Had Zero been touched before? The beast thrashed, eager to discover. Zero was so beautiful, but so guarded. He was like a flower too poisonous to pluck. Kaname bet no one had dared to try. If Kaname were a good person, perhaps he would take that as a sign and respect Zero's apparent disinterest. But Kaname wasn't a good person. He was an ancient monster in young skin. He took what he wanted—and oh, how Kaname wanted.

But he would not take. Soon, he wouldn't need to; Zero would come right to him. Just because Kaname didn't like walking through minefields didn't mean he wasn't good at it.

With a great deal of effort, Kaname conceded the first round and pulled his eyes away from Zero. With perfect grace, he stepped to the left of the car door and revealed Yuuki. He was the ideal, protective big brother. He offered her his hand, palm up: deft, princely. He smiled mildly—careful with his affection, never offering too much—and let no hint of his pleasure show as he caught Zero carefully tracking each of his movements.

Perhaps Zero had not changed so much as he appeared to have. That boded well. Their mutual obsession would be much easier to turn into a relationship than if Kaname had to fight Zero's genuine disinterest. Privately, Kaname felt a little flattered that his absence hadn't diminished Zero's fixation.

Submersing himself in his role for the moment, Kaname let his eyes caress over Yuuki's form. Yuuki, too, looked beautiful in the moonlight. Her cheeks blushed prettily, and her eyes sparkled, petal-pale lips glossed sweetly. She wore dove grey and white, her pastel skirt peaking demurely from her peacoat's hem. Her long hair caught the wind like so much shining silk. Yet, when he interrogated his feelings for her, Kaname only found brotherly affection. With Zero, Kaname barely managed civility. How damning, Kaname thought, that he had ever confused the two.

With effort, Kaname subdued his frown before even vampire eyes could catch it. He would come to the bottom of this mistake. Such lapses in his judgement were unforgivable. Shamefully, Kaname had held a flicker of a hope that his realizations at the manor had been an age or stress-induced madness. It would be easier than accepting that he had brutalized and betrayed his mate such as he had, misleading and hurting his sister in the process. But, no. Standing here, now, caught between Yuuki and Zero, Kaname knew instantly who he would step into the way of a bullet for—even if he had equal faith that Zero would dodge before Kaname had the chance for such heroics.

Yuuki was his precious sister. But the vampire core of him would always seek his mate to every bloody extent.

Biting back his sorrow, Kaname smiled at Yuuki and gently brushed her hair behind her ear. Her blush increased, breaking his heart. What a terrible mess he had caused. But now was not the time to admit it. With grace Yuuki had never had as a human, she slipped elegantly into the place by his side, their fingers locked together. She grinned at him, sugar-sweet, and then dashed off. She embraced Cross with a gleeful giggle, hugging him around the neck as they grinned together like happy children. Quickly hidden behind their polite facades, the infant hunters sent by the Association to play at being jailors and spies wrinkled their noses in perfect time.

Kaname bit back a snort. That was the Association properly entertained, then.

Turning his head just the slightest, eyes still predominately fixed on Yuuki, Kaname indulged in Zero's reaction—and immediately stifled a curse.

If Kaname had needed any further proof that Zero was his mate, then the evidence lay in the hunter's face. Murder was writ large across his features, from the leaping red flames in his eyes to his fangs, glinting from behind his lips. Kaname’s senses screamed predator approaching! so loudly that he was momentarily confused why no one had run screaming yet—but the group's focus was entirely on Yuuki and Cross. Fuck.

Several facts flipped instantly through Kaname mind. Zero was a Level D. He would have naturally less control over the possessive rage of vampire mates than any other kind. He was a hunter—did hunters even teach their children about vampire mates? Kaname didn't know. He did know that in a real, territorial fight, Zero would win. Yuuki was a Pureblood, but new to it and untrained. Zero was lethality incarnate. How could Kaname protect them both? Kaname was such an idiot. He should have foreseen this.

Kaname was a second from darting to Zero when Cross's voice interrupted him.

"Zero!" Cross called joyfully, blithely unaware of his adopted son's sororicidal feelings.

Mercifully, Zero's attention snapped to him.

"How about you and the others head in?" Cross suggested, grinning. "I'm sure no one's going to be sneaking about tonight."

Zero, eyes abruptly violet and fangs withdrawn, stared at Cross for all of two seconds. His face was blank. Like a toy soldier, he turned on his heel, the four other prefects flanking him seamlessly.

Kaname blinked. Did anyone realize how close they had come to death—?

"And you simply must come back to the house for tea!" Cross declared. Kaname blinked again. Okay, apparently not.

"That would be lovely, Headmaster!" Yuuki replied, without a glance of consideration at Kaname. Something of his reluctance must have shown, because Yuuki's eyes skittered uncertainly over his face. "Or, well…"

"No," Kaname cut in gently, "Tea does sound nice, after our travels."

Yuuki beamed at him gratefully, while the headmaster gave one of his hyperbolic cheers. Biting back a sigh as his emerging headache spiked, Kaname pointedly refused to stare into the dark woods he could sense Zero retreating into. He would be breaking Yuuki's heart soon enough. He owed her a last night of his complete attention.

Zero threw himself carelessly across the bed, face crushed into the comforter. He was damp from the shower, but he hadn't relaxed at all. He was exhausted. The same question had haunted him since leaving the Night Class's dorms, ceaseless: Why does Kuran still have power over me?

He had given up Yuuki, and he had no other reason to fight with Kuran. Truthfully, he had no desire to fight at all. Bloodlust wasn't a problem anymore. So, what was left for Kuran to hold over him? Nothing. With Ichiru's death, Zero had forced himself to let go of the old rage that had made him so easy to manipulate. He had thought, with that final tether gone, that he would be free. Ha! Judging from the events of the night that had obviously been a self-indulgent fiction.

As soon as Kuran had turned his eyes on Zero, he’d felt Kuran's aura wash over him. Zero had been expecting pain—a warning, perhaps, or a punishment for some slight Kuran had imagine. But instead the aching migraine Zero had been dealing with since noon had subsided. The fog in his mind had cleared, allowing Zero to pay attention to the proceedings around him.

Zero snorted. Not that he could imagine a worse time to be able to focus. The sight of Yuuki in Kuran's arms had released an untold fury in Zero. The reprieve from the fuzziness had been near paradise; the ensuing wrath had been like a swan dive into Hell.

Even now, Zero couldn't quite understand what about the engaged pair's tableau had set him off. By all accounts, Yuuki had looked well-cared for and extraordinarily happy. Kuran, homicidal sociopath though he was, seemed to treat her admirably. Zero had no prerogative for rage beyond that which he had already denied himself—Yuuki had chosen Kuran; Zero couldn't blame either of them for it any longer.

So, why was he so angry? And at Yuuki, of all people. He could feel it still, like a glob of lava in his gut. He felt scant inches away from erupting, and with no logical cause. The confusion ate at him, rivaled only by the dull ache that chased through his body. His throat was killing him and his fangs pulsed with bloodlust. Ridiculous, because he would have felt the effects long before now if that had been his problem. His chest was tight and irritated, wrath bubbled in his veins, and Zero was sick of it.

Maybe it was time. Maybe the Kurans were Zero's pale horse. If he was—Zero could barely think it—slipping again, toeing the line between D and E, maybe he should just—No!

Zero shook his head hard, fingers death-tight on the sheets and knuckles white. He choked on his breath, struggling for peace. He couldn't stop now. He had promised Cross. Cross was an idiot, mostly, but Zero was aware that he owed the man. Zero would be damned before he broke his promise to just 'hold on.' Zero could hold on. He was a master of holding on.

To what end, though? Cross had never elaborated. He had just sat Zero down, as the dust had settled across Cross Academy, and made him promise not to do anything drastic. Zero had never seen the man so serious, or so vague—the Vampire without Fangs, indeed.

But. What if Cross didn't know how close to the line Zero was, anymore? Cross had helpfully directed Zero away from the Kurans tonight, but had he truly understood Zero's raging eyes, his bared fangs? Zero had been about to attack Yuuki. He knew that like he knew that the sky was blue. His mind had filled with the dreamy image of her dismantled corpse, of her ashes prettily dancing on the night-breeze. He had wanted her blood on his hands like nothing else. Only Cross’s voice had snapped him out of it, leaving Zero numb with horror.

Did Cross think that his rage had been directed at Kuran? Zero had only spiralled when Kuran had bent to help Yuuki out of the car. One minute he had been watching the scene, tracking Kuran's movements, and then—despair had welled in his throat. Kuran had brushed Yuuki's hair back from her face, gentle like a summer breeze, and that—sorrow? —had ignited into rage. Zero hadn't felt pain like that since Ichiru's death. It was unreal, sanity-stealing. And somehow, Zero's instincts had figured that rending Yuuki limb from limb would save him.

Cross would surely not force Zero to live if he knew that Zero had desired Yuuki's bloody murder. Surely not. And surely, if Kuran ever found out, the problem would be out of Cross's hands. Kuran would annihilate any threat to his princess, unheeding of the cost. Look at what he had done to the Senate. Surely, Zero's death would cause the Pureblood less annoyance than theirs’ had.

Rolling over, Zero let his head fall listlessly against the bedding. Fuck. He was contemplating suicide-by-Kuran. Zero would rather carve his heart out with a paperclip. Just the thought made Zero want to die on a whole new level, one he wasn't sure he wanted to understand. The image of Kuran's hand curling around his heart, like it had when Kuran ripped out Shizuka's, made tears burn at the back of his eyes.

"No," Zero said. The word creeped out unbidden, hoarse and ragged. "I won't let it come to that." His fingers traced gently, comfortingly over Blood Rose's familiar trigger.

Chapter Text

Zero woke gasping for breath. His eyes rolled in his skull, body spasming in the grip of pain. Fire raced along his veins. Cool, clammy sweat broke out across his brow. He thrashed; an aching moan slithered past his lips. Lightning crackled against his skin. He choked on his own blood, a product of his fangs cutting into his abused lips.

That had been an hour ago.

Breathing in ragged gasps, Zero glanced at his alarm clock. Just fifteen minutes had passed since his last check. Why won't it go away? Clamping his eyes shut, Zero groaned as another wave surged over him. His inhales tasted like blood, tainted from his lacerated mouth. Is it getting worse? Wonderingly, for the first time he thought, Is this going to kill me?

However, apparently the attack was only a flirtation with death. Slowly, far more slowly than ever before, he began to relax. The flames consuming his mind and body burned down, becoming just embers that then dimmed to ash. His muscles twitched still, but with exhaustion. Sighing, Zero rolled onto his side and quickly devoted his willpower to his war against nausea. When he felt safe from being sick, his breaths coming carefully through his nose, he gingerly rolled himself flat on his back.

Staring at the dark ceiling, Zero listened to the perfect quiet, silently awed that he was still conscious. Zero knew pain—but not like that. Never, before, like that. And the nausea. That was new. It was good to know that whatever was wrong with him liked to keep things new, keep things interesting. The dizziness and cold flashes he'd been getting for the last week since the Kurans had returned were a nice touch. Usually the attacks mostly dealt with more painful symptoms, like black-out inducing migraines and the sensation that his skin was on fire.

His seal stung like someone had tried to rip it from his neck with their bare hands.

Resigned, Zero pulled himself into a sitting position. He winced as sharp muscle pains ricocheted through his body but didn't stop. He shoved the covers away and gathered his things for a shower—a herculean effort, but hot water was one of the few things that could soothe his body after an attack. A few clicks at his laptop summoned music, and Zero's shoulders finally dropped from around his ears as the chorus rolled over him. Under the pelting water and rollicking guitar, Zero focused on consciously unwinding each muscle group, forcing himself to breath through the worst aches.

"…say it right this time. 'Cause I know I said I'm sorry, but that's not what I meant to say…" Unbidden, brown eyes and long hair snapped into Zero's mind, reminding him that the attacks weren't actually the most painful thing that he had dealt with lately. Snorting, Zero snapped the water off, dried himself, and changed the song before he became anymore maudlin.

It had been a ridiculous thought anyway. Of course he and Yuuki weren't going to be close anymore. They had parted horribly after killing Rido. Zero had said things that he hadn't meant. His twin's blood had still been hot and foreign in his veins, wounds emotional and physical ripped wide open and bleeding. Now that Yuuki was back at Cross Academy, Zero had gone to apologise. She took tea regularly with Cross; Zero had taken that to mean that she still wanted connection to her human life. And Zero had missed her—his best friend. His only friend, for a long time.

Zero had been wrong. Spectacularly wrong.

Throwing on his uniform, Zero stormed out of his dorm, fearsome glare set. Rumour of his confrontation with Yuuki had spread—of course it had. Academy sympathies seemed to be with Zero (for reasons beyond him; it wasn't like he was a particularly friendly guy), and it was driving him to the brink. Even the vampires shot him disquietingly sympathetic looks. It was intolerable. He was supposed to be intimidating, an authority figure not to be fucked with. Not a goddamn charity case. He couldn't imagine what Kuran thought of him—Zero almost tripped, startled by his thoughts.

What did he care what Kuran thought? Sure, Kuran might gut him if he thought that Zero was after Yuuki again, but the rumours weren't like that. A group of Day Class girls waiting to speak to Cross had heard Yuuki declare loud and clear that Zero was "no brother or friend" of hers. His years of devotion were apparently no match for Yuuki's new status and Zero's harsh words. Kuran would never have reason to suspect that Zero was competition for his fiancée again.

But did Kaname think he was pathetic for trying to talk to Yuuki? Were they laughing together, mocking his stupidity? Zero’s stomach twisted horribly, misery and rage ripping him up inside.

Zero forced himself to lean into the pain. He shouldn’t care about this. It didn’t matter. Zero had been worthless for a long time. He was a fuck-up hunter and a useless Level D. He had no value, no options, and no future.

The nausea from earlier returned, forcing Zero to stop his angry march. His hands shook as he ducked into the trees, away from prying eyes. His throat went tight. For a moment he panicked, thinking that this was the start of another attack, but no. It was just emotion, rubbing him raw. Why do I care?  Zero thought, frustrated. To his horror, tears pricked the back of his eyes.

He couldn't actually give a damn about Kuran, could he? The Pureblood made him shiver—in all the wrong ways, of course.

For just an instant, unbidden, Kuran Kaname snapped into his brain. His deadly features, too beautiful for humanity. Eyes like blood when he was angry, and a brown more like wine than chocolate when he wasn't. His deceptively soft mouth. He and Zero were of a height, but Zero always felt like he was fighting Kuran's presence when they shared space. He dominated the room so effortlessly, so unconsciously, that any attempt Zero made for control was useless. What would it be like, he wondered, to stand beside that personality—that power—rather than oppose it?

Was Kuran ever ruffled? Zero thought that he had forced the other vampire close, once or twice. The notion pleased him.

Stunned, Zero wrenched himself away from those thoughts. He felt frozen, revolted and surprised by turns. He had questioned his sanity before, but these thoughts took the cake.

It wasn’t a gender issue. Zero thought about men. He’d dreamed about tall, strong bodies with rough hands and powerful limbs—but never vampires, and certainly never a Pureblood. Never, especially, this Pureblood: he was anathema to Zero. He bore no comforting calluses like the men Zero had imagined. He would never fall into a motel bed for a rough fuck after a mission. Kuran was lethal elegance, the kind of arrogant, entitled power possessed by imperial kings. He was all that Zero despised.

And even if Kuran were not—all it would take was one taste of Zero's blood. One glance at his hip. One hint, and Zero's secrets, and those of others, would be screwed. Everything that Zero had worked so hard to hide, Kuran would no doubt haul out from the nice camouflage of lies that he had put into place. For his own amusement and little else, Kuran would scrutinize what remains there were to be found, and that could not happen. Not when Zero's life was just setting into a new normal. Zero wouldn't allow it.

Kaname felt guilty. Guilt had long been unknow to him, before. But Kaname had recently, regretfully, become its frequent acquaintance.

Not long ago he had felt a horrible lash of pain run through his body. It had been like nothing he had ever felt—like each individual blood cell he possessed had turned into a tiny shard of glass. The only reason Kaname hadn't dropped to his knees was his own force of will. He had been left staring blankly ahead, his hands trembling so badly that he'd been forced to hide them in his pockets. Minutes had passed before he'd realized that his body wasn't the one under attack: Zero's was. Their close proximity had boosted the semi-formed, fading blood bond and allowed Kaname to sense his pain.

The realization had shocked the tremors right out of him. Kaname's Zero was in horrible pain, while Kaname—sat beside a girl he didn't love like that, drinking tea. In the background of his mind, Kaname could hear her voice like an intrusive thought. She was discussing their wedding with Cross. His gleeful noises shot through Kaname's brain like bullets.

Kaname blinked for a moment longer than standard, his only tell as he fought to maintain his composure. His every instinct demanded that he rise and seek out his mate, consequences be damned. Kaname could not be so rash, however. Zero had to be treated carefully, now. Kaname's earlier brutality had seen to that.

Kaname had no cover for coming to Zero's side, and revealing their mated status so abruptly was out of the question. Zero would shoot him on sight. More disturbingly, the news might tip Zero over the edge. Kaname's dreams, he now knew, had been at least somewhat prophetic. So close to Zero, Kaname could see and sense how gingerly attached his mate was to life. He could be swayed into a much-too-final choice by so little. A scandal of the proportions Kaname's rebuffing Yuuki to flee to Zero's side would cause was an unacceptable risk. The possible outcome left Kaname terrified into waiting for a more discreet opportunity to leave.

Finally, Kaname saw his moment. Coughing politely, he donned his most charming smile. "Yuuki, I must retire now. I have papers that need signing. And besides," he added when she opened her mouth to protest, "It's not right for the groom to know about the bride's dress." He offered her his most gentle smile, the words like ash in his mouth.

Yuuki giggled, nodding her assent with a quick kiss to his cheek. Cross swooned, accepting the line as eagerly as his daughter. Kaname strode away from the headmaster's home moments later. He used the half-formed bond (built from the numerous times he had forced Zero to take his blood, Kaname realized, new-found guilt clawing at him) to guide him to Zero. All the while, he cursed himself for not noticing something sooner.

But what had he missed? There was no blood in the air, and Kaname could sense no energies interfering with the wards around the Academy. Poison, Kaname guessed, was an option. But Kaname trusted Zero's skills (and paranoia) as a hunter; Zero would be able to avoid something as simple as that. And besides, there weren't many poisons that could harm Zero like this in the first place. So, what was Kaname missing?

Between his preternatural speed and the fledgling bond, Kaname quickly spotted Zero. He lent against a tree in a clearing not too far from the school complex, though isolated enough that no one would easily find him. This place, with its softly shuddering tress and peaceful air, was obviously a haven. The knowledge made Kaname feel a new, special kind of guilty for spying on him in it. Then the pain pricked him again, and Kaname's protective instincts took precedence.

But—something was wrong.

Grass danced gracefully in the gentle wind, painted silver by brilliant moonlight. Zero was tense, but not more so than Kaname thought was Zero's normal state. The hunter's face was strange. His expression was calm, very nearly blank, but not like he was trying to hide himself. It was more relaxed, a simple absence of distracting emotion. It was not what Kaname had been expecting.

With the pain he felt, Kaname had expected Zero to be on his knees, not standing there as if nothing had changed. A chill ran through Kaname. What if nothing had changed? Pain like this could be normal to Zero. He could have adapted to it. Kaname's nostrils flared. It would have had to have been a long-standing affliction for Zero's apparent kind of acceptance.

Kaname should have noticed this. Did Cross know? The man was Zero's guardian. Why hadn't he said anything? Not that Kaname had any right to that kind of information, he reminded himself firmly, so far as anyone knew. Considering his performance with Zero, Kaname wouldn't be surprised if Cross had thought that he was protecting Zero by keeping this secret.

If Cross even knew. Zero was skilled with keeping secrets. Kaname had once abused that trait mercilessly.

Clearing those thoughts away, Kaname moved silently through the silvery trees. The moon was so bright human eyes could have seen by it. Tucking away his aura so that nothing and no one would sense him, he came to an abrupt stop within feet of Zero. Kaname blinked, dazed. The pain had stopped. Not faded or given any signal, just stopped like someone had thrown a switch.

Kaname didn't have time to ponder, however. Immediately, violet eyes were on him. A glare replaced the soft expression from before, and Zero's body shifted, tensing. Kaname locked eyes with Bloody Rose's barrel.

The change took less than a second, all told. Kaname wouldn't have caught the transitions without his Pureblood sight. Zero was the best hunter in Kaname's ancient memory. His actions were smooth, controlled, flawless. But not unexpected. 'Unexpected' was that Zero was Kaname's. Kaname bit back a proud grin. How beautiful his mate was, so lethal and so lovely.

"Kuran."

Kaname squashed a flinch. That tone was not lovely, but it was deserved. When Kaname tallied his sins, a glare was the least of the dues he was willing to pay to Zero. But this was not the time for penance.

In return, Kaname kept his voice calculatedly cool. "Kiryuu."

As Kaname had grimly known he would, Zero riled immediately. Though Zero seemed to have gained more control of his temper, it was still there. And Zero was always malleable when he was angry. Kaname had ample personal experience to confirm that.

"What do you want?" Zero hissed.

Kaname let the words roll off his back. "Have you been feeding?"

He could think of no other cover that would get him close enough to tell what was wrong with Zero. It was monstrous, but Kaname was willing to reopen Zero's traumas if it would keep him alive. Because what kind of pain was like the horror he had experienced, but not life-threatening? With this move, Kaname might be able to diagnose Zero and bolster Zero's strength. There was very little pure blood could not cure, after all.

Kaname watched Zero's beautiful eyes widen. Suspicion danced there blatantly, but it was the flicker of blood-red flames that caught Kaname's attention. He smirked, oozing arrogance to hide his guilt. He knew Zero was damaged every time Kaname forced him to take his blood. Drinking in such a violent way made Zero fear the predator inside himself even more, exacerbating the self-loathing Zero breathed like air. But Kaname couldn't find another option; he didn't have the time. He could only make the best of the worst.

Slowly, he stepped closer to Zero. He could be fast: too fast for Zero to comprehend or resist Kaname's actions until the time to struggle was over. Yet, Kaname sensed that doing so would be the wrong approach. He didn't want to hurt Zero anymore than he had to. He couldn't let Zero avoid feeding, but he could be gentle. He could begin undoing some of the damage that he had wrought.

Committed to his plan, Kaname carefully backed Zero up against the tree. He cut off Zero's escape, but he made sure to telegraph his movements. No surprises. Carefully but surely, he caged Zero in.

Zero's brain felt overfull. He had blown off the whole day in the wake of his emotional turmoil, figuring that he could spare a day of useless classes if he could manage to get his head on straight instead. He had stayed past dusk in the clearing, letting his thoughts run rampant. And then, as though opposed to his peace, an attack had almost sacked his new-found control. Before his suffering could wear itself out naturally, it had gone in a flash—a stunning, disorienting feat—and been replaced by Kuran, creeping out of the trees like Zero's personal destruction.

"Have you been feeding?" Arrogant bastard. Zero had been popping blood tablets now that Ichiru's sacrifice had stabilized him, so bloodlust wasn't his problem anymore. But Kuran wasn't owed that information. Fuck him.

But words wouldn't come. Zero's breath stuttered out too quickly as Kuran drew closer, beautiful and terrible. He was caught under Kuran's focus, under the innate sway of a Pureblood vampire. Usually, Zero could fight it off—did fight it off—but he was so tired now. The pain, the insomnia, the realization that Kuran might have his interest in ways that Zero didn't even want to consider—he was weakened by all of it, and so distracted by his racing mind and heart that he didn't even noticed that Kuran had backed his body up against a tree until he felt the bark scrape against his jacket.

With no escape, Zero pushed mutinously against the tree and away from Kuran, cursing his luck. The night had held such promise a moment ago. An early attack meant that Zero could expect as many as ten hours before the next. Zero had planned to spend that whole time sleeping. And then Kuran had inserted his obnoxious presence back into Zero's life in the least tolerable way he was able.

Zero's instincts, hunter-born, insisted that the situation would only get worse from here. He should have known to run as soon as the pain had disappeared. Kuran had some kind of effect on it. His closeness wiped away the numbness, eased the pain. Zero had felt it when the Kurans arrived. He knew better than to relax into the absence. Why hadn't he run?

He was so, so tired of running.

Ruffling fabric dragged Zero back into the moment. Looking up, he saw that Kuran had undone his tie. He deftly popped the top buttons of his shirt, revealing the marble-white skin of his neck. Zero flinched at the sight even as his mouth flooded, hunter instincts at war with his vampire's. Familiar panic sparked in his gut while the animal howled for blood.

So close, the scent of Kuran was overwhelming, overpowering. It pulsed hotly from his carotid artery like red ambrosia. Zero wanted, even as he was horrified at the desire.

He could sustain himself on blood tablets, but they could not be compared to Kuran’s blood.

Setting his jaw, Zero dragged his eyes away. If he did feed from the bastard tonight, it wasn't going to be without a fight. He shoved against Kuran, but to his dismay Kuran already had too strong a grip on him. Zero had lost time, trying to get his instincts under control. His hands were pinned up above his head, leaving his body thrashing and defenseless. He stilled.

His vampire instincts knew that the fight was lost, had known since a Pureblood had walked into the clearing. Now that Kuran had his hands on him, however, Zero couldn't muster any fight at all. His vampire wanted to yield to this rare pleasure, a Pureblood's willing offering: his hunter wanted to die. Stuck in the middle, Zero was at Kuran's mercy. His heart hammered. He growled low in his throat.

Kuran chuckled. Soft. Light. The sound sunk into Zero's senses like dark chocolate, like everything Zero had ever wanted. His breath ghosted over Zero's face, warm and intimate, laced with bergamot and coppery blood tablets. His attention fixated on Kuran's mouth, his wet, pink lips and glinting fangs. Zero cringed, body suddenly too hot and too desperate, desirous of anything that Kuran was willing to give him.

Wrenching his face to the side, Zero could only pray that Kuran couldn't see his humiliated, blushing face. Unlikely. Kuran's chest pressed tight against his. Then Kuran's leg slipped between his. Zero jerked, liquid fire igniting in his gut. No one had ever touched him like this, so close and so intimate, and Zero flinched back from the lightning-pleasure that gushed through his veins. But Kuran's hand clasped the nape of his neck, freezing him. He was unable to move. Unable to think. But wanting. Gods, did he ever want.

The slow erosion of Zero's iron will was both the most beautiful and the most terrible thing that Kaname had ever seen. The slow consumption of his cool violet eyes by bloodthirsty red was exquisite. But the state of his eyes, just before they became red and the haze took over, was...painful. The panic and fear went down to his soul. Kaname could see Zero's mind screaming in his eyes. That image had always been one of the most common to haunt Kaname's dreams when he slept. Now he was adding another vision to the gallery.

Sighing quietly, Kaname drew a red line along his neck with a sharpened fingernail. He watched, awe at war with dread, as the red flames danced in Zero’s eyes, the fear eaten away. For a moment—just one was all that he could afford—Kaname let himself mourn that fear, that part of Zero that Kaname could not yet protect. But from that point forward, his task became undeniably easier.

Not even Zero could keep his predator locked away forever. Not in the face of his mate's blood, of Kaname's blood. Only two or three seconds passed before Kaname felt the telltale feather-light pressure of Zero's lips on his skin. Kaname didn't rush him. Minutes passed, but Kaname simply held him. Before, he had forced Zero to bite: angry at Zero's influence on Yuuki, thinking only of his next move, his next plot. Not now. Kaname knew better, now. He curled his fingers into Zero's silver locks, gently kneading the base of his skull. He let his blood and time do the rest.

Slowly, almost shyly, sharp pain sliced through Kaname's neck. Kaname groaned, immediately alight with want. Those other blood exchanges—they had never been like this. Hot. Wanting. Kaname wanted him. Like air, like blood. Like his mate, like the one person Fate had designed with Kaname in mind. Whom Kaname had been designed for. Supporting him as gently as he could, Kaname curled around him. He angled his neck for Zero's best access, fingers curling into his hair as he pressed Zero closer.

Zero moved with him. He drank deeply, like he was starved for it. His tongue and lips worked to lap up Kaname's blood greedily.

Kaname hummed, content spreading through him with every pull his mate took, his predator pleased to provide for him who was his. He buried his face in the crook of Zero's neck, forehead pressed to his shoulder, and breathed in deeply. Fresh, clean florals and the barest trace of gun's smoke. Kaname grew drunk on it, dazed and adoring. His pleasure rumbled in his chest, through his throat, and the last of the tension that always wound Zero's frame tight and painful entirely disappeared. He was silk in Kaname's arms, warm and soft to the touch.

Kaname would shred anyone who tried to touch him.

As Zero drew back from Kaname's neck, panting with exertion, Kaname straightened. He tried to inhale air without Zero's dizzying scent, but there was none to be found. He strove to focus wholly on controlling his desires. But it was difficult. There he was, leaning entirely on Kaname. His head rested sweetly on Kaname's shoulder. Kaname and his gentle grip was all that held him up.

He went to step away from Zero, struggling for distance and control, but Zero followed. He moaned, soft and wanting, seeking his mate. Cautiously, Kaname released his hold on Zero's thin wrists. Awe suffused him when Zero's arms settled over his shoulders, pulling Kaname closer. A dusting of rose-red blush covered his nose and cheeks. His lips—red still with Kaname's blood—were parted, showing the glint of fangs.

The tether of Kaname’s self-control, usually heavily guarded and mercilessly enforced, snapped.

Chapter Text

Zero's head was a disaster. A whirlwind ripped through his mind, questions and thoughts colliding together. His bearings escaped him. He had to pull himself together and get away from Kuran before things went too far. But that thought slipped away from him as easily as all the others. He was lost on a red tide. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. His entire body felt hot and too sensitive for even the air to touch. His only peace came from Kaname, whose hands cradled him so gently and securely that Zero could do naught but trust in their protection. He was caught in the undertow, with no desire to fight the pull.

He breathed easily, calmly, through his mouth. With every inhale, Zero tasted blood. Raw power coated his mouth, his throat, filling his stomach with heat and strength. Kaname tasted like rubies. Like gold and luxury, like armies under a sovereign command and the crown a king wore. Zero was enthralled, under the blood's spell. But it wasn't a bond like before, the kind that had held Zero in rage until the right enemy rose to meet him. This time, the blood cosseted him. He was lulled by that gilded crimson, pulled down into the dark by sweet red ambrosia that warmed him from the inside out. And Zero didn't fight. He sunk himself in that red wave and let Kaname carry him out to sea.

Kaname didn't let him drown. He cradled Zero, shoring him up with his own body. Sighing, Zero curled closer, nose chasing the cinnamon-cardamom scent that lived strongest on Kaname's neck, just behind his ear. He could feel addiction stirring, his mind latching onto the safety that the smell, the man, promised him. Zero had been so long without safety of any kind.

Some had tried to give it to him, but the harbours they had promised had always been weak, uncertain things. Not Kaname. His hunter knew the awful capabilities that lurked under Kaname's beautiful shell, and his vampire now purred at that lethal promise. Zero didn't understand why. Kaname's inherent threat had once been all his instincts had agreed on. Now, the vampire hummed in Kaname arms and the hunter was silent, calmed into passivity. Disoriented, Zero had no choice but to follow his senses.

Lips ghosted over Zero's neck. They were soft, careful. Zero was given every opportunity to pull away, but Zero didn't want to. He felt so safe. He didn't need to move. The lips paused, opening for a hot tongue to sweep over his pulsing carotid, tasting him.

Zero gasped, fingers bunching in Kaname's jacket. Before he could breathe out, two twin pricks of pain seared through his system. Lightning shot through his body. Emotions flashed. Panic. Fear. Anger. Hurt. And, overwhelming them all, a crushing, sucking deluge of want that seemed to radiate right out of his bones. His very soul felt tempted to let Kaname do as he pleased. The bite felt like a culmination of the long game he and Kaname had played. It was so good that Zero almost forgot the repercussions he had spent his life in dread of.

The key word, of course, being 'almost.'

Tapping into his newly replenished vampiric strength, Zero ripped his body away from Kaname's gentle hold. His hand flew instantly to Bloody Rose. Fingers white-knuckled around the grip, Zero pulled the trigger and unloaded a single shot into Kaname's side. He didn't hesitate. He didn't think. Not instinct, but sheer, conditioned panic had overridden his body, clawing him away from what felt good and natural.

Lies, his mind hissed, woken from its daze by razor-sharp fear. The bullet cracked as it left the chamber, but Zero didn't even hear it. Stunned, Kaname dropped back into the grass, but Zero didn't see it. He was running out of the clearing before Kaname had even stumbled.

Blood pooled sluggishly in Kaname's hand as he sat, all-but collapsed in the grass. His body was still with pain and his mouth hung open in shock. His emotions warred with each other as the last ten minutes replayed over in his head. Zero had just shot him. Kaname couldn't believe it.

Zero had always threatened to shoot him if Kaname went out of line. Kaname couldn't count the times he had felt the cold mouth of Bloody Rose's barrel pressed against his head. But he had never dreamed that Zero would actually do it. Even before he had found out about their bond as mates!

There had always been something there to still Zero's hand: Yuuki, Cross, Kaname's nobles, or other students. Kaname smirked wryly. He guessed now that they had been alone Zero had seen his chance.

Sighing, Kaname lifted a hand to his face, stubbornly ignoring the fine tremors that ran along his skin. That had been an uncharitable thought. Obviously, the night had not gone how either he or Zero had expected it to.

He swallowed, tasting again the lingering phantom of Zero's blood in his mouth. Zero shooting him had hardly even been the most shocking part of the night.

When Kaname had fantasized about tasting Zero's blood, he had always imagined that he would find it to be bittersweet. Level D blood was, and as all mates were, he had expected to become addicted to that bitter sweetness. But now, after tasting Zero... Kaname knew that he never would have needed the natural addictiveness of mates to crave Zero's blood. It was unlike anything Kaname had ever tasted before. It was not a level D's blood, certainly. Kaname, of all people, would know. In his long life, he had tasted every kind of blood that there was.

Or so he had thought.

Drinking Zero's blood was like diving into a dark cove. A winding labyrinth. Feral things hid in the shadows, untouched and wild, but the temptation to go deeper was all-consuming. Up and Down, Left and Right, disappeared. A promise of more, of power, drew him deep and disoriented him. Sweet and delicate, misleading and confounding. Strange. It was addicting in that strangeness, in its newness. Kaname couldn't place quite why he sensed such danger there, but the sensation haunted him. Thrilled him. Kaname wanted more, and he wanted to know why.

Slowly, Kaname smiled. His Zero, his own delightful little mystery. He would be Kaname's to unwrap in more ways than one, it seemed. Kaname was eager to start. But first he would have to pick himself up off the ground.

He winced as he shifted the side Zero's bullet had gone through. Of course, the wound hurt like sin. The Bloody Rose was a powerful, possessive weapon, exceedingly loyal to its master and finely tuned to its master's needs. Once upon a misty, distant time, Kaname had been that master, wielding the gun as easily as he had the Artemis rod. Time and circumstance had taken both from him.

Finding his weapons again, in Zero's and Yuuki's hands, had been disorienting. He had burned with anger to be threatened by the gun that had been entrusted to him, wielded by a worthless ex-human. Bloody Rose's fidelity to Zero had felt like a betrayal. Now, Kaname wondered at Fate's wise hand. Bloody Rose had protected his mate when Kaname, for reasons still frustratingly unknown, could not. He owed the weapon a debt of gratitude.

Yuuki had abandoned the Artemis rod, Kaname remembered dimly. If he gave it to her again, if he let her know its place in their history, would she take it back? Kaname wasn't sure of his thoughts on that. Questions for another night, he decided.

He ran a careful hand over his injury and found it as he had thought, a clear through-and-through. It would never kill him. It wouldn't even hinder him unduly. With Zero's sweet fresh blood hot in his veins, Kaname would be healed within the hour. Kaname tried to take some comfort in that.

When Zero had shot Hio, the damage had been extensive. Zero's shot this time had not been meant to kill, or even injure; only to stun him, Kaname surmised. Which, Kaname thought dryly from his place amongst the grass, it had done rather well. But at least there had been no premeditation. Kaname had simply pushed the boundaries of a predator too far and been clawed for it—there was room yet for him to make amends.

Biting his lip, Kaname started the careful process of pulling himself to his feet. Without any witnesses to perform for, he winced as needed until he felt steady enough on his feet to stand. By the time he reached his full height, a thin layer of skin had already knit over the wound. He'd need to be careful with how he moved for the next half-hour or so, but he didn't need to worry about bleeding again.

Satisfied, Kaname began a slow walk back to the Night Class dorms. The need to reach his personal library and begin researching his newest quandary was a living thing under his skin. To his irritation, neither giving Zero his blood nor taking Zero's had revealed to Kaname what had caused Zero's worrying, breathtaking pain. It was an unknown, and that disquieted him. And now there was also Zero's strange blood to consider. Could they fit together somehow? He couldn’t think of a way, but despite his age and capabilities Kaname acknowledged that he didn’t know everything off the top of his head.

It all circled back to a conclusion Kaname had drawn while still at the manor. He needed to do some research, especially about the hunters. They had barely figured into his plans to this point, but Zero was a product of their society. It followed that his struggles might come from there.

Kaname had once been better abreast of the hunters’ situation. They had been nothing more than a handful during Kaname's time, yet growing stronger daily by her grace.

Kaname didn't think about the Hooded Woman anymore. That way led to the kind of darkness that he had Slept to avoid.

When he'd Woken, he had learned only enough to orient himself in the new world and to manipulate Zero as needed. Now, that knowledge wasn't enough. Modern vampires, Kaname had learned, like to boast that they knew everything but it wasn’t often true. It seemed to Kaname that many of history's tragedies could have been avoided if more vampires had paid closer attention to the worlds around them. Kaname would not make that mistake with Zero. Not again.

Kaname frowned. Now that he thought of it, most of the research for his topics of interest would probably need to be conducted in the Association's records. Kaname felt no pleasure at the idea. Not only had the hunters become somewhat nervous of him after he'd taken the Senate to task, but hunter record-keeping was notoriously accurate. Such diligence was understandable, as when the hunters made bookkeeping errors—such as listing a stable level D as a frenzied E—innocent blood always spilled. However, the less desirable consequence was that the Association's Library of Record was a huge, labyrinthine complex. As unsure of what he was looking for as he was, Kaname would need to enlist help to thoroughly scour their resources.

Well, Kaname mused, I suppose that's what I maintain a court for. That decided, Kaname began drafting a mental to-do list as he walked. At the very top of the list, just after his research was complete—it wouldn't be wise to try and tackle the next task ignorant—was confronting Zero. He would need to do so carefully. More carefully, he thought ruefully, than he had handled tonight.

Zero's taste haunted his mouth still. He wanted more, to savor the crystalline thrill of Zero's blood like fine wine, at his pleasure. His hands craved Zero's skin, silken soft and warm against his questing fingertips. He saw Zero spread out against his sheets, surrounded by his touch, under his dominion. He knew what a blush looked like, now, against Zero's almost always icy face, but he wanted to see the colour in full light. Was it truly such a delicate red as Kaname thought, or had that been a trick of the moonlight? Kaname imagined it was true. He imagined his line's roses paling in comparison, their crimson petals staining the sheets as Kaname thrust—

Kaname shook his head, dazed. He needed to focus, but focus was hard to grasp. Kaname grimaced. He had little choice. Glancing at the sky, Kaname picked up his pace. Judging by the moon, it was only a few more hours until sunrise and Kaname had no doubt that Yuuki would be worrying about where he was.

Yuuki seemed to have made it her duty in life to be by his side every possible minute of the day and night. If Kaname didn't go to her before sunrise, she would most certainly come looking for him. The last thing he needed was for her to stumble upon the forest where he and Zero had been.

Zero had been clever. As he had left the glade, Kaname had noticed a hunter blood neutralizing charm carved into a tree. Designed to hide the scent of blood, the charm was used by hunters who didn't want to chance curious humans wandering onto their killing grounds. It worked well against vampires, too. Kaname's nobles might have scented his blood for a few seconds, if they caught it at all, but the smell would have disappeared the moment Zero finished carving the last sigil.

Even Kaname's most suspicious courtiers wouldn't risk disturbing Kaname's peace for something so minor. But the charm wouldn't help if Yuuki chased down Kaname's trail. Yuuki was a Pureblood; if she were to follow Kaname's scent into the forest, which she no doubt would, there would be no hiding what had happened in the clearing from her superior nose.

Kaname smiled slightly. His mate was so clever. Kaname refused to screw up his mate's cunning cover. Which, unfortunately, meant hurrying back to Yuuki's side rather than stalking down Zero as his instincts demanded.

Taking a deep breath to compose himself, Kaname cleared the last few meters and slipped in the dorm's front door. With every step, he further beat down his instincts' demand to leave his messy life behind, grab Zero, and run. 

Why not? He mused as he wandered the halls, in no hurry to change his bloodied clothes and reach Yuuki's rooms to bid her good morning.

Kaname smirked as the answer came to him. Because, obviously, then Fate would have no one to laugh at.

Zero sat on the floor of his dorm room. He had started at the desk but had quickly decided that he needed more room for this problem than his desk allowed.

Books lay scattered around him, split open and rife with sticky notes marking places of interest. He was dressed still in his bloody uniform, his and Kaname's—Kuran's! —blood tacky now against his skin and beginning to flake. Their entwined scent teased him, but Zero pushed it out of his mind. He was soaked with cold, adrenaline-induced sweat, but he shoved that physical reality away, too.

Along with his plethora of books, he also had paper, pens, and his laptop, which he'd used to access the Association's record system. Or, at least, the bit of it that had been digitalized. Why? Because Zero didn't care if it killed him, he was determined to discover what had driven Kuran to his current madness. He had to. He could see no other way of rationalizing what had happened tonight, and if he couldn't do that, then Zero didn't know how he could hope to mount a defense against Kuran's next move. And there would be one. No one who had trod so close to the Kiryuu family's secrets had ever let sleeping corpses lie—and Kuran Kaname would never be the first.

Hells, Zero thought distantly, fighting for focus when his whole body, and especially his brain, felt wrapped in cotton—from being bitten by Kuran or the shock of shooting him, Zero couldn't tell. Why can't I ever catch a break? Across his lap lay a particularly huge leather-bound tome, entitled boldly 'Vampires: A General Study.' He had read his current chapter a dozen times, cross-referencing and double-checking as he went, but neither the words nor his conclusions ever changed. In that moment, Zero wanted nothing more than to give into the downy fuzziness eating at the corners of his mind and blame his realizations on unstable judgement. But Zero knew better than to think that he was ever that lucky.

Gently, Zero closed his eyes and brought his hands up to message his temples, a vain attempt to banish the headache he felt coming on. Exhaling slowly through his mouth, he leant against the side of his bed. For the umpteenth time, he began rehashing everything that he had learned in the last forty-five minutes. But he hadn't the mind for details, anymore. He had checked his math on this already too many times to call it rational. The answer never changed. According to the data (his rages at Yuuki, Kuran's insane tenderness with him in the glade, how Zero hadn't wanted to fight his bite even a little) there was an extremely large possibility that he was Kuran's—ugh. Zero couldn't even bring himself to think it. How childish. He should be better at acclimatizing to bad news, by now.

And he was, Zero thought, opening his eyes. He stared ahead blankly, unable to make his weary eyes do more than blink. But impossible news? Maybe he could forgive himself for having problems with adapting to impossible news.

Kuran had Yuuki. She was his, body and soul.

Zero's heart lurched as they flashed in his mind. Kaname, so gentle with her, brushing her hair back behind her ear with careful fingers. Kaname's smile, so sweet that night as he had helped her out of the car. They had looked so perfect together.

Blinding rage rose in his veins as the memories battered him; the horrible desire to rip perfect little Yuuki to pieces pushing at his skin. He wanted her blood on his claws, wanted to watch it pour from her severed arteries. 

What the hell? Zero thought, desperate. He shook his head violently, trying to clear his thoughts. It was like slipping past level D all over again.

Zero stood up abruptly, letting out a hiss of discomfort as his stiff muscles stretched. Shucking his school jacket and dress shirt, Zero walked over to the bathroom mirror and looked at the bite wound that Kuran had left him. Unlike Zero's bite, Kuran's was clean. Save the two perfectly spaced indents in his neck from Kuran's fangs, there was no damage. It was already nearly healed, thanks to the special properties in Pureblood saliva. Zero bet there wouldn't even be a scar.

He hadn't expected any different. A Pureblood's bite was the opposite of a level D's. For one, people bitten by a Pureblood were meant to live. A Level D was primarily a weapon. Zero's bite was meant to dole out the most damage possible, ensuring death in most cases. A lot of things about Zero were designed to ensure death. He tried not to think about it. On the good days, he succeeded. Today was not tallying up as a good day.

Sighing, Zero ran a hand through his hair. He locked gazes with his reflection. Eventually, he ripped his eyes from the pale monster in the mirror and turned his back to strip. He let his bloodied clothing pile around his feet. If he were even a little more able, he would pre-treat the bloodstains overnight with a solution that Zero imagined was worshiped by slaughterhouse workers and vampire hunters alike. But he couldn't make himself care. If worse came to worst, he'd buy a new damn uniform. He had more money than patience, at this point.

In the shower, Zero stood for as many as fifteen minutes letting the hot water pour over his skin. Under the pounding water and surrounded by steam, his wound muscles slowly relaxed. Some of his physical tension gone, his mind stopped spinning in circles long enough that he was able to work out a semblance of a plan.

Tonight Zero would call the Association and place a seal on all the important works concerning his family. Being the last surviving Kiryuu, Zero didn't foresee having any trouble with that.

Zero frowned, turning off the water. He doubted removing the files would discourage Kuran's curiosity much. But it would at least throw up a barricade in the meantime. When Kuran knocked it down, well. Zero guessed he would just have to clean that mess up once it was made.

Stepping out of the shower, Zero thought of his other problem. If Zero truly was Kuran's... mate, then he would come for Zero. Zero had never heard of a vampire resisting the pull. The need was written in their marrow.

Kuran might like to pretend that he was above instinct, but Zero knew better. He had been a soldier in the war Kuran had waged to protect his territory. What belonged to Kuran Kaname never roamed free for long. He was too willing to soak the field in blood. Zero only wondered why he had been given such a long rope—more than enough to hang himself with—for so long.

Mates were supposed to share an instantaneous attraction; was Zero somehow damaged? Perhaps that was why Kuran had sought and won Yuuki instead. She must still be his priority. They were, after all, engaged. But what did that leave Zero? Despite his incessant instincts, he had no desire to find out.

Quickly making and finishing his call to the Association, Zero left his phone to charge and crawled into a set of worn-soft pajamas. He settled in bed on autopilot, exhaustion screaming from what felt like his every bone and muscle. He expected a battle, the last twenty-four hours having provided his habitual insomnia with every kind of ammunition, but there wasn't one.

In his darkened room, his body seemed to melt into the cool sheets. His eyes slipped closed easily, having stuck together a little longer with every bleary blink. His vampire was quiet and content, satisfied as never before, and even his tightly wound hunter felt soothed. In the silence, he could hear the hum of rubies in his veins and their lullaby coaxed him down. He felt warm and weightless, familiar, peaceful waves lapping against his mind and drawing him away. He fell into the pull easily, sweetly, and thought nothing of the name he dreamily breathed before he could think no more.

Chapter Text

Zero woke late in the afternoon. He blinked blearily and was almost awed by the golden rays that peeked through his window, the beginning of the sun's last hurrah before twilight. It had been a long time since he'd woken up to such a sight. For a moment, Zero simply laid there in silent appreciation, grateful for the opportunity to watch the bars of light roll over the carpet.

Earlier in the day, when his alarm clock had rung at six am for the first time in months, Zero had decided that class wasn't very important in the face of undisturbed sleep. Half-unconscious still and frustrated with trying to quiet the irritating mechanical creature, Zero had rolled over and gone back to bed, leaving the broken pieces of his alarm clock where they lay on the other side of the room. He must have hurled it at the wall in a hell of an offended rage, if the dent left behind was any evidence.

Now, Zero replayed those memories in something like amazement. He'd slept. Perfectly. No pain, no insomnia. Just deep, blissful rest. As he pulled himself to sitting, he felt no pain. He stretched languidly, only feeling the comfortable tightness of having laid still for a long time. An unheard-of ache, in his life of late. So inspired was he by his unusually peaceful body, Zero didn't even resent rising and preparing for his prefect duties. Until, of course, his sleep-logged brain reminded him that he would be seeing Kuran again at changeover.

Zero cringed as the last night came rushing back to him. Shame and guilt warred in his gut. He had given in to Kuran; no one could dispute that. He had melted into his arms like an idiot victim, mesmerized by the pretty predator. The high he'd felt—Zero had no words for it. No frame of reference. Panic darkened his vision when he came too close to the memory, making him feel sick and dizzy. Had that desire always been there? Zero didn't want to know.

To make matters worse, Zero had shot Kuran, too. And he felt upset and downright guilty about it. Shooting people, in general, didn't bother Zero. He had even shot less deserving people much more fatally. Yet, Zero felt guilty specifically for shooting Kuran. Guilty! In the past, Zero would have thrown a parade if he'd been offered half the chance to shoot Kuran. Now he'd done it and his instincts were crying about it.

It was because of the mate-bond, Zero knew—academically, at least. It was stronger now, thanks to the blood exchange, and it didn't like it when one mate harmed the other. But they couldn't be mates, Zero thought desperately, eyes skittering warily over the abandoned piles of reference that covered most of his floor space. They just couldn't. But the pattern fit. And only dead hunters ignored patterns.

I can't think about this anymore right now, Zero decided. He had a job to do, and, for the first time since Cross had made him a prefect, he was eager for the distraction. Grabbing a uniform and other necessities, Zero slowly worked through his routine. With every step, he grounded himself. He breathed. He locked the shame and the guilt and the panic in a box and put the box on a high shelf. There were a lot of boxes on that shelf. Zero ignored them all as he slid his jacket on, shoving aside those problems for the one he felt he could actually do something about.

Kuran had tasted his blood. And Kuran was just the kind of man to refuse to let Zero's 'unique qualities' lie. Zero had worked too hard at hiding to give up easily. He'd called the Association before sleeping (thank you, 'round-the-clock staffing), but he also had some wards to check. He'd need to visit some people, maybe. He didn't want to have to take anything with him—he wouldn't put it past Kuran to search his room—but he needed to make sure everything was secure. Zero sighed. He'd need a list, it looked like.

Composing that list in his head, Zero finished dressing and grabbed his music player. He turned it to a playlist of calming songs that he had designed specifically to help keep his temper under control when dealing with pain-in-the-ass vampires and, even more annoying, fangirls. He'd even painted a silence charm on the device to help mute the fangirls' shrieks some, saving his ears from their ridiculousness. Without Yuuki, Zero had had to learn to keep himself in check. So far, Zero thought with quiet pride, his coping mechanisms had been even more effective than she had been.

With the music blocking some of his stress, Zero left his dorm feeling almost settled. Kuran's bite had healed and Zero had forgone his tie almost purposefully, as though as in defiance of the claim Kuran had implied. He felt good. He felt in control. He may have dreamed about Kuran all night and day, may have lost himself to hazy fantasies where 'Kaname' rolled off his lips with terrifying ease, but he was awake now. He had a plan. Other people might be suffering today, but hang the Gods and the Devils, Kiryuu Zero was doing just fine.

And he was determined to milk it for as long as he could.

Aidou Hanabusa sighed the sigh of the long-suffering as he came to the end of yet another row of ten-foot-high shelves. Dear Gods. He'd thought vampires were fanatics when it came to record-keeping, but they had absolutely nothing on the hunters. Why was his life like this?

He had just finished combing the last level of the hunters' Library of Records. Thus far, all he had to show for his hours of effort were the official report on the Shizuka Incident, the singed remainder of a family tree (everyone on the tree either blacked-out or dead, save Kiryuu Zero), and Kiryuu's hunter registration forms.

Apparently, they forms had to be filled out and filed when hunters became official. Disturbingly, Kiryuu had filed his at ten years old. He had been an adorable kid, based off the first ID photo. That, however, did not explain why the hunters had children out killing for them. Sheesh, even vampires weren't (usually) that bad.

Moral quandaries aside, however, Hanabusa knew that he had next to nothing and had wasted an entire day and most of the night finding it. Vampires were made of tough stuff, but Hanabusa was exhausted. And, oh, Kaname-sama was going to be so mad. He had seemed very invested in this assignment when he'd passed it along to Hanabusa. Not that he'd shared why. Obviously it was to do with Kiryuu, but then again, why would Kaname-sama need to know anything about him? Ugh. The whole scenario made no sense to the genius, which just annoyed him even more.

Glancing around the huge, book-filled space, Hanabusa felt horribly cornered by the oak shelves that stood imposingly on his every side, ornate and taunting. Perhaps Kaname-sama's order to search the library for information on the Kiryuus wasn't even an assignment, just a cleverly disguised punishment.

Sighing, Hanabusa readjusted the (rather thin) folder he had tucked under his arm and headed for the elevators. Yup, that's right, elevators. Hanabusa hadn't expected a hunter library would need elevators. Oh, how wrong he had been. Each letter had its own floor in this place. Each floor housed what seemed like one-freakin'-billion ten-foot-tall shelves, all stuffed to the brim with different forms of material information: suspiciously ancient-looking scrolls, books, modern manila file folders, post-it notes—all meticulously filed and, apparently, containing worthwhile information. All of it was contained on one physical floor of the hunter HQ, by way of some kind of magic Hanabusa "couldn't possibly hope to understand," if the smarmy hunter-librarian he'd asked had been truthful. Honestly, between the old guy's downright caustic expression and the way his fingers kept twitching as if for a gun, Hanabusa hadn't bothered prodding him further.

Figuring that the aides would more likely shoot him than, you know, aide him, Hanabusa had decided that instead of asking for help, he should just scan the floors one by one. Even at top vampire speed and with judicious strategy, it had taken him nearly twenty-four hours to find nothing at all. He was so, so doomed. Sighing, Hanabusa accepted his fate and turned to go find the elevators again when a voice called out to him.

"Excuse me, but can I help you?" She was a tiny woman, deeply wrinkled with kind eyes. She looked more like she should be serving cookies to her grandkids than minding a hunter library like the prefect-esque band around her arm said she did. Despite her age, though, she quickly caught up to him and gave him a warm smile.

"I'm Satou Aio," she said gently. "I've been watching you run around here for quite some time, Mr. Vampire. I don't mean to intrude, but I figure you could use some help."

Hanabusa didn't know what to make of her. He had seen the different library attendants skulking around, watching and glaring at him. When he had originally moved to ask for help, he'd been instantly treated like scum. It was not an experience he'd hoped to repeat. There was little that made you feel smaller than having a score of old humans stick their noses up at you. While Hanabusa tried to figure out just what he'd done to garner this particular old lady's attention (and if it was some kind of trick), the lady drew herself to her full, miniscule height.

"You'll have to excuse my fellows. In our line of work, we don't see decent vampires often. That's why everyone's been so rude, dear," she explained. Oh yeah, Hanabusa thought, this woman was definitely the milk-and-cookies type of lady. But still, wasn't she also a hunter? Like an old, retired one or something? She should be just as mean as the rest.

She smiled at him kindly, reading the wary question in his eyes. "I've been fortunate enough to have had a wider experience. Now, what can I help you with?"

"I'm looking for anything to do with the Kiryuu family," Hanabusa said, after a long moment of silence. He was a naturally suspicious person—so was most of Kaname-sama's court—but he was also pragmatic enough to know that he didn't have a lot of choice here. He loathed disappointing Kaname-sama, and, as it stood, that was all he would be able to do on his own. "I'm also looking for a kind of general hunter history guide, and a book on spells and wards, if you could," Hanabusa said. He tried for a charming smile but was too tired. He really hoped that this lady could help him. She was his last hope, as pathetic as it sounded.

Her face turned thoughtful for a second before she looked back up at him. "You're going to need to be a little more specific than that, Mr. Vampire. Do you know what time frame you're looking at? The Kiryuus are a very, very old family, dating all the way back to before the Hunter Association was even formed! And the history book, I don't know if we have one that tells everything…"

As the woman popped questions at him, she pulled a pair of thin wire-framed glasses out of the pocket of her cardigan and slipped them on her face. Grabbing Hanabusa's hand, she pulled him off into the elevator. Hitting a button labeled CL—that Hanabusa had not yet dared to touch—the elevator rocketed them up. Stepping into the room, Hanabusa stared at the endless rows of computers and desks.

The woman moved quickly. Typing at an impressive speed, she pulled up screens and entered passwords almost faster than Hanabusa could follow. Two seconds later, thousands of files flew up on the screen. Hanabusa gaped. Weren't old people supposed to suck with computers? He belatedly noted the wicked smile on her face as she patted the seat beside her.

"Now, Mr. Vampire," Satou said as she clicked the first file, "this is where things begin to get interesting."

Yuuki bit her lip as she stared at the tall mirror, contemplating the wedding dress she held in her hands. The consultant had pulled it from the storeroom for her to try; it was so new they didn't even have a sample out yet. Yuuki had half a mind to demand that they never do so, that the dress belong only to her. That was the appeal of a custom design, Yuuki supposed. Kaname had looked at her a little oddly when she'd told him her plans to go boutique shopping.

Maybe, Yuuki thought anxiously, a vampire of her class wasn't meant to shop for a wedding gown like this? She certainly hadn't gone to store for her other clothes—Kaname had ordered them after Yuuki was fitted by a taciturn seamstress in Kuran livery. But Yuuki had wanted this, the experience of wedding dress shopping, and she hadn't been able to quash her possibly too-human desire.

Well, Yuuki thought, it was too late to be regretful now. The wedding was only a few months away. She would just have to enjoy what she could and worry later. Determinedly, she turned her focus back to the dress.

She held it up against her body critically. It was certainly pretty. It had long, lacy sleeves that would just reach her fingertips and a flowing lace train that would trail elegantly behind her. A crystal-strewn sweetheart neckline would show off her delicate throat. A dainty sash wound under her bust, ending in a bow high on her back. The rest of the gown would float around her airy layers. The image in her mind was a pretty one. Far prettier, Yuuki thought, than Cross Yuuki had ever dreamed of being on her wedding day.

Yuuki brushed those thoughts away, uncomfortable with them. The dress. She had to only think about the dress. And she liked it, she decided. But. Well. Yuuki just wasn't sure if it would suit her—or her station. She was a princess, wasn't she? And even if she wasn't, she was going to be marrying a prince. She would be a princess by default even if the title hadn't been her birthright. That meant that only the best would do her justice. Right? Her tutors had told her so. Society seemed to agree. Yuuki didn't have reason to think otherwise, and she had every reason to try and meet that standard.

Frustrated with her own thoughts, Yuuki adopted her sweetest manner and smiled at the company she had brought along: Souen Ruka and Tooya Rima. She thought that Ruka was full of herself and that Rima was a little too emotionless, but they had been the ones that Kaname had suggested would be the best company for her. Yuuki had thought to bring a few of the vampires she'd met since moving into the Night Class. They were all nobles or wealthy gentry, of course, though admittedly not quite on par with Kaname's personal courtiers. Ultimately she had decided to acquiesce to Kaname's wishes. After all, Kaname knew best.

At moments like these, Yori swam into her head. Yuuki drown those memories mercilessly. She couldn't afford human weaknesses, like Yori and—…

Tilting her head to the side with practiced delicacy, Yuuki decided that she might as well ask the women's opinions. Their words wouldn't truly matter. A Pureblood's word was always the final one, Yuuki had come to realize. However, these women were a part of Kaname's inner circle. They must serve her brother so well. The least she could do was be nice.

Also, Yuuki thought with a pleased smile, once she married Kaname they would be hers to command. She wanted to prove that she could be a good leader, and sometimes that meant consulting lesser opinions. Just not, you know, following those opinions if they contradicted her own. That was how Kaname seemed to lead, at least. Yuuki would do anything to avoid embarrassing Kaname.

"Ruka, Rima, what do you think of this one? Should I try it on, or would that just be a waste of time?" Yuuki asked, giggling. She couldn't help it. She couldn't believe she was getting married, The wait felt both like ages and no time at all. Soon, Kaname would be hers forever. Yuuki was blissful at just the thought.

Ruka sighed while Yuuki beamed, apparently eager for her response. It wasn't so much that Ruka didn't like the dress, or the fact that it had been three hours since they had entered this store—never mind the other two they had already been at, where Yuuki hadn't tried a single thing on. No, Ruka understood the importance of finding the perfect wedding dress. She herself hoped that one day she would have the privilege of dragging a group of friends through various boutiques and design houses in the hunt for her ideal gown. The issue was that Yuuki insisted on adding an extra layer of glee and glitter to everything she said or did. It was saccharine and sickening to the practical aristocrat.

Hanabusa was like that sometimes, Ruka moodily allowed. But only when he played up his vapidity for the fangirls or the vulture-like noble crowds. He was always purposeful, pantomiming for laughs or political ambition. And when he took it too far, Ruka could call him on it and he stopped. Yuuki was a Pureblood and, worse, Kaname-sama's sister. His fiancée. Ruka couldn't say a single censorious thing to the brat without gaining, at least, his implicit approval first.

Ruka had a paranoid suspicion that Yuuki knew it and was using it to drive Ruka crazy.

That was probably giving her too much credit, Ruka thought mulishly. She wanted to cross her arms and refuse to play along. But that would be childish. She had seen Yuuki do exactly that when Kaname-sama hesitated to give her what she wanted. Ruka refused to sink to the brat's level.

Sighing, Ruka cast around for something nice to say. But Yuuki's smile had gone from expectant to blissful, so mercifully Yuuki must have mistaken her earlier sigh for an awed one. In the face of her contentment, Ruka wasn't going to tell her that Ruka had meant the exact opposite when that little noise had slipped past her lips. How could Kaname-sama have this girl for a mate?

Maybe it was a political match, Ruka mused. They happened sometimes. Vampires lived for thousands of years. True mates marrying the first time around was an especially auspicious blessing for the couple. Everyone knew that Hio Shizuka and Kuran Rido's engagement hadn't been a love match. People whispered that Hio's mysterious E lover had been her mate; that that was why his loss had driven her over the edge.

But what angle could Kaname-sama be working with?

Immediately, the Senate slaughter flashed in Ruka's mind. There was no government currently running vampire society. Various Pureblood courts were jostling for full control. Surely Kaname-sama knew what his actions against the Senate would bring. But if he could offer the vampire world a stable court, with a king and queen blissfully in love and working happily together—Ruka had no doubts that the Kuran Monarchy would rise again.

Unfortunately, seeing the logic behind Kaname-sama's actions didn't make them any easier to bear. Ruka felt disgust well in her throat as Yuuki broke into a large grin.

Having bought Ruka's cover, Yuuki had turned her attention to Rima. To Ruka, Rima's besotted smile was obviously fake. Yuuki, however, was obviously pleased. Smiling like the sun—persistently bright and irritating to Ruka's sensitive nocturnal eyes—Yuuki let out a high-pitched squeal that left Ruka and Rima (and several humans who were also within earshot) to wonder if it would be considered rude to cover their ears. And run.

Smile still firmly in place, Yuuki called over the consultant that had been helping them throughout their time at the store and told her to go set up a changing room. In response, the assistant seemed to let out a sigh of relief before casting the two vampire women a sympathetic glance. Ruka smiled back, feeling an odd bond with the human woman who'd suffered through this ordeal with she and Rima.

But as the minutes ticked into hours, Ruka wasn't sure that she'd ever smile again. In fact Ruka was almost certain that she was going to die in the bridal boutique, bound to her satin chair by Yuuki's temperamental whims. Just as Ruka committed to texting her last good-byes to Akatsuki, the princess appeared.

A bright, happy smile accented her heart-shaped face as she practically skipped over to the mirror. Not gracing either Ruka or Rima with a second glance, she looked herself over and squealed again. Ruka cringed, but smothered the expression in an instant. If Yuuki squealed, she must like what she saw, right? Maybe they would be out of here soon, Ruka thought, sharing a glance with Rima.

With this thought in mind, Ruka examined the dress. She tried to find anything that she could genuinely like about it. Anything that she could use to sell Yuuki on it and get she and Rima out of this nightmare. Ideally, before they had to be back on campus for class.

The smooth, silky fabric hung in the most complementary way possible for Yuuki's almost curve-less shape, Ruka thought, giving her the illusion of having round hips and a perky chest. The dress's bodice gave her small bust even more help, while the sash accentuated her tiny waist. Glitter and tiny gemstones had been added to just about every possible inch of the gown, making Yuki sparkle every time she moved. The skirt of the dress had been altered; it was probably four times as big as it had been originally, giving her a very cupcake-like look. The sleeves, the highlight of the dress for Ruka, were gone. This alteration left Yuuki's pale arms, which had only thinned out more after she abandoned the Artemis Rod, bare.

Ruka despaired. In her honest opinion, Yuuki looked like a cake topper. Today was, obviously, no day for honesty. When Yuuki turned to her, grinning like a spoiled child who had just received her newest toy, Ruka scrambled for words. "Oh, Yuuki-sama!" Ruka eventually settled on, "Surely, Kaname-sama will only fall deeper in love with you when he sees you in such a beautiful dress!" Ruka almost choked on the lie. At best, Ruka thought venomously, Yuuki would pass for a catalog bride.

But Yuuki was satisfied with Ruka's bitten-out words and turned her attention back to Rima. With Yuuki distracted, Ruka disappeared into her thoughts.

Against her better, pragmatic nature, she found herself sending a prayer upward. She could see the political backdrop Kaname-sama was likely playing against. The goal that he was, most probably, working toward. Ruka knew the easiest pathway, politically, was Yuuki. A royal Pureblood by birth, a malleable little girl by nature—the perfect queen to a domineering king like Kaname-sama doubtlessly would be.

Yet. There was no way that Yuuki wouldn't make Kaname-sama miserable. A tyrannical, manipulative taskmaster he might be, but he was a damn good leader. He deserved a partner who could match his cunning, not just play a role in his plans. There had to be a better road.

Would it be too much, Ruka wondered, for Kaname-sama’s real mate to come onto the game? No matter how easy Yuuki would make the politics, there was nothing vampire society favoured more than true mates. An authentically bonded couple would seal the deal in a heartbeat.

They could try to fake it, Ruka guessed. Some couples did. Ruka's own parents weren’t bonded, but no one in society would dare question their union. But Yuuki. She had neither the loyalty of Ruka's father nor the dedication of her mother. There was nothing holding Yuuki to her vows, to the act, but her romantic affections. Those affections couldn’t go deep enough for this kind of performance. Not if Kaname-sama didn't return them. And from what Ruka saw, he couldn't possibly do that.

Watching Yuuki spin giddily in her dress, Ruka swallowed her sigh. Ruka would take anyone over Yuuki. Hell, Ruka would settle for Kiryuu at this point! At least he was genuine. There was no way in Hell could someone fake a temper like that. He was handsome, too, if you looked past the permanent scowl. And he was competent. Powerful.

Yuuki was also powerful, being a Pureblood. But she hadn't worked for it. Kiryuu, comparatively, had become a prolific hunter against all odds. And then he had killed Kuran Rido. That alone, in Ruka and many others' books, made him a more enticing investment.

Ruka shook her head. Her musings were nothing but foolish fantasy, she told herself, wincing as Yuuki giggled again. There was no way that she could be that lucky.

Chapter Text

Hanabusa stared. Satou-san pulled up file after file—an absurd number of files—and, file after file, there appeared a bright red sign over the document. In huge, capitalized, underlined letters, 'SEALED' seared itself across Hanabusa's eyes and soul. There wasn't even a password box! All the computer missed was a padlock and a big sign reading: 'Hanabusa, I now doom you to fail your Kaname-sama and be disgraced for all eternity! Mwahahaha!'

...Okay. So. Maybe he was being a little overdramatic. But, really? It was horrifying. Every piece of information on the whole damned Kiryuu family was either blocked or missing. It was like someone had known he was going to be searching and had locked everything in advance—hm. Hanabusa paused, considering. Could someone have known? It was conceivable. If Kaname-sama were interested, he could be working against someone. But who would have that kind of authority? If the hunters' system was anything like the vampires', then only a council member or the head of the clan the information concerned could seal the files.

Hanabusa's eyes went wide. The only Kiryuu left was Kiryuu! That bastard had blocked him!

Though, Hanabusa thought—rubbing his aching head as the small woman before him cursed again—now that he had realized the obvious, he did have to wonder why. Kiryuu, as Hanabusa knew him, didn't give a fuck about anything. So why care about the privacy of a bunch of dead people when the Shizuka Incident, which had to still be painful, was available in all its fully documented glory? Did Kaname-sama know the other documents were sealed? Hanabusa wished he understood what kind of cat-and-mouse game was going on between those two. Kaname-sama had more worthy concerns than some long-dead geezers in the level D's family tree. Didn't he?

Kaname-sama never did anything that wasn't, somehow, important.

"Why, this is most annoying..." Turning his attention to Satou-san, Hanabusa couldn't help but smile. The lady was indeed determined. For the last hour she had been attempting to hack some file or another, only to be thrown out. In that time, Hanabusa had learned so many new phrases that he couldn't wait for his and Ruka's next fight.

Reality dragged him back from a lovely daydream where he delivered Ruka the smackdown for the ages when Satou-san cursed a blue streak: the computer had completely shut her out. Above them, the lights flickered as the library's firewalls fought and won dominance. Glaring, Satou-san turned her attention back to him. Determination flooded her face as she stood up, pushed her chair in, and motioned for him to follow. Which he did in seconds, so as to not anger the only person in the whole place that had offered to help him.

"You know, Mr. Vampire, you have picked a very guarded subject. I can't help but wonder why. Granted, the Kiryuus do play an important part in both worlds' politics, but I can't wrap my mind around why a young vampire like yourself would be interested in such an old, hunter-oriented topic." A clear look of interest set her face as she shepherded Hanabusa to the elevator, pressing the 'K' button once the doors closed.

Hanabusa didn't think about answering her question. The mission wasn't secret. Kaname-sama would have mentioned that, right? So with a clean conscience, Hanabusa replied, "I've been sent by Kuran-sama. He's taken an interest."

He was so absorbed in other thoughts that he almost missed the woman's sharp inhale. He frowned, concerned. "Are you feeling well, Satou-san?" His tone was natural and friendly, hiding his concern. Could she know something? Or maybe it was age. Hanabusa was instantly terrified that he was about to lose his only guide in this research nightmare. Selfish, he knew, but truthful.

Satou-san just smiled: not a grandmotherly expression like before, but a smile akin to the one Kaname-sama sometimes bore when he stood over his chess board. Hanabusa's panic rose. She must have noticed, as her next words were pitched kindly.

"It's nothing too bad, Mr. Vampire. I just think you're going to be surprised by where we're heading to hunt down our information." The elevator doors' opening 'ping' cut off any further explanation. Primly, Satou-san exited and guided him to the part of floor K given to vampires. Hanabusa felt immediately wary. He had already combed this section, and sure enough, he'd found a file containing a report about the surviving Kiryuu son being turned vampire. But Satou-san skipped right over the space that file had lived.

"Mr. Vampire, do you think you could hand me that stepladder? What we're looking for is on the very top shelve," Satou-san said. Her smile never faded. His unease growing but without other options, Hanabusa did as she dictated. For about ten minutes, he lost her to the high shelves. Just when he felt he couldn't handle the wait any longer, she pulled the first book and passed it down.

Staring down at the book, Hanabusa felt his heart stutter. It was old—ancient, even. The preservative magics woven into the embossed cover hummed against his skin. He recognized the distinct feel from the most treasured documents in the Senate Library's collection. This book was made by vampires, for vampires, at a time when such craft was prized—the high period of the Monarchy, at the latest. Without even opening the work, Hanabusa knew at least ten names who would risk war for whatever such a book contained. If his suspicions about Kaname-sama's mission were correct, then Hanabusa's lord would be right at the top of the list.

Hanabusa stared at the pile of books he had mechanically been building at his feet. They were all like the first: beautiful, woven covers decorated with leather and gold, even jewels. They all sparkled with that same protective, distinctly vampire magic.

How had the hunters come by these? Hanabusa would bet his life that the Senate had never known they existed, let alone where the resided. Spoils of battles, no doubt. Monarchy artifacts were not easily let go by any vampire, and especially those entrusted to guard them. For some books, entire family lines were dedicated as historians and caretakers.

Turning to the one in his hands, Hanabusa gently opened the cover. A diary, belonging to... Hanabusa stared. Kuran Akeno?

Hanabusa eyes widened as he scanned over the rest of the books. They all had to do with the Kurans! What the hell? As fantastic as it was to hold such amazing relics in his hands, there was no way Hanabusa would find the information he needed—about a clan of human hunters—in diaries written by Kaname-sama's Monarchy ancestors. Right?

Stomach turning uncomfortably, Hanabusa willed the shakiness out of his voice and put the question. "Satou-san, why do all of these books have something to do with the Kurans?"

She paused a moment and raised an eyebrow. His hypothesis that the old woman had merely led him wrong died a horrible death. She seemed to be sizing him up, peering into his very soul to judge his worth. After a very uncomfortable twenty seconds, she replied. "I think you will be very surprised how—and what—information comes to be remembered, Mr. Vampire."

Snapping back to the shelves, Satou-san pulled an armful more before scaling down the ladder. Within moments, they were back at the elevator. "Now, just some hunter history, and the one on magic and strategy. I—"

Overwhelmed by the revelations of the last twenty hours and the ancient treasures in his arms, Hanabusa lost track of the old woman's murmurs. Just what, Hanabusa wondered anxiously, had Kaname-sama become involved in now?

Zero groaned as he fell on his bed. For about two hours, his life had looked good. Sure, hitting rock-bottom and glutting himself on Kuran's blood had probably been what had allowed him to steal all the wonderful sleep that had led to his sunny disposition, but those two hours had been almost worth it. Now, eyes despairingly set on his music player’s clock—his tabletop clock still in pieces on the floor—Zero couldn't believe it was only three in the morning. As exhausted as he was, he had been sure it had to be later.

Rolling onto his back, Zero stared up at the ceiling. Fun fact: Zero had stopped expecting his life to go well the moment he had felt a Pureblood vampire on his family property. That being said, eleven-year-old Zero had not been able to predict just how many levels below 'well' he would discover in the next seven years. Not only must he step softly around the monster in his mind, Zero lost loved ones like other people lost pens. Hair elastics. Socks. In his desperate efforts to hold on to the few who remained, he had placed himself at Kuran Kaname's mercy. He'd been little better than a fighting dog, held to the Pureblood by a leash of blood and fear.

Consuming Ichiru had broken that chain, but apparently not the one around Zero's fucked up emotions. Whether Kuran was his mate or not, Zero realized that he had looked too closely into the abyss with that one. There was a tether there he didn't want to examine, one that terrified and thrilled him. He had reveled in having Kuran's fangs in his neck, too blindsided by his heart to listened to his head. Zero was well and truly fucked, and for Kuran Kaname, not because of him.

Certainly, his bloodied eleven-year-old self hadn't seen that coming. Zero was positive he'd have stabbed himself with that butter knife if he'd had the slightest inkling.

Changeover today had been what Zero had needed to confirm his new self-awareness. He had tried hard for normality and control, viciously excising his rising anxiety as the gates opened. He had almost managed it, too. The Night Class had entered with the usual fanfare, perhaps even a touch milder than was typical without Aido "Idol" Hanabusa there to whip the Day Class crowd into madness.

Ichijou Takuma, the member of Kuran's court Zero most tolerated, had passed along that Aido had been called away for a family emergency—code, Zero had noticed, for whenever Kuran had decided one of his missions was more important than having all his minions attend class. Zero had indulged himself in a brief moment of victory; obviously, he'd been apt to have the library place that seal when he had. He wished Aido the best of luck. The irritating bastard would need it.

He'd been turning away from Ichijou, after exchanging increasingly familiar and weirdly enjoyable pleasantries, when he'd felt angry eyes at his back. Senses shrieking, he'd spun on instinct to lock gazes with Yuuki. In an instant of seeing her expression, he couldn't believe he had ever expected their friendship to survive. His ancestors must have rolled in their graves at his naiveté. Yuuki had looked at him like he was the scum of the Earth, manner perfectly aloof but eyes icily caustic. She had snarled "D" at him like a slur as she passed, her own personal entourage following her poisonous lead—even as Kuran's courtiers had stuttered a step in disbelief.

Through his own wrong-footed surprise, Zero had managed to match her derision with a bloodcurdling glare. Several of her followers—nameless nobles and new money commoners; rejects of her brother's, Zero would bet—had paled and flinched.

He'd caught the flash of her frustration, the way she fisted her skirt still the same tell it had always been. Vicious satisfaction had flooded him. But Zero had refrained from gloating. Anything less than perfect control, he was certain, would have ended in Yuuki’s death. That red haze from the night of the Kurans' arrival had swarmed at the edges of his vision. Thankfully, smothering his violent impulses had been easier this time.

After all, Zero’s vampire purred, her fiancé's fangs had been in his neck last night. How much of a sway could she possibly hold over Kaname? Killing her would almost be a wasted effort.

Zero frowned, disturbed by his own thoughts. He had loved Yuuki so much for so long. And even if he hadn’t, the political fallout for killing the Kuran Princess would be immense. But those realities meant nothing to the predator under his skin.

At least the rage had left a good impression on the baby hunter transfers from the Association. He was aware they were all spies sent to judge how much of a loose cannon he was, and they knew he was aware of it. But they had all closed ranks around him today with admiration plain on their usually blank faces, so Zero figured he'd gained a win on that front.

The Day Class, however, was a different battle. The students around him, especially those who were in on Cross Academy's secret after the Rido Incident, had been shocked silent. The others had followed their lead, hushing up until the entire crowd had gone quiet. In that moment, it had felt like someone—perhaps an entire era—had died.

Taking advantage of the silence, Zero had snapped into prefect mode. He'd ordered the Day Class to scatter and jerked his head pointedly at the vampires. Painfully and awkwardly, crossover had ended.

Zero shut his eyes and groaned. In the chaos, he hadn't even seen Kuran. His nobles hadn’t looked happy—the perpetually sunshiny Ichijou had even frowned blatantly before he caught himself—but who knew what the bastard thought? Maybe he was pleased with his fiancée's venom.  

The vampire in Zero's brain hissed in protest, but he wrestled the instincts down. The wedding was still on, after all. Zero should know: Cross couldn't be made to shut up about it. Every time Zero saw him, he spouted about all the beautiful details—how beautiful a husband and wife Kaname and Yuuki would be together; how much they obviously loved each other—Zero slammed his fist into the bed, fangs dropping in rage. The red haze descended and Zero had to fight, hard, to remain where he was.

So maybe the blood exchange hadn't been enough to secure Kaname’s affections. Fine, the vampire snarled. Zero would just snap off Yuuki’s hands and rip off her lips, and leave her heart in the fucking courtyard for all to see. Let her try and take what wasn't hers then.

The haze didn't dissipate this time until Zero felt tears roll down his cheeks. He collapsed onto the bed, shamefaced.

Zero wasn't built for this. He didn't understand these warring emotions, and he couldn't submit to his instincts enough to learn. He just couldn't. He wanted to—desperately, he wanted to. No one was more tired of being cold and strong than Zero was. It was just that he couldn't. It wasn't how he was wired.

Hunters were killers, born and raised. Killers don't cry, and killers certainly don't fall in love with their targets. And every vampire is a target, eventual if not immediate. The hunters had enough problems without adding in any more shades of grey than that.

Hunters didn't have secrets or agendas. That was the common perception, before the Rido Incident. The President's corruption had been shocking to both worlds. But not to Zero. He was privy to some of the dark closets the Hunter Association had locked up and forgotten about. Now, with the old President's death, Zero was the last to know all the secrets and lies. The last loose end, determined to remain unraveled. Yet despite his best intentions Zero felt frayed to his bones.

Too restless to remain still, Zero got to his tired feet and paced. Memories scratched at the surface of his mind. He fought them down ruthlessly. It was over. Ichiru and his parents were at peace. Hell, maybe Shizuka was, too.

Zero was alone, but that was okay. Alone was his preferred state of being. He had forgotten that, let Yuuki and Cross trick him into believing in family. Idiot. Alone meant you couldn't be harmed. He had to remember that—Fuck!

Abruptly, pain and blood filled his mouth; in his upheaval, his fangs had sank into his lip. He raised a hand to his mouth, frustrated to new levels when it came away with ruby blood stuck to his fingers. He turned on his heel, determined to clean up and then go for a run, maybe until his heart fucking gave out, when—

A delicious, dreaded aura, tucked away but not concealed tightly enough to trick Zero's hair-trigger senses, brushed gently against his skin. Turning, Zero stared at the window. The ivy that climbed along the ledge was broken. Someone had either gripped there or jumped and landed. And Zero knew, soul-deep, exactly who was responsible. After all, he was standing right behind him.

Confirming his instinct, an alabaster hand settled gently on his hip. Zero froze, entire body still but for his rabbiting heart. The other hand trailed up his side, gliding across his chest to rest on his shoulder. A firm body radiated heat against his back as Kuran stepped closer, lips searing a kiss at the nape of Zero's neck. Zero's breath stuttered in his chest, almost drowning out Kuran's fathomless, rasping murmur of his name, "Zero."

As though Kuran had a line to his body that completely surpassed his mind, the word sent pleasure rolling through his chest. He relaxed against the body cradling him, despite his doubts. Anxiety fluttered in his stomach, his hunter instincts in hysterics, but Zero's vampire was strong from fresh pure-blood and wouldn't be silenced in Kuran's—Kaname's?—presence.

His head fell back, muscles lax, nose seeking the cinnamon spiciness that had haunted his dreams and memories for the last twenty-four hours. A rumble rolled along his back, Kuran obviously pleased by Zero's acquiescence. Zero's vampire purred in mutual satisfaction. Still, Zero wasn't stupid. Not this time, at least. He had questions.

"What are you doing here, Kuran?" Zero asked, dredging up some self-control.

Kuran chuckled, slow and sweet, amused and genuine. The sound hit Zero like rich red wine, intoxicating and dizzying. He closed his eyes a moment and tried to calm his throbbing heart.

He didn’t need to look at Kaname’s face to know he was smiling when he spoke. "How did I go from Kaname to Kuran so fast?"

Zero frowned and opened his eyes. "Is that what we're doing? First names and secret meetings in the middle of the night?"

An instant passed, and then Zero was spun, pinned chest to chest with Kuran. Wide-eyed, he stared up at Kuran, struck again by his impossible beauty. Every line of him was perfectly drawn, composed, and aligned. A lovely covering for a vicious creature. But that reality was far from this room, where Kaname stroked gentle fingers under Zero's jaw, something like awe softening his face. Zero grit his teeth, turning away to hide a rebellious blush, unused to being looked at like that. But Kaname wouldn't let him. His fingers held firm, forcing Zero to meet his eyes.

"You're getting married," Zero blurted, knowing Kaname, his strategies and his tactics. If he didn't speak now, Kaname wouldn't give him room to later. "You have Yuuki. Why are you here?"

Kaname froze. "I do have Yuuki," he said shamelessly.

The vampire snarled, enraged by his stupid mate. For once Zero let himself feel it. Anyone with eyes could see that Yuuki wasn't meant for Kaname. Why did the idiot insist on keeping her? The red haze teased his vision, a low growl falling past his lips. Zero would hunt her down, shred her to pieces for even thinking she could keep him, prove to Kaname just who he was rejecting—and then hands were cradling his face. A low, soothing voice murmured to him, drew him closer, bathed him in his mate's scent.

"I have her," the voice—Kaname—whispered into his ear, "But I don't want her. I want you."

With every word, Zero's red haze receded, like a tide pulled out to sea.

"She's a sister, maybe a friend … but, mostly," Kaname's dark chocolate eyes slowly swirled red, "She's just a mistake."

His thumb trailed over Zero’s bottom lip. It came away tacky with Zero's blood, spilled by Zero's own clumsy fangs. Zero was enchanted by the black glimmer of it in the moonlight. He watched as, with what must be deliberate slowness, Kaname popped his thumb into his mouth and sucked. His eyes fluttered closed, expression of complete bliss sliding across his face.

Zero breathed out, soft and wanting, undeniably pleased. Rational thought disappeared, drowned by pleasure. His blood had put that expression on Kaname's face. His.

Emboldened, Zero set his palms on Kaname's shoulders, breathing slowly in and out. He was touching someone forbidden to him; it was like cupping fire in his hands. He wasn't burned, but Zero felt like he should have been.

Kaname's red eyes snapped to his. Intense and dark as heart's blood, his pupils were blown against a sea of wine. His thumb slipped out of his mouth with a sinful pop.

Zero ached, moaning without thought. Low fire lit his gut, hardening him in his uniform slacks. His lips tingled. He had never felt like this, had barely dreamed like this. He was caught in a new world, and when Kaname reached to pull him deeper Zero followed him eagerly. Hot and wet assaulted him, lips meeting lips messy and desperate. Zero gasped into it, hands leaving their careful perch to push off Kaname's jacket, aggressive and frustrated. There were too many layers. Zero wanted skin. He wanted scent. He wanted Kaname.

Kaname's hands were already on Zero's button-up, carelessly ripping the white fasteners away. Zero had shucked his jacket and tie once his door closed behind him, and he hadn't bothered with the vest that morning. "You always wear too much," Zero hissed, eyes locked on Kaname, "You're always so covered up, like a perfect doll."

Kaname kissed him again, like he was helpless to do anything else. Like he was fighting a war and Zero's mouth was the last objective. His teeth sank into Zero's battered lower lip, a sting that pulled a gut-deep whine out of Zero. "Like you're any better," Kaname breathed, rough-voiced. His breath smelled like Zero's blood. "Half-dressed like you don't give a damn," he snarled, ripping Zero's shirt from his shoulders, "My walking temptation."

Yours, Zero affirmed, drowning the word at the last second in a moan. He couldn't make promises like that. A last sober braincell wouldn't let him. But he could have this. He wanted to make this claim on Kaname. So, he moved. He gloried in watching Kaname's vest buttons fly, in the way Kaname laughed as they scattered across the carpet. "Impatient," Kaname murmured. He bit Zero's ear, tugging hard on a silver piercing. Zero keened unrepentantly, rock hard and panting. His fingers sank into Kaname's hair in silent demand.

Kaname didn't disappoint. He marched Zero back against the bed, pushed him sharply down. Zero bounced, momentarily disoriented, and then he was consumed. Kaname rolled over him like a wildfire, destroying all in his way. Lost, Zero could make out hands stripping his belt, frustratedly attacking his slacks and underwear until sharp claws ripped both away. Cool night air whisked over his hip bones, his leaking cock.

Zero had never been bare like this before. Under Kaname's eyes, it felt both terribly wrong and deliciously right. Desperate to avoid his own conflicts, Zero reached for help. "Please, Kaname."

Kaname smiled, kissing softly at the corner of his mouth. "Yes, love?" He murmured. A red blush rushed over Zero's neck, down his chest. Love? No one had ever called him that. Embarrassed, struggling for clear air, Zero threw an arm over his face.

Fingers quickly wound with his, pulling his cover away. The bed shifted, but Zero kept his eyes closed. His hands were pulled up, pinned above his head. Knees braced his waist on either side of his hips, Kaname's skin lightning-hot against his. "Open your eyes," Kaname said, soft by nonetheless an order. Zero was helpless but to obey, drugged by Kaname's presence. He pulled his eyes open, panting with exertion.

"What do you want?" Kaname said next, kissing bruises down Zero's neck, his chest. His fangs, distended, caught teasingly on a nipple and Zero shouted, short and ragged.

Zero didn't have to think. He couldn't. His hips rolled by instinct, craving the heady friction Kaname's body promised him. But he didn't ask for that. "Tell me what am I to you," Zero panted instead. He needed Kaname to give him the words. He would never find them himself.

Kaname laid over him, pressing together their bodies from hips to chest. A powerful leg slotted between Zero's, and Zero whined as their cocks brushed. Kaname hushed him gently, clever fingers making soothing circles under his navel. When Zero quieted, Kaname rested those fingers against his face. Surrounded and subdued, Zero lay plaint as Kaname leaned down. In a hot, hushed whisper, he said, "You are mine, Kiryuu Zero. You are my mate, and you always will be."

And so, with a sigh of contentment on his lips, Zero let himself fall.

Chapter Text

What had he done last night? That was all Zero wanted to know.

Oh, he knew the mechanics. Like a horror film starlet, he'd invited the monster in. And not just in one sense, Zero thought, face flaming. They hadn't quite gone all the way, but they had certainly gone far enough for not having exchanged fifty civil words in seven years of acquaintance. Zero felt ill thinking about it. He wished he had blacked out, if only so he could pretend that he still had some sort of dignity left.

His stomach twisted. That was a lie. Zero would kill anyone who tried to take the memory from him, who tried to usurp his claim.

And a claim had been made. There was blood on his sheets to prove it. Other fluids, too, but Zero's brain only yet had room for the blood. Gingerly, Zero raised a hand to his neck. Two healing wounds met his fingers. His own mouth tasted like—Kuran. Like raw, golden power and crimson luxury, the most addictive wine and the most beloved precious jewels. Zero could almost follow the flow of Kaname's blood in his body, like veins of gold riddled throughout granite. Strength suffused him, his body stronger than ever even as his mind felt as firm as tissue paper.

Zero might have woken up alone, tucked into bed like a well-loved child, but he surely didn't feel like it.

Stuck in a dazed, nearly dream-like state, Zero padded on soft feet over to the bathroom mirror. Academically, he traced his eyes over the mad array of bruises Kaname had left behind. His neck, collar bones, and down his chest and over his stomach were all well-marked; Kaname had left no skin untouched. When Zero moved, he could feel scattered aches lower, like little sparks against his skin. The night might have ended with little more than blood-drunken, sloppy hand jobs, but Zero felt owned all the way through.

The feeling laid oddly on Zero's shoulders. Did all relationships feel like this? Zero doubted it, but he also didn't have any other experiences to compare Kuran with. A seven-year-long existential crisis and concurrent attack by a few different crazed vampires didn't leave one much time to date.

Not that dating had been part of his plan in the first place. Whatever had happened to his plan of slipping away into oblivion? Zero had killed the bad guy, Kuran had won the girl, and while that story was a bit different from the standard fairy-tale, the story was still supposed to end there. But it hadn't.

Zero hadn't tried to fight fate. He had known his place in the game. He was the knight. He protected, he sacrificed, and he was not nearly important enough to make it through to the end of the game. And he'd played that role perfectly. Except he had survived.

Against all odds, Zero had done the impossible. As the dust had settled on Cross Academy, Zero had found himself dirty but undeniably alive. He'd panicked, faced with years that stretched out in front of him, unexpected ever before. But Cross had been there. And Yagari. And Kaito. And even Yori, eventually. All four had stormed into his life with the odd, insurmountable expectation that Zero remain alive and in one piece. So, for lack of a better argument, Zero had. The next three months had passed pain-smattered but tolerable, and Zero hadn't thought about anything that wasn't directly in front of him.

And then Kuran Kaname had stood directly in front of him. Zero now had a lot to think about, and, in the light of day, he wasn't at all sure what to do with any of it.

Vampires were supposed recognize their mate on sight, or in very rare cases, the moment they first smelt their mate's blood. Zero had been seen by and bled in front of Kuran countless times. If their bond was true, an obsession should have sparked. They shouldn't have been able to keep their hands off each other, let alone their fangs. They should have felt, immediately, like they had last night.

Gently, Zero brushed his hand again over the neat wound in his neck. On closer inspection, he had noticed another, shallower bite on his inner thigh. Kaname had mauled him, but so gloriously that Zero had lain open for him willingly.

Zero certainly hadn't felt like this three months ago, and neither had Kaname. There had been no bond, no recognition. The discrepancy made Zero wary. If they were mates—and, Gods help him, that seemed to be the case—there should never have been such a delay.

Continuing his examination, Zero's eyes settled on the seal on his neck. The Hunter's Seal, designed to supress and control the vampire Shizuka had seeded in him. Maybe that had caused it. His considering fingers fell to his hip. Or, perhaps, something else; something that Zero had borne a lot longer than the seal on his neck.

But those thoughts were tantalizing, a temptation that made his hunter instincts cringe. That Kaname had overcome some magical inhibition to be with Zero now was straight from a fantasy. Far more likely was Zero's original assumption: Yuuki was Kuran's mate, and Zero was the pawn. A plaything, even, to be kept for Kuran's amusement.

Rage welled within him at the thought. In the mirror, a red-eyed reflection glared back at him from the glass. The vampire clawed at the walls, infuriated. Zero gripped the counter, fighting to stay still. The porcelain crumbled in his grip.

He desperately wanted to believe that Kaname had been truthful, especially after last night. His wrath surged at the thought of giving himself over to emotion only to have it one day thrown back at his face. Zero had been able to trust few people, and Kuran least among them. Zero should be wary of him.

There was something in Kaname's eyes last night, though. In his voice, when he'd laid his claim on Zero. Kaname's aura had rolled over Zero in time with his body. Devotion and truth had had melted over his hair-trigger senses like warm sunlight. Those memories soothed the beast.

But could that be faked? Kaname was the most powerful Pureblood Zero had ever encountered, by far. Rido had felt like a nuclear bomb, but Kaname? It was like standing next to a collapsing star. If anyone could lie with their aura, it would be Kuran Kaname. And if he had chosen to—well. Then Zero had just made the biggest mistake of his life.

Closing his eyes against his reflection, Zero carefully released the counter. Shattered shards of porcelain stuck to his palms. Others fell to the floor with a taunting tinkle. Damn it, he hated losing control. Screw Kaname for turning him into a maladapted schoolboy.

Turning his back to the whole mess, Zero showered and dressed. His neat room was quickly becoming a disaster, he thought, eyeing mulishly the scraps of alarm clock he'd yet to pick up, the bloodied clothes and sheets that he'd yet to launder. Again, the mess would have to be a problem for later. A check of his music player revealed that if he hurried, he might be able to make it to class on time for the first time since the Kurans had returned. Locking the door, Zero jumped the stairs and ran; at this point, an algebra lecture would be a nice, relaxing distraction from his other problems.

Kaname sighed. Why did everything have to be so annoying? The sun was so bright in the morning. The documents he had woken early to work on were so long and boring. And Yuuki! She was so loud as she bounced around his office, manically happy despite the early hour. Kaname had only woken so early to gain a few hours of peace before she usually rose. He had been almost horrified to find her already awake when he'd left his bedroom, occupying his private office with an abundant armful of roses. She was taking up floral arrangement, she had informed Kaname cheerfully, so that she had something quiet to do when she kept him company while he did his paperwork.

Standing at the threshold of his office, Kaname had realized that he had, in the last hour before dawn, left behind the best night of his life for the day from Hell. And now, several hours into that day, Kaname knew that he had been correct. The paperwork was manageable, an old and comfortable torment. But Yuuki clung to him like a wedding-obsessed limpet. The continual talking was doing terrible things to his mood and destroying what little focus he had left. He found himself daydreaming; not about Zero, like he would have liked, but about Yuuki. He was halfway through a graphic and sadistic scenario involving long, slow torture, when an epiphany struck.

Kaname wasn't reacting to his own emotions. Oh, no. No matter how annoying Yuuki became, Kaname never allowed himself to dream of her demise. He felt he owed Juri and Haruka to think kindly of their daughter, no matter how intolerable she sometimes was. Zero, however, had no such compunctions. Kaname was picking up his emotions and applying them to his own situation. It was one of the most common signs that mates were coming close to completing their bond. Happiness unfurled in Kaname at the realization.

Of course, Kaname's homicidal fantasy meant that someone must have royally pissed Zero off. Kaname had been purposefully trying not to think about Zero, and that should have offered him a little protection from the fluctuating bond. However, it was a goal Kaname was finding more and more futile as time went on.

Running a hand through his hair, Kaname leaned back in his plush leather chair. He couldn't help but smirk as he imagined who the poor soul was that had gained Zero's ire. A full-blown smile broke across his face when he decided that it had to be Cross. He was the only person on campus who willfully argued with Zero. Or maybe he had he brought up the wedding again.

The thought made Kaname ill, killing his smile. He couldn't entertain the idea of having Yuuki as a wife; not now that he knew for certain that Zero was his.

Kaname hadn't gone to Zero's that night for sex. He had been drawn by Zero's raging emotions. They had bled through their fledgling bond, a continuous anxiety that had itched under Kaname's skin. He had been concerned. He had gone out of concern. Standing in the shadows, blood and tears heavy in the air and clinging to Zero's lip and eyes, Kaname had known he'd chosen right. Zero had clearly needed someone in his corner. But events had quickly escalated.

Zero had fallen willingly into his arms. He'd been gentle and so sweet. All he had asked for was Kaname. Instincts purring in content, Kaname hadn't been able to resist. He’d offered up his undivided attention, pinning Zero under his gaze and in his arms. His thumb had brushed against the little wound from Zero's uncareful fangs unconsciously. Desperate for a taste, for the dizzying confirmation that Zero was here and his, Kaname had fallen to temptation.

Zero was obviously new to such acts. He was hesitant in his touch and so incredibly sensitive. Kaname couldn't leave him. He was enchanted by the delicate blush on Zero’s pale cheeks, his moans and curious hands. The night had spiraled, one glorious moment blurring into another.

Kaname now knew Zero in ways that no one else did and he luxuriated in the memory. He could still taste Zero at the back of his throat, the wildnewsweet that he could not aptly name. He'd also coaxed Zero to drink deeply of his blood; one hand cradling Zero's head against his throat while the other teased Zero to climax, doing his damnedest to associate his blood with Zero's pleasure. He had made a start, at least. By the last round Zero had even said please.

But understanding one of Zero's intricacies only left the others unbearably unknown. Kaname knew Zero better now, but only physically. Zero had possessed secretive eyes since Kaname had met him as a child. He’d just wrongly assumed that he'd known any secret Zero could have. Ripping Hio’s heart out had been meant to end Zero's complexities, but Kaname was coming to understand that he was still missing pieces of that game.

Could one piece be the delicate rose bloom Kaname had lain kisses over last night? Kaname tried to draw the image in his mind. It lay on his pale hip, small, minimal, and cloudy grey—a tattoo, he'd thought. Another of Zero's charming rebellions. But when Kaname had kissed the smooth, inked patch of skin, the mark had hummed against his lips. Another seal, he'd realized with surprise.

"What's this?" Kaname had questioned, hot with want but intrigued. A sharp tug on his hair and a hissed "Not the point" had quickly made him loose interest in the little mark. At least, until now.

Kaname frowned. He'd better start a notebook. Mating Zero was becoming an involved endeavour; he'd hate to lose track of any details. Knowing as much about Zero as he did, he could guess that the consequences would be lethal.

Kaname smirked. He did love a challenge.

Though, Kaname allowed, he would prefer that solving his lovely puzzle wouldn't require so much research. He had sent Hanabusa to the Association Library for the basics—Hanabusa had returned with what seemed to be their entire collection. Four boxes, each at least twenty volumes deep, sat locked in his bedroom closet for when he had a spare moment. He’d thought originally to keep them in his office, where he could look them over under the guise of doing paperwork, but Yuuki's newest ploy to monopolize his time had shot down that idea. Curse the Association for only just now transferring their files to a digital form; he could have perused on his laptop with none the wiser.

But he shouldn’t be ungrateful. Hanabusa had apparently gone through Hell to get what he had. The bubbly aristocrat had been dead on his feet when he’d finally reported to Kaname, almost a full twenty-four hours since Kaname had sent him out. Most of the Kiryuu documents had been sealed—Zero was clever and definitely hiding something—but some human librarian had guided Hanabusa to other sources.

Kaname had been stunned to recognize Monarchy-era books in the mix, primarily diaries of his descendants born after he had left the throne to Sleep. He was insatiably curious to see what was contained therein, but he hesitated. He had so carefully stowed those memories away, wrapped in soft gauze to dull their lethal edges. He didn't want to disturb their coverings anymore than he had to. Besides, what could Zero's mysteries have to do with his dead descendants? Hanabusa's human helper had probably just made a mistake.

He thought back to Hanabusa's pale face. His hands had trembled slightly as he brought in the boxes. He hadn't made a single witticism, just blandly reported his findings. He had been so unlike himself that Kaname had surreptitiously texted Akatsuki to make sure that Hanabusa was taken care of once he left Kaname's office. Hanabusa, obviously, didn't think that this was a mistake. Unease nipped at Kaname's nape.

Uncomfortable with that line of thought and unwilling to tune into Yuuki's continuous chatter, Kaname settled on another problem. Or, well, a pair of problems: Ichijou Takuma and Shiki Senri. Out of those he trusted the most in his court, they knew Kaname the best. And they certainly knew that Kaname's interest in Yuuki was not genuinely romantic.

To be blunt, Takuma and Senri were too aware of Kaname's possessive nature to buy the gentlemanly persona he wore around her. He knew they noticed how perfectly unruffled Yuuki’s appearance always was. He felt their eyes on his back as he and Yuuki remained in different bedrooms all day. Each time he kissed her forehead or cheek, he knew they added it to a running tally. He adamantly wore kid-gloves with Yuuki. And last night, after that nightmarish crossover, his companions had confronted him about it.

His initial reaction had been dismissal. "Such does not concern you." But Takuma had grown up with him, his only confidant in Ichijou Asato's house, the only constant kindness in his life after Juri and Haruka. Kaname might be immeasurably old, but his freshest memories and feelings held Takuma in the highest esteem. One warm, concerned smile from him and Kaname had caved.

The three of them had doubled back to the Night Class dorms, classes abandoned for the evening. Ensconced in his office, Kaname had lain out the whole sordid tale.

Takuma had been surprised silent, mouth open to reply but empty of words. Kaname had been grimly considering his own words—should he begin with defences, arguments, or displacements? —but had no chance to voice them.

Breaking the silence, Senri had sighed loudly and slumped in his chair. "Well, that's a relief."

Kaname, ancient Ancestor and king, had replied intelligently. "What?" 

"I concur," Takuma had added softly. He had begun to spread out a tea service—when had it appeared? Kaname hadn't the faintest.

To Kaname’s bemused stare, Senri had shrugged. It was about as animated as Senri was capable of being. His stalwart nature complimented Takuma’s enthusiasm perfectly, and their natural balance should have tipped Kaname off to their matehood immediately. As focused as he had been on his own problems, however, it was only when Takuma had broken down and begged Kaname to make sure that Senri wasn’t still at risk from Rido’s possession that Kaname had found out.

He had done so without hesitation, of course. His own power had easily burned out the lingering taint of Rido’s influence, allowing Senri to truly heal. His young cousin and descendent had become quite close to him since, leaving him evermore grateful that Senri had not been too badly hurt in the war between himself and Rido—largely thanks to Takuma’s skill and care.

"I just mean," Senri had continued bluntly, "It's not like any of us like her."

Kaname had blinked. Takuma had fussed with the tea. Senri had stared on, unperturbed, nibbling elegantly on a chocolate Pocky stick.

Kaname had turned to Takuma. "And you still agree?"

Takuma had sighed, his natural glow dimmed considerably. "She was a lovely human,” he’d diplomatically replied. “But she's not that human anymore. It's very noticeable."

"She was rude to Rima," Senri had elaborated. "Ruka thinks she will make you miserable, and that makes her miserable. How she acts now also makes Hanabusa sad, and when Hanabusa is genuinely sad it annoys Akatsuki. Seiren doesn't have an opinion, but it wouldn't be a good one if she did." His eyes flicked to Takuma. "She was very disrespectful to Kiryuu-san at crossover just now and you saw how she ignored Takuma when he tried to censured her as part of his Vice President duties. She usually ignores Takuma."

Kaname had blinked again. That was the most Senri had ever said at one time. "And you, dear cousin?"

Senri's Pocky stick had snapped between his fingers. "I prefer her to Rido and not much else."

Kaname lips had pursed. "Point taken."

"Well," Takuma, who didn't like bad memories, had interrupted cheerfully, "In any case, I think Kiryuu-san is delightful. Personally, I think we have a lovely rapport. I've worked him up to at least three civil, non-duty sentences per crossover. He hasn't drawn Bloody Rose on me at all. He might even accept my standing-invitation to tea by year-end."

Senri had shrugged again, meaningfully. "He killed Rido."

"That he did," Kaname had agreed. Quieter, without letting himself think, he'd asked, "Do you think I have a chance?"

The pair had exchanged glances. They were both aware of some of how he had mistreated Zero, and now the odd circumstances surrounding his recognition of the bond. After a long moment, Takuma had reached over and lain a supportive hand over Kaname's. "I think," he'd said gently, "That you had better go find out."

Kaname had found out, later that same night, just last night. Kaname could barely believed how his once so pitiful circumstances had changed. He had a shot. He just had to not fuck it up. And that meant finally putting an end to the charade his life had been for the last three months.

"Kaname, look!" Yuuki exclaimed, breaking Kaname from his thoughts. "Isn't this arrangement nice? At this rate, I could do a better job of our wedding flowers than the florist!" She was standing over a vase of roses, which to Kaname looked no different than they had four hours ago when she had first set them in the vase. A little more wilted, maybe, from her constant touching. Kaname empathized.

Drawing himself to his full seated height, Kaname carefully cleared his papers. He wanted to do this gently and respectfully. He owed it to Juri and Haruka. He owed it to the lovely human he had destroyed waking Yuuki up. She would have gone mad eventually—Juri’s work was never meant to be permanent—but looking at the manic young Pureblood before him, Kaname still felt like he'd made the wrong choice for her somewhere along the line.

"Yuuki," Kaname tried, but she rolled right over him.

"And then, I was thinking about the guest list! Well, actually, it was Headmaster  Cross who asked, but still, I—"

"Is there a point to any of this?" Kaname snapped, nearly as shocked as Yuuki that he had interrupted her.

Yuuki, beautiful in a dress of pink silk and taffeta, planted her hands on her hips. "Of course! Haven't you been listening to me?"

Kaname didn't think it would be gentle or respectful to reply honestly to that question. "Yes, but—"

"But nothing!" she insisted. Her eyes narrowed but her voice softened. "This is really important to me, Kaname. It's our wedding. There's still so much to do—the venue, flowers, the clothes alterations, the cake, the food, the guest list—"

"Please," Kaname interrupted, thoroughly tired of her ranting. "The flowers at Kuran Manor bloom year-round, and we have seamstresses and caterers on staff for the rest." He didn't want this wedding. Why was he even arguing? But the words kept coming. He had bitten his tongue for too long. "The guest list isn't even hard. Seiren knows all the important names that need to be invited. The rest—that's just your family, the Night Class, your human best friend—Wakaba, wasn't it?"

Kaname stopped, struck by Yuuki's anxious expression. He raised an eyebrow. "But you may have other thoughts?"

"Yes," she replied instantly. Then the diamonds on her choker bobbed as she swallowed. "Well. It's just—do you really think Wakaba should be there? I mean, she's with the hunters, now, isn't she? I saw her with Kiryuu's lot…" She trailed off in a grimace, one delicate hand waving airily as though to clear an unpleasant smell.

Kaname just barely kept the surprise off his face. Yes, he'd known that Yuuki had changed. Takuma and Senri had made that abundantly clear, and Kaname wasn't blind, deaf, or dumb. He had witnessed the spectacle at crossover and had heard the rumours about some other bad exchange between Zero and Yuuki. He just hadn't thought that his presence would help. He had always been a faultline in their relationship, sometimes purposefully. That was why he had sent Takuma to deal with Yuuki at crossover. Now, though, Kaname suspected that he had been somewhat blind to the true state of things.

"Yuuki," Kaname asked, "are you even listening to yourself? You're talking about your best friend and foster brother. Why are you speaking like this?" Caught up in emotion, both his own and Zero's leaking feelings, Kaname didn't notice at all the gathering crowd at his office door, drawn by their raised voices.

"Things are different, now, Kaname! Don't you understand that?" Yuuki cried.

Her angry whine made Kaname grimace. "So," he snapped, "if circumstances changed you would abandon me also?"

Only the crowd's sudden dead silence made Kaname's head turn toward them. Fuck, he thought, but then his attention snapped back to Yuuki. She was stuttering through a gobsmacked expression. For a moment, mad delight suffused him. He had shut her up! But then reality set back in. Behind her shock, her eyes flashed, and he knew. She would leave him behind if she needed to.

For a moment, he admired her for it. That kind of instinct made rulers—he should know. But he was already a king, and he wouldn't tolerate that impulse in a queen or a prince-consort.

"Kaname—I—what a—"

"Shut up, Yuuki," Kaname hissed, beyond restraint. He took a breath. When he spoke again, much more softly, he said, "I am sorry, but this engagement was a mistake. While you are my sister, I do not love you as anything more, and I cannot trust you to be my partner." He paused. His eyes locked with devastated brown eyes only a shade different from his. "The wedding is off," he stated simply.

Yuuki gasped like he'd stabbed her. Crystalline tears gushed down her snowy cheeks. Her pink mouth opened, and a torrent of wrenching sobs spilled out. Between sobs she burbled at him, reaching out, but Kaname didn't spare her another look.

Turning on his heel, Kaname marched from his office with all the grace and arrogance someone of his position commanded. The vampires who'd gathered for the show parted like the Red Sea, all of them sensing the emotions of their Prince and knowing better than to engage him. After a breakup like that, there was no telling what a Pureblood would do.

Kaname, despite his distant many thousands of years, was among those who couldn't even guess.

Chapter Text

This was not supposed to happen. Zero was not supposed to care about Kuran Kaname. He was just supposed to survive his time at Cross Academy, not draw attention to himself, and then disappear. Getting attached was not part of the plan. But the plan was in ashes, Zero recognized, and the fire had started with Kuran Kaname. All this being to explain why when a sharp knock rattled across his door, Zero opened it up despite knowing full well the powerful aura that stood on the other side.

"So we've graduated to using doors now. That's good to know," Zero snarked, armour up and weapons at the ready. He was prepared for a confrontation. He was prepared for a fight. The plan might be scattered on the winds, yet Zero was no damsel. Kuran perpetually spoke in fucking riddles, but not today, dammit. Zero was prepared. And then he got a good look at Kaname's face, and those thoughts went out the window.

"What happened?" Zero prodded, pulling Kaname into his room. He checked the hallway, gratified to see that it was empty, and silently closed the door. He locked it, then activated the silencing charm hidden under the paint with the press of a bloodied thumb. He debated putting up wards but decided that they might not be staying here long. Gods knew what kind of nonsense had put a look like that on Kaname's face.

"Zero," Kaname started, voice low and lovely. He’d sat down on Zero's abandoned desk chair, and now he looked at Zero like he was the only safe port in a storm.

Zero wanted to hold him, to run his fingers through that long silk hair until the devastation left his eyes. Then Zero shook his head, horrified at himself. He couldn't have thoughts like that right now. Not when there was obviously some kind of danger lurking.

"No," Zero said firmly, both to himself and Kuran. "What happened and have you briefed Cross?"

"Zero," Kaname said again, a touch of frustration in his voice. Then he blinked, and it was like watching a computer restart. His face was utterly blank by the end. He stood. "I apologise. This was a miscalculation. I shouldn't have come to you. I'm not thinking clearly."

He moved to the door, but, for once, Zero was faster. He had both hands braced on Kaname's chest before he had taken a proper step. "No," Zero said again, "That's not how this is going to work. Whatever this is, it's not going to be like last year. You're damn well going to tell me what the plan is before I'm in the middle of it, this time."

"We're mates," Kaname stated. He gently clasped Zero's bare wrists, sending sparks up his arms. Zero swallowed, frozen. "I will not act outside your best interest." Kaname winced. “Anymore.”

Zero’ eyes narrowed. "Then tell me what's going on. You didn't look this bad when Rido waltzed onto your territory." Cold panic flooded down Zero's spine. "He's not back—"

"No!" Kaname interrupted emphatically. "No, it's nothing like that. He's dead. Zero, you killed him, I promise, he's not coming back."

"Okay," Zero said, relaxing. His instinct was to doubt, but Kaname wasn't hiding from him. His aura lapped against his skin, held at bay but not concealed. Zero could only feel truth and anxiety, and a dangerous undertow of desire. He cleared his throat, looking away. "Okay. But something's upset you. I can feel it." And he could, even without his senses. Kaname was a thrum under his skin, currently heart-constricting and irritating where he was usually soothing and controlled.

Zero had tried to ignore it, aware that sharing emotions was a mating sign. He hadn't wanted to think about it, hadn't wanted to give fuel to his fantasies. But. Kaname's palms were warm over his wrists, and his words had gone straight to Zero's stupid heart. His dangerous fantasies felt far too close to reality.

"I'm sorry," Kaname offered gently. His thumb skimmed soothingly over Zero's skin, butterfly-light but never letting go. "I didn't mean to worry you."

Zero snorted. "I'm not glass. Whatever dumbass thing you've done, don't bother hiding it. We both know I've seen worse." You've done worse to me.

Kaname dropped his eyes. "I have always known how strong you are." That's why I chose you as my knight.

Zero pulled away, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. He glared, suddenly angry. "Then speak."

"I broke off my engagement," Kaname said. Clear, crisp, concise. The winter chill of his voice stole the air out of Zero's lungs.

"You did what?" Zero gasped, stunned. He felt like someone had doused him in ice water; he hadn't thought that actually happened in reality. But he hadn't thought that Kaname would ever leave Yuuki, either. Not really. Even if Zero had been coming 'round to the idea that they were mates, he knew that vampires made political matches. He knew that Kaname was a political creature. He had imagined that Kaname would offer him some kind of arrangement, if he would offered anything at all. If last night hadn't been a misfire, a single out-of-control moment.

A hand settled on his shoulder, the other brushing sweetly against his cheek. Zero focused back on Kaname's face. He wasn't smiling, but his serious mouth held the implication that, one day, he might.

"Zero," he said, "You are mine. I won't let anyone else have you. Ever. Do not misunderstand that, for both of our sakes." Lips settled at the corner of his mouth, the gentlest claim Zero had ever felt seared on his skin. And then, as quick as he had come, Kaname had slipped out the door.

That had been yesterday, with the dusk peaking in through the window. Zero had gone to crossover in a daze, mechanically beating back the Day Class and shepherding along the Night Class. Yuuki had been absent—due to a personal concern, Ichijou had informed him, beaming to outshine the sun at high-noon—and her entourage had been subdued. Aidou had made up for it, throwing a show for the fangirls to outdo all others, dragging Kain and Shiki into his performance with enthusiasm. Souen had laughed at their antics, and even Toya had cracked a smile.

It had made Zero think of the early days. The nobles had looked oddly younger, like a weight had been removed from their shoulders. Zero had tried not to flatter himself by thinking that their jubilation was caused by Kaname's broken engagement, but he couldn't think of any other reason big enough to inspire such a change.

And then Kaname had inclined his head to Zero, smiling genially. The Day Class fans had instantly lost their minds. Kaname never smiled at crossover; only once or twice for Yuuki, in those early days. Zero, horribly flustered, had dove head-first into the Day Class’s distraction. He didn't know what to think. He didn't know how to behave.

He’d been slowly warming to Ichijou, approaching friendly slowly but surely, but he and Kaname had only ever been enemies in public. Ichijou had at least been something of a liaison between Zero and Kaname's court. But there was no foundation there with Kaname. They had jumped from enemies to—lovers? Mates, Zero guessed. Zero didn't know what the protocol was for that. How public did Kaname want to be?

Hours later, sitting back in his room, Zero still didn't know the answer. His involvement with Kaname was so far off the plan that he could no longer even make out the plan's silhouette against the hazy sunset. He was working entirely from scratch. And Zero had no idea where to begin. Kaname may have broken off his engagement and sworn some kind of verbal dominion over Zero, but what the fuck did that mean? It hadn't been a proposal—thank the Gods—or even an invitation to go on a date. It had been another claim. Zero, regardless of his waring hunter-vampire instincts, didn't know if he wanted to be claimed. Not that he thought he had much of a choice. Kuran had made that exceptionally clear.

The door snapped open, banging against the wall. Zero, sleep deprived and absorbed in thought, jerked like he'd been electrocuted. Arms pinwheeling, he just caught himself before his precariously balanced chair tipped backward.

Breathing heavy, he slapped both hands down on his desk and levelled a death glare at the door. Two snickering hunters greeted him, forestalling his desire to fire Bloody Rose.

Hauling himself to his feet, Zero crossed his arms and spoke through gritted teeth. "Kaito, Yori. What the hell are you doing here?"

Takamiya Kaito, always a jerk even as Zero's oldest friend and the Academy's newest teacher, waltzed into the room and threw open Zero's closet. A look of pain crossed his face as he revealed the neat rows of Cross Academy uniforms. "We," he said, gesturing to Yori and himself, "Are saving you, and anyone near you, from death by angst. You've been even more miserable the usual lately. Did you know that you even have the other prefects concerned? And I thought they were all too well-trained by the Association to have any human empathy left. I guess I'll have to reconsider…" Kaito's voice trailed off as he dug deeper into Zero's closet, tossing onto his bed what seemed to be anything that wasn't a uniform. The pile, admittedly, was very small.

Wakaba "Yori" Sayori, Yagari's latest hunter apprentice and, consequentially, Zero's newest friend, turned to him with an amused smile. She patted his shoulder sympathetically, unbothered by his baleful glare. "What Kaito is trying to say, Zero, is that—well, you need to get out more. It's not healthy to leave your dorm only for duties and class." Her expression turned sweet. Zero was immediately suspicious. "Also, there's the vampire ball tonight and I'd love to see the look on the Kuran Princess's face when she realizes that she has to listen to the likes of us all night." In the depths of her eyes, anger flashed.

Zero sighed. He had forgotten all about the function tonight. Technically Zero was on reserve while he patrolled the Academy, but Kaito and Yori were his team. If they were assigned, they could pull him onto their mission.

 They were the first team he'd ever been on. Most hunters didn't want to work with a Turned, so Zero had hunted solo. But Kaito had been angling to pair up since Rido, and once Yagari took an interest in Yori it only made sense to partner her with his other two living students. For the last three months Yagari had put them through the paces in any spare moment they had. They worked together seamlessly, and the long hours had forced their friendship on Zero.

Kaito had already had an advantage, being one of the few souls to hold onto Zero after Shizuka had infected him. They had both lost brothers to Pureblood machinations, their own hands stained with the loss. Kaito's presence was like a puzzle piece Zero hadn't noticed missing sliding home. Yori was different, the new growth after a fire. She had refused the memory wipe after Rido out of loyalty to Yuuki, only to be jilted by the new Princess. Untethered and already half standing in the hunter world, the snub had been enough to push her over the edge.

She wasn't like he and Kaito, though. She was still joyful. Warm. Against his better nature, Zero liked that.

The short of it was this: Zero wasn't going to be left alone tonight. Not with the both of them on his case.

"Aha! I knew you had decent clothes in here!" Kaito cried out suddenly, holding a black bundle that looked suspiciously like the tight black jeans Kaito himself had given Zero for his last birthday. Zero had thanked him politely and then deposited them in his closet, which they had not left since.

Zero raised an eyebrow. "Somehow, Takamiya, I don't think those would be appropriate for a vampire ball."

Kaito snorted. "Firstly, I don't care what you wear to the stupid soirée. That would be Yori's department, Gods only knows why she wants it." He walked over and clapped Zero on the shoulder, a bright grin on his face. "I, my dear oblivious friend, am referring for the afterparty! Which, come hell or high water, you will be attending. Secondly, when did I become Takamiya! I thought we were passed that."

Zero shrugged Kaito's hand off. "The moment you started raiding my closet. And what the hell do you mean 'afterparty'?" Zero growled, voice getting progressively louder.

Kaito examined his nails. "Oh, you know, the parties we hunters throw after we've done our duty at the soirées. The things you typically try your best to avoid.” With sudden energy, he marched back to Zero's dresser, seemingly intent on finishing his search for Zero's descent clothes.

"And I have no say in any of this?" Zero asked resignedly.

"Nope!" echoed twice, from the closet and dresser respectively. Zero sighed. Somehow he just knew that he was going to regret being such a push-over for these two.

Yori stared at herself in the full-length mirror. She was beautiful, she knew. The turquoise silk gown hugged all the right places, slit to the thigh. The pearl studs and choker stood out against her creamy skin, emphasizing her delicate throat. Her hair was curled into honey-brown spindles and smoky makeup made her eyes pop. But looks were deceiving. Her shoes were flat Grecian sandals, made of durable black leather and laced snugly because she might need to run. Below the layers of flowing gown, a sheath of throwing daggers clung to her covered thigh. In her handbag, a beautifully crafted fan edged with sharp anti-vampire metal kept company with lipstick and blush. She was beautiful and unassumingly fatal. Powerful like Yori would have never foreseen a year ago.

On one level Yori abhorred it all. Her body itched beneath the undergarments and push-up bra. The pearls around her neck were too tight and her ears stung from shoving the studs through. The makeup looked foreign. The silky fabric of her dress felt strange and unnatural against her skin. The scent—of the hairspray that kept her curls in place, the new-clothes smell of her dress, the perfumed smell of makeup—made her stomach twist. That part of her cried out for her favourite sweater and soft, practical denim skirt. She wanted her strawberry lip gloss and her mother's gold locket. She wanted to put down her lethal handbag and take up the Artemis rod, tossed off by Yuuki after becoming a Pureblood and picked up by Yori. She wanted to protect people. She didn't want to dress up like a beautiful executioner.

But, she reminded herself, this was her job now. As a hunter it was part of her duty to dress in this way when she had to, make nice, and be alert in the case of a vampire unable to control themselves. It was a duty she'd depended on when Yuuki had shoved her aside so harshly that Yori had been left with nothing to hold. Yuuki had been so much of her world. Yori had realized that she hadn't had much time to really be herself. Vampire hunting, the focus and discipline it provided, had been just the thing she'd needed to bring herself together again.

It had also offered her a unique kind of support network in Kaito, Master Yagari, and Zero. Friends and mentors that she could really depend on, because if they hadn't liked or wanted her, she was sure that she would know by now.

 She had been terrified during the Rido Incident, but not as much as some. She hadn't lost her mind. She hadn't turned on the Night Class. She had been able to tell vampire from monster. She had been able to tell Aidou Hanabusa from—from what those scared, stupid girls were calling him. This world was her world. And so, the dressing up and pretending was worth it, just to claim that place.

That place also meant taking care of her team. She had noticed how stressed out Zero had been the last few days—and of course he would be. The Kurans were back. Yori couldn't imagine how that must feel. Yuuki had abandoned her, but she hadn't been Yuuki's foster sister. She hadn't—loved—her. And Kuran. Yori didn't know the details. Zero was so tight-lipped that even Kaito didn't know the details. But after Rido's ashes had been swept away, Zero had been in an obviously bad place. He had never been a happy person, but he had been better than the walking corpse Yagari had introduced her to.

Slowly and surely, she and Kaito had coaxed Zero back to some kind of life. Not a completely happy one, Yori recognized, but she had stopped worrying about leaving him alone with Bloody Rose. She didn't think that he had quite sunk to that point in the last few days, but something was obviously bothering him. She didn't expect guarding a vampire ball would help, but she was hoping that some quality time with she and Kaito would.

Her plan firm in her mind, Yori finished her makeup and collected the backpack she'd stashed he afterparty things in. Dragging a finger over the zipper, Yori grinned. Sure, the afterparties were often trashy, crazy, and alcohol-soaked, but they were a lot of fun and she was still a teenager. You didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the appeal.

Shutting her door behind her, Yori made her way to the dorm lobby. Outside, an all-black limo idled.

Yori smiled. She supposed there were some perks to this kind of job. The dress, bought with a special stipend given to outfit hunters for this kind of event, was lovely. She'd been partial to this shade of unnatural blue for a while now, for reasons she hadn't quite yet discerned. So, looking on the bright side with thoughts of the afterparty driving her forward, Yori thanked the chauffeur and slid in. A bemused smile settled on her face as the door snapped shut and the limo pulled away, leaving her alone with the bickering duo in front of her for the next hour.

"No, I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Oh, come now. I'm sure you've tried it at least once."

"I—"

"Would someone like to fill me in here?" Yori asked, amusement plain on her face.

Kaito's eyes flew wide with surprise. "My Gods, is that you, Yori? If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a vampire."

Yori glared while Zero shook his head, a poor attempt at hiding one of his rare smiles. "Ignore him. You look beautiful, Yori." Mischief lit his eyes, "I especially like the thigh holster."

Laughing, Yori bumped his shoulder companionably. "Thank you," she giggled, "I have to work hard to keep of with the pair of you."

"Not me," Zero snorted. His eyes settled on Kaito and he smirked. "This one, on the other hand, spent a whole hour on his damn hair."

Kaito squawked in offense, ducking to the side in horror as Zero reached over to ruffle his bangs. As the boys tussled, Yori laughed behind her hands and silently congratulated herself on a job well done. She knew dragging Zero out of his room and off the Academy grounds was the right move. Even if it was for work, and even though the Kurans were probably going to be in attendance, his playful side would have never had a chance to reassert itself if they'd stayed in the place of so many of his responsibilities and bad memories.

Besides, Yori mused, Zero looked good cleaned up. As he and Kaito settled down, she let herself nod approvingly. Considering what she'd started with, he looked like she'd worked a miracle.

Kaito had joked that she looked vampire-beautiful, but Yori knew that they both paled in comparison to Zero. Yagari's lessons had taught her that level Ds didn't gain much beauty in the change, but a little care made Zero's natural appeal almost as threateningly obvious as a born vampire’s.

The clothes helped, too. Eschewing black, she'd chosen a gunmetal three-piece that fit him like a second skin, broad shoulders and towering height perfectly emphasized. Coercion had been required for the wide royal purple tie, but Zero's eyes popped like gemstones with the contrast. Brushed instead of left to dry to its own whims, his hair fell like silver silk, piercings glimmering wickedly against the backdrop.

Yet, it was his face that truly sold the impression. Unlike Yori and Kaito, Zero had the ethereal features that just weren't seen anywhere but in vampires or, apparently, Kiryuus. She couldn't count how many rumors she'd heard while in the Association about that. Yori had scorned such talk, but looking at him now…

For want of Bloody Rose and the Kiryuu clan's signet ring on his forefinger, Zero looked like a Pureblood. A Hio, the especially mean gossips had liked to whisper. Zero had lost everything to Hio Shizuka, Yori thought sadly, and fate had dealt him the cruelest irony in their admittedly close resemblance.

Shaking away the unjust thoughts, Yori turned her eyes to the window. Her attention, however, was on her bickering partners: Kaito, specifically. He had tried to pass off this adventure as Yori being the only worried one, but Kaito had been the one to first bully Yagari into assigning them the mission. He was just as worried about Zero as she was, maybe even more so.

Yori sighed. Something wasn't right. Something, Yori suspected, that had to do with the Kurans. The elder, specifically. She had seen him leave the Day Class dorms yesterday, his expression thunderous. Without a doubt, she knew who he had sought in the building. Kuran wanted something from Zero and Yori wasn't confident that Zero could handle the Pureblood Prince on his own again.

And he wouldn't have to, if she had anything to say about it.

"Hunters, we've arrived," called the polite voice of their driver. Hit with sudden dread, Yori just barely restrained a curse. She just hoped that this soirée was the only bit of suffering they'd have to put up with.

Chapter Text

"Is that Kiryuu-san?"

"I know. He looks so…oh."

"Kind of like her, but with purple eyes, doesn't he?"

"A cruel irony, isn't it? Before long, we might have a Madly Blooming Prince."

The two female aristocrats drifted away as they spoke, laughing airily at their cleverness while Kaname ground his teeth and pretended he hadn't overheard them. He and his innermost court had only just arrived in the gleaming white ballroom and already he was running out of tolerance—and he hadn't had any patience to begin with.

Kaname had honestly forgotten the ball altogether in the face of his recent personal tumult. He wouldn't have attended had Takuma and Seiren not partnered to remind him how important his presence at such soirees was. Their formidable combination of cheerful shepherding and terrifying efficacy had ensured that he and his entire entourage had entered at the perfect moment, the midnight bells acting as a herald of their arrival.

Lady Kurosaki, their powerful noble hostess, had been so struck that she'd almost stuttered in her greeting. Considering that she was the matriarch of a line second only to Takuma's in blood and class, she might as well have sworn her allegiance to Kaname right there. Unfortunately, such was not done in these times. A pity, Kaname's ancient mind whispered. In the old days such immediate declarations were a popular means of saving time and blood. But Purebloods rarely seemed to physically fight for dominance anymore.

Another loss. Perhaps if the tradition had persisted, he wouldn't be entertaining a murder-suicide fantasy at only an hour into the night. The modern world was all bark, no bite.

Kaname was quickly growing to despise these toothless gossips. Due to recent events, the most common subject of conversation—his wedding—was off the table. Discussion of the cause, repercussions, and suspicions around the breakup, which Kaname suspected during any other time would have happily replaced talk of what the bride and groom would wear, was also condemned to silence as both he and Yuuki were attending the ball. Presumably no one wanted face their wrath if they lost control—Kaname's attack on the Senate had apparently given the entire Kuran family a violent reputation. So, the bored and shallow members of the vampiric elite were relegated to finding something less potentially fatal to discuss. That 'something' had come to be how much less 'savage' the hunters looked when forced to dress 'civilly', and eventually a study on Zero Kiryuu: the first hunter (and a level D at that!) to gather the notice of the average upper-class vampire.

Rumors drifted thickly through the perfumed masses, spurred on by the eerie feeling many a noble felt go down their spine when they made the mistake of catching a hunter's glaring eye. Comments on Zero's physical similarities to the Madly Blooming Princess were made with a slight, subconscious nervousness in the voice of the speaker. Though, for the sake of pride, they were still said.

The hunters grew more riled with every word. Kaname quietly joined their ranks as the idiots he was surrounded by continued to talk.

Because Kaname hadn't publicly marked Zero as his, he was powerless to stop the morons. That was something that would need to be corrected quickly, he grumbled to himself, lest he do something bloody and violent. With his engagement to Yuuki broken off there was no reason to keep Zero a secret. First, though, a voice sounding annoyingly close to Takuma's whispered teasingly through his head, You'll have to actually find him.

Kaname barely restrained a sigh. Wasn't that the truth? While it seemed like everyone else at this Gods-damned gathering had been able to see his beautiful lover, Kaname had yet to catch even a glimpse. It was driving him to the edge of his sanity, and everyone knew how ugly pretty that was to view.

Could Kaname have scared Zero away? That was Kaname's biggest concern. He had barged uninvited into Zero's territory last night. He hadn't been thinking clearly, shaken from his unexpected glimpse into Yuuki's personality as much as from the breakup, looking only for a quiet place to think for a moment. Without meaning to, his feet had led him to Zero's door.

Even as a child no one had ever properly handled Kaname. He had always been the orchestrator, directing movements as needed to complete his piece. But Zero had neatly swept him inside, silencing and locking away the world while Kaname's mind had still been caught in the doorway. He had triaged the situation, dismissing Kaname's deflections and hunting out the bleeding wounds. Kaname had no doubt that, had Kaname remained, Zero would have managed him aptly.

But Zero hadn't deserved that. Zero deserved to be taken care of, not to have to cope with Kaname's instability. Once Kaname had caught his breath, he'd realized his mistake and made a quick exit. Now he only hoped Zero hadn't been scared off by Kaname's lapse.

Kaname glanced at the overly grand analog that hung above the equally grand main entrance. The delicate gold hands slowly slunk along the clock's face to tell him that it was just barely reaching one in the morning. The party, he had been informed by a vaguely displease Takuma on their way to the venue, an old ancestral mansion of the hostess's, was to end at about five in the morning. It had taken all Kaname's considerable willpower to stamp down a tortured moan, then. Now he was forced to let a little one slip by, drowned with a tasteful mouthful of spiced bloodwine from his crystal goblet.

Over the rim of his glass, Kaname scanned the crowd of richly dressed men and women for one distinctive head of silver hair and gemstone eyes. Again, his search fell flat. Disappointed, Kaname closed his own tired eyes for half a second and let his full weight be supported by a conveniently placed marble pillar. It was all so dispiriting.

Even if his attendance did aid his political plans, his real motivation for attending was that Takuma had whispered to him that Zero had been scheduled at the last minute as part of the patrol. Thus, in hopes of stealing his lover away for a moment, Kaname had allowed himself to be dragged off, dressed up, and presented to the masses. But his Zero seemed to have a power for disappearing, if Kaname's current situation was anything to go by.

A weepy voice echoed behind him and immediately Kaname felt his eyes roll of their own accord. The voice, that of his darling baby sister, was going on about heartache and perseverance in the face of failing love. All around her the voices of low-end nobles and fickle gentry rose up in agreement with her words. Their praise and sympathy were seasoned with enough saccharine fakery to make Kaname's bullshit radar go flying off the scale.

It seemed that if there was one person who didn't know how to disappear, it was Yuuki. After sobbing loudly in her room for the better part of the day—once Takuma had, as a favor to Kaname, shooed her out of his office—she had somehow pulled herself from her blatant misery long enough to decide that she, too, was going to attended Lady Kurosaki's ball, even though she hadn't been formally invited. Fortunately for Yuuki (and, perhaps, the opposite for everyone else), Kurosaki had been forced to concede to her wishes. Yuuki was, after all, still a Kuran Princess, if not by marriage then by blood. Anyone who hadn't pledged fealty directly to Kaname was still honour-bound to serve her, including House Kurosaki.

Even if Kurosaki hadn't been leaning toward Kaname since the beginning of the night, Kaname was certain that Yuuki had landed him Kurosaki's loyalty—if only to avoid ever dealing with Yuuki again. If the fact that Yuuki had demanded the invitation wasn't enough, Yuuki's conduct had been such as to make the event awkward for everyone near her.

A trail of minor nobles followed after her, conspicuously catering to her every whim and ostracizing other guests who tried to speak with her as they jockeyed for position in her graces. She swanned around in a Kuran-red gown that bared her Pureblood neck like an upper-class mistress's, making the particularly traditional flinch. Kaname was amused to note that Kurosaki Chorei, the Lady Kurosaki’s ancient grandmother, couldn't even look at her directly.

Worse, all she could talk about was how roughly she felt life was treating her. From Rido's obsession with her (which was a crass enough subject to bring up, in Kaname's mind), to how her beloved 'Kaname–sama' had spurned her; all of it was seasoned with tears and sobs.

Cross, whose recent election to Association President had sent him an invitation, seemed to share her feelings. He’d given Yuuki a big hug upon seeing her, giving her a loving shoulder to cry on as she rehashed her story for the third or forth time. Yagari Toga, who brooded at Cross’s elbow, didn't seem to care at all about the tableau and continued to glare at anything with fangs with his usual disregard.

Kaname had seen something that others hadn't, though. After the crowds had dispersed from around the pair, Cross had quickly made his excuses and departed from Yuuki's side. Kaname had followed, curious. Once in a secluded alcove, Cross's waterworks had died with no provocation, a mirthless smile taking their place. Yagari had busied himself with a cigarette, a gesture Kaname had noticed his teacher only carried out when he sought to distance himself from something. After that, the two had disappeared and Kaname had yet to catch another glance of them.

Questions swarmed Kaname's mind. Did Cross have an angle he wasn't aware of? Kaname knew that the man had once been the Vampire without Fangs, a cunning and lethal hunter who was much more powerful than the norm. But Kaname had assumed that he'd left that side behind when he'd opened the school, and out of love for Juri and Haruka.

Fuck it, Kaname thought, aggravated. So Cross appeared to have a secret agenda. Why wouldn't he? Everyone had an agenda at his Academy. It was practically a prerequisite for attending. Besides, while Kaname did make a note to have Seiren look deeper into Cross, he had more immediate concerns to ponder over, inspired by the ball.

With his engagement broken, he and Zero needed to be announced to society as a couple. He was going to need to do it soon. That Takuma and Senri already knew and approved made it easier. But he was still wary of how others might react. In the last twenty-four hours since his breakup his court had become noticeably more protective. Could he trust them to guard Zero as a part of him, or would they see Zero as another danger to Kaname, as Yuuki had proven to be?

Kaname had so many worries and what felt like little material time. He still hadn't read the books Aidou had fetched. His practical excuse was that between the recent drama and his physical time constraints, he literally hadn't had the time. In actuality, though, his senses tingled unpleasantly every time he settled down to read them. They gave off an aura that told him his life would turn out better if he just let them rest in peace, or maybe even got rid of them altogether. He'd been halfway to the fire with the first book when he'd realized what he'd been doing.

Kaname needed one of his more magically inclined nobles to check them over before having another go at them. That part of the magic woven into their being seemed to dissuade reading was an intriguing puzzle, especially as the spells were strong enough to influence him. Whatever knowledge they contained from the Monarchy years Kaname hadn't experienced, Kaname was certain he now needed to know it.

Tired by the thought of his extensive to-do list, Kaname gave himself a moment to silently mourn for his dictatorial days. At the height of his old power, he could have made anyone his consort without a single second thought. His word had been absolute, courtiers and enemies alike too frightened of him to voice their criticisms. Of course, the concurrent isolation had then been part of what had driven him to madness and Sleep. But there had been bright moments. Perhaps he could claim a little of that back if he blew up a few more political enemies. It wasn't like there was a Senate around to try and cage him. Not that they could have, even before he’d slaughtered them.

"Kuran-san, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to speak to you. Privately." The clear voice drew Kaname abruptly from his musings.

Jerked back to reality, he cast considering eyes over the girl in front of him, a little taken aback when he recognized her face. Dressed like something out of a modern myth, Wakaba Sayori was barely recognizable as the loyal, trustworthy friend of Yuuki's he had always know her as. Though still physically small, reaching maybe 5'5 at best, she cut an imposing figure in the candlelight, much more so than some of the vampires Kaname had seen throughout the night.

She was a friend of Zero's, now, Kaname remembered, trying to see her through the eyes of his mate. She was also a rising star in the Association. He'd need to tread carefully around her. Also, he'd need to thank Seiren for the exceptionally thorough dossiers she had prepared for him on tonight's attendees.

Curious about what she could have to say to him, he inclined his head to her and straightened, though he didn't offer his arm. Her posture was tense, wary, and he didn't want her to take the gesture as a remark against her ability. Nodding to him, she quickly made their way towards the secluded balconies overlooking the garden.

Kaname mentally congratulated her on her choice. Between the chatter of the guests, the isolation, and the privacy spells placed on the balconies, no one would overhear their discussion. Which, of course, led to the question of what it was, exactly, that she felt needed discussing with him—of all people—in such secrecy.

Curiosity more than anything else taking control of him, Kaname silently stepped out onto the polished marble, quietly reveling in the cool night's air on his face. He surveyed his new surroundings. Wakaba had seated herself on the great stone railing of the balcony, her back to the smooth stone of the manor's outer wall. A good position, he thought, as he positioned himself opposite her, using his powers to shut the French doors and effectively cutting them off from the noise.

"What do you want with Zero?" Her voice was icy and defiant, sharp and to the point.

Surprise washed through Kaname. Had he been so obvious, or was Wakaba Sayori simply smarter than the average observer? The fact that she'd cornered a Pureblood about his plans alone suggested not. Yet Kaname knew he couldn't harm her; not without losing Zero entirely. Perhaps she had factored that into her plan.

After a miniscule pause, Kaname pulled a consoling smile from the depths of his mind, deciding his best bet was to lull away her concerns. "I’m sure I don't know what you mean. Kiryuu-san and I—"

"I've watched you use that voice before," Wakaba interrupted coldly. "On Yuuki, your nobles, Day Class girls, you name it. I don't want to hear it." She turned to face him full on, her honey eyes gone steely. "I just want to know what Zero could have possibly done to draw your interest again."

Well, there went that plan. His eyes narrowed. "What could I say? You seem to have me figured out."

She snorted. Kaname cast around for his next move. He could always force her to forget—through magic or coercion, he'd done both enough to master them—but he didn't want to risk Zero's ire. And, at the very least, Yori shouldn't be punished for her loyalty to Zero. Such may prove useful, one day.

"Look," Wakaba said eventually, when it had become clear that Kaname wouldn't break the silence. "I don't care about your goals. I just don't want to see Zero hurt again." Her eyes softened. "You likely don't care, but you damaged him during your last game. That can't happen again."

Kaname ignored his baser instincts’ demand that he kill this girl for condescending to him about him mate and took this advice considerately. "What if I told you that all of what I'm doing is for Zero's benefit?" He was bored of games, as necessary as they sometimes were. Perhaps the truth would help this time.

Wakaba watched him with narrowed eyes. "I suppose I'd have to ask you for some proof."

"And if this could be provided?" Kaname asked.

Wakaba didn't sigh, but she did run a hand through her honey-brown locks before turning her eyes back to Kaname. "Then I'd have to do what I felt was best for Zero."

She would have to quash that tell one day or it would kill her. Which would be unfortunate, because her answer was exactly what Kaname wanted to hear.

From the upper veranda over the ballroom, Cross Kaien looked down on the decadent partygoers of vampire society with pensive eyes. His mind worked behind his glazed gaze. He'd spotted Kuran Kaname following Wakaba Sayori out onto a balcony not ten minutes ago, the girl's face tense while Kaname had looked almost inquisitive. From the lack of blood in the air, he could only guess that whatever discussion they were having was going well.

It wouldn’t be much longer now, he calculated. If they were talking about what he thought they were, then perhaps Kaname had more sense when it came to Zero than he'd expected. A pleasant surprise.

Sighing, the centuries old ex-hunter sent a gentle look at his 'son'. Zero was only now creeping into the ballroom, a wary look on his face as he scanned the room. He relaxed a little after a moment and stepped out fully, presumably relieved that Kaname was nowhere in sight. He looked more tired and stressed than he had when Kaien last saw him, and he hadn't been looking very well then.

Kaien sighed. He wished the circumstances were different, that the coming events would center around any other boy than the one Kaien had grown to think of as 'son'.

Pulling his eyes from the scene, Kaien whispered a little hunter prayer to whatever power was listening before allowing Toga to guide him back into the party. Kaien had never been particularly religious, but he found it was comforting to think that someone more powerful than him might lend Zero their support.

Gods knew Zero could certainly use it.

Chapter Text

Yori watched the eldest Kuran sibling, carefully weighing his words against what she already knew. Contrary to popular vampiric belief, hunters did know a thing or two about their prey's mating habits. After all, the old proverb 'know thy enemy' included knowing all their weaknesses. Nothing could possibly put a vampire in a weaker position than a knife to their mate's throat. So Yori knew that a vampire could only have one, and that they knew them right away.

How could Kuran have confused his instincts so badly? That confusion was the odd thing out from all the other symptoms he had described to her. Could the seals placed on Zero have disrupted Kuran's senses?

Snatching up the thought with a deft mental hand, Yori pursed her lips. Well, there was only one way to find out. "Kuran," she cut in, successfully shortening the roundabout speech he was giving her on vampire history. Perhaps he was trying to bore her to death? That seemed plausible. Under other circumstances, Kuran obviously knew how to cut to the chase. Could he be trying to distract her?

Yori grimaced. More the fool him; she wouldn't be inattentive like that.

"Yes, Wakaba-san?" Kuran asked, utterly polite at the interruption.

Yori's fledgling hunter senses tingled, warning her of danger. Not being stupid, she made a conscious attempt to curb her irritated tongue. "Could it be possible that you didn't realize Zero was your mate due to his hunter seals?" She asked as professionally as she could manage.

Kuran's handsome face tweaked into a tiny frown. "He has more than one?"

Yori could have kicked herself. Master Yagari's first rule was not to let any information slip to the enemy and that was what Yori had just done. Though she guessed Kuran couldn't exactly be considered the enemy anymore. Not with his probable bond to Zero, a phenomenon as unbreakable and powerful as the sun. But he certainly wasn't an ally! Not yet, at least, she tacked on shrewdly. She wanted to talk to Zero before she made any decisions, to make sure that she wasn't falling for one of Kuran's infamous schemes.

Sucking in a breath, she thought bitterly that perhaps Zero had been right not to tell her anything when she'd inquired about his secondary seal over the summer. He'd been injured during a harsh level E extermination mission when she'd discovered it, a small, rose-like mark on his hip.

It had shocked her like an open wire when she'd brushed it while wrapping bandages around the hole one of the poor monsters had made in his side. She'd asked him about it, of course, figuring that if she was going to keep treating his injuries like she foresaw she might as well know about anything that might cause complications in the future. But Zero had refused to talk about it. The dark look on his face had assured her that the answer wasn't worth the risk of losing Zero's hard-won trust in her.

Yori had bluntly changed the subject after a few tense seconds. The relief on Zero's face had easily convinced her of her decision.

She trusted Zero. If it really was something she’d needed to know about, she knew he would tell her when the time was right. Gods knew that they all had their secrets. It would do no one any good to go prying for something like curiosity's measly sake. Looking back, she thought her restraint in that moment had been the foundation for the friendship she enjoyed with Zero now. The thought that she might have just betrayed Zero, even accidently, to Kuran made her ill.

Gods, she prayed silently, let that seal not be something crucially important. She didn't think she would be able to lie her way out of this conversation.

Kuran's expression was gentle, but his eyes were hunting-dog sharp. Yori wasn't a bad liar, but she wasn't arrogant, either. She was no match for the Pureblood across from her.

Crossing her arms, she met his eyes and prepared to sing what she knew like the caged canary she was. "I don't know much about it," she began. So, you can wipe that look off you face, she added silently, frustrated but not stupid either. "As far as I know, he's had it since birth. There's no mention in his medical file," a document she had permission to look at as the member of their team with a medical specialization. She hadn't been snooping, technically. And if she had, well, it came from a place of concern. "But other than that …well, your guess is as good as mine. Zero refuses to speak about it."

"Where is it located?" Kuran asked.

"His hip. It's a little flower. You'd have to be blind to miss it." Or stupid, she thought. Kuran was obviously capable of being both.

Kuran nodded like she'd just confirmed something for him. Impossibly, his perfect posture straightened. Any confidence she'd shaken from him with her attitude had been set back into place now that his inference, whatever it was, had been proven. He smiled at her, falsely kind. "What makes you think he's always had it? Couldn't the Association have purposefully left it off the records after placing it on him?"

Yori snorted. "For someone who likes to talk about his own culture, you sure don't know much about hunters."

Kuran's cheek twitched in irritation. Yori smothered a self-satisfied grin. No wonder Zero liked baiting this guy. But in an instant his face smoothed over like ground covered by fresh-fallen snow. "I do not, unfortunately. Perhaps you could share what you yourself must have so recently learned, over these last three months." His voice was unfailingly kind, but the mocking undertone set Yori's teeth on edge.

She returned his smile mildly. The sad fact was that he was right; she only had three months' more experience with the hunter world than Kuran did. And sure, it had been a crash-course provided by the Association's strongest hunters, but she knew she was still missing pieces from not being hunter-born. On the upside, being a transfer had given her a perspective she wasn't sure anyone but an outsider would be able to have. Lately she had begun to think that her perspective was valuable, maybe even something the Association would need if it wanted to survive in their brave new world.

"The first thing you should understand is that while hunters hold vampires in contempt, we—they—aren't any better." She absently twirled a hair-sprayed curl around her finger as she picked her words. "We may not suck blood, but we are cruel and are used to spilling it." She cast her eyes at Kuran, whose face had gone respectfully blank. It raised him a few notches, from 'scum sucking toad' to 'splinter in my foot,' in her book.

"Kuran, do you know when most born-hunters kill their first target?" Yori asked eventually, voice soft in the warm night air.

Kuran paused, a hint of confusion in his eyes, as though he were asking how the question could possibly relate back to the subject at hand. Yori just watched him silently, judgmentally. If he truly wanted to understand the Association, and by extension, Zero, he'd better be prepared do so properly.

"I'm not completely sure," Kuran answered slowly, not used to being unsure of something. "But I'd imagine it to be somewhere in the middle-teens."

Yori grinned a monster's smile, acidic chuckles leaving her painted lips at the vampire's ignorance. "'The first assisted extermination a born-hunter should commit is expected to be around the age of eight, with their first solo a year or two after. Any later and the parents should possibly consider their child not right for this path,'" Yori quoted, enjoying the slight widening of the Pureblood's eyes before Kuran had a chance to cover it. "That line comes directly from the Hunter's Manual, along with other such lines that basically say 'the sooner, the better,'" she explained.

"Zero, being the baby-prodigy he was, killed his first solo when he was seven during a mission just after the one that cost Master Yagari his eye. According to the report, that was the first time he used Bloody Rose. I can't imagine how," Yori mused. "His hands must have been so small."

Kuran's face was perfectly emotionless—he might as well have been carved from stone. Yori shook her head, devotedly carrying on with her story. "From there, Zero never let a vampire get past him, right up until Shizuka attacked. If not for her, Zero could have made top hunter by the age of fifteen, with the way he was going." Yori's smile was poison in an expression. She looked out over the dark, thoughts momentarily consumed by all those sleeping flowers growing there, waiting for the sunlight. "It's funny how things work out, isn't?"

"I'm sorry," Kuran murmured, his voice more aged than before. "But what, exactly, does this have to do with Zero's seals?"

Yori sighed, dragging her attention away from the flowers, the traces of lovely lavender even she could smell in the air, and back to her grim topic. "Let me answer your question with another question," because she could be as roundabout as shit, too, Kuran. "How do hunters rationalize what basically boils down to murder?"

"I don't know," Kuran answered with no hesitation at all. He was obviously growing tired of moral quandaries. Yori's smile lost a bit of its cruelty. She could understand that, at least. Talking of the Association wasn't ever a pleasant thing, she had learned, especially when it became personal.

"Honour," Yori murmured. "Hunters rationalize training children to kill people by calling it honourable, by creating no other option. Honour, above all else, is the most important thing to a hunter. Without it, hunters are monsters." She looked away from Kuran's searching gaze, "It doesn't make a lot of sense, looking in from the outside. Not until you've lost your whole world to something so incredibly powerful that the whole concept of 'fair' becomes a lie."

Yori knew she was lucky. Her sorrows weren't like Zero's and Kaito's. None of her loved ones had been killed by vampires. She had lost Yuuki, but Yori had begun to think that maybe her human friend had been an illusion all along. It was less painful than thinking that she had been consumed by the Pureblood in her mind, like so many people whispered.

But Yori still understood that feeling of resentment. She might have chosen to keep her memories, but that choice had resulted in the complete loss of her innocent human conceptions. She couldn't imagine how much deeper the hate went for hunters like her teammates.

"Because of that mentality," Yori continued, "To be bitten is the most shameful thing a hunter can experience. It's a betrayal on the biological level. To be bitten because of a family member's betrayal—that's even worse. If there had been other loyal Kiryuus left alive at the end of the Shizuka Incident; if the Kiryuus hadn't been so integral to the running of the Association; if Cross hadn't stepped in…" Yori closed her eyes, like that could block out the horror of her words. "Zero would have been executed."

When she turned her eyes back to Kuran he was frozen in place. If not for the hatred boiling in his gaze, she would have compared him to statue. But the violence radiating from his stare could never come from something without sentience.

The best thing to do would probably be to finish her story. Though whether he would hear her through his anger was unknown. At least he's keeping his aura down, she thought. I'd hate to see what the nobles would do if they got a face full of that.

"That didn't happen, though," Yori continued carefully. At her words his shoulders relaxed a little. She took that as a sign that it was safe continue. "Instead, the powers that be decided to seal away his vampire side. It was a colossal scandal. The President publicly denounced his family. It was clear that the Kiryuus would have been less disgraced only if Zero had died. He became a pariah." Yori cleared her throat, fighting through the sadness she felt for her friend. "So, with that in mind, it doesn't make sense that the same fuss wouldn't have been made about a second seal if it hadn't been part of his family inheritance."

Yori felt like she was rambling. She had lost control of her words somewhere. But Kuran was staring her down and she didn't know how to keep a level head when she had the most powerful vampire of the modern age watching her. Considering her. Weighing her words for lies and truth. After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds, Kuran finally turned his eyes away from her.

Like a noose had been released from around her neck, she inhaled gasps of mild, late September air. They shared the silence for a few minutes, both of them, Yori thought, struggling for calm. Then, he turned his eyes back to her.

"Thank you for the information, Wakaba-san," Kuran said. Yori was silently amazed at the transformation that had taken place in him in those few minutes. Looking at him now, all propriety and kindness, she never would have thought that he had experienced rage in his life. "I hope giving this information to me put you at no risk yourself."

Yori opened her mouth, eyes wide as Kuran pushed himself away from the wall he had been standing against for most of their conversation and made to leave.

"Where are you going?" she asked, getting to her feet. Kuran turned back and gave her look that told her exactly how little she mattered in his grand scheme of things.

Ah. There was the anger she had seen missing. Still, she held her ground in front of the door. She swallowed. Okay, Yori thought, I'm maybe a little stupid. But it's for Zero. For once, someone needs to protect him.

"I am going to go find my mate," Kuran grit out. His polite mask was cracking under his rage. Yori could see little pieces of the monster leaking through.

Stubbornly, she stood her ground. "Not like that," she snapped. "You'll only hurt him if you march up to him like some self-entitled asshole and strong-arm him away. Especially while he's on a mission!"

Kuran was on her before she had the time to blink. Long white fingers clenched like steel around her throat, jerking her up and slamming her against the rough stone wall. Air left her lungs in a rush. She dropped her bag—her weapon—and was left scrabbling at his hand. Like that will keep him snapping my neck, she thought wildly.

"And what, exactly, makes you think I care for anything you say?" Kuran growled. His eyes burned hellfire, fangs glinting against his lips.

"Because," Yori gasped, struggling to breath. She was very aware that she could only gasp out words because Kuran was letting her. A thin veil of sweat broke out over her body as her mind went into fight or flight. "I'm his friend."

Kuran dropped her like she’d burned him. Yori hit the floor clumsily, snatching up her handbag by instinct alone. She managed to avoid retrieving her weapon by the skin of her teeth.

It wasn't like she'd be able to fight Kuran. She had no delusions of grandeur. Fighting Kuran would be like trying to breath in an airless room, useless and ultimately lethal. So there she sat, catching her breath and waiting for him to make a move.

After a long and awkward moment, "I apologize," Kuran said. "I lost control."

No, really? Her bruised throat kept her from saying it out load. But even with fear pumping through her veins hot and heady, she knew that she needed to stop him.

Vampire mates were an immutable, inarguable fact. She could not keep Kuran away from Zero forever. But if Kuran went after Zero here, surrounded by nobles and hunters and anyone else who'd deigned to show up, it would only lead to bad things. He needed to talk to Zero somewhere people were distracted by more than spiced blood-wine and gossip, where it was easier to disappear. Where Zero wouldn't be so on edge.

The answer snuck up on her, dangerous and unexpected. Fuck, Yori thought, and then got on with it.

"Look,” she croaked, grimaced, and then rubbed her throat. Zero so owed her one. Vampire matchmaking was dangerous. "There's going to be a party tonight—hunters only. Everyone, Zero included, is going to be there. I only ask that seek him there, where he won't be under the eyes of the entirety of vampire high society."

"You said Zero wasn't respected by the Association. Why would he be any more secure at this party?" Kuran probed incredulously.

Yori gave him an approving grin, comforted by his suspicion. "Because this party isn't hosted by the Association," she explained. "It's the new faction’s. They’ve worshipped at Zero's alter since he took down Rido. They'll do whatever he asks, including leaving him alone for a few hours."

Kuran considered her. "And you think Zero would prefer to meet there?"

Yori nodded emphatically. "Zero's always easier to deal with when he isn't surrounded by vampires."

Kuran blinked once, then smiled. Back to practiced kindness, Yori thought, and suppressed her unease. She quickly gave him the club's details.

"I’ll make the arrangements,” Yori assured him. She looked him up and down. “Just don't show up dressed like a Pureblood." She gave him her best smile. Kuran returned it like a funhouse mirror.

He inclined his head to her. Arrogance bled off him. "I'll do my best, Wakaba-san." He turned his back to leave, but paused with his hand on the handle of the French doors. "I don't suppose you have any other helpful advice before I go?" Kuran asked, obviously not expecting her to answer after the last time she'd 'advised' him on anything.

"Yeah," Yori said, "don't hurt him.” As gracefully as she could, she hauled herself to her feet. She pushed her hair back out of her face and crossed her arms over her chest. “Zero's hanging by a thread. I don't want to see you snap it."

Kuran kept his back to her, but from her angle she could see his grip on the door's dainty handle tighten. For a moment she wondered if he was going to throw her up against the wall again. "I shall try my best, Wakaba-san," he answered instead. He shoved open the door and disappeared from her sight, behind the curtain-covered glass.

Once he was gone, Yori sucked in a deep, painful breath and held it a minute. She let it slip slowly between her teeth. Turning her back to the doors, she rested her crossed arms and chest against the balcony's stone railing. Almost half her upper body hung over the edge.

Even the air tasted of that man—she needed a little space. Her fingers twitched with the need to play with something and suddenly she understood Yagari's need for cigarettes. If only they could take away my injuries, too, then I'd be sold, she thought with a self-deprecating smile.

Instead, Yori removed her anti-vampire bladed fan and twirled it lazily between her fingers. I wonder what I've just done, she thought, eyeing the door handle Kuran had just mangled in his annoyance.

She tried to comfort herself with her belief that Kuran's feelings for Zero were genuine, and protective to the point of violence. Though she worried still. Zero was damned stubborn and Kuran was used to control. They were both men steeped in violence and loss. They had sharp edges and a willingness to use them. She wondered if they wouldn't cut each other to ribbons while trying to do whatever mates were supposed to.

Either way, Yori swore she would be there for Zero.

Dispassionate at her morose thoughts, Yori straightened and arched her back. Her muscles popped as she tried to forestall the stiffness being slammed into a wall usually brought about. Turning from the balcony, she tried to judge if she had waited a suitable amount of time. She didn't want anyone to suspect that she and Kuran had been meeting. She let another few minutes tick by and then waltzed out.

She put on a confident mask, sure to dupe the average alcohol-addled noble, but she was anxious to get to the nearest restroom. She needed to treat the neat ring of marks Kuran had gifted her with before they had a chance to bruise. It would be unfortunate if Zero ever found out that she was helping a man who had given her bruises.

Chapter Text

Music pulsed through the club, the walls of the old warehouse buzzing with noise. Zero could feel the vibrations coursing through his skin even from his hideaway in the VIP lounge. A network of catwalks and platforms suspended above the club proper, the lounge gave him the perfect vantage point to watch the goings-on below.

Zero sat at one of the darker edges, his feet dangling over the crowd, arms resting on the railing bar. He idly spun the amber alcohol he'd ordered around in its tumbler, the tempting heat of the building pressing against him. He was watching the twirling lights, a little fascinated by how they turned the couple-hundred dancing hunters below into a colourful, flashing crush. In the centre of the twisting, twining mass, a famous DJ Zero hadn't heard of played on a platform guarded by two big, black-suited men.

Usually, the rare time he was coaxed to one of these bashes, Zero would join the dancers. Hard alcohol did a fantastic job of blitzing his self-awareness into submission, and the darkness and spinning lights provided enough anonymity to keep away the fanatics. He would sacrifice his stringent control for just a few hours, just like all the other hunters below.

In the last three months, the only thing keeping him grounded between his many shifting partners and the cacophony of music had been the terrible ache in his body that the pain attacks had left behind. For a while, back then, he could pretend the pain was from the constant flow of movement. For a few hours, he would give himself to the music and cut his strings to reality. For a few hours, he would just be. Just like everyone else in the club.

The dancing was something Zero liked to keep to himself. He was a controversial figure, to be polite, and it would be bad if people knew there was a distinct time when he wasn't on guard. So he moaned and complained when Kaito and Yori made their biweekly overtures and he let everyone assume that he hated the club—Vermillion, named such probably because 'Crimson' and 'Scarlet' were too cliche.

Thus far, no one outside of maybe his hunter teammates had been given the opportunity to figure out his little system of checks and balances, and if they knew, they did Zero the favour of maintaining his charade. The less people who knew your weaknesses, the less weaknesses you had. That was one of the little rules his instincts gave him, and so long as they worked, Zero tried not to question them. So far, the one mentioned above had worked charmingly.

After all, Zero thought wryly, no one's managed to kill me yet. And not for a lack of trying, either. Why fix what isn't broken?

Glancing around—cataloguing faces, checking exits, scanning for behavioural irregularities that might allude to murderous intentions—Zero stole a smooth sip from his glass. He was trying desperately to let the ebb and flow of the club's atmosphere ease the tension from his body and the thoughts from his mind. He wanted that old mindlessness back, that comfortable exhaustion of dancing and touching. Usually, a couple neat, strong drinks in the VIP section would soothe his anxiety enough that he could slip easily into the crowd, comfortably numb. Not tonight. He could feel it in his bones that something was stirring. It was more than just his feelings towards his and Kuran's apparent fate, Yuuki's drama, or how skittish Yori had been in the limo that was tipping him off. Though, at this rate, Zero thought that he might as well throw all of that into his calculations as well.

But no, the current thing aggravating his delicate sense for the scheming of others was the subtle tension lacing the patrons of Vermillion. A tension that, as an unwritten rule, was usually coat-checked at the door. Several people, most all of them under forty and wearing expensive clothing, were gathered at the bar.

They were talking animatedly with each other, though the spells littered craftily about the VIP section kept everything quiet to anyone not invited to the conversation. Zero had been watching them since the beginning of the night. Their group had only grown, and their actions—suspicious looks cast over shoulders, the passion their muted bodies belayed they spoke with, the anger in their tight mouths—all set Zero on edge.

Scenes like the one at the bar weren't unfamiliar to Vermillion, Zero allowed. The club was owned entirely by a secretive collection of hunters who weren't fond of the Association. They encouraged criticism on everything from how it was run to the traditions that were upheld within it. Usually, though, these critics and debaters didn't carry out their discussions in such large groups or in such public spaces.

They were rightfully paranoid. The Association didn't like criticism. In the old days hunters who spoke out tended to die in tragic accidents: misfiring weapons, delayed back-up, medical misdiagnoses. Gaining a reputation as a rabble rouser was life-threatening. Leaving the Association was an option, Zero guessed, but not a sustainable one. Without Association resources solo hunters usually wound up arrested, committed, or dead.

Perhaps they were emboldened by Cross's election. He’d run on a reformer platform, featuring transparency, and won by a landslide. Maybe they thought he would be more merciful to dissent. Maybe they thought he was weak. Gods knew he let Yagari get away with all and sundry. But then, Cross wasn't as gentle as he liked to pretend. The Vampire without Fangs, Zero reminded himself. Sometimes even he forgot his foster-father's old life. The old man hardly needed protecting, pacifist or not.

Not that that would stop Zero. For better or worse, Cross was one if his people. Woe betide anyone who came for him, whatever their stupid reasons.

Zero shook his head. Everyone had a passionate opinion, nowadays. It was funny, in a way. It seemed that the Rido Incident and the subsequent slaughtering of the Vampire Senate had not only revealed the corruption of the vampires’ world to their common folk, but also given a spark to a lingering rebellious fire within the hunter world. Since it had all gone down, Zero couldn't count the number of debates he'd stumbled across on hunter forums or wandered into during his brief times spent in the backrooms of Vermillion. It seemed that society was revving up for something big; something that Zero's much-trusted instincts told him to be cautious of.

Idly, Zero wondered if he should get up and go see what they were talking about. He usually tried to keep a finger on the Association's political pulse, if only out of self-preservation. When he was a child certain factions would have seen him dead if given half the chance. But that had recently been less of a concern. Killing Rido had given him a kind of power he wasn't used to among the hunters. A month after the bastard's death, the Association had even turned over the Kiryuu lordship to him—a materially meaningless title, will all the clan members dead, but symbolically important. Emotionally, too, Zero reluctantly acknowledged. His thumb sought out the silver ring, rubbing gently over the band. The last he'd seen it, the ring had been on his father's hand. After being bitten Zero hadn't thought he would ever see it again.

Cross had done what he could to shield Zero from the social backlash of being turned, but that hadn't taken the poison out of being so soundly rejected by the community he'd been devoted to since birth. Only spilling pure-blood had made him palatable to the hunters again, even honoured. The thought made Zero ill. He had only managed what he had because Yuuki had made the first blow, and because Ichiru had died. And all of that at Kuran's behest. Zero hadn't been more than a knight, moving as directed. Who was he to become an influence in the Association?

Yet, he was. He had been voted to the Council, even if the other members fought his suggestions. With Cross as president more of them made it into action than Zero had ever expected. Even Zero's self-loathing wouldn't let him ignore what that meant, what his duty entailed.

Not that he'd paid much attention to those duties, the last few days. He'd barely even checked his email. Between class beginning again, the pain, and Kuran, Zero's attention had been consumed.

Kuran. What a nightmare. In the last three days, they'd exchanged blood, quips, and handjobs, and then Kuran had broken off his engagement. And he'd stormed into Zero's room to tell him so. In person. And then stormed out, like his goal in life was to lead Zero three steps forward and then push him two steps back.

He'd laid claim on Zero, but that didn't have to mean anything material. Violence and the bond existed between he and Kuran. Zero, in his right mind, couldn't even comfortably call him by his first name. That wasn't a relationship. That was a mess. No wonder vampires were such a limited population, Zero thought tiredly, if he and Kuran were an indication of how mating worked.

But Zero hadn't come to Vermillion tonight to brood on Kuran. If anything, he'd come to forget. So, if he couldn't relax, he guessed he would privilege his hunter problems over his vampire ones.

With purpose that had eluded him since Yori and Kaito had ditched him at the bar, Zero downed the rest of his drink and pulled himself up from his place in the shadows. He was making to approach the group when Zero found himself stopped nearly chest-to-chest by one of the servers who regularly prowled the area, doling out drinks and flirting shamelessly.

Zero almost groaned. Once upon a time, they had stalked him relentlessly. Zero had hoped they'd finally given up. Apparently not. "Look," he started awkwardly. How did the vampires like Aidou enjoy this? "I'm sorry, but I'm really not interest—"

"Oh," the woman cooed. "Oh, no! I'm not here for that.” Her voice was decidedly coy.

Zero raised an eyebrow.

The grin fell, leaving her with a genuine smile. "No, seriously, I'm not. I'm just here to let you know that you've got someone waiting for you in room twelve. Also," she thrust forward a single rose wrapped in delicately patterned paper, "They've got great taste in flowers."

Zero blinked at it, willing away the warmth he felt trying to bloom across his cheeks. The rose was a purple, a strange twilight-like shade that belayed its origins as a Blue Moon Rose. It was a flower often picked for its meaning of love-at-first sight and enchantment, a fact that Zero only knew because it was the Kiryuu clan flower. Zero hadn't seen one since Shizuka's attack. Gently, he took the flower and ran his fingers over the soft outer petal.

He looked back at the server. "Do you mind giving me a hint at who's waiting for me?"

Not that he didn't have a good idea of who it was on his own, but it had never hurt to be sure. And if it turned out that it wasn't Kuran who sent the flower, well, then he might as well drop by to warn the poor bastard inside to start running. In Zero's years of experience with the older Kuran he had found that the man was nothing if not possessive of what he felt was his. Whether the object of that possession agreed with Kuran was unimportant to the question.

Kuran definitely felt had some claim to Zero. He wouldn't take kindly to a challenger.

The woman's eyes sparkled above her grin, her lips coated in vermillion red—the only uniform the club had—and teeth eerily bright in the semi-darkness. "I didn't catch a name, but he was hot for sure. Dressed in black and with the strangest eyes I've ever seen in a hunter. Burgundy, I think. Do ya' think he wears contacts?"

Zero choked on a snort, making the woman giggle.

Tamping down on his amusement, he slipped past the woman, intent on finding out just what the fuck Kuran Kaname was doing in the one place anyone with fangs would be stupid to tread in.

From a darkened corner of the dance floor, a pair of bright eyes watched with dawning horror as the reality of the events of the last few days came crashing down on her.

Contrary to what the nastiest nobles whispered where they thought she couldn’t hear, Kuran Yuuki—once Cross—wasn't a stupid woman. Yes, she liked pretty clothes and romantic endings, and yes, she did feel entitled to having those things for herself. But she also knew that there were little roadblocks that one must come across. Yuuki's only real mistake, it seemed to her, was that she had believed that she had already jumped all her hurdles and was now free to enjoy life for once.

After all, she thought tearfully as she stomped away from her hiding place, had she not stood against Rido with all she'd had? Had she not suffered under the guise of humanity, pathetic and frail, to help her brother's schemes? And she had been so good through the transition back to vampirism! Always commanding and royal, never crying or tripping in public. And Yuuki, as a human, had been very prone to both. She had even gathered an entourage of new nobles—she had even more courtiers than her brother! But, then, his were all higher grade, she guessed, and eternally loyal… but Yuuki could only work with what was available to her.

Yuuki sighed as she set herself daintily on one of the leather stools that lined the beaten bar, pulling uncomfortably at the hem of her borrowed leather skirt. Gods, this place was so trashy. It only proved, in her opinion, that Kaname's decisions were becoming more and more hindered. Why else would he come skulking to a hunter club, of all places, to meet up with that level D? Had anyone told her that Kaname had done such a thing, she would have been furious at them for spreading such horrible lies. But, now, thanks to her new noble friends, she had seen it herself.

Kiryuu had walked down the stairs and gone right into room twelve, which she'd watched Kaname enter just moments earlier. She'd watched that slutty waitress leave with a rose from room twelve, only to see it end up in Zero's—Kiryuu's—hand a few minutes later. The proof of the rumours she'd heard swirling made her sick.

He must be under one of those spells, Yuuki thought with sudden certainty. She thought of the Artemis rod and how it burned vampires who touched it, and the way the pounding music had quieted once she reached the bar. Hunters had powerful magic. The level D had to have placed a powerful spell on her brother.

Yuuki sobbed a little, stricken for Kaname. Yes, that must be it. Oh, and she'd said all those bad things about her poor brother when really he was being manipulated… she felt so guilty. How could she lose faith in him like that? If he had still had his own will, he never would have broken off their engagement. She knew him better than to think otherwise.

Sucking in a harsh breath, Yuuki decided that the temporary falter in her trust in Kaname would be forgiven when she had saved him from Kiryuu. When all this was cleared up, she would come clean to her brother about her lapses. Surely, he'd forgive her and they'd be married by the week's end. Yes, she thought, nodding to herself. Her plan would work.

First, though, she needed to speak with the hunter who'd given her noble friends the tip about what was happening at the club. She hadn't wanted to believe it at first, thinking that he was just trying to manipulate her like Kaname had warned her about before Kiryuu had entranced him, but now she was sure he was being honest. And he'd already agreed to help her get rid of Kiryuu.

Yuuki felt a little ill at the thought of 'getting rid' of someone—especially Zero, a little human voice whispered sadly—but she felt sicker about losing Kaname to some spell.

Standing from her seat at the bar, Yuuki walked purposefully out of the club. Her mind span with ideas of how to save Kaname. Also, a desperate need for a bubble bath filled her to the core. Her urge to scrub off whatever reeking hunter humanity being in the club had left on her was overwhelming.

And if she seemed to be crying (mourning) among the bubbles—well. There would hardly be anyone watching her in her private bathroom.

Yori cursed as she watched Yuuki leave, knowing full-well that Yuuki had seen Zero enter the backroom. And from the look on the Yuuki's face, she also knew who was waiting there for him. Downing her shot, Yori grabbed her bag and left her seat with a few crumpled bills on the bar as the only evidence of her being there at all.

Walking with quick steps, Yori fished around in her bag until she had her phone. She sent off a quick text detailing what she'd seen to the number one of the older Kuran's cronies had slipped to her just before she'd left the soirée. The message on the back of the paper the number had been written on gave her directions to use it whenever she had "delicate information" regarding Zero.

Was it just her, or had she become something like Kuran's personal spy on Zero? She could only hope that her friend would forgive her—and that her gut was right, and she really was acting in Zero's best interest. Yori wouldn’t ever forgive herself otherwise.

Shaking off those worries for another time, she stuffed the phone back into her bag and nervously wondered what else she could do. Adrenaline ran through her blood and was cooking up all kinds of ideas, though thankfully it didn't affect her enough to completely murder her rational judgment.

Even if she did try to do something like follow Yuuki, what was the point? Yori couldn't exactly interrogate the Kuran Princess for information. Yori knew that if Yuuki was angry enough she could do some real damage with her powers, even as unharnessed as they were rumoured to be. Yori wasn't even a fully trained hunter yet, despite being a rising star in the Association. There was no way she could take on a Pureblood, not even a fledgling with no control.

She couldn't even turn for help to any of her hunter teammates, Yori realized with a start. Kuran obviously wanted as few people as possible aware of his interest in Zero. Filling in Yagari and Kaito would probably anger him.

And it wasn't like Zero had revealed his relationship with Kuran to her. He seemed to want as few people to know as Kuran did. Asking for help from Yagari and Kaito was off-limits for this game. At least until she had absolutely no other choice.

Smothering a depraved little laugh at the mess she'd gotten herself in the middle of, Yori stopped one of the attendants with an order for a drink. She settled herself on one of the vermilion-red leather couches that lined the sides dance floor, a place with a perfect view of room twelve. She relegated herself to waiting for the other side to make the next move. Gods, she thought resentfully as the hunky male attendant handed her a brightly coloured martini, I really hate chess.

Chapter Text

Kaname watched the prettily carved and heavily magic-laden door of private room twelve with predatory eyes. The crystal tumbler in his hand strained under his clenched fingers. He strove to remain seated, though the temptation to storm out of room was strong. He wanted to rip the thrumming club to pieces until Zero was safe; until Zero was secure in his possession.

Wakaba's words had woken the monster. Kaname struggled to hold it back.

Why had he followed that hunter-child's advice? The logic was presently beyond him. She might have had three more months of Zero's trust and faith than he did, but Kaname was Zero's perfect match. Gods, fate, evolution, and science had colluded to draw them together. With Kaname's instincts uninhibited, there was no one better designed to meet Zero's needs. Yet, because he had followed Wakaba's advice, Zero was still out of his reach. Worse, he wandered among crowds that would have condemned him to death for sins not at all his own. At eleven. Adrenaline crashed through Kaname's veins at the thought, as though if he only moved fast enough he would be able to whisk the child Zero away from his suffering.

Kaname rubbed his eyes. Purebloods weren't hindered by such human maladies as headaches, generally, but Kaname had been feeling more of them lately than in the rest of his thousands of years combined. Gods, he was stupid. He sat in this hunter club, maudlin over the past, when he should have just followed his instincts and retrieved Zero at the soirée—consequences be damned. This game of cat and mouse with Zero had gone on long enough. Some things, Kaname had learned long ago, were better done by asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

At least then I'd know he was safe, Kaname thought. Unfamiliar anxiety bit at him, sending his senses scanning over his surroundings anew every few minutes. The private room was elegant, even he could admit, but the privacy spells cast to keep the noise of the club out and the noise of the room in were driving him spare. He had wanted to be able to at least track Zero by sound and scent, if not sight. The wards, however, kept him dulled and dumb. He could push through, but that would reveal his aura. Despite his concerns, Kaname wasn't willing to cause whatever no-doubt dramatic disturbance a Pureblood in a hunter club would inspire.

Not yet.

Wakaba's words about Zero haunted him, confirming his worst suspicions. They were killers with a self-defined mission, a kennel of self-righteous hunting dogs without masters. They cleaned up the messes reckless Purebloods let their courts create or insane Purebloods caused themselves, but there was no oversight of any kind. Obviously—their old president had been Rido's puppet.

Forget research. Kaname didn't need to know more than he had heard tonight to identify what kind of beast the Association was: an animal in the same family as the Senate. Kaname had mercilessly put down that mutt when it had threatened to bite him. Should the Association test his patience, Kaname would not hesitate to administer the same justice. If Zero didn’t obviously hold an unfortunate, lingering attachment to the organization, Kaname might have already begun spilling blood.

Kaname growled. Why hadn't Zero arrived yet? Surely finding one man in a club wasn't so hard, even for a mortal waitress. Perhaps he’d made a bigger mistake than he’d thought when he’d agreed to confront Zero here. Zero had been born into a world that seemed to mirror the one that had reared Kaname: full of blood and fear, distasteful tradition and zealotry. Despite what Wakaba had said about a new faction favouring Zero, the hunters may be more of a grave than a cradle for him.

Absently, Kaname wished that he had tortured Hio before ripping her insane, blackened heart from her chest. Her machinations had been what had tainted Zero in the eyes of his people. In doing so, she had painted a target on his back in bright red blood. But she had been victimized, too, by Kaname's descendant and uncle. If only Kaname hadn't been stopped from killing him by their bond of blood; if only Rido hadn't Woken him at all.

But then Kaname would have never had met Zero. His heart cringed. Gods, Kaname thought, what a tangled web we Purebloods weave.

Little wonder Zero behaved the way he did, angry and paranoid.

Rage ignited. Had even one of those variables Wakaba had listed not been in play, Kaname's mate would have died with Kaname none the wiser. Gods, Kaname could have killed Zero himself. He remembered vividly nights where Zero's stubborn, impudent attitude had pushed him to the edge of his control. Kaname had weighed the worth of Zero's life, those nights, and found it lacking but for its sacrificial value. Kaname felt sick at his own skin.

That rose seal seemed to be the culprit—but then, blaming the seal felt like shirking his own culpability. Kaname knew that he was a monster, but he liked to think that he was a responsible one. He was an Ancestor. The fabled Vampire King. He should have known. He should have crowned Zero his queen on sight, not forced him onto the board with naught but a bloodied sword. Idiot.

Shattering glass broke him form his musings. His hand was bloody, and his crystal tumbler had fallen to the floor in shards of sharp glitter. Kaname sighed, exhausted, and regarded the shards—evidence of his lack of control—with mild disgust. He rose to his feet and trudged to the ensuite, washing the blood and brandy away. That was probably for the best. The last thing his state of mind needed was alcohol. Staring a moment at his pale reflection, Kaname suddenly felt too tired for words.

Returning to the elegant wingback, Kaname sank down. He had already lost it once tonight. Guilt circled him as he thought of Wakaba's bruised throat. He couldn't slip again. Moments like that had been what had convinced him to Sleep in the first place. His eyes fixed on the candlelight playing off the broken glass at his feet. A madness most discreet, was love. But Kaname could not afford madness. He was too old and too powerful for irrationality. That way led to death and destruction; a path walked by too many of those Kaname had cared for.

Once, after being Woken to a child's corpse and Rido's sadistic intentions, Kaname had thought that finally the time to succumb had arrived. On bright days when Juri and Haruka had mourned their real son, Kaname had entertained thoughts of wiping the slate clean. Secluding Yuuki and watching her grow-up from a distance had reinforced the idea. The consequent violence, the pain his nobles had endured, the useless human casualties: all had convinced him that Kaname's like, Purebloods, were without redemption. He had been prepared to orchestrate one final drama—a final end.

But then Zero had slipped into his mind. The winds had whispered of change, a subtle calling Kaname had not heard since he'd first established his crown. Perhaps the crooning of his own delusions, but perhaps not. He had first thought his dreams of Zero a kind of madness, too, but no more. These persuasions had turned Kaname away from his first plan. Perhaps, he had begun to think, I have enough in me, still, to rise again.

Kaname thought of Kuran Manor with the courtiers' wing properly filled again. The Red Hall, where Kaname had held court, no longer clumsily disguised as a second, gaudy ballroom, but returned to its proper purpose. His court's children running through the Rose Garden, joyous under moonlight. The observatory would still be his private sanctuary, reserved only for Kaname's most trusted, but the other solars and drawing rooms would again bustle with the court's entertainments and plots.

He was quietly coming to envision again the world he had left, but modern, updated. Freed from the feudal antiquarianism and rash brutality that he had fought, in his last life, to exhaustion and the teetering edge of insanity. A peaceful world for his people finally realized, a completion of Kaname's only life-long goal.

And presiding over this dream was a new figure. Zero, dressed in Kaname's colours, first the white Night Class uniform and then the blood-crimson of the Kuran family. Zero, armed to the teeth but innately kind, even when he tried to hide it. Zero, snapping and growling when Kaname was being stupid, the bravest person Kaname had ever met. Zero, a Kuran rose tucked behind his ear. Zero, blissful in Kaname's bed. Zero, holding hands with a child.

Consciously, Kaname guided his thoughts to the present. He had to be cautious. Fantasy was no basis for reality, and that was what Kaname wanted. Reality. A life he could live happily. Zero was Kaname's last chance at that life. He couldn't screw up by playing too many steps ahead. But the dreams were hard to bat back.

Kaname was so, so old. His skin had aged as much as it ever had, as it ever would, but his mind was diamond-old. Even vampires weren't really designed to last as long as Kaname had. Without this new hope, Kaname feared submitting to insanity's touch. That, one day, he would be uncaring of Yuuki's good intentions and bad habits, or what might befall the nobles he'd abandon in his madness. Kaname feared what he would do if he became unmoored, like what had threatened him at the end of last year once Rido and the Senate were dead.

His and Zero's fledgling bond had helped. It was stabilizing him, slowly but surely, and cementing him in the present. Kaname was staring down the barrel of a gun. And Kiryuu Zero was the only one who could save him from it.

Zero would never admit it, but it wasn't the need to calm his rising anger and indignation that kept him outside the outwardly plain, black door of private room twelve. Rather, it was deep weariness that kept him standing there. He was desperate for anger but trying to draw from that well made him tired. Sick.

The analog clock over the bar had told him that it was reaching six in the morning when he'd caught a glance at it on his way down from the VIP section. The last two days, Zero had been sleeping better. His body was saturated with Kuran's blood, his vampire quelled by his mate's closeness. The pain hadn't bothered him at all since that night in the glade. Now, however, his body was becoming used to sleep. He'd been up in the morning to attend his classes and he hadn't napped in a single one—signaling the End of Days for probably half his professor. But then Kaname had crashed into his room, revealing his broken engagement, and Zero's plans for a nap before crossover had died a fiery death. And after crossover, Kaito and Yori had burst in to drag him to the soirée.

Zero had been up for almost twenty-four hours, and only vampire stamina and his hunter training were keeping him awake. He was a little tipsy, having ingested naught but a pair of neat whiskies since noon, and he wanted to go home. Thinking about the Association had given him a headache and that made it easy for the whispers of the soirée's vampires to reinvade his brain. He had been purposely not thinking about them all night. "Doesn't he look just like her? Poor, beautiful boy." There was a reason Zero never dressed up, but he hated to disappoint Yori. Zero wanted nothing more than a shower and sleep, hoping those would silence the taunting, tittering voices.

But Kaname was behind that door. Kaname had brought him a rose, like they were a properly courting couple. A rose that made Zero think gently of home; thoughts Zero hadn't thought he'd ever have again. Even if the Blue Moon Rose had been an accidental choice Zero felt he was due to give a brief appearance. He had been purposely avoiding Kaname at the ball, unsure of how to behave around him now and not wanting to reveal his cursed resemblance, even if Kaname had doubtlessly heard all about it. Kaname had even made the effort of coming to a hunter club. That couldn't have been easy.

He should at least say hello.

Zero sighed, glaring his self-disgust through the door in front of him. Gods, he was a mess. His ancestors would be rolling in their graves to see him now, but there wasn't much he could do about it. He didn't want to hurt Kaname. Hating him had been easy for so long, but the last two days had unsettled the well. Zero had lost any hope of friendship with Yuuki, and, almost as if in exchange, Kaname had shown him peace and pleasure that he had never even dreamed of.

Zero hadn't been this shaken since the Kurans had left the Academy. It had been hard, those first few weeks. So hard that Zero had dropped all pretenses of anger at the vampire world and simply thrown himself into rebuilding the school. He had done whatever was needed, from clearing rubble to helping Cross pick new professors to replace the ones who had refused to come back.

 Most exhaustingly, Zero had led the effort to re-ward the grounds. He had called on arcane magic, spells kept so secret by the Kiryuus that Cross had thought Zero confused when he'd explained his plans. The awe on Cross's face when the glimmering, glittering shields rose high over the Academy, their raw power palpable in the air, wasn't a sight Zero would forget soon.

Zero had slept through a whole week, after. Wards like his weren't meant for one caster. Had he made them any stronger, he probably would have died. Zero hadn't told Cross that part; he had been concerned enough when Zero woke up.

The blessing of that work was that it didn’t give him any time to think. Zero had drifted through the days without having to wonder what to do or where to go. He hadn’t really had a plan, but there had been order. Zero had taken the chaos Kaname had left him with and made progress out of it.

And then, Kaname had come back.

And I, Zero thought with no little bitterness, became all caught up in him again. What could life throw at him next? Zero didn't want to wait around to find out.

Gritting his teeth, Zero opened the door. His face was blank and a barbed quip sat on the tip of his tongue. He had goals. Say hello, find out where Kuran got off giving him sentiment-charged roses, and maybe interrogate him a bit about this broken engagement. Like, why did he think Zero should be the first to know? Cryptic bastard. Then, Zero would focus on getting Kuran out of the club without causing an incident. Easy.

Of course, by now, Zero should have known better than that.

Kaname had always been a handsome man, in Zero's book. He had an unsettling, predatory beauty that paled other vampires by comparison. Every feature was carefully defined, alabaster skin in perfect contrast with his dark, silken hair and stunning eyes. Even among Purebloods, Kaname stood apart and above. Here, though, free from the ridged white of the Moon Dorms or his formal attires, shaded into colour by burning candles and accented by shadows, he was something intoxicating. Unfortunately, he was also fucking fast.

The door had barely slipped shut behind Zero before Kaname caged him against the wall. Riding the edge of pain, Zero faltered under the assault. He became all senses: the pinch of eager fangs, the hot-wet Kaname's tongue. He tasted the barest hint of brandy, cinnamon spice tickling his nose. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, broken up only by his acquiescing moan. The rose, cradled ever so carefully, fell to the carpet as Zero scrabbled for contact.

They broke for air. Zero whined, high and needy, but had no time to be horrified by the sound. Encouraged, or just determined, Kaname nipped wickedly at his throat. A hand cradled Zero's head while the other cupped his ass, squeezing a surprised gasp out of him. Kaname made a contented little sound, a sweet hum that sent goosebumps over Zero skin as it buzzed against his Adam's apple.

"Kaname," Zero moaned, forgetting himself entirely under the Pureblood's hands.

Kaname chuckled, the laughter ghosting teasingly against the Zero's sensitive flesh. "If you missed me this badly, Zero," Kaname murmured, kisses fluttered over his abused throat, soothing him, "Then you shouldn't have avoided me."

Zero groaned, head pressing Kaname's hand into the red, red wall as his punishment continued. Frustration and desired warred in him. "You were the one who stormed out of my room this morning," he gasped.

"I wanted to give you time to think. And I'd only just done it," Kaname replied. "I wasn't thinking as clearly as I should have been, but I knew you were the only person I wanted to tell." The kiss this time was gentler, almost an apology. Zero sighed into it, enjoying the softer touch more than he'd expected.

"Well, still," Zero said as they parted. Kaname was distracted with the buckles on the jacket Kaito had thrown at him in the limo, so he had a couple seconds to think. Sarcasm came to him easily. "Was I just supposed to waltz up to you in front of all your little puppets?"

"I'm sure you could have found a more discreet way to the same result," Kaname returned coolly. His hands stilled on the buckles.

Zero snorted derisively, "Why do you want me to be 'discreet' about it?" He held Kaname's gaze unflinchingly, "Scared I'd fuck up some scheme of yours?"

Kaname sighed. "Why must you assume that there is always a scheme involved?"

A tense silence settled, filled only with the exchange of breath. "Because," Zero finally answered, "I've come to always expect one from you."

Kaname dropped his hands like Zero had burned him. He took a step back, jaw trip-wire tight. "Obviously," he replied, "You don't know me as well as you think."

Zero's laughter was bitter as he wiped Kaname's kisses off his neck with the sleeve of his jacket, hoping to gather some dignity while he was at it. "Well, of course not, you prick," Zero said, half to himself and barely loud enough for Kaname to hear. "When was someone supposed to drop the hint that I'd need to?"

Kaname gave him what could have been a pained look, leading Zero to think that perhaps he should tone his barbs down a notch. The expression flickered away in a blink, though, replaced by utter calm. Zero was mildly resentful of that control. Here he was, stumbling around like an idiot, while Kaname led him down the rabbit's hole. Anger stuttered to life under his skin, but exhaustion smothered it. There was no point to anger, Zero was slowly learning. It just hollowed you out and burned up everything around you.

"Perhaps," Kaname said cautiously—he didn't like the way Zero's gaze was focused so far away. It made him nervous—"It would be better if we talked before we go any further?"

Zero laughed again and Kaname bit back a flinch. The laughter wasn't happy, or even mocking. The bitter sound needled Kaname's instinct to protect into action, but he stomped it down. At this point approaching Zero might be detrimental. Like a trapped animal, the hunter didn't look like he knew if he wanted to attack or lie down and not get up again. The dark rings around his icy eyes did little to dissuade the comparison.

How had he not noticed those before? Had he really been so lustful that he'd failed to notice Zero's discomfort? Perhaps he was as bad of a mate as Zero's remarks had alluded to.

Before his thoughts could get any more depressive, Zero interrupted.

"Sure, Kuran," Zero said, settling himself in the comfortable armchair opposite Kaname's. He was stone-faced, all fragility tucked away. "Let's talk."

Absently, Kaname wondered what he should do next. It was his turn, his game, but his hand was stalled over the board. His game plan had unraveled under the stress Zero seemed to radiate. Kaname blew out a long sigh. Maybe Zero was right. It always came down to his plans, didn't it?

Chapter Text

Cold leeched in through Zero's dorm room window with a single-minded intent. Zero, however, wasn't much bothered. He had long ago become too lulled by the rattling rain to care. The vaguely numb sensation spreading from where his face touched the glass barely occurred to him. Dressed in his favourite lazy clothing, a shapeless, long-sleeved T-shirt and drawstring sweatpants, his feet and hands bare and chilled to the point of comfort, he made the perfect picture of an introspective youth. Appropriate, because Zero had little left to do but think.

Morning had come and gone, shifting into its parallel in a storm of easily completed homework and extra credit assignments. He had entertained the idea of going to see White Lily, something he hadn't felt good enough to do in a while, but after the whirlwind of homework and a dismal shift in the weather he had found himself feeling lethargic once again. Apparently, the exhaustion-induced coma he had slipped into after returning from the club hadn't been enough.

Oh, the club, Zero thought ruefully. Now that brought back memories worth brooding about. Damn Kuran and his fucking plans. The bastard wouldn't know honesty if it slapped him in the face.

His eyes landed on his bedside table. Sitting there innocently in a slim crystal vase was the rose Kuran had given to him. It was utterly perfect, healed of all damage from its tumble to the floor by Kuran's powers. Possibly Kuran had done that as an allusion to what their 'agreement' was supposed to do for their relationship. Gods, Zero thought, I hate symbolism.

Zero liked to think that he hadn't tossed the rose because he was a rational person at heart, and he knew that insulting his 'future mate' would be a bad way to start off this new arrangement of theirs. If he had wanted to be truthful (and he didn't), Zero would have admitted that he had kept the flower for sentiment. Not just because Zero had played in Blue Moon Rose gardens as a child, but because he appreciated that Kuran had thought to give it to him. He had never thought that he would like romantic gestures, but Zero was learning all kinds of new things about himself lately. He kind of hated it.

Kuran. He should probably become used to calling him 'Kaname' now that Zero was accepting presents from him. That would be new territory for Zero, if he discounted those moments when hormones and emotions had made his tongue slippery. Zero kind of hated that, too. It tasted too much like submission. Yet calling the man he'd slept with, his fated vampire mate, by his last name just felt ridiculous.

With a bitter smile, Zero looked away from the vase—an item that he hadn't even remembered owning until he had needed it—and let his gaze settle on the woods. He had a brilliant view. It was a bit of a jab by Cross, Zero thought, about how much time Zero spent wandering the forest. Zero's dorm was also the closest to the Headmaster's private abode as the crow flew or, more fittingly, as the vampire jumped and ran.

Frowning, Zero dragged a hand through his disheveled hair, a sigh slipping past his chapped lips. He didn't want to think anymore, but he was without distraction. His previous tiredness was beginning to melt into a kind of twitchy energy, especially as the day passed closer to the designated time of his and Kuran's meeting. He needed to find something to kill time with before his thoughts had the chance to suffocate him.

Swinging his legs down from where he'd curled them when he took his seat in the window box, Zero stood. He stumbled off a couple of steps worth of pins and needles and then collapsed into his computer chair. Grabbing his phone from its place of abandonment atop his own personal leaning tower of newly completed homework (it was amazing how productive he was when he wanted to avoid something), he flipped the little thing on and read through his messages.

He was hoping that Yori or Kaito had left him an amusing rant to reply to regarding the excuses he'd sent them to cover for his disappearance at the club. He'd had close to thirty worried messages on his phone between the two of them when he had return to consciousness sometime this morning, so he was hoping for some fantastic replies to his weak explanation.

For a moment, Zero frowned. Most of those worried messages had been from Kaito, which struck Zero as odd. It was usually Yori who played mother hen when he didn't check in. Weirdly, he had only received one message from her. Maybe she had just been busy? With the Kurans' return begetting him more personal drama than ever before, Zero hadn't had much time for his hunting-mates lately. He would have to remedy that soon, Zero decided. Maybe he would invite them for a late-night training session after his—thing—with Kaname was over.

Kaname. How odd to use his first name so casually, without lust or blood making his head spin first. Zero wondered how long 'becoming used to it' would take.

Pulling away from those thoughts, Zero forced himself to focus on his phone and his life outside Kuran Kaname. His messages suggested that a training session would be a good idea. To his half-hearted excuses all Kaito had sent him was a frown-y face and a 'not cool, man.' Yori had given him a 'good, K'. Zero could only assume they were a little annoyed with his recent seclusion and his disappearing act from the afterparty. Dutifully, Zero text them both invites and scrolled on.

Cross, of course, had clogged his mailbox with overly emotional responses to the 'I'm fine' Zero had sent him, but he wasn't desperate enough to send anything back to those. No distraction there, then.

Kuran Kaname was also recent in Zero's messages, though not since last night. A place and a time, nothing more. Kuran—Kaname—was, apparently, an exceedingly frugal texter, which didn't surprise Zero at all. Had he used an emoji Zero may have actually died a little. Not that Kaname could ever know that. Assuredly his next messages would be littered with them just to get a rise out of Zero. An eggplant wasn't just an eggplant anymore, Yori had taught him. Zero wouldn't take the chance that Kaname knew that too.

Setting the phone down on his desk, Zero checked the time, finding it half-past five. He winced. Their little experiment was set for an hour later. Almost bouncing with nerves, Zero pushed himself away from his desk and stood again. Flipping open his laptop, he hit and clicked a few keys and buttons. After scrolling through his playlists, Zero picked one with a particularly harsh tone and let it play. Half a second later a fast, bone-shattering drum solo broke free from the speakers, the chaotic sound soothing away some of his tension.

The music beating down his doubts, Zero went over to his closet and started the daunting task of figuring out what to wear. Unlike their last two encounters, Kaname had stressed that this—meeting, let's call it—was to be, well, casual. And normal. Kaname had gone so far as to call it 'hanging-out,' which had been admittedly fun to watch him say with a straight face.

But as amusing as it had been watching the imperious and up-tight Kuran Prince describe a coffee date without using either of those words, it had left Zero with an issue. Zero didn't have a particularly large social life. Besides Yori, Kaito, Yagari, and the occasional trip to Vermillion, he didn't have one at all.

Zero's life was devoted to his Association duties, his prefect duties, and his classes. The Association ate up most of his time—the Council meetings, the proposals to review and put forth, managing the apprentice hunters assigned to the Academy as prefects, his physical training, actual hunting, and after-action reports all took more time and effort than Zero had ever imagined. Managing the Day Class and his homework was almost a vacation in comparison, but those also took time. And what free time he did have was definitely not spent dating.

Turning on his heel, Zero went into the bathroom and started up the shower, guitar-heavy music following him. He would figure out what to do about appearances in a bit. Besides, he had been past the place Kaname had suggest they meet at. It was trendy. Popular. Zero would have never set foot in the place naturally. He was confident that if he embarrassed himself he could comfortably avoid the place for the rest of his life.

Shedding his clothes and stepping into the spray was probably the best feeling Zero had experienced in recent memory. He hadn't had an opportunity to wash away the remnants of the club yet. Sleep-deprived Zero might think that Kaname smelled too good to wash off, but not the one awake and in his right mind. The last thing he needed was to go on this date smelling like Kaname. The smug bastard would probably think that it meant something. He pointedly ignored the fact that he had woken up at noon and spent the next several hours doing work that he could have easily put off for a moment, his lips quirking occasionally as he caught a lingering snatch of cinnamon and cardamom.

The last of Zero’s tension left his shoulders as the hot water streamed over him. The chill he had cultivated at the window melted, and Zero dried off feeling markedly more relaxed. Good. Speaking to Kaname was almost guaranteed to stress him out—when the clever bastard wasn't playing Zero's gullible body like a fiddle—so he had best start off with a blank slate.

Laughing to himself at the absurd way his life worked, Zero finished washing up and toweled off. That done, he battled his closet, cursing his date and his own lack of fashion sense the whole time. And if all of the cursing and growling distracted him from his nerves and maybe even his excitement, then, well, Zero would never confirm it.

Kaname watched Seiren unpack the newly de-spelled books Hanabusa had fetched from the Association with interest, a glass of blood tableted-wine in hand. He had sent her with the mission just after leaving the club, a task managed only after he had watched Zero safely secure a cab. Kaname had failed to convince Zero to share his car; apparently Zero had wanted space.

Kaname had barely refrained from rolling his eyes. They were mates. Space from his mate would never soothe Zero's frayed instincts. Yet Kaname had conceded with grace. He was slowly learning that Zero shared his own introspective nature. Even if distance wouldn't lull him, it may give Zero greater clarity and peace of mind. Kaname empathized with that. Also Kaname had already won Zero's agreement to a date, so Kaname had been pleased enough to have succeeded with that objective.

"Kaname-sama, is this all you need?" Seiren asked. Kaname nodded, but he didn't send her immediately away.

"Did you happen to retrieve a copy of the spells they pulled from the books, Seiren?" Kaname was not a man who enjoyed not knowing things, and some of the offensive and defensive spells that had been cast on the books had been quite alien to him. His paranoia, as well as his curiosity, demanded more information.

Seiren inclined her head and pulled a sheaf of papers from her shoulder bag. "I had a feeling you would be interested, so I had Muryuki-san give a basic description and approximate age of each spell. Muryuki-san also encourages you to contact him if you need any further information."

Her tone, and the glimmer in her usually flat silver eyes, belayed how much of an ass-kisser she thought 'Muryuki-san' was. Kaname was inclined to agree with her, but Muryuki was easily the most capable of Kaname's extensive court with hunter spells and his greed kept him deep in Kaname's pocket. Resisting the urge to quirk an eyebrow at the sizable number of papers—each covered in precise black ink, whether it be via diagram or word—Kaname was just about dismiss his bodyguard and assistant when Seiren's cool voice broke the silence that had descended on the room.

"Kaname-sama…"

Kaname frowned. That wasn't Seiren's usual manner. She sounded unsure, cautious; much more so than her usual blank tone would allow. Kaname gave her an encouraging smile, quietly bemused that he even needed to. There were few (Takuma, and, increasingly, Senri) as comfortable in his presence as Seiren.

"It's just," Seiren began. After a pause, she straightened her shoulders and found her confident tone again. "Those books were very dangerous. I watched while Muryuki de-spelled them. Some would seem completely normal, and then a certain page would be spelled to burn the eyes of the reader out of their skull. They're safe, now, but…please, be careful, Kaname-sama."

Kaname nodded, his mild smile perfectly maintained. Silently, though, he took her warning to heart. Seiren wasn't one for displays of emotion and she was easily the least shakable of his inner circle—exactly why he trusted her with such sensitive assignments. It was also why he trusted her word above all except Takuma's. If she cautioned him to be wary, then he would give her advice due consideration.

"Is that all, Seiren?" Kaname asked. His focus was already drifting to the books atop his desk, as though they held all the answers that he would ever need. Or more questions, Kaname thought ruefully, as seemed to be the case when dealing with his tricky mate. Kaname already had several circulating his mind. It seemed that Kaname had gone to Sleep just in time to miss all the drama. Passingly, he was grateful that he had been Woken in time to meet its heir.

Wakaba Sayori had sparked one of Kaname lines of inquiry. She had said, during their discussion, that if the Kiryuu family hadn't been so integral to the Association Zero would have been killed. What was it that made the Kiryuus so crucially important to the Association? Yes, they were powerful hunters, but Kaname couldn't remember the family ever being terribly political, nor did he think they were very wealthy. Kaname hoped that the books, now safe to examine, would reveal all.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of Seiren politely clearing her throat.

"Actually, Kaname-sama, Takuma-san asked me to inquire if you were planning on hosting a Samhain celebration this year," Seiren replied.

Kaname blinked at the question, which hit him out of the blue. They were closing into October, weren't they? In days passed the Kurans had traditionally held a ball, but not since Juri and Haruka had died. He was tempted to restart the tradition—he had lingering sweet memories of Kuran balls as a child and as King—but Lady Kurosaki's soirée had left a bad taste in his mouth. Running calculations in his head, Kaname decided.

"Takuma knows that I detest those events…" Kaname stated bluntly. His poor friend had certainly been made to endure Kaname's thoughts on Kurosaki's. He couldn't imagine what about that (admittedly one-sided, rant-like) conversation had made Takuma think that Kaname was in any kind of mindset to host his own. Though, knowing Takuma, this could merely be an idea sparked from one of those damned manga he entertained himself with. Kaname smothered an affectionate smile.

Seiren's lips twitched, giving away how amused she was by Kaname's reaction. He narrowed his eyes back at her teasingly, the way he was exceptionally with few others.

She looked away first, huffing a laugh under her breath. "Yes, my lord, we are all aware of that. But in light of—recent events—throwing a ball would show that you are not as affected as the rumors may suggest."

The 'events' she was referring to were obviously his failed engagement. When Kaname didn't interrupt her, Seiren carried on. "It would also open up new opportunities for you to meet with those remaining influential families who may side against or in neutrality to you." The 'something you seem to have forgotten about' wasn't said, but it was present; as was the curiosity as to why he wasn't focusing as much on politics as he had been until a few days ago.

Sighing inwardly, Kaname nodded. His mind worked inwardly to find a way to bend the aspects involved with a ball to his will. Perhaps, if he could secure Zero's agreement, he could use this event to introduce himself and Zero as mates to the vampire public. The timing was perfect, both giving him enough time to show respect towards Yuuki and to lend himself validation for leaving her so suddenly. Samhain was also a strong cultural occasion for vampires, one that was only contested by the winter solstice. Revealing his and Zero's relationship then would endear them to the traditional faction, whom Zero's hunter and former-human status would clash with the worst.

Nodding to himself, Kaname checked the time. He was surprised when he saw that he only had half an hour to go before he was supposed to meet with Zero for their date. The human convention had been Kaname's rebuttal to Zero's point that they didn't know each other. After all, if it worked for humans, why not vampires?

He absently glanced at the books, sitting in tall, untouched piles on his desk. He had been hoping to crack into them before meeting with Zero, but that wasn't going to happen. Stifling a frown, Kaname turned back to Seiren with a list of orders.

"In that case," he said, "Please pass along my thanks to Takuma for his helpful suggestion. I need you to contact the Kuran Manor staff and the Hunter Association Security Board. Forewarn the staff and have them ready to tele-conference with me when I return to campus. Inform the Association that a Samhain ball will take place at the manor on the 31st of October." There were a hundred other things to do, from invitations to costumes, a tradition going back thousands of years. But his orders would get the ball rolling.

Seiren nodded, her eidetic memory well at work. Satisfied, Kaname pulled himself from his desk chair and went over to the exquisite chessboard set up on a table for two by the expansive window. He idly moved the pieces back to their starting positions, lost in thought.

"Is that all, Kaname-sama?" Seiren asked a moment later, parroting back his earlier question.

Kaname paused, his finger resting on a white pawn. It would be best to inform his court about Zero sooner rather than later. He considered giving the order for Seiren to spread the news of a meeting to his inner circle. He certainly couldn't inform his chosen nobles at the ball among the rest of the rabble—that was not an insult Kaname would ever give. Besides, Takuma, Senri, and possibly others already knew or suspected. Kaname never chose stupid, oblivious nobles. There would be little risk in filling in the rest of them.

But then there was Yuuki to consider; her and the troop of low-class gentry she was gathering about herself like flies to rotten fruit. He didn't want to inform her in a court gathering where she had the chance to make drama, but he couldn't keep it a secret from her without looking cowardly. He didn't want to inform her ahead of his court, either, as that would make it seem like he was favoring her when the way she was acting lately made it look like she was intentionally working against him.

She was still his sister, though. Even if she was acting like a spoiled child, he was the one who had woken that side in her. She was his responsibility. He would need to deal with her before he did anything else.

This much decided, Kaname let his hand fall away from the board. Turning back to Seiren, he rattled off his additional orders with one eye on the clock. He didn't want to be late to meet Zero. "I need you to gather my inner circle," he said. "Bring them here as soon as the sun goes down this Sunday, and also inform Yuuki to meet me at my office after classes Monday night."

Seiren nodded. "And if I am asked for the subject of the meetings?"

Kaname smirked. "If they ask for clarification I suppose you can tell them it regards the events of late. I trust you could make it sound better than I."

She blinked a moment before giving him a chilling grin. "With pleasure, my lord," she said, and prepared to leave. Kaname raised a hand for her to stay a moment.

"One last thing," Kaname added. "When you apply for a hunter security team, ask that Team Yagari not be assigned."

Suspicion briefly slipped into her eyes. Kaname bit back a grin. Never stupid nor oblivious, indeed.

"And if they need a reason to comply?" Seiren fished.

Casually, Kaname scooped up the white queen from the chessboard and twirled it between his fingers. "It would be annoying if four of my guests were unable to enjoy themselves because they were ordered to work the event. It would put quite the wrinkle in my plans for a nice night, especially if Zero were to be assigned." He chuckled inwardly when Seiren's eyes widened.

"Indeed, I imagine it would," she murmured. "And that will be all?"

Kaname gave her a wicked smirk, "For now? Yes, I think that will be enough." With a muffled click, he set the queen back behind her soldiers.

Seiren nodded and disappeared soundlessly out the door.

Pleased with his arrangements, Kaname stepped away from the chessboard and busied himself with preparing for his and Zero's date. Though he doubted Zero would think of it like that. More likely Zero had decided that it was some kind of plot. Which, Kaname guessed, it was, but he was going to ignore that fact. He was determined not to think of any plots or plans while with Zero. Kaname was going to focus solely on Zero, to try and really know him beyond what their passionate, instinct-driven encounters had revealed. It was what he had to do if he wanted their relationship to mean something.

He had already tried the other way with Yuuki, and what a mistake that had been.

Moving fast down the stairs, Kaname didn't pay attention to the eyes he felt following him. He had lived thousands of years with people staring at him; he was nearly immune. But, perhaps, he might have if he had noticed the burning jealousy in one watcher's gaze.

Chapter Text

The number of times Zero had cursed his prized motorcycle could be counted on one hand. A gift from Yagari when he’d finished his training, the bike was both Zero's key to leaving the Academy whenever he liked and, reluctantly, invested with sentiment. His curses had all been uttered during the time before he’d added a silencing charm to the bike, when the roar of the engine had accidentally warned his target of his arrival. That issue had been corrected, though, and never again had he criticized his mechanical obsession. This current problem couldn't be fixed that easily, however.

Not that it was really his bike's fault, Zero amended as he stirred his chai tea; a secret vice of his. It was just so wickedly fast that he had arrived at the café earlier than he had planned for. Thus Zero had suffered the agony of going from being early to being perfectly on time, with no Kaname in sight and nothing to do but wonder why the ever-punctual Pureblood wasn't there.

But Zero would never admit to thinking about something like that. Rather, had he been asked, Zero would have blamed his bad mood on the rain that had started pouring halfway from Cross Academy. Or that he'd been forced to sacrifice his leather jacket to the coat hook to get dry. Or that the other patrons of the café wouldn't stop staring at him. Anxious, Zero glanced at the digital clock on his music player—Kaname was fifteen minutes late.

Putting his spoon down with more aggression than was strictly reasonable, Zero sighed. He shifted in his seat, looking around and trying to feel like less of an awkward misplacement in the café. Tall, annoyed, and dressed in black, Zero knew that he looked out of place. Sitting alone, decidedly damp, knee kept from bouncing only by his staying hand, the fingers of his right hand twitching; he must look a mess. The pair of girls in the corner kept glancing at him and giggling. There was a man a little older than he was whose eyes flickered over his newspaper to watch Zero periodically. The barista had looked him up and down before taking his order. Every expression made Zero want to duck away, back to his room or to the stables, anywhere he wouldn't be under scrutiny.

Zero was a hunter. Hunters worked in the shadows. They did not frequent quaint, brightly lit cafés. But here he was, and Kuran had the nerve to be late.

Zero wished that he was relieved by the tardiness. He should be eager for the excuse to ditch this stupid date and go home. He’d called Kaname's bluff; point to Zero, and without having to suffer two hours of Kaname's presence. But that wasn't what Zero felt. Instead of righteous indignation, disappointment curled up in his gut. His nerves felt worse, like every ignorant human in the café knew that Zero couldn't even keep his own mate's attention.

Grimacing, Zero stared down at his tea. It was the stupid bond's fault. The miserable thing was stirring up all kinds of emotions that Zero didn't want or feel. Because that was of course how vampire bonds worked, Zero thought self-deprecatingly. He sighed. He wished he didn't know better.

Zero let his spoon lie still against the mug's rim and sank back into the comfy leather chair that he'd commandeered. One of the perks of arriving early to the fight was being able to pick the battlefield. Zero had chosen the chair nestled in the corner to soothe his ever-present paranoia and to be close to the happily roaring fireplace. He was still freezing from the impromptu rainstorm. A rainstorm that hopefully wasn't an omen.

Zero blinked as the thought passed by him. His fingers itched to play with the spoon again, but his ingrained consciousness of body-tells stopped him. Could it be that he was becoming invested in this little plan of Kaname's? Judging by the fact that he was still sitting here, Zero guessed that he was.

Biting at his lip, Zero tried to pin down where the bastard had gained ground with him. The fact that the term 'bastard', when applied to Kuran Kaname, was becoming an endearment within the space of Zero's mind seemed to be proof that, ever so slowly, his defenses were breaking down. It was the when and the where that Zero didn't seem to have any reasoning for.

How did hatred melt into wary affection? The bond seemed to be the most likely culprit. Blood-bonds came in as many types as there were flowers. Coercive bonds could be like chains, like Zero's bond to Shizuka, his sire. But even the most powerful bond had limits. He had been able to doubt the emotions she'd forced on him enough to break the compulsion he'd felt to obey her. The mating bond was similar. It could connect a pair in ways otherwise impossible, if given a chance to grow—but it could not fabricate love. It only pulled people who were biologically, perhaps even spiritually, perfect matches together.

Ludicrous to the point of fantasy though it sounded, the concept had been tried and proven. Some thought it was a scientifically engineered failsafe for fending off madness by isolation, a fate the vampires’ long lifespans made them mor prone to. Hunters called it an expendable weakness. Zero didn't know what to think.

If Zero didn't care for Kaname at all, in theory physical lust and a possessive desire to be close should be all that he had to cope with. His hatred should have remained untouched. In theory. And Gods, did Zero ever feel the lust. Every time they were alone Zero couldn't keep his hands to himself. But Zero was growing suspicious that something deeper was developing, too.

His hatred just wasn't there anymore. Kaname had done terrible things, and Zero didn't think he regretted most of them. But three months had given Zero some perspective. Rido's death had been necessary and maybe impossible without Kaname's manipulations. And Zero had been his enemy at the time, and Kaname had been Zero's. Of course blood had been spilled. But they weren’t enemies anymore.

Zero had always possessed a habit of loving dangerous things.

Zero stared into his tea. He’d dreamed of Kaname lately. Bright, soft dreams, of lying in his arms while noon light streamed in through the window. Of coming home to him at the end of long hunts, to a place he knew was safe because the house's master was home. Of Kaname's fingers carding through his hair, his scent bleeding into Zero's life. The most embarrassing had been a daydream in class. Nothing bad, like that night in the glade or the night in his dorm room. That might have been preferable. At least he could have blamed the lust. But no. Instead, the noon bell had broken Zero from a fantasy about horseback riding.

Horses generally hated vampires, but Zero knew some could hide their auras well enough to manage it. And White Lily had always been good to Zero. She was a point of peace in his life. Zero guessed that if he really was softening towards Kaname it only made sense that his subconscious would want to share that part of his life with him.

But it was still mortifying. And as Zero sat alone in the warm café, surrounded by the type of people Kaito often amused himself by mocking, he swore not to bring it up. Not even if there was an awkward silence. Gods, the prospect of conversing with Kaname had been so much less complicated when Zero had only ran the risk of bumping into him during prefect duties. The bastard.

His bastard, it seemed.

Zero took a sip from his oversized mug, smirking a little at the mustache monogramed on the side. He warmed his fingers on the porcelain and slipped deeper into contemplation. Maybe it was time to put his weapons down. He certainly hadn't been happy when Kaname had left him behind. Their present relationship at least consoled his vampire instincts and, Zero couldn't forget, seemed to stop those painful attacks. Kaname also seemed to be on his best behaviour lately, possibly to please Zero. He could get used to that.

He ran a hand through his damp bangs. Not to mention, he really, really didn't want to see what Kaname would do if Zero denied him. Thus far Kaname had only resorted to a little strong-arming and trickery to get his way. He had been acting practically human. But the promise in his eyes when he'd pledged his claim on Zero that night in his dorm room had been all vampire.

Vampires didn't have human limits. They dressed up in ballgowns and tailcoats and drank their blood from crystal goblets while the best ten-pieces played Vivaldi, but that was only a facsimile of humanity. A thin veneer, easily broken for the right motivation. And a mate was paramount. The Association had seen entire villages, neighborhoods, and towns slaughtered in the crossfire of a spatting mated pair. And Gods help whoever hurt a vampire's mate.

Zero needed to be careful. He had to pick his battles. He wasn't willing to give up the secrets he'd spent so long hiding, but perhaps it wouldn't be a terrible idea to give Kaname some of what he seemed to crave: Zero's attention.

Jingling bells sounded just then, breaking Zero's musings. He looked up and instantly locked eyes with the object of his thoughts. Having tensed on instinct, Zero forced himself to relax. He also forced himself not to stare.

He couldn't help but notice that Kaname was dressed as the very definition of appeal: fitted dark-wash jeans, a burgundy button up, and creamy overcoat tailored to emphasize his strong shoulders. His cherry-chocolate eyes went bright when they met Zero's, a wicked grin breaking across his face when Zero gave a cautious nod in greeting.

That smile sent heat flashing over his cheeks. Zero had to look away before his blush became obvious. He covertly watched Kaname walk up to the counter and wished Kaname would lose the jacket so he could see if those jeans fit as tight as he thought.

Pursing his lips, Zero silently recognized that his biggest obstacle to keeping a clear head around Kaname might just be himself.

The aggravation Kaname felt at being late melted away the second he laid eyes on Zero. Not just because Zero looked delectable—his black V-neck tight across his chest and arms, teasing the barest hint of collar bone—or because he blushed the instant Kaname smiled at him, but because Zero was there at all. Kaname had been sure that his temperamental mate wouldn't have waited five minutes past their designated time, let alone fifteen or twenty.

Thank the Gods for Takuma's mother henning. "The longer you make him wait, the more pissed he'll be," Takuma had muttered, as anxious as Kaname while they stood in the foyer at fifteen after six.

"He'll be gone by the time I arrive," Kaname had replied morosely. He'd only just barely been disentangled from Yuuki, who had caught him as he was about to leave. He'd been avoiding her solidly since the breakup. Waiting for his driver to pull up, she'd seen her chance.

"And if he isn't?" Takuma had insisted. "Then imagine how hard you'll have it."

Point taken, Kaname had let himself be bundled away. "How did you manage to get her to leave, anyway?" Kaname had asked as he stepped into the car. Takuma had walked up to her, mid-rant, and whispered in her ear. Kaname's repeated interruptions had done nothing to silence her angry, crying rambling, but she'd turned on her heel and disappeared the moment Takuma had finished speaking.

Takuma had smirked. "I just passed along a message that there had been an accident at the shop with her new ballgown; that one she was bragging about ordering after the soirée?" Takuma had shrugged, an evil glint in his eyes. "I wasn't even lying. That designer likes me better than her."

There was a reason Takuma was Kaname's most valued and feared advisor, and it had nothing to do with his powerful grandfather or Kaname's long patronage.

Now, as always, Kaname was grateful to have Takuma on his side.

Zero looked so adorable, Kaname thought warmly. His eyes barely left him as he gave his order. Not a description most would apply to a lethal hunter, but Kaname didn't see that right now. Zero had nestled himself into the corner closest to the shop's exit and was watching Kaname over the edge of a funny-looking mug. He had offered Kaname a tiny nod before purposefully turning his face away, though Kaname couldn't help but notice how Zero's violet eyes seemed to flick back to him. He was behaving almost shyly, Kaname thought, charmed. So different from the bitter creature Kaname had met in the club.

Feeling amused and pleased by his mate's unexpectedly sociable mood—Kaname had been preparing for some rather exceptional glares even before he'd fallen late—Kaname threw Zero one of his more flirtatious grins before paying the girl at the register and accepting his drink. He'd ordered a heavily caffeinated tea blend introduced to him by Takuma. Actually, the whole casual café date idea had been suggested to him by Takuma, during that hectic stretch of time spent dressing Kaname down and shuffling him into Vermillion. Takuma was full of romantic advice derived, presumably, from his manga. Kaname's last somewhat-disastrous meeting with Zero had been enough to convince him that it was time to listen to his closest friend.

Also, out of the two of them, Takuma was the happily mated one. In retrospect that should have been enough of an assurance in itself.

But here Kaname was—now seated in the cushy chair opposite Zero—desperately trying to think of something to say that wouldn't sound ridiculous. Or awkward. And he was drawing a blank. Lovely.

Kaname sipped his tea, mind whirling for a topic. What was he supposed to say? Neither he nor Zero were particularly talkative. The conversation at the club had been like pulling teeth, and not just because they'd both been in a cold war-kind of mindset. Kaname could always spin a line, but he tried to reserve that for annoying-come-useful nobles, not people he legitimately cared for. And he did care for Zero. Kaname admittedly did not knowing him very well, but he respected him, was amused by him, and found him challenging in a way no one had ever been to Kaname before. Zero's temper was something to be wary of, but even his tiresome hunter morality was sometimes endearing. He was Kaname's mate, and Kaname cared to know him genuinely.

Now if only he could find something to say that didn't have to do with any of their past experiences. Kaname held back a sigh. Perhaps he should have taken that list of ice breaker questions Takuma had left in the car.

He glanced around the café, hoping to find some inspiration. It was a cacophony of classic and modern, dabbled with quotes and lyrics and shelves filled with books and knickknacks obviously not meant to be touched. It was when he spotted a leather-bound Atlas sitting primly on a shelf that a safe-seeming topic jumped out at him.

"So…" Kaname drawled, drawing Zero's attention back from the window he'd been staring doggedly out of for the last ten minutes, "Have you traveled much?"

The moment he said it Kaname wanted to cringe. The question had sounded better in his head. Out loud, he realized that he already—guiltily—knew the answer. After all, he'd kept tabs on Zero from the moment he'd come into contact with Yuuki. He knew Zero had never left Japan, and rarely the area surrounding the Academy. Stupid. But Zero was distracting, with his hair damp against his forehead and his cheeks rosy. Kaname didn't think it was fair that he should be expected to sound smart in his presence.

Kaname waited for Zero to snap. He was so prepared for Zero's verbal acid that he was almost dumbstruck when it didn't come. Zero just looked at him a moment, head tilted to the side, before the sharp crack of his laughter split the air.

Kaname slowly smiled. Zero's laugh, here among the books and vague coffee smell, was so different from the animalistic chuckle he'd let loose at Vermillion. It was still sharp and rough, as though it went unused for long periods of time, but lower, now, and warmer. Kaname felt glad to have won it and sad when it ended. Zero himself looked surprised that he'd even produced the sound in the first place. He caught himself, though, and the next instant his eyebrow was curled into an expression of practiced incredulity. Though, if Kaname tried, he could still pick out the smile in his mate's smirk.

"I can't say I have," Zero replied, after a beat where Kaname had silently gestured for him to answer the question. "I stay close to the school, though sometimes the Association sends me out farther. Once I wound up in Kyoto, but that's the farthest I've been."

Kaname hummed, unsurprised. He was itching to ask about Zero's life before he came to the school, as that was information Kaname knew he would never find in another source. But that would be about as 'unsafe' as a subject could be. The absolute last thing Kaname wanted from this date was for Zero to leave unhappy, or worse, feeling manipulated.

"I like to stay in Japan, myself," Kaname said instead, continuing their current path. It was true, too. Of all the places he had seen in his ancient life, Japan was the territory he had chosen to rule from. The appeal, he was pleased to see, had not faded with time. "I do sometimes fly for business, though. Primarily to Europe and North America, but other continents as well." The one respectable decision his heirs had made was to maintain a dominate stake in the global economy. Kuran money made much of the world go around. The various businesses generated obscene amounts of paperwork, but the material power Kaname wielded in exchange was very useful.

Zero's expression was humouring, a teasing tilt to his mouth. "You work a lot, don't you? I can sympathize with that." Kaname would bet; Zero had been recently elected to the Association Council—his paperwork might rival Kaname's. "What about New York? Have you seen it at all, or do boardrooms look the same internationally?"

Kaname had seen New York, actually. He’d once prowled through a New York devastated by war, ripped to pieces by Pureblood courts jostling for control, with all but a few vampire-run territories left to smoulder and become ash. But Zero wasn't talking about that New York. No one did, anymore. The place had improved greatly in the last few thousand years, and was once again a metropolis to be envied. It was this glimmering reincarnation that Zero meant. A reincarnation that Kaname, yes, had only really viewed from a one-hundred-and-sixth-floor window.

Kaname smiled, inclining his head to the point. "There is a startling resemblance."

Zero smirked. "That's a shame. The music scene in New York is infamous."

Music? Music was something he could do, Kaname thought with great relief. If he hadn't thought Zero would protest, he could have kissed him right then for giving that little string of hope to their conversation. "Oh? What have you heard?" Kaname asked absently, finally feeling comfortable enough to take another sip of his tea. Music, he thought, I can handle that.

"Well, it is the ancient home of rock n' roll," Zero replied, smiling and leaning forward. "Today, Tokyo's stuff is great. But since they uncovered the Velvet Underground recordings, New York's been—" Zero paused, then smirked.

No doubt, he was amused by the surprise Kaname could feel showing on his face. Classical music, Kaname could handle. He had been well-schooled while under Ichijo Asato's care. Rock music? Not even a blip on Kaname's radar.

Zero sipped his tea. Chai, Kaname noted idly. "I guess rock concerts aren't where you spend a lot of time?"

"Not between the scheming and plotting, no," Kaname dared to quip. No risk, no reward.

As he'd wagered, Zero laughed again—a little snort, less surprising then the full-body laugh Kaname had won before, but lovely all its own. "Maybe I should take you to one," Zero rejoined wryly. "A distraction might keep you out of trouble."

"At the very least," Kaname agreed amicably, "I might find more pleasurable trouble to get into." He thrilled at Zero’s blush.

The conversation flowed easily from there. Subjects wound into each other, smooth as silk. Zero didn't just like rock music: he played electric guitar. Kaname had learned several instruments, but never guitar, and none he liked better than the piano. He hadn't played in years, though. Classical music made Zero think of work—they danced around what his work was—but did Kaname know anything about jazz? He didn't, but maybe he could learn, or just play for Zero sometime? Hesitantly, Zero had agreed. It was the most pleasant, peaceful hour Kaname had spent in the last six months, maybe longer. He felt so content, sitting in comfortable chairs with Zero's crisp scent laying easy on his senses, that Kaname abandoned his plans to discuss the October ball.

He would tell Zero soon, Kaname swore, but just not right now. Their truce was too lovely to interrupt with what Zero would undoubtably see as a move in one of Kaname's schemes. Zero, he was learning, had little patience for machinations. He was direct where Kaname was veiled, stalwart where he was flexible. Kaname was wary of pushing him. This was just their first date. Kaname was thinking ten moves ahead, but Zero might feel that announcing their bond by the end of next month was moving too quickly. Pragmatically Kaname recognized that he would have to change Zero's mind, but that priority could wait a little. He wanted to savour this moment, the fragile normalcy of meeting his lover for tea.

Kaname stretched out his legs, relaxing into the armchair. His foot nudging Zero's by accident. Zero paused, smiled without meaning to, and reddened again when he realized that he was smiling. He stumbled over a word, but otherwise pushed through his summary of guitar types with enthusiasm. He foot remained where it was, ankle brushing Kaname's. Though he had quickly willed away his red cheeks, his ears remained crimson as if to spite him. Abruptly, Kaname's heart melted. This is what I want, he realized. Not blood and drama, to be immortalized on paper and marble. Just a world where Zero was safe, happy, and by his side.

Absently, Kaname wondered how many bodies he would have to drop to achieve that goal. Not too many, surely. Word would spread.

Chapter Text

Fisting fine-boned hands in her rose-pink sheets, Yuuki choked on a wail. The sound was garbled through her many pillows. Little bits of colour danced in her vision, her stinging eyes clamped tightly shut against what little light pushed through her thick drapes. Her face felt wet and itchy against the growing dampness of the fabrics cocooning her. Darkness was the most pressing feature of Yuuki's room, though not for the sun's lack of trying.

Outside the expansive white-trim windows, sharp, late-September light reigned over the neo-gothic buildings, courtyards, forests, and gardens of Cross Academy. A bone-chilling wind reminded everyone outside the imposing walls of one of the campus's many buildings that it was just barely two days until October first. Day Class students rushed in waves to where they needed to be, if not to avoid tardiness then to avoid the sudden cold. But Kuran Yuuki, swathed in the latest of her tragedies, couldn't find it in her aching heart to care.

Chocolate locks of hair lay about her head and shoulders in matted tangles, whilst her white Night Class uniform bunched and wrinkled uncomfortably against her skin. Snot, tears, and sweat mingled on her pale, petite body. Misery produced it all and 'it all' contributed to her misery. No one was pretty while in pain, Yuuki was coming to realize bitterly. She had learned that intimately, having been crying on and off for the last three weeks.

Rolling onto her back, she carelessly tossed an arm across her forehead, cringing at the crinkle her once perfectly starched jacket made. She really should get changed, Yuuki mused wretchedly. Perhaps have a shower, get cleaned up—she wasn't acting her part at all as she was now, that was for sure—but… why bother? Who was going to see her when not a single one of her noble 'friends' had come to pacify her in her agony? Who was it she had to play princess for when her audience had turned their backs on her? Kaname, it seemed, had made good on his threat to scare them away.

He thought they were bad for her, didn't he? As opposed to what, the solitary lockdown he had placed her under? No matter what he said nor what coaxing tone he used, it was clear to her that his decree was a punishment.

Yuuki sobbed again, the painful memories of a few hours ago overwhelming her. It wasn't fair. How else had he expected her to react, hearing him proclaim that, that—Kiryuu, of all people, was his real mate! The notion was so insane that it barely bothered reacting to. But in her horror, Yuuki's emotions had overwhelmed her. Just like during their conversation in the lobby, before he'd left to meet Zero. If Yuuki had know that was where he was going, she would have never left his side—no matter what other perils needed her attention!

"How could we have possibly been a mistake?" She'd screamed at him tonight, in a fresh conflict after tonight’s court summons. Tears had flooded her eyes. "I'm the one you waited for!"

Kaname had turned a deaf ear. He'd insisted—kindly, softly—that he was sorry, that they would always be siblings, but that he couldn't marry her. He'd explained that he thought Zero's—Kiryuu's—seal and his own distraction with Rido had caused the mistake. "I would never purposely hurt you, Yuuki," he'd insisted gently, "But I can't be what you want or deserve."

Their fight—because that's what it became—had gotten messy, after that. Yuuki had been so angry she still couldn't properly remember what she'd said. She knew she must have insulted Kaname something awful, though, because he'd called her behaviour treasonous, of all mad things. Yuuki loved her brother. She was devoted to him. How could he possibly think that of her?

Even more unfair than her brother's spell-induced lunacy (her belief in that wasn't weakening, no, no, no), Yuuki thought, was the way not one of her nobles had defended her or tried to go against her brother's word. It was something they would pay for, she promised herself, but not quite yet. As it was, she had other things to mourn over first. Her life was in ruins, her heart in turmoil—and she'd had such hope.

She should have known that nothing good would come of Seiren intruding on her time in the library. Yuuki had been stewing in her thoughts. She had dealt with the dress emergency Takuma had thoughtfully warned her about, but that meant she had to cut her conversation with Kaname in the foyer short. She had been debating how to catch his attention again when Seiren had slipped in silently behind her.

Seiren had always been someone Yuuki felt vaguely wary of. The noble wasn't like any of the others in Kaname's court, or like any in Yuuki's own entourage. She was like snow-covered ice and Yuuki could barely hide a shiver whenever she met the other woman. It didn't help that the rather pretty blonde spent so much time in the company of her Kaname, either. Especially when it seemed like every time Yuuki tried to spend time with Kaname the man practically ran the other way.

Despite her personal feelings Yuuki had still plastered on a smile for the icy woman and ignored that the other vampiress had barely offered Yuuki a proper greeting in return at all, let alone one fit for someone of Yuuki's station. The smile had become noticeably more real when Seiren had finally delivered her message, dictating that Kaname expected Yuuki to meet him promptly in his office after Monday's classes.

Yuuki had barely managed to hold back a shriek of excitement. She'd thought that perhaps her Kaname wouldn't even need her help to be free of the level D's spell if he was asking her away for a private conversation all on his own! After all, she'd been sure the ex-human had ordered Kaname to stay away from her since calling off the engagement, but her dear older brother had obviously broken past the command! Yuuki had giggled to herself with relief. The meeting was probably just to confirm what her Kaname already suspected through the veils of magic he was obviously fighting. The whole mess would be over quickly now, she was sure.

She'd been so, so sure.

Giving Seiren a blinding smile and a cheerful acceptance of the invitation (at which point she'd been given a smile like a dagger in return—the first sign of the horrors to come, Yuuki thought in miserable retrospect), Yuuki had gone to her own room with visions of romantic endings running rampant through her head. She'd been so happy, the miserable Yuuki of the current thought. And relieved, too. With Kaname back in his own mind, it would be up to him to deal with the level D. Yuuki would be free from the inklings of sadness she occasionally felt concerning the ex-human, as well as others from her old life.

Cross was the only one she really cared for anymore, Yuuki mused, trying to justify her human emotions to her new vampiric mindset. It was okay because her parents had been friends with him, too, and no one important would mention it negatively because of his place in society. The others, though—like Yori, and, of course, Kiryuu—were supposed to be below her notice. They were not okay to be around or care for. The vampires she was surrounded by, her brother included, said as much. Not in words, but with their actions. The way they held such an arrogant disregard for them… it had to have been something expected of her as well. Who was she to disregard such advice?

Disgust swirled in Yuuki's guts at the reminder of her own weakness. The feelings, the emotions, she sometimes felt towards the silver-haired cur and the rest were an insult to her true race, to her true life. She worked hard to tamp them down and hide them away, lest they overcome her new knowledge of the world. Cats did not care for rats; especially the despicable, dirty kind who forgot what they were and tried to displace their betters. Especially ones like that man-stealing Kiryuu!

Across the darkened room, her vanity shrieked as the mirror and her crystal-bottled perfumes shattered. The wind howled in and ruffled every lose fabric and paper, the glass keeping it out having cracked and fallen as Yuuki's un-tended powers riled at their master's rage.

Pushing herself from the bed, Yuuki sat up for the first time since she'd been sent to her room. She turned and started rifling through the oak side table to the right of her bed. Hand closing around the item of her desire, the disgraced Kuran princess gently—almost hesitantly—pulled it from the drawer. Even in the darkness of her room, the small red jewel in the center of the metal cross seemed to glow in gentle pulses. No taller than the length of her pointer finger, the pendent hung from a simple silver chain and had sharp points at each end of the cross. Grooves from each point to the stone appeared as simple decoration, but Yuuki knew—had been expressly told—better.

Winding the chain around her slim fingers, Yuuki held the pendent lightly in her hand, careful not to let the points cut her skin, as she considered it. It had been given to her by the hunter who'd tipped her nobles off about Kaname meeting up with Kiryuu. She'd met with him the night after to discuss things and had found herself slightly… unnerved, to say the least, by his plans. He'd sensed that her emotions from her human days were acting up, she thought, and had reassured her that nothing would happen without her saying so and that all she needed to do was give him a sign when she felt it was the right time to implement their plans.

She liked the way he had said 'their' instead of 'his' or 'my,' like Kaname would have. His consideration of her feelings had helped her opinion of him. It had been sometime since someone had considered her feelings like that.

Back then, the sheer brutality of the man's plans had cowed her indignation somewhat—after all, Kiryuu was merely an animal who didn't quite know how to keep out of other people's things; death had seemed a bit harsh. Now, though, with Kaname's confession fresh in her mind, her heart aching with embarrassment and pain at his talking down at her, her rage at this fallacy of a ball, staged to do little more than provide the perfect scene for that despicable rat to steal her beloved right out from under her nose in front of the entire vampire community!—

Mercy was the least of Yuuki's concerns.

Firming her grip around the cross, Yuuki poised her thumb over one of the sharpened tips. Grimacing, she pushed her flesh onto the point. Ruby red blood ran from her wound, along the groove, and into the gemstone. She watched in fascination as the stone blackened, flashed brightly once, and shattered. Anxiously, she waited for the sign her message had been received. Minutes ticked into quarter and half hours, months and years, until finally the stone regenerated all its red beauty, and her blood faded from the metal. A smirk contorting her face, still tear-stained though not nearly as distraught, Yuuki slipped the chain around her neck. Her plan was in motion, and if her partner's promises came true, this mess really would be done in days. Just not quite in the loving, peaceful way she'd first thought.

Going to her oversized closet, Yuuki looked at the rows of pastel night dresses in mild distaste. They were all things Kaname had gotten her the first few days at Kuran Manor, and while she did adore them and loved wearing them for him, she felt rather annoyed with him right now, despite his being entranced.

If he really was entranced. If their entire relationship, as well as his destruction of her former, happy, human life, hadn't been one giant unneeded lie—

Besides, Yuuki thought to drive away the whispers at the back of her mind, this was her first time pulling off a truly vampire-worthy scheme without Kaname's help. A different colour for a different scenario seemed delightfully appropriate. Making a mental note to take herself out on a shopping trip, Yuuki absently plucked a silken negligee from the back of the closet. She had purchased it with the desperate hope of stirring some interest from her mate (he was hers, dammit, hers. This doubt was all a spell. She hoped—knew it). Silk in hand, she slipped into the bathroom. The hot water, the promise of sleep, and the reassurance of having her life back soon all did their part in relaxing Yuuki until her smirk had melted into a small smile. For once, it seemed like she was about to get some control over her life. It was a pleasant change.

In a manor very much like that of the Kuran family in age and enchantment, as well as in the blood-status of its inhabitant, a woman with the physical youth of a nineteen-year-old and hair like Rapunzel smiled from the chaise lounge she was sprawled across. Before her knelt one of her more useful servants: a hunter who had not yet been recognized by the Association for what he now was.

"It is time to put my plan in action," she said softly. "I trust you know what to do?" Her sky-blue eyes twinkled in time with the jewel on the cross pendent around her neck—the sister necklace to the one she'd had given to the youngest Kuran—as she played with its chain.

"Yes, my lady," the servant replied, his voice seasoned with malice. The woman barely restrained a sigh at the tone. It was such a pity that she couldn't make her servants change their attitude towards her as easily as she controlled their loyalties. Perhaps this one required one of her special touches to change his mood…

Later though, the blonde reminded herself. For now, he was needed with everything in working order.

"Good," she responded instead. "Have it set in motion by the week's end, then. Have you been able to set a meeting between myself and the younger Kuran yet?" With the young princess's agreement to the plan, she had made herself infinitely more interesting to the blonde. She'd shown a uniquely practical side that the only other vampire to gather the blonde's interest simply didn't have. It made the blonde eager to drop her charade and show the girl just who she was really working with.

Kuran Yuuki was such a sweet-looking thing, too, the blonde thought. Wouldn't it be a lark if the older Kuran really wasn't insane and had made a mistake in who his mate was? It would be simply sublime, especially in the wake of the blonde's plans. With so few of them left, she really despised the thought of destroying an entire Pureblood House. If it was revealed that the older Kuran was the only one in her way, then it was really just all the better.

"Word's reached the Association that the Kurans are having a Samhain ball. Invitations are expected to be out within the week," the servant stated, not bothering to mention if she would be on the guest list or not. As the head of one of the last remaining Pureblood families, of course she would be. The blonde gave him a smile for remembering to cut straight to the point without nattering. Perhaps she wouldn't have to harm this one too much. Minor defiance could be ignored easily for the sake of competence, no?

"Good, good," she murmured, her eyes dancing in amusement. "And Kiryuu's all set to be assigned a mission?" It was only she, her puppet, and dear Yuuki who knew that Kiryuu's mission would as good as guarantee him dead.

A single nod was her answer.

The blonde smirked, an evil thing against her doll-like face. Sometimes it paid to be a little evil.

She sent her puppet away, his job done for now. Once he was out of sight, the Pureblood gracefully pulled herself to her feet, her silky hair falling in gentle waves to the hem of her floor-length dress. Making her way to the window, the head of the Shirabuki family, one of the seven remaining Pureblood families, gave one last calculated smile towards the noonday sun before leaving to her bedroom.

So many things are turning out even better than I'd planned them, Sara grinned.

Kaname Kuran had grown so distracted with all this bonding drama that he'd yet to notice the snakes within his own garden. Kiryuu Zero—the last of the founding hunter families—would be dead shortly, leaving the hunters with no plausible protector to rally behind when heads began to roll, their fundamental defenses deeply weakened. Yuuki Kuran might have posed an issue, once upon a time, but someone seemed to have done a fine job of driving her into Sara's web. It was all so hysterically good!

Yuuki wasn’t even really necessary to the plan. Sara could have engineered the death of Kiryuu, the older Kuran, and Yuuki herself just as simply as she’d included Yuuki in her plans. This way, though, Sara would get to meet the girl in person and either confirm or disperse the intrigue she’d felt upon seeing her photo for the first time. Depending on the way that went, if her suspicions really were correct, then it would barely even matter that Ichijou Takuma had found his mate in Shiki Senri. She'd already have her own.

Smiling happily to herself, Sara shed her lacy dress and slipped into something more appropriate for bed. Visions of the elder Kuran dead at her feet, his sister in her arms, and his crown upon her head danced through her mind. The death of Kiryuu would just be the start of it.

Chapter Text

Cold winds howled outside his elegant bay windows. They were newly minted by October's chill and felt painful against the skin. Yet, they were nothing compared to Zero's suddenly icy countenance. And today started so pleasantly, Kaname thought mournfully. He silently cursed Takuma.

The noble had been urging Kaname to tell Zero about his plans for Samhain since Kaname had revealed them to his inner circle. Everything from a usually ignorable censure in Takuma's eyes when the subject rose to flat-out blunt comments had been sent Kaname's way. Finally, he’d caved.

He’d invited Zero to a private afternoon tea; a midnight snack, for the typical vampire. Privately Kaname wasn't sure how Zero managed to maintain a diurnal life. As old as Kaname was, once the sun rose all he wanted was to sleep. But knowing Zero was going to be displeased by news of the ball, Kaname had staged every detail of telling him solely for the purpose of minimizing the damage. That meant fitting the discussion into Zero's Day Class lunch hour rather than interrupting his more important duties.

(Like Kaname, Zero disliked being bothered while he did paperwork. Unlike Kaname, he adopted the cutest little frown when Kaname did so anyway. Kaname had learned that if he came bearing a chai latte, however, he could both enjoy the frown and an adorably stammered "thanks." Also, kisses to the corner of Zero's mouth while Kaname handed the cup over won stunning rose-red blushes. Lately the barista at the campus coffee shop had begun making his chai lattes the moment Kaname walked in and Kaname had become very skilled at stealing kisses.)

The plan had been simple: invite Zero somewhere private, make sure it was early enough that Zero would have an abundance of time to cool off before Kaname had to face him again, and bring those little chocolate biscuits Kaname had discovered Zero adored during their third date. Kaname now thought wistfully of that happy moment. On Takuma's recommendation to Kaname they'd gone to a local minimalist art exhibition—and discovered that they both hated minimalism. Kaname because it offended his admittedly decadent taste, and Zero because anything that cost that much should take more effort than a nearly blank canvas suggested. They'd stopped trying to be polite fifteen minutes in and had exchanged barbed witticisms about the art for the rest of the night. Zero's caustic tongue was delightful when Kaname wasn't on the offending side of it.

Other dates had followed through the rest of September. They'd avoided hunter and vampire locales, for obvious reasons, but the human world had been hospitable—a remarkable change from the wreckage it had been in Kaname's old days. Zero had taken them to Kaname's first rock concert; an experience enjoyable to Kaname only because Zero had lit up like a full moon from the first song until the last. Kaname had countered with an evening wine-tasting. Not thrilling for his hunter, Kaname knew, but Zero had gone along agreeably, cheeks pinkening adorably as the wine slowly hit him. Zero had even reached for his hand as they wandered the vineyard, allowing an intimacy that was much easier to enjoy when not whipping down a highway at 120 mph, clinging to Zero's waist. That bike was a menace, not that Kaname was dumb enough to say so to Zero's face.

Time spent with Zero had passed Kaname dreamily. So much so that Kaname had even been able to push Yuuki's melodramatics out of his mind for entire evenings and afternoons. Inside the Moon Dorms doing so was impossible. Yuuki's uncontrolled aura carried throughout almost every room, reminding them all of her 'turmoil' with subtle tension and the lingering smell of wilting roses.

Kaname had hesitated to invite Zero inside, but the Night Class was dead asleep at this hour. No one but the cook knew Kaname was having a guest, and he would never breathe a word. For an hour, at least, he and Zero would have complete privacy. Kaname just wished the time could be put to more enjoyable uses.

Tea had begun enjoyably, Kaname mused. Zero had arrived on silent feet, only pinging against Kaname's senses because Kaname had been waiting for him. He'd slipped in Kaname's unlocked parlour door with a little smile, wryly submitting to Kaname's kisses once the door had slipped shut behind him. "You know," Zero had said, "I never thought I'd have to do something as human as sneaking around, but here we are."

Knowing grimly that Fate (the witch) had given him his opening, Kaname had dutifully tucked Zero into his chair, poured their tea, and laid out his plans. Now, flat amethyst eyes watched Kaname like a cat did a mouse they thought particularly brave—or stupid. Sitting tense in his seat, Kaname watched with bated breath as those deadly eyes shifted from Kaname's face down to the stately invitation now held in Zero's thin fingers.

"So let me get this straight," Zero said, voice gentle even as his eyes flashed darkly. "You want to reveal our relationship in front of the vampire world's most elite, during one of the most important holidays of the year, with your recently ex-fiancée present, after only not outright hating each other for about three weeks." Zero locked eyes with Kaname, his purple gaze drilling holes into Kaname's head. "Is that right?"

Pretending he hadn't been wincing internally throughout Zero's cut-and-dry summary, Kaname masked his face and nodded.

"And you thought this was a good idea how?" Zero hissed, his hands fisting by his sides. "Fuck, Kaname! This—relationship—is not just something you can go and show off like that!"

"Why not?" Kaname replied evenly. He rose to his feet, mirroring Zero, who had already stormed away from the table, chocolate biscuits left untouched. He was silently grateful that his rooms were constantly warded for privacy. His inner court knew now that Zero was his, but when Zero was less angry the loss of his composure would bother him if he thought other vampires had heard. Kaname didn't relish the thought of his every subordinate listening to Zero tearing him a new one, either.

Moving quickly, Kaname approached Zero where he'd paused by the door and wrapped gentle arms around him. It was a calculated maneuver. Zero would never admit it, but Kaname knew now that he liked to be touched. But the who, when, where, and why could be detrimental mitigating circumstances. Zero didn't pull away now, but he didn't relax into Kaname, either. Half-marks, Kaname surmised.

He pushed his luck a little further and nipped playfully at Zero's ear. "Why can't I show you off, Zero?" He hummed.

"I can't imagine that would be helpful to whatever goal you're working towards," Zero snapped. He stepped neatly out of Kaname's arms, moving to the window. He was beautiful, cast in gold by the noon light. But his shoulders were tight, his every muscle coiled under his jacket. Kaname was treading on thin ice.

Kaname felt his own patience waning in response. He was self-aware enough to recognize that he was stretched thin. Kaname truly enjoyed every moment spent with Zero—but the delicate game they played was draining. Zero was right to guess that Kaname had plans, but Kaname didn't trust him enough to confirm his theories. Zero was, after all, a hunter before he was anything else. Their Association was born to police the vampire world; if Kaname were to succeed in establishing anew his absolute authority, the hunters would need to be collared. Kaname wouldn't bet, yet, that he held Zero's loyalties above the Association despite the hunters' transgressions against Zero himself.

It ached, not being able to trust the one meant for you.

"I could never regret your presence at my side," Kaname carefully said. He joined Zero by the window but didn't touch him again. He watched Zero sigh, his shoulders dropping a little.

"Please don't say that," Zero said. "You can't say that. We haven't even been together a month." He wouldn't meet Kaname's eyes. He stared fixedly out the window instead.

Kaname took his hand, forcing Zero to turn to him. Irritated eyes met Kaname's, but fear also lurked there. Gingerly, telegraphing his movements, Kaname brushed his fingers through Zero's bangs. Zero allowed him to, even tilting into the touch. Kaname almost said nothing; he almost let the silent, peaceful moment settle. But his mouth, his stupid heart, got away from him. Before he was cognizant of the desire, he asked, "Would it be a terrible thing to ask you to just trust me this time?"

The silence shattered. "Do you really want me to answer that?" Zero snapped, ripping his hand from Kaname's.

Kaname winced. He'd walked right into that one. "Zero, please," he said. Vampiric speed had him at Zero's side before he could get the door open and storm out. Angry eyes met his, a nasty curl to Zero's mouth showing his displeasure.

"I know we haven't been together long," Kaname started, voice purposefully low and soft, "But I'm just trying to do what's best for us." He brought Zero's hand to his mouth and pressed a delicate kiss to his mate's pale wrist. "The nobility won't take it kindly if we act like we're hiding this," Kaname explained, "Especially considering—"

"That I'm an ex-human hunter with a reputation for insanity?" Zero snorted, pushing Kaname's hands away. Kaname tried to hide a grimace at the cold sheen to his mate's voice, but the guilt in his stomach and the emotions flowing through their bond were enough to shatter his unflappable mask.

Watching him, Zero sighed loudly. "Look," he said, "I've been offered a mission, something a bit farther away than usual. Tokyo. I wasn't planning on accepting, despite all the supposed urgency," Zero rolled his eyes, making Kaname smile despite his growing sense of malcontent, "But, with this…"

"You think it would be wise?" Kaname asked softly, clamping down on the wrathful possessiveness that rose within him at the mere thought of Zero being out of his easy reach. Logically, he had known that this point would come eventually. Zero was a stringently independent creature, not quite chaffing at the bindings the Association had placed on him when he had come to live with Cross, but almost. Zero had revealed to Kaname that sometimes all that kept him from full-out revolt were the rare faraway missions he was assigned from time to time. If Kaname fought him on this the outcome wouldn’t be happy regardless of who won.

Zero nodded. "Yeah, I do. It would give me some time to think. To figure out how to explain this to my team." Zero smiled bitterly. “Hunters don't like secrets very much."

Kaname just barely managed to keep his instant rebuttal—'Then why won't you tell me what you're hiding?'—to himself. Instead, he did something unprecedented in his history: he offered one of his own secrets first. "Wakaba Sayori already knows," Kaname said factually. "She sought me out at the soirée. She knew I was interested in you and wanted to know why. I didn't lie to her. She's very brave, your friend," Kaname added when Zero remained silent, blinking at him. "Loyal, too. She—"

"Was how you knew to find me at Vermillion. Oh, Yori," Zero said, the last part a murmur to himself. His face had closed off, eyes going far-away. Kaname couldn't read him.

"You're not angry?" Kaname prodded cautiously.

"I have a lot of things to be angry about," Zero replied, focusing again on Kaname. "Yori trying to protect me isn't one of them.”

The implication in those words set Kaname's teeth on edge. Kaname was trying. Zero saw that, Kaname thought, but it wasn't enough to soothe him. Not entirely.

Kaname's instincts hissed. But what could he do? There was so much bad blood to clean up. Kaname had to accept the parameters Zero gave him. Every move had to be taken at Zero's grace. If Zero needed space then Kaname had to yield.

Besides, with Zero away maybe he'd have a chance to finally study those books. If Zero refused to come out and say whatever it was that he was hiding, Kaname would just have to look for it on his own. He doubted that Zero wouldn't do the same if their roles were switched.

Gingerly, Kaname retook his seat on the opposite side of the table he'd had brought in specifically for their date. Taking a sip of his tea—cold, but then so had grown most things today—he turned back to Zero, who hadn't left his place by the door. "So, when do you leave?" he asked.

And if hurt flashed in Zero's eyes, Kaname pretended not to notice.

"Fucking Kuran, Gods-damn—!" Zero growled, fist closing around the delicate vase that had sat like a precious heirloom on his bedside table for the last few weeks. Held within its fragile grasp was the same purple rose Kaname had given him at Vermilion, as immaculate as ever with the aid of the Kaname's magic. Rage boiling in his veins, Zero lobbed it at the wall.

The crystal shattered with a sound like laughter cut short, leaving the wall wet. The rose lay unnaturally perfect on the floor, not even a petal out of place. Zero leveled a glare at it and contemplated crushing it beneath his boot. Probably it would just regenerate as it had every other time it had started to look a little wilted.

Thoroughly annoyed, Zero closed his eyes and fell onto the bed. His half-packed duffle bag bouncing listlessly in consequence. What was he doing, getting himself messed up with Kaname? There was the bond to consider, but Zero knew places he could go where Kaname would never find him. The Kiryuu family had made disappearing an art. Many generations had constructed boltholes all over Japan and outlying nations. It was how he suspected Ichiru had managed to keep himself and Shizuka so far of the grid. If Zero fled to one of those no one would be able to find him until he wanted to be found.

Zero felt his very being sag at the thought, despair rising in his throat. That wasn't what he wanted. Not anymore. It would take so much energy, so much will and magic and power and trickery—and for what? A cold, lonely life and an isolated death, while back home Kaname ran havoc searching for him. The thought made him cringe.

He didn't really want to be away from Kaname, not truly. The man drove him mad, but these last few weeks had been nice. More so than Zero had expected. Kaname wasn't afraid to touch Zero, as so many were. Kaname did not flinch away from his glares, did not duck his head when Zero raised his voice, did not insist on 'fixing him' like he was a broken doll. Ichiru had been the last person to be so familiar with him. Affectionate. Even Yuuki had been cautious around him, toward the end.

Zero blushed, thinking of Kaname's affection. They hadn't touched each other like they had in Vermillion's backroom since that night, nor had Zero woken up covered in bruises and fang-marks again. Not a word had been spoken about either occurrence, but it seemed as though they'd both agreed privately to try and curb that part of their relationship until they became more…stable.

Since the coffee shop, they'd been light with each other, playful. They were simply two people moving on together and learning about each other, trying to hammer out some common ground that didn't involve blood and pain and a girl with sunshine eyes. In fact, the kiss Zero had given Kaname upon entering the sitting room had been the first blatantly romantic show of affection for a while.

It had felt good, so very good, and that was probably why their tea had ended the way it did. Zero could never keep a good thing going.

Sighing, Zero rolled off his bed. He started on the packing again, trying to drum up some excitement for the trip. Tokyo would be fun once he cleared out the level D nest. Maybe he'd stay a day or two longer, enjoy the sights and the nice hotel room reserved by the Association. There were some infamous hunter clubs in the area. All for his own enjoyment, of course. Certainly not to punish Kaname for this fucking ball of his, or for how the bastard never took a second to discuss this shit with him, or—

Zero cursed colorfully. He brought his bleeding hand to his chest, wounded finger going in his mouth as he scanned his room for his first aid kit. On his bed the throwing knife he'd been tucking inside his bag glared at him balefully. He guessed raging at Kaname made him clumsy. At least it wasn't a big cut, Zero thought as he pulled a Band-Aid from the kit. He'd hate to see how the vampires would react if they smelled his blood now that they knew about he and Kaname. Hanabusa Aido and Souen Ruka would prove to be endlessly amusing with their reactions, he was sure.

Because the Night Class had to know by now, Zero thought. Kaname would never plan a ball without including his inner court in the decision. Vampire balls were so much work. Kaname didn't have the time to do it alone. And if Kaname was willing to use Yori to help him win Zero's affections, why wouldn't he use his court?

Suddenly the last few weeks made a lot more sense. Zero had thought it was odd of Kaname to suggest they go on a coffee date, of all things; to take Zero to a gallery, to abide Zero's suggestion they go to a rock concert, the fucking wine tasting. If Zero were to try, he bet that he could match each date to one of Ichijou's damned manga. No wonder he'd felt like he was playing two steps behind Kaname. Zero had been in this relationship alone. Kaname had been working with a whole damned support team.

The only consolation was that the Night Class hadn't changed their behaviour toward him. Zero had been exchanging pleasantries with Ichijou since late August, when he had come back to seemingly lead the next year's Night Class. Surely that relationship was genuine. Unless he knew about the bond before I did, and only respected me because his master said to—

Oh, he was getting paranoid. Kaname wouldn't do that. It would have gone against basic vampire etiquette if his nobles had known before Kaname had told his fiancée. Yuuki had been hanging off Kaname right until the end. She wouldn't have done that if she'd known what was coming. Right?

I need to get out of here, Zero thought, this place is making me crazy. Taking a deep breath, he flipped the duffle bag's strap over his shoulder and took a little comfort in the familiar weight. Filled with the bare necessities of clothes, weaponry, medical supplies, and cash, it felt good bouncing against his hip as he moved to collect his music player and cellphone. Bloody Rose, as per usual, was secured at his hip.

He'd changed out of his uniform already. A shower had been his first step, to get Kaname's stench off him. It was a practical move—a strange Pureblood's scent might make his prey change pattern—but Zero was also pissed off.

He'd donned his hunting clothes. Thick black Kevlar jeans, worn and familiar to fight in. A long-sleeved t-shirt under a black leather vest, high collared, to protect his neck, and embroidered with charms. Solid boots tied tight to mid-shin, speed and silence charms set in the soles. Holstered knives clung to his thigh and waist, with Bloody Rose on his hip. Over that was a short leather duster, nondescript but for the Kiryuu crest displayed over his back.

Out of the Cross Academy uniform, free of a soirée-approved tux, there was no mistaking what duty he had been born to. He almost wished Kaname would come and try to stop him, just so the bastard could see what Zero was supposed to look like. Not a reckless level-D but a powerful hunter. The pride of not just his ancient house, but of his entire people. That future was long gone from Zero, now, but he caught glimpses of what it might have looked like in the mirror, and he saw it now.

Letting that fantasy wrap comfortingly around his shoulders, Zero took up his motorcycle helmet. He slipped on his thin leather gloves, to protect his hands and keep his trigger finger from slipping during repeated rapid firing. He eyed his phone. On one hand, protocol demanded he bring it. The Association sent real-life envoys to avoid leaving a traceable trail, but in a pinch they sometimes lowered themselves to texting hunters new mission details. Or so Zero had heard. He had never received any of those supposedly life-saving messages. Zero's missions never changed. He was a blunt object, his raw power able to take out nests that regularly required ten ordinary hunters. A slaughter never changed once it was begun. Zero didn't need his phone.

On the other hand, Kaname had the number. A secret part of Zero already found itself in knots over whether Kaname would call him or not. The image of himself casting considering glances at his phone every other minute, debating the pros and cons of his relationship with Kaname like a love-sick schoolgirl, eventually made Zero set it down. The mission was cleared. Cross and Yagari knew where he would be. They wouldn't contact him, not at the risk of distracting him from the mission. Only Yori and Kaito might try to text him, but Zero wanted time alone to think.

And he was going to Tokyo. It wasn't like he'd be impossible to find if he was needed, nor would he be stranded if he got in trouble. Fuck, there was an Association armory station right there. Turning his back decisively, Zero scanned his room once more for anything he'd forgotten. He frowned.

His normally neat space was in disarray. His uniform lay in a crumpled heap, drawers and his closet were left gaping open. The rose of Kaname's was across the room, lying wetly on the floor in a bed of shattered glass. Zero winced. There was still a dent in the drywall, and scattered pieces of alarm clock below it. He had half a mind to clean the mess up before he left—he was trying to rein in his temper—but his anger won. Like everything else, Zero thought distractedly, he'd deal with the mess when he got back.

Grabbing his keys, Zero flipped the light switch, stepped out of his room, and locked the door. Taking the stairs two at a time, Zero stood in the Cross Academy parking garage in barely anytime. He strapped the duffle bag to the back of his bike and sat astride the machine, glancing around. For ten minutes he sat there, waiting for someone he knew wouldn't show up.

The resignation settled in slowly but familiarly. When he finally felt the last of his romantic whims die, Zero revved the engine and pulled away. Knowing he was safe to drive as he liked at least until he hit the Academy's outlying towns, Zero gunned it until the trees were smudges and each curve threatened death. Between the speed and the adrenaline, he didn't think. Not even the warm café he passed on his way through town pushed through his haze, reduced to a mere bright light in his peripheral vision.

Chapter Text

Moonlight lay easily about the room, path disturbed only by the strategic flicker of candlelight. The combined glows filled Shirabuki Manor with soft, downy illumination—the kind of light that filled a fairy castle, a dreamland. A place without the bloody secrets vampires kept behind closed doors.

Aglow in just enough light to be clearly seen by, Sara stood atop a seamstress's stool in the first semblance of a fine gown. Two common vampires fluttered around her, pinning and measuring in a practiced flurry. She was smiling, eyes roaming, pleased, over the bolts of fabric set around her boudoir. She fingered the undone ribbon that had held the creamy card in her hand closed. As expected, her invitation to the Kuran Samhain Ball—and engagement soirée; oh, the controversy—had come one minute past midnight on September the thirtieth, the traditional start of October. Twenty-four hours later and, like any quality Pureblood lady, her dress was in its beginning steps. Her mask's design had already been approved and sent to Venice to be crafted by the finest hands in the industry.

Sara giggled and twisted her hips, watching with delight as her dove-grey underskirts twirled. Her seamstresses flinched at the sudden movement. Silly women; as if she'd harm them while they still had her gown to finish.

And what a gown it would be! Her smile settled small and sweet on her lips. She was donning the mask of Hades and of Pluto, the ancient Mediterranean gods of riches and the Underworld. She had ordered only the best materials brought to her: expensive guipure lace, shining silks, and ethereal Paris chiffon. Trays of glittering jewels sat out for her perusal; tiny Swarovski crystals in thirty different colours, genuine precious stones, and trims made of pearls and gold filigree. Her gown's design was set, and now Sara was left with naught to do but stand still and think. Boring.

Her eyes landed on a bolt of the chiffon, a delicate shade of cherry blossom pink. Perhaps she would compose Kuran Yuuki a gown. A Persephone and Proserpina gown. Sara saw it in her mind's eye: Grecian draping in the chiffon, with a high halter neckline to protect that pale, lovely throat Yuuki had so scandalously bared at Kurosaki's soirée. Sara would set a diadem of golden camellia on her brow and dot the gown's neck and chest with ruby shards.

Yuuki would be branded, Sara dreamed, the Shirabuki flower in her hair and the rubies like the pomegranate juice the spring goddess had surely dripped as she greedily consumed the seeds. Her mask would copy Sara's, as golden and perfect as godly ambrosia. Perhaps she would add a pair of thick gold bracelets; not manacles, never, but of a kindred purpose…

With effort, Sara pulled away from her musings. She huffed, frustrated. Her wonderings, after all, were pointless. There would be no engagement ball at Kuran Manor this Samhain. Sara had made sure of it. She'd made sure… hadn't she? She was being fitted for a gown, but that was only a precaution. If she had received an invitation to a ball and hadn't immediately summoned her seamstresses, she would have looked odd. She couldn't refuse the invitation. Gods, no. That would have insulted Kuran Kaname, and Purebloods never insulted each other so openly. So, she had to reply the affirmative and she had to have a dress begun immediately. That was only smart. That was only fostering a good pretense. Her plans would not fail. Kiryuu Zero would die, and Kuran Kaname's engagement ball would die with him. Surely, surely, that was what would happen.

Suddenly Sara found herself wanting free of the layers of dress. They had become stifling against her skin. The air felt cloying in her lungs and even the candlelit sconces' gentle glow seemed harsh to her sensitive eyes. Snapping her fingers, Sara's mood fouled even further when even her seamstresses' quick switch to attention did nothing to please her. "Out," Sara hissed, "You may finish this over the next night."

"But, my lady, it's barely ten this night! We need all the time we—" Swift as a knife through air, the seamstress—little more than a child, a mere level C half a century old—let out a choking gasp.

Sara's glare sharpened. She watched with vitriolic eyes as the woman's blouse grew wet, the scent of melting skin and burning blood filling the room. Screams trailed the smell, crashing against Sara's ears in useless waves, like a match against a frozen tundra. The additional seamstress stood icy in her stillness. Growing bored, Sara blinked a handful of moment later.

As though by orchestration, the lesser vampiress went quiet. Her mouth gapped in unattractive, blatant horror. The room witnessed a beat of silence before the seamstress tumbled from her crunched, frozen position to the soft cream carpet, letting out a minuscule squeak when she landed. Sara sneered, annoyed by the sound. The girl whined, almost as if she weren't too dumbstruck to speak, but no words came. She just lay there as the liquidated cacophony formed from her melted chest bled into the floor, no doubt staining it.

"I had hoped you had trained your aids better than this, Kimika," Sara murmured, face gone blank while watching her punished servant wither in the aftermath of her wrath.

Kimika, the head seamstress and one of the few remaining staff hired by Sara's parents, nodded silently. Her lips sat drawn together in a tight line as her old, dark eyes watched over her mutilated apprentice unsympathetically. She had warned the girl. Their mistress was like a princess, the elder had explained. Pressures innumerable weighed on their lady's shoulders, and as such she deserved the best and did not take kindly when things were not done as she commanded. Perhaps, Kimika acknowledged, when she'd been explaining how their mistress's wrath was like acid, she should have made sure to emphasize how literally she'd meant the words.

"I had hoped the same," Kimika said, senses blind to the suffering of her charge and instead focused on Sara—on self-preservation. "It is obvious now that I was mistaken. My apologies for making you correct my error, Mistress." When no response came, Kimika swallowed and added carefully, "Please, allow me to deal with this mess. Shall I send someone with tea? Perhaps you could take it in the observatory, where you could then recuperate under the moon's full light?"

Sara's lips lifted in the slightest way at Kimika's words. Her lithe fingers went up to play with a few curling locks of her pale hair as she thought on the proposal. Her depthless eyes never left the fallen seamstress's body. Despite Sara having broken the hold her corrosive powers had taken on the other woman, the low-class vampiress's skin still bubbled and burned. Her face was frozen in agony, mouth moving like a fish out of water. Really, Sara thought, she should punish Kimika for bringing such trash into her home.

Sara cast a glance at the elderly servant. The seamstress's once midnight black hair had become wound through with silver, and there were now a tinge of crow's feet at the corners of her dark eyes. Kimika had served Sara's family since before her birth and had been one of the few to stay after Sara's parents had perished. For that, Sara supposed, she could be lenient this once.

"Yes, that does sound appealing," Sara hummed, offering her hand to her servant. Kimika took it with great care, standing as a prop while Sara lowered herself from the stool. She was careful to avoid the mess that had become of the woman who was once Kimika's prized apprentice.

"Would you prefer to change first, or would you like to test the beginnings of the gown for fit?" Kimika asked softly, cleverly reminding her dear Mistress of her current state of dress. Her Mistress blinked once, slowly, before a sweet smile crossed her face. Kimika instinctively wanted to flinch, but nothing of the sort showed on her face.

"Yes, of course. Let's get this off," Sara said. Kimika nodded and dutifully helped her free of the gown, but only after guiding her to the other side of the boudoir—the one clear of any gore that might stain the gown. By the end of it, the dress hung carefully from a custom mannequin's frame while Sara stood draped in the dress she'd worn to the fitting.

Kimika frowned as she noticed the necklace her mistress wore. It must have been tucked away under layers of fabric before, but now the little metal cross stood out starkly, its blood-red jewel sparkling.

"My lady, wherever did you find that necklace? It's so unique!" Normally a question like that would have sent her Mistress off on a light, giggly tale of the item's purchase—the girl did love her shopping—but not now. Instead, her Mistress's pair of clear blue eyes blinked once before narrowing, the blonde's fingers going to the pendant at her throat and clasping around it sharply.

"That reminds me…" Sara murmured as they made their way to the observatory. "Would you please bring me my stationary set and the scrying mirror with my tea?" A dark, worrying light came into her eyes. "There are things I need to check the progress of."

Kimika nodded warily. "Of course, my lady. Do you need anything else?"

"No," her Mistress said softly, mind already occupied with other things. Things Kimika had no desire to know about. "That will be all. You're dismissed for the rest of the night following the completion of these orders. I will have no need of you."

It was said in such a different way, but it was still the exact same order that Kimika's stupid apprentice had spoken up against. Nodding once, Kimika turned from her Mistress with quick steps, eager to do her bidding and then venture freely for the rest of the night. For, while her face did not show it, she remembered her apprentice's screams; how the confident girl had crumbled beneath the force of their Mistress's lethal wrath. No affection for the broken girl Shirabuki Sara hid so well could quell the fear in Kikima's heart as she left, running in every way but speed, wailing in every way but physically.

The scrying mirror was radiant under the moonlight, its silver handle and glass face cool to the touch. Despite its worth—rumours of its whereabouts alone could cost fortunes—Sara treated it as though it were unimportant. It was, really, when contrasted against her own power. It was a little scrap of a thing, developed by hunters to find hiding vampires or their remains. Sara had procured it for its beauty alone. That it was coming in useful now was merely a bonus.

Taking up a cloth soaked in a concoction of rue water tainted pink by Sara's own blood and turned cloudy by the ashes of one of Kiryuu's Academy jackets, Sara washed the glass surface. That done, she waited for an image to appear.

The glass gleamed wetly. Her eyes flicked to the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. Sara knew she could only expect one of two options. Either her plan had worked or it hadn't. Either she'd need that dress or she wouldn't. This conclusion did nothing to stop her impatience as she watched the mixture be absorbed by the enchanted glass with glinting eyes, only a little annoyed by her sudden dependency on the tool. Fog gathered slowly behind the reflective surface, reaching a swirling crescendo before fading away. It had found the person she desired.

Tokyo lights radiated neon into the decrepit ally. They were only partially obscured by the wards' cold luminescence, constructed to hide the sounds and sights of battle from wandering humans. Kiryuu, tall and imposing despite bleeding from several open wounds, stood with his back to the ally's mouth. Boxing him in were an array of level Es, freshly fallen and full of blood-rage. More clung from the walls, dangling from warped fire escapes and abandoned balconies, while others stood crouched together, clogging the narrow pass. A thick carpet of ash lay at their feet, the remains of numerous comrades, ground into the wet asphalt and muddy with spilled blood. Glinting bullet shells and discarded daggers lay half-buried in the muck. Snarls rent the air, overcoming the heavy, struggling breaths Kiryuu did his damnedest to take and emit. They sounded suspiciously wet, as though perhaps one of the Es had the luck to puncture a lung.

Gods be damned, Sara thought, teeth grinding together. Where was her ace when she needed it? At least a hundred Es would have had to have been slaughtered for that amount of dust to build up, let alone the few B class nobles she'd sent as the Es' commanders… She snorted, bitter. They'd called it overkill, at the time. She wondered what they'd call it now, from beyond the grave.

All around the scene, rose vines ran rampant. Their horrible thorns must have pushed through Kiryuu's skin at the will of their master once he'd run out of bullets and lost the mobility to fight hand-to-hand. They struck with a vicious, unsavory vengeance; they slew one E after another, as though the diamond-sharp strikes of their prey hurt not at all. Kiryuu's face was a mask of stony concentration as the Es' blood splattered against his skin, only his eyes hinting at the relief he felt as the number of enemies decreased, thinking he was almost free—

Sara laughed viciously not a heartbeat later. There was her extra card!

From behind, a body broke through the wards. It was a small thing, light and quick—that of some trashy little whore, withdrawing eyes alight with a terrible purpose. Clasped in the mortal's hand was a dagger of vampire silver. About a foot long, it was a prized heirloom of the Shirabuki family from their days as warriors. It was special in that it was immune from hunter magic. Even in the whore's inexperienced, tremulous hands, it cut through the wards like tissue paper. It sunk easily into Kiryuu's back, the blade—having been cast with the ashes of fallen vampires—sharper than what the anti-vampire chainmail the hunter's jacket was lined with could withstand.

For a small moment, all stood still. Sara's mortal instrument, her special little back up plan, seemed to be in shock at the reality of what she'd just done for the promise of a fat payday. Kiryuu was still up, gagging on the blood that was pooling in his mouth, choking as it dripped down his chin. His torn-up body seized with pain where it had only been trembling with exhaustion before. His breaths became death rattles. He coughed, painfully, and blood sprayed from his mouth. Like a clockwork toy, Kiryuu's head swiveled towards his attacker; violet eyes wide in disbelief when teary, human eyes made contact with his.

"I'm sorry," the girl muttered, her miserable, broken voice like glass on Sara's ears.

Kiryuu's jaw fell open, a wave of scarlet flowing free with the motion, garnering a sob from the mortal. For a moment Sara thought he'd give the bitch some sign of exemption, a free pass from the guilt she was doomed to be eaten alive by—Sara had always read the D as the heroic type—but instead only one word fell from his lips. It struggled valiantly free from his copper-coated mouth before he crumpled, hitting the ground so suddenly his human killer jerked back in surprise. Stunned, she let the dagger fall with him.

"Run."

Sara smirked. Indeed, that was the more prudent thought to give with his last breath. There were still a couple of hungry level Es left; wounded and lusting after hot blood even more than they had been before...

The girl—the pretty key to Sara's plan—was too shaken to do as she'd been told, though. She was also too stupid from her human upbringing to realize that she'd need the dagger in Kiryuu's back to pass through the barrier the way she'd come. The remaining Es descended on her, and soon the silence of Kiryuu's death was broken with the shriek of a new one.

Sara watched a few moments longer, eyes regarding the casual violence of feeding level Es the way another might children bickering over a shared snack. The human girl's screams affected her on the same level as the ripping of a wrapper might someone else. That wasn't what she was watching for. No, Sara was merely counting Kiryuu's last breaths. Or, rather, his lack of them.

Sara smiled, closed-lipped and pleased, eyes fixed on his death-blank face. He was beautiful like this. Alive, Kiryuu had been a threat. Sara could find no beauty in his dangerous mind, in his lethal devotion that Kuran Kaname had been cultivating for his own. Even at the soirée, where every eye had followed Kiryuu's lovely form, Sara had turned her face away. But now, still and silent in the ash, Sara lavished him with her attention.

She caressed his ivory pale face, so well-formed that Sara ached for pencils to catch it forever on paper. His silvery hair shone in the moonlight, and she found herself lost in his wisteria eyes. They had not yet dulled in death, frozen open like he was looking up just for Sara. She lingered on the bloom of blood over his lush mouth. If she imagined, just a little, Sara thought the stain could be her favourite lipstick, poppy-red and lovely. His hunting clothes ruined the image a little—Sara would never dress one of her precious ones so harshly—but she could forgive him. His delicate rose vines, still now as their master, seemed like an apology. Like a bouquet spread around his body, presented just for Sara.

For a moment, Sara's heart hurt. She hated destroying beauty. She craved to preserve it. She saved the most beautiful human boys and girls from time, training them lovingly to decorate her home. She strove to lure the most perfect commons and nobles to her side, glutting them on blood and honey. Shirabuki Manor was a fairy-castle and Sara was its queen. Kaname had already won one prize from Sara: Ichijou Takuma, whom Sara had long adored. She had come so close. But Fate had infuriatingly favoured Kaname—Takuma had mated Kaname's bastard cousin. The insult was almost more than Sara could take.

Making Kiryuu her own would have been an appropriate punishment. And, in a way, Sara supposed she had done just that. He was stolen from her living possession, but his last moments would reside in a shadowbox in Sara's memory. Kaname would never know how nobly Kiryuu—Zero—fought. How temptingly his clothes, torn by rose vines and lucky level E claws, had revealed his bloodied skin. The perfect beauty of his frozen face. All were Sara's, a final possession that thrilled her and soothed away the sting in her chest.

Kiryuu Zero, Sara thought giddily. He's just the first thing that I've taken from you, Kaname. But he won't be alone for long.

Sara's theft wouldn't be official until Kuran reacted—Purebloods never lost their mates quietly—but Sara had seen enough. She had no desire to watch Zero's body disintegrate. She didn't want that memory tainting her last beautiful image of him. The glass frozen on Zero's lovely face, Sara gently placed the mirror in a waiting bowl of water. She watched as the image swirled away, her mixture leeching from the glass and leaving the surface merely reflective once again. Kiryuu Zero was lost forever, but for his image in Sara's mind. She smiled.

Placing the mirror back in its case, she turned to her writing set. She almost wanted to contact Kaname: to gloat at his ill fortune, to confess it all and then wait eagerly as madness stuck the proud man down. But that was foolish, she reminded herself. Kaname, for all that she disliked him, was powerful. His rage would be fantastical and yet he did not even know of her involvement. No one, not even lovely Yuuki, did. No, it was best not to test Kaname's rage. It would only lead to a battle; one she did not need when she still had other things to orchestrate.

Sara also yearned to contact Yuuki, to summon the girl to her manor and show her the beautiful, bloody web Sara had weaved. The brilliant card game she'd played. It was yet early for that, too, though. Best to show Yuuki in little steps, one card at a time. Sara didn't want her overwhelmed. That was where Kaname had gone wrong with her in the first place.

Sighing, Sara picked up her pen and scribbled a missive to her hunter-servant. She'd have him instigate the next step in her plans—this one to secure Yuki—and then there would be little to do but ensure that she was the most likely option to claim the throne. Killing Kaname would seal her inheritance.

So many hadn't noticed yet, but Kaname was walking the path of his ancestors. The Senate would not rise again from his slaughter, like some ambitious commons and gentry still nervously warbled. Kaname was slowly, noble by noble, opening again his families’ Red Rose Court. She had no doubt that in early daylight he walked the halls of his ancestral manor—once the imperial Rose Palace—and imagined himself king. Sara had let him do his work. She bore no love for the Senate, and less for the hunters. But Sara would not be ruled. Sara would let him plant the seeds and mature the flowers, but Sara would watch them bloom. With Kaname dead, his mate disposed of, and his sister unrepentantly Sara's, his court would have no choice but to fall into her hand. With them, the claim would be unanimous. A royal flush to Kuran Kaname's signature checkmate.

Sara walked to her private rooms with a smile, hair and gown trailing behind her. There were still a half-dozen hours of solid night left, but Sara found herself lacking the mood to do anything but seclude herself and sip blood until the sun rose. Once she had Yuuki things might play much differently, but for now this was all Sara sought to congratulate herself on a job well done. Along the way she dropped off her missive with the head butler, a shaky level B still unbearably new to his job, along with a request of spiced blood wine to be sent to her room. The other vampire was quick to heed her and, for the first time since her disastrous dress fitting, Sara found herself feeling distinctly at peace. A winning hand always did that, even when her cards stained her hands bright red.

Chapter Text

Oh, Kaname, Yuuki thought, can you do nothing by half?

In the days following Kiryuu's departure from Cross Academy, it became very clear to any passerby that something terrible had happened to Yuuki's dear brother. His aura, usually so carefully controlled that it was little more than a whisper, had become suffocating. Once so light that no mortal could feel it, it now rolled over the grounds like a poisonous black fog.

It had been slowly seeping through the walls since Kiryuu had left the campus, but only late that night had it truly broken free. Before it had merely upset the horses and made the common-level vampires anxious. Yuuki hadn't even been able to feel a shift in it without drawing on her own power, a skill she'd been learning slowly. After that night, however, it had caused tangible terror in all but his closest nobles. Against the unrestrained energy Kaname emitted, windows broke, wallpaper peeled, flowers withered, and animals fled. In one memorable case, Hanabusa had tumbled from a second-story balcony when the rotted railing he'd been leaning against gave way.

The last occurrence should have lightened the mood a little—Yuuki couldn't think of anyone who didn't find Hanabusa's mishaps funny—but, no. Apparently whatever had happened on that night to start this mess had been too heavy for those in the know to move past it. The rest of the Night Class had followed suit, despite having received little explanation as to why Kaname couldn't pull his suffocating power back. Yuuki, of course, had only been deemed privy to the bare bones. Having just been freed of the social solitude that her brother had forced on her as punishment for arguing against his mate, she wasn't deemed close enough to him to be told all the details. It would have infuriated her—and still did, to some extent—if she hadn't recently been given means to find out on her own.

She drew a silk-gloved finger over the surface of the gift she had received. It had been delivered to her on the eve of her release from her room by her hunter contact, cloaked in a glamour to make him appear like just another gentry-level vampire. He had explained that it was a gift from 'his Lady.' As it turned out, he was not actually the one who had been helping her. He had only been working as a puppet, heeding the orders of another. Yuki would admit that she hadn't been particularly surprised. She'd thought that something was strange about the way he'd spoken to her, as though she were an equal. Men never considered her their equal. No wonder why he'd seemed like such a breath of fresh air.

Yuuki thought fondly back to the letter she'd received along with the gift. Written on thick creamy stationary, the note had been both informational and friendly, as though smiles had been laced between the words. The writing had been so different from her brother's swift, slanted scrawl. Instead the letters had been large and carefully crafted, swirling and beautiful. Even without the paper in hand, Yuuki could still smell the perfume it had been scented with. Jasmine. From books she'd read during the lonely nights she'd spent in Kuran Manor, she knew the white variety stood for sensuality. Maybe...

Blushing, Yuuki wondered if maybe that message had been intentional. Oddly, the thought of someone else's interest in her didn't anger her as she'd thought it would. It should annoy her that someone else saw the good in her while her one true love ignored her. But Kaname had been so cold for so long—and he was only getting worse. It seemed that doing away with Kiryuu had only made her brother even more unstable. Yuuki, she could admit only in her own thoughts, was starting to grow bitter about it. Maybe if she accepted another's interest, it would help? Could it draw him out some, make him more interested in her if he knew there was competition? She didn't know. All Yuuki knew was that now everyone was miserable, not just her. And, strangely, that made everything all the worse.

Leaving one hand on the mirror to keep her present from falling, Yuuki raised the other and tried to alleviate her growing headache. Not even in being made miserable was Yuuki singular to Kaname. Nothing of his was uniquely Yuuki's. Nothing she did, or was, was ever enough to keep his attention. That was a rather new conclusion, one she'd found while trapped away in her rooms. All that time alone had given her ample opportunity to review her old conclusions. A terrible thing, really. No wonder why she hadn't stopped to think much as a human. All thinking did was make her question herself. It made her look through books on hunter spells, praying she'd find evidence that she'd been right in her actions. It made her crave the blisters she'd had from Artemis Rod, wish for the taste of the Headmaster's terrible food, and made her sob for strong arms to hold her when she cried.

Like Zero had, once upon a time. But Yuuki couldn't think like that anymore.

Kaname had promised her that he would make her happy, if only she chose him. That he would make her better, if only she gave him time. That he would raise her from madness and help her deal with the creature that had woken inside of her. He'd told her that he'd do all of that, make everything well again, if only she followed him; if only she snubbed Kiryuu and Yori and mortality. Just like the tutors he'd hired told her. Just like the instructors on vampiric society had instructed her to do. Just like the maids implied when they'd merely given her pity in exchange for her enquires to her then-fiancé's whereabouts. Just like she read in the library books she buried herself in during those lonely, cold, maddening nights so very alone in the terrible, beautiful, wretched manor! Locked away in the middle of nowhere while her brother mooned and moaned for the foster-sibling he'd made her leave behind.

Kaname said he'd make her better.

Where, oh, where, had those promises gone?

Yuki strangled a shriek as her mental diatribe came to an end. She almost felt out of breath, though she'd not spoken one word aloud as her mind raged. She'd become very good at that, she'd found. Kaname's aristocrats might think her vulgar and impulsive (oh, don't think she couldn't read them—she'd grown up in a private school; tittering gossip was not new to her) but they had no idea how much she held back. If not for her control, she had very little doubt the school would still be standing. She could feel it. Power lived, wild and thrumming, beneath her skin, in every cell of her blood. If she could just control that, instead of only her emotions, then maybe she could win back what she'd lost.

Which is everything, she thought miserably. Her head fell back listlessly, dewy eyes on the hatchling sunset. A memory of a smile kissed her lips as one of the last rays caught the face of the mirror in her lap. Yes, Cross Kuran Yuuki had lost a great deal, but she did have the gifts her Lady Sara sent her. Like the mirror. It was such a lovely thing, the beautiful silver mirror. Not to mention that, when soaked in her blood, special water, and the ashes of something connected to the person she wanted to see, it would show her that person. It had been so helpful, allowing Yuuki to spy on the private meetings her dear Kaname held with his lauded inner circle.

Thank the Gods a bit of Hanabusa's coat had become caught on the rubble when he'd tumbled from the balcony. She only wished she'd been able to snatch something from one of the ones Kaname trusted more—like Seiren or Takuma. Still, Yuuki wasn't greedy. The Mirror had told her what no one else would.

She'd made sure to keep an eye on her brother's nobles, watching for when they all seemed to disappear, and then she too had left up to her room. There she’d done just as Sara's letter instructed, and then watched gleefully as her brother's interior sitting room came into view.

It was like watching a film. Yuuki had looked in on their gatherings, wildly intrigued by the casual air they treated each other with. Ruka smiled; she leant into Akatsuki's side like she belonged there, and his arm curled around her lovingly. Contentment radiated off the normally detached man, often Akatsuki he chatted amiably with Seiren. Seiren never smiled, but her face was more expressive than when she was in public. Hanabusa sat childishly on the floor at his cousin's feet, legs crisscrossed, which Yuuki had expected; but he rarely spoke. Instead, the public chatterbox stared fixedly at a notepad, scribbling away at math that made Yuuki's head hurt. He was a genius, Yuuki had remembered distantly. But he never acted like it. That side, it seemed, was reserved for his court-friends only.

Occasionally Ruka would make a quip, setting off a banter with Hanabusa that amused the whole court. When the witticisms turned sharp, Akatsuki would sooth them—a gentle hand on Ruka's shoulder, his fingers running through his cousin's blond curls. Rima, quiet and doll-like still, but more mellow, feet tucked up under her on the couch, would draw Ruka into conversation while Akatsuki entertained Hanabusa's complicated theories with affectionate ease. Senri, socked feet in Rima's lap, would tilt his head back dozily for another Pocky stick, which Takuma, nose buried in a manga, would distractedly feed him. Senri's head was almost always on Takuma's shoulder or lap, and Takuma always indulged him. Was that what mates were supposed to be like? Ruka and Akatsuki weren't mates, Yuuki didn't think, but they certainly seemed to be lovers—far more than she and Kaname had ever been. Senri and Takuma definitely were. They were inseparable. Watching the couples, Yuuki wanted.

The court seemed to clear all formal business in the first twenty minutes of gathering, and then used the next hour and a half to relax. Yuuki, never privy to these meetings even before Kaname had broken their engagement, had been incensed. Kaname had told her the meetings were all politics! That Yuuki would be bored and wouldn't want to attend. But that wasn't true! They were just hanging out. Yuuki had trusted Kaname and he'd misled her.

That was why Yuuki had been vindictively pleased when she'd noticed the tension lacing the nobles. They tried to relax, Yuuki thought, to behave normally, but for all their closeness and wit they couldn't quite manage it. The longer Kiryuu remained away, the worse Kaname's mood grew. His face was blank and he was unresponsive to their words, be they formal reports or casual conversation. The nobles, attuned to her bother's temper, exchanged nervous looks and concerned glances with each other from behind their blithe masks.

Yuuki might have giggled a little at the nobles' nervous twittering—how unlike the stiff disproval she was used to! —but for the fact that Kaname hadn't bothered to shush them. Rather, her tall, imperious brother had merely sat still, molded to the contours of his wingback chair, as though proper posture was an effort beyond his reach. While always pale, in the mirror he'd appeared nearly gaunt, eyes shadowed and mouth drawn taut. There'd been a certain deadness in his eyes, a deep sort of pain. It had hurt her to watch.

But the hunter books she'd found had assured her that these were common signs of a magic-bond being broken. She'd almost been grateful for her forced seclusion, then, for if she hadn't read those books (brought to her secretly by Sara's servant), she might have doubted that she'd been right to get rid of Kiryuu. The books had comforted her enough that she confidently believed that Kaname would get better. That his strength would return, and with it his aura would recede. It was all written right there. How long it would take hadn't been clear, but Yuki had decided it would take quite a bit of time. Kiryuu had been powerful, after all.

Secure in this knowledge, she'd watched the meeting long enough to learn that Takuma and Senri were being sent to search for Kiryuu. She'd been a little annoyed by that—he had barely been gone thirty-six hours! Why was Kaname trying to find him already? —but she'd calmed herself. It was just the magic giving a final fight for control. Maybe when Takuma and Senri returned with Kiryuu's ashes the bond would finally snap. Content with this thought, Yuuki cleaned the mirror and put it away. She'd had other things to attend to. The mirror gift deserved to have a letter written back to it. What would Yuuki care for the details of Kiryuu's corpse's recovery?

She steadfastly ignored the twitch in her heart her once-brother's name triggered. It was so hard to reconcile her mortal memories with the new values she'd been bestowed with. She'd thought that so long as Zero was in one piece and away from her, she could manage it. Then, after seeing him again and realizing her prior plan was a failure, she'd sought to make him hate her. It would be much easier to distance herself from him if their relationship were already severed at his end. Then she could devote her full self to Kaname. Instead, that distance had only given Kiryuu more chance to hurt her by stealing her brother! Such a traitorous creature deserved death.

Damn her mortal-raised heart.

Pursing her lips, Yuuki gathered up her things. Hiding the mirror away in her room, Yuuki made sure she wasn't being followed and slipped into the Mood Dorm's private garden. She wasted the hours before sunset basking and musing in the light, ignoring her burning eyes and her almost overwhelming lethargy. To sit in the sun was a luxury she rarely granted herself—she'd been chastised for this human behaviour by every one of her tutors at the Manor—but today she needed it. Sometimes her human hang-ups comforted her, when hidden from the view of others.

Yuuki smiled as the sunset's last light caught at the new pendant hanging from her neck. The silver camellia sparkled beautifully from a triple string of pearls. It had come with Lady Sara's last letter, along with an invitation to meet. It was rather foreword of her, having only exchange letters with Yuuki a scant two days, but Yuuki didn't care. She was mortal-raised and though it shamed her she still felt the urge to take risks like she didn't have time to waste.

Kaname's eyes flickered in her mind, warm and brown and loving. Her hands clenched as a lance of hurt shot through her heart. If she could not have what she really wanted, she thought, then she could at least have her risks.

Far from the roses his sister favoured, Kuran Kaname closed his burning eyes against the last golden rays of sunset. Like this he could almost pretend that everything was back to normal. If he breathed lightly, he could almost say that there was no ash in his mouth, no knife in his heart. Like this, hand clasped around the ivory knight of his chessboard, Kaname could hold himself together.

His free hand clenched, nails breaking through the skin of his palm. Almost. He could almost hold himself together, and, oh, how it galled him. Every conscious moment, he could feel the rage nipping at the back of his mind. With every intake of air, the anger grew hotter. Black misery fueled it. In response, he breathed softer and never through his nose. Not when he knew that all he would catch of Zero's scent were fading remnants. Not when his every sense screamed at him that all he would ever have were ruins, because his lethal silver love was—

No.

No.

No.

Do not think that way. Just breathe. Slowly, softy. Swallow the knot in your throat, ignore the razor blades lining every vein, every muscle. Ignore the aching, seething blackness where he once was, tamp it down, don't let it break through your skin—

But it already had, hadn't it? It had broken through late the night Zero had left, a wave of pain that had felled him like a bullet through the skull. Kaname had woken the next night to find misery in his blood and Takuma at his side. Thankfully Kaname had collapsed in his rooms and Takuma had been able to conceal his infirmity from all others, or else Kaname would have woken to bedlam.

Kaname himself was far from being in control. Takuma had tactfully avoided mentioning the thick miasma of his aura but even in his pain Kaname wasn't oblivious. He did what he could, but the dimming of Zero's half-formed bond to him was the last stressor he could take.

The last time he had felt like this, he had Slept. He tried not to think of that sweet, dark relief. Not when there was still hope.

Hope terrified Kaname.

Tentatively, Kaname reached for that well of energy inside himself. As had happened many times since waking, a wince stole across his face. What should have been full of stored power now felt half-full and ever-waning, vitriolic and searching. Too much of his power had joined his aura and it was making him, and everyone around him, ill. Gently, Kaname reached for his last line of defense, a thin light in the darkness. His last hope. His last connection to Zero.

It was so small, Kaname thought fearfully. Since that first full blood exchange their bond had never been so small. It flickered dismally now, as if it knew of its own delicacy and dreaded the day someone tried to break it. Kaname could feel his rage spike at the thought and pulled away, scared that Zero might feel his anger and try to fight him off.

The thought of Zero being any farther away was enough to make him sick. Kaname knew he wouldn't be able to stop if that light were to become any less. Worlds would end before he would stop. Before he could be stopped, because the Gods knew that he would be helpless against himself. Only Zero had ever had that power over him. Only Zero ever would. That was why Zero needed to be found. If not for Kaname's sake, then for the rest of the world's.

Zero would not appreciate Kaname turning the world to rubble to find him. Zero would not appreciate Kaname's insanity. It was a state that would surely follow if he were to give into the void's demands. Demands that he search and hunt and kill, let none stand in his way. Oh king, how your enemies mock you, they shan't when their greatest loves drown in blood—No! Kaname fought viciously for control. What was left of Zero's tattered bond to him shuddered violently. It always seemed to do that when Kaname slipped a little. It only made the hate grow, only made it so much harder to keep his inner monster in hand. Oh, how terrible it was to see his most treasured delight tremble.

"You need to find him," Kaname bit out, hand white-knuckle tight around his ivory knight.

He felt ill. Tired. Shaky with the effort of leashing his power and maintaining his connection to Zero. His full weight leant against his wingback chair, even the little effort it took to maintain proper posture beyond him at this point. Another sign of his weakness. Oh, the anger he felt. Whoever was responsible for this would find no sanctuary, no safe harbour. Whatever their aim, their goal, Kaname would see it burned before their eyes. Their hearts would be his.

A hand touched his shoulder, gentle but firm, reassuring. "We will. I swear we will."

Takuma. Oh, what would Kaname do without him? The words were like a balm to the edges of his worst wounds. Without a doubt this situation would be so much worse without Takuma. Without all of his inner court. The knowledge of that loyalty was enough to settle the worst of the tension in his muscles, though not enough to lull him. Not so long as Zero's connection was still so frail. Hopefully that would be remedied soon. As it was, Kaname slowly inclined his head and motioned for Takuma to continue his update. The official court meeting had ended, but Takuma had been bringing Kaname hourly reports around the clock since Kaname had woken.

Takuma did so now softly, his voice and face clear of the urgency Kaname could see in his posture. Affection welled in him at the gesture. "We've managed to track Kiryuu-san to Tokyo's downtown core, specifically a small network of alleys. It was difficult, likely due to wards, but our dowsers managed it admirably. In the end they tracked him by his magic expenditure, so whether he is still in the area is uncertain. However, due to the evidence of his injuries, it's unlikely he's gone far."

Something in Kaname's bones told him that it was worse than it sounded, that something other than wards had interfered. The dowsers in Kaname's court used only the most cunning crystals, the cleverest parchment and maps and inks. Their findings were always precise. It would take something extreme for them to feel the need to track by how much of Zero's raw power had been used in the area. And evidence of injuries? One of the dowsers must have seen a vision of a battlefield, of blood. So much blood that they doubted Zero could move far under his own power. Nausea rolled in Kaname's stomach. A thousand plans swirled in his mind.

With effort, Kaname kept his thoughts to himself. He knew that he wasn't thinking clearly. As weak as he was, he would be useless as a tactician. He had too much else to worry about just with maintaining the link and keeping himself centered. He needed to trust, this time. Zero's well-binging depended on it. There was no time for anything else. So instead of demanding that Takuma outline every inch of his plans and their consequences, Kaname merely nodded. "I trust that you and your selected will be leaving within the hour?"

Mercifully Takuma had realized that Kaname was suffering from bond damage while he was indisposed and begun the search for Zero immediately. But it had taken time to find him. The dowsers hadn't been able to narrow down a probable location until now. In that time it had become clear that the entire mission Zero had been sent on was false, a construction of some yet-unknown enemy. When Cross and Yagari had found out they had reportedly been apocalyptic with rage.

Reportedly, because between the bond-sickness and his tissue paper-thin control Kaname didn't trust himself around people so breakable as hunters. Or humans. It was infuriating. But Takuma made it endurable.

Exhausted, Kaname closed his eyes, unable to fight the impulse any longer.

"Yes," Takuma confirmed, and then went quiet. The hand on Kaname's shoulder squeezed comfortingly. Kaname let himself lean into the contact.

"We will bring him home," Takuma promised.

"I know you will," Kaname replied. They both pretended no other fate existed.

Chapter Text

It took the better part of a day to reach Tokyo from Cross Academy. Senri usually enjoyed the trip. Cross Academy sat in a dense pocket of forest, warded to the treetops and mostly isolated. A few scattered towns dotted a main road that led to the more suburban districts, and watching the subtle bleed into urban life was interesting to Senri. Accompanied by a stockpile of Pocky and Rima's quiet company, the drive made a comfortable return to the world of photoshoots and high fashion.

Senri smoothed out the frown he felt threatening his composure. The same could not be said of this trip.

"When I get my hands on the sick fuck who did this, I'm going to fucking—"

"Yes, Yagari-san. We've heard," Takuma snapped. Or, well, hummed threateningly, perhaps. Takuma never actually lowered himself to being less than courteous.

Senri sent his mate an admiring glance. If he were made to isolate a single characteristic of Takuma's that made him fall in love, he'd name that patience. That peace. With the insanity that ran rampant in Senri's life, he'd found himself clinging to it more and more.

Takuma's innately peaceful nature was also probably the only reason the van they were traveling in hadn't combusted yet. It was a valuable quality even to people Takuma wasn't bonded to.

"Don't mind him, Ichijou-kun! This situation just has him a bit tense," Headmaster Cross responded, smiling in shotgun. At the beginning of this mission the headmaster had asked them to call him by his first name, Kaien. To Senri that felt a bit like calling Saint Xocolatl by first name—just not the rightly done thing. Also, 'Kaien' didn't seem like an adequate name for such a murderous creature. His cheerful smile did nothing to hide his rage. Honestly, Senri was happy to sit cramped in the back with Hanabusa if it meant having a bit of distance from that.

The hunter master, Yagari, sat behind Cross. He was six-foot-four of killing intent on a good day. He was the only professor unafraid to fail Night Class students--in fact, he seemed to glory in every opportunity he had to do so. He had threatened to shoot Senri for eating Pocky during lecture. He had also, apparently, been keeping Kiryuu alive since Kiryuu was a little baby hunter.

No wonder Kiryuu is such a basket case, Senri thought, with these two as role models. Since leaving Cross Academy he'd revisited that epiphany several times. He'd also sworn to stop giving Kiryuu a hard time. Obviously, between Senri's cousin, Kiryuu's family, and Yuuki, the kid had enough troublesome people to contend with. Senri would even share his Pocky with him to help with the stress. After all, they were nearly family. Senri was even mostly pleased to add Kiryuu to the tree. At the very least, Kiryuu seemed to have a good appreciation for naps. Senri could work with that.

Of course, Kiryuu would have to do them all the monumental favour of being alive for any of those promises to be relevant. Thinking back to the wreck that had become of Kaname, Senri closed his eyes. Oh, please, he thought. Let Kiryuu be alive when we find him.

"Would everyone just shut up?" Came an irritated voice from Senri's left, disrupting his prayers.

Senri smirked. What irony. Aidou Hanabusa, loudest vampire in the Night Class, begging for quiet? More likely than Senri had thought, apparently. As the most talented dowser ("Of course I am, I'm a genius!") in Kaname's court, Hanabusa been elected to try and get them as close to Kiryuu as possible. Originally he and Yagari had the middle section of the van's seats to spread out maps and work on narrowing the area down, but after Yagari had nearly strangled Hanabusa they'd had to reshuffle a bit. Now Senri found himself strong-armed into being Hanabusa's assistant.

"Yes, no—not that one, we're too close for that one to be useful, the one—yes!" Pressing the map down between them, Hanabusa took a deep breath and let the dowsing crystal swing on its chain. Clasped in his free hand was Kiryuu's yearbook photo. The crystal swung aimlessly for a moment, but snapped to attention before long, pulling against the chain. Hanabusa let it touch down and Senri watched as it drew a circle around a nest of streets and alleys. Hanabusa hummed, his expression distant and dazed.

Senri twirled a Pocky nervously between his fingers. "Anything new?" he asked.

They'd been at this for hours now. Changing maps and dowsing and praying they were getting closer. The other dowsers at court had helped Hanabusa narrow Kiryuu to a specific Tokyo district, and from there they couldn't get a fix. Too far out, they'd said. That hadn't made sense to Senri, who'd seen dowsers track things from across the globe, but apparently there was some sort of interference.

Senri felt a bitter blackness swim in his throat, the urge to growl rising. Someone was trying to keep them away. Not only had someone planned to attack Kiryuu, they didn't even want Kaname to find him. Senri hated that. Murder was one thing—a bad thing, because Kiryuu didn't deserve to be murdered at all—but stealing someone; to Senri, that was worse.

Senri had been stolen, last year. Rido had invaded his body, taken every drop of control and agency he had. Kept him captive, locked away from Takuma and Rima and everyone he loved. Senri hated to see that happen to someone else. Especially someone who made his unhappy cousin smile, who was supposed to be family. Senri had a lot of family troubles, but slowly he was finding a stable one in Kaname's court. He wouldn't let some unseen threat hurt that dream. Not this time. Thank the Gods that Kiryuu was a stubborn bastard. If Kiryuu could hold out just a bit longer, no one would have to worry. They just needed time to find him.

"We can cross out another few streets," Hanabusa said, eyeing the map critically. "But nothing very definitive."

Yagari made an angry sound. To the back of Takuma's head he said, "I thought he was the best you had?"

Hanabusa glared, anger pulling him from his trance. "I dare you to find someone better," he sniffed. "It's just… difficult. It's like there's something in the way," he said more thoughtfully. "A wall. Not like what we encountered before. That was pretty flimsy stuff, your general wards and whatever. Good against your normal idiot, but not me. This, this is something else."

In the driver's seat, Takuma tilted his head. "You think Kiryuu-san moved location?"

Hanabusa nodded. "Or someone moved him. Not very far, though, or I wouldn't have a grip on him at all."

"What do you mean?" Cross asked, turning in his seat. His eyes were different; concentrated. No ditzy, cheerful glow in sight.

They were hunter's eyes, Senri realized. Disquieting and intense.

Hanabusa rubbed a hand over his face. "It's like I'm trying to look through mist, but the only reason I can even see the mist is because someone already cut down the forest. The only reason I can see those streets is because I knew I needed to be looking near them. Otherwise, I'd say to just… I don't know, but dowsing wouldn't work."

Senri anticipated a caustic verbal onslaught from Yagari in response. But nothing came. A tense silence held the car in a chokehold. After a minute, fear stirred in his gut. Did the mist mean that Kiryuu was beyond them? How badly were they fucked, exactly?

Then, Cross chuckled.

Senri blinked. What?

"That clever boy," Cross said, tension bleeding out of his frame. "I didn't even think they had any in this city."

Yagari looked just as ready to spill blood as he had since the news of Kiryuu's disappearance broke, but the lines around his eyes lessened a little. "They don't. If he's in one, it's not registered. His brother must have made it."

"Still, he'll be safe. Those wards wouldn't discriminate."

"I don't think Ichiru did, either, in the end."

"Would someone please explain what’s going on?" Takuma asked. He still wore a smile, but it was strained. There was a limit to even Takuma's incredible well of patience and he was rapidly approaching it.

Senri didn't blame him. Being Kaname's right hand was almost impossible, and Takuma excelled at it—but maintaining Kaname's station in his absence? That was a much more demanding task. And Kaname wasn't just their lord, either. He was their friend. Their family. It wasn't just professional concern, not anymore. It never had been, for Takuma. He cared so much, about everyone, and even more for Kaname. The last thirty-six hours had worn him thin. Now, the cracks were finally starting to show.

Senri sent him a wave of warmth through their bond, bathing him in love, appreciation, and care. In the rereview mirror, Takuma smiled at him and replied in kind. Golden warmth radiated from Senri's heart outward, filling him up to the limits of his skin. But the feeling didn't last. It couldn't, in the current dark circumstances.

Cross turned to Takuma with a vaguely amused look. His voice was teacher-like when he spoke. "I don't suppose any of you know why, exactly, the Kiryuu are so valued within the Association?"

Takuma's eyes narrowed. His smile twitched into an expression like a grimace. "I'm not sure if now is the time—"

Yagari cut him off. "Quiet, punk."

Cross didn't seem to care about the interruptions, possibly too crazy for Takuma's words to reach him. He continued as if giving a lecture. "Primarily it was for their warding abilities. Dwellings, family homes, safe houses; the Kiryuu specialized in all of it. That was why Shizuka needed Ichiru to get into the Kiryuu Compound. Try as she might, she couldn't get past the wards on her own. Apparently, she also had him set up a bolthole in Tokyo."

"But, how do you know this isn't the bad guys' work? They could be just as good. I also doubt Kiryuu’s evil twin would have been keen on Kiryuu being able to waltz into his hidey-hole," Hanabusa brought up, leaning forward. The academics of the issue had distracted him from the dire circumstances. Senri tried to not be annoyed.

"Would you describe what you're seeing as a silvery, misty shroud becoming denser as you go? Surrounding something impenetrable, cold … dangerous?" Cross asked.

Hanabusa nodded. "It's like the wards are threatening me, almost. Pushing me. But that's impossible. Wards are defensive. They can't hurt you."

Yagari snorted. "Kiryuu wards can. Back in the war days they set huge nets of them around entire towns and cities. Then they'd sit back and watch vampires trying to leave or enter get fried. Better than a bug zapper, if you ask me. It was outlawed as 'too genocidal' during peacetime."

"How could Kiryuu-san get in, then, being a level D? And how would he even know it was there? And, more importantly, how are we going to find it?" Takuma cut in, each question spiraling into another.

"Wards set with Kiryuu blood wouldn't worry about status. It’s the familial tie that’s important. The family ring, which Zero has had since the summer, is keyed to the wards. It would pull him towards a safehouse if there was one nearby. As to how we'll find it," Cross murmured, and took a small dagger from within his coat, "We'll use my blood."

Hanabusa frowned. "You're not a blood relation."

"No," Cross said. His voice had gone calm, idle. "But I have been Zero's guardian for many years, and in all that time I've never put him at risk; even when he wanted me to. That'll be enough for the wards."

Reluctantly, Hanabusa handed over the crystal. Cross took it and made a small cut on the meat of his thumb. After Cross coated the crystal liberally in his blood, Hanabusa took it back by the chain and set to work. Sans Takuma, who was still driving, every single passenger in the car had their eyes fixed to the map. Even Takuma took constant glances at the mirror, his anxiety pulsing hot and desperate through the bond. The crystal seemed to swing for ages, blood dripping sluggishly on the shiny map paper. Cross bit at his bottom lip, making Senri think that he wasn't as sure as he'd sounded.

However, perhaps five minutes past an eternity later, the crystal lurched to one location on the map. No circling, no movement at all, just a neat rest against an apartment building maybe twenty minutes outside the original search zone.

"Thank the fucking Gods," Takuma swore. He blushed immediately after, unused to swearing, but no one teased him. He was only voicing the thoughts of every single person in the van, after all.

In Senri's humble opinion, the place was a dump. And not in the dystopic, avant-garde way that was presently so popular with designers. His delicate vampire nose picked up the sick perfume of drugs, piss, and human refuse from inside the van. The whole street of buildings seemed to slouch, downtrodden, scarred with neglect and littered with abandoned trash. Calling the squat apartment building they pulled up to 'dilapidated' would be too kind.

"Yup, this is the place," Cross chirped, grin sharp-edged.

Yagari nodded, his shotgun coming alive with a clack. "Nearly a signature," he growled.

"What is?" Takuma asked, polite, but trying to wrestle some control of this situation back. Senri gave him another  comforting smile from the backseat.

"High-traffic, out of sight, and out of character," Hanabusa murmured, looking to Cross for approval.

Cross nodded, an educator's smile melting some of the lethality from his face. "The perfect place for a warded safe house. Very Kiryuu thinking."

"Alright," Yagari said, like it was a call to action. He was apparently done with everything that he couldn't shoot. "Get your shit together. We have a bratty apprentice to get back." He popped the door open and left without another glance. Cross was only half a step behind him, a long, sheathed sword in hand.

Senri snorted. Beside him, Hanabusa pulled a face, while Takuma muttered under his breath. "Hunters, not a plan in sight, of course."

Senri spared a smile for his mate. He empathized with Takuma, but there was no time for comfort. Reaching forward, Senri released the seat blocking his way and swung out the van door Yagari had left open. Hanabusa followed, and soon Takuma was leading them into the building while he and Hanabusa dropped back a step into a triangle. Strongest player at the front, two defensemen at his back. Classic vampire formation. Not a hunter commonality, Senri guessed. Because that would be too easy, of course.

As Senri had expected, the lobby was just as distasteful as the building's exterior. Grimy linoleum, a smattering of decrepit chairs, dingy yellow paint chipping off the walls. The overpowering reek of cigarette smoke made Senri’s stomach twist. Even supposing Kiryuu wasn't injured and Kaname was the picture of mental health--the faster they could get Kiryuu out of here, the better.

As the three vampires cleared the entrance, Senri noticed a disgruntled human glaring at them from an open door marked 'OFFICE.' Cross gestured to the man as he rejoined the vampires, Yagari trailing behind him like a reaper. "The manager says a couple purchased a suite on the fifth floor last year. His description fits Hio Shizuka and Kiryuu Ichiru."

Cross's hair fell into his face, loosed from its tie. His glasses were gone, and his hazel eyes glinted eerily without their friendly shape. He was dressed in a long black jacket, tactical pants, and combat boots. He held the katana in his hand like it was an extension of himself. 

This was The Vampire Without Fangs, Senri presumed. He spared a moment to be grateful that Cross had retired before Senri's time, and that Senri hadn't done anything since to draw the man out of his new cozy persona—unlike the poor son of a bitch who'd taken The Vampire's chosen son.

The hunter pair didn't wait for any comments before leading the way to the elevators. "Did he mention Kiryuu?" Takuma finally asked as the doors closed.

Cross shook his head, reaching for the fifth-floor button. The elevator jerked up with a slow squeal. "No. And the video cameras are fakes, of course. However," Cross paused, suddenly looking older and more dangerous than ever, "They did find blood in the lobby last night."

Takuma swallowed. "But no body—or ash?"

Senri reached for Takuma and briefly squeezed his love's hand. Takuma's face had gone paper white, and his grip was slight when he squeezed Senri's hand back.

Cross's jaw tightened; it was Yagari who provided a verbal answer. "This isn't the kind of place to go looking for one until somebody complains about the stink. They cleaned up the blood until they hit room 533 and left it at that."

"Of course," Hanabusa sighed. "They wouldn't have been able to get past the wards, anyway." He paused a moment in thought, and then was almost mowed down by Yagari as the elevator doors opened.

"How are we going to get in, anyway?" Hanabusa grouched, shooting daggers at Yagari's back. Yagari didn't pause, storming down the hall with Cross. After a split-second's hesitation, the vampires fell into step behind them.

"An upside to training the heirs to a warding family is that they give you a key in case you get in a pinch," Yagari said. Then, he produced a literal key from his pocket. It was perhaps a finger long, brightly silver, and etched with a rose and other designs Senri vaguely recognized as runes. But magic never had been Senri's strong suit.

There wasn't time for anymore explanation before they were at the right door. It was what might have been cream once, with rusty hardware and an off-putting collection of mystery stains. One looked vaguely hand-shaped. Senri spent ten seconds trying to convince himself that it wasn't Kiryuu's blood. He failed, but no one needed to know that.

There seemed to be a collective silence among them; a waiting, of sorts. As though no one could quite believe that the misery was almost at an end.

Senri swallowed. Or, in the worst case, at a fresh beginning...

Yagari broke first. He shoved the key forward, teeth toward the door. It didn't even touch the lock, an ancient electronic card scanner, before a curling, silver mist swirled together to form a traditional keyhole. "If I didn't have this baby," Yargari said and inserted the key. The mist glowed briefly before dissipating. "We might all be dead by now."

Hanabusa snorted. "Wonderful. Can we get in now? The sooner this is over, the better."

"You'd just better hope the brat's in one piece," Yagari sneered, "Or I'm coming after all you fanged bastards." He shifted and struck out with his left leg. The door's cheap frame snapped, sending the door banging back against the wall.

"Duly... Noted..." Takuma stammered. No one noticed his sudden lack of composure. For the door had bounced open, and out had flowed the most overwhelming scent of blood, decay, and dead roses.

Takuma reached out his hand, took Senri's in his, and breathed out. "Oh, no."

Horrified, Senri nodded in agreement, his eyes frozen on the dismal darkness inside.

His head hurt. The deep, pulsing pain infected his face, his jaws, leaving him gape-mouthed, breathing through his ragged throat. His head was tucked into his chest, body pulled tightly together to protect his bleeding wounds, his vulnerable gut and throat. Someone had renovated the bedroom and removed the windows, but even with his stabbed back pressed as close as he could bear to the cornered walls he still felt exposed. He had half a mind to put the bed between himself and the door, just to give himself one more protection, but his body wouldn't move anymore. It had finally given out on the bed, and on the bed it would remain.

He had never thought he would get to die in bed. Show's what he knew. He would have laughed, but his chest... Heh, if his throat burned, then his chest was on fire. His back, too. Odd, that. He was bleeding so much; could blood not put the fire out? But, no—his blood was fire, too.

Gods, the blood. He was painted in it. Some was older, now. Tacky. Flaky. But even if his body had improved after—it—he could still feel the spill and drip. He was wounded all over. Some had closed, thanks to it, only to be torn open anew as he fought again, slaughtering all who attacked him. Their blood had been no good, gone rancid with madness. And he couldn't harm the humans. His soul flinched at the thought, spiting in the face of his starving, blood-let body. So he'd followed the pull of safety on his hand, away from the battlefield, iron will at the fore. But now he was weakening. It—the Rose Seal, he remembered groggily—had broken, but his new body—should-have-been-mine-always body, his instincts hissed—tolerated anti-vampire wounds even less well, still unstable and fragile after being so-long sealed away.

That knife's bite had killed him once; now, it would do it again.

He didn't want to think about death. Not when his seemed to be drawing closer. The Rose had bloomed, petals falling away from his skin, and he was withering with it. If he died—would the secrets go with him, too? They would. But.

He didn't want to die. He couldn't leave—Kaname. His eyes flicked open, searching wildly for a person who wasn't there. It happened, from time to time. When the seal on his hip broke, he was sure he could feel Kaname calling to him, coaxing him back from the soothing dark. As it turned out, it was just his own damn stubbornness. Gods, if only he could have ignored the call. He wouldn't have been in pain, now, at the very least.

But, Kaname—his last cord to this world. He could feel the remnants of their bond, half-formed and strained, binding them. He could feel Kaname's misery, his distress. He found it easy to become lost in the rawness of Kaname's emotions, particularly his rage. There was so much of it. Hatred. Run, the monster is loose, and he is so angry.

He whined lowly in the back of his throat, body curling tighter into itself, upsetting his wounds afresh. For a moment he thought he might give into nausea, but he knew from experience that he didn't have anything in him to lose. Instead, his fingers bent into claws. His nails bit into the scarred palms of his hands. Fresh blood hit the air and his fangs--they ached. They ached and they pulsed and he could hear people outside.

The people passed by all the time, on their day-to-day activities. They were humans. He could smell their mortality, hear it in their heartbeats. Their blood wouldn't heal him fully, but—no, no, no, no. He couldn't, he wouldn't, no. He didn't care who he was, what he was; he wouldn't hurt any humans. He wouldn't.

He protected humans. He would not hurt them. Not before he hurt himself.

His knuckles whitened, hand strangling the grip of his gun. It was the only thing he'd taken from the battlefield. It had burned him when he'd first woken, high on the rush of being unsealed. The gun had been as afraid of him as he was of himself.

He smiled grimly, thumb brushing softly over the engraved name. Bloody Rose. He'd won back it's loyalty. He'd proven himself trustworthy by downing the monsters he'd been trapped with. The metal had stopped burning him after that, and together they'd taken out the wards and made it to the safehouse.

Ichiru's safehouse. Damn his twin, always forcing him to make the hard choices. Even from beyond the grave.

He'd barely done beyond that to ensure his survival, which he supposed would have driven his twin mad. He'd stripped off his bloody clothing and bandaged the worst of what he could reach, but there had only been limited equipment in the bathroom and he had been tired. He was still tired. A cynical part of him, a part that Kaname's words and promises had never quite touched, imagined that he always would be.

If he lay very still, he could almost pretend that he was back with Kaname the morning that he'd left. He'd been so angry, but...Now, he just wanted to go back.

Yes, he would just...Go back.

"Kiryuu-san! Dear Gods...Hanabusa, get in here!"

"Takuma..."

"I don't even know where to start. And what's up with his aura? It—it's like a—"

"Shut up, fang-face! Ah, brat, just hang on, okay? We'll get you stitched up, you've had worse."

"Oh, my poor boy. It's okay now, just rest, Zero-rin. It's okay."

And Zero said nothing at all.

Chapter Text

"He's a Pureblood!? Are you kidding me?" Hanabusa hissed, the door snapping shut behind him. He'd been repeating the sentiment since Kiryuu's pulse had stopped stammering and finally settled into a steady rhythm. Before that he hadn't been thinking at all. Just acting, hands flying to patch and stich and bandage. Now, Hanabusa was bloody and exhausted. And he reeked of pure blood. His instincts twisted anxiously under his skin.

Inside the bedroom, Cross was still tending to Kiryuu: holding his hand, brushing back his hair. He was a father, not the Academy's headmaster or a bloodthirsty hunter, and he'd nearly lost his son.

Kiryuu had only partially stabilized after being fed huge amounts of Takuma's blood. Hanabusa was frankly amazed that Kiryuu had improved even that much. Even if—some fucking how—Kiryuu had pulled a Yuuki and jumped up the vampire pyramid, he was still so heavily injured that Hanabusa's first instinct as a medic had been to dope him up on painkillers and wait for the reaper. Only his loyalty (and, to be honest, fear) for Kaname had jarred him into acting. Thank the Gods that there was an extra store of medical supplies in the hall closet. What they had brought with them had been entirely insufficient. Thank the Gods for Takuma's blood, too. Without that, Kiryuu would have surely died.

Hanabusa shuddered. Kiryuu had not deserved an end like that. Certainly the rest of them had not deserved the repercussions that would follow, either. They had done all they could to forestall that terrible fate. Now was the time to do what geniuses did best—find answers.

Turning to the assembled men, Hanabusa reviewed his options. Takuma was settled in a chair, pale as snow and eyes distant. Senri was stationed dutifully at his side, his own wrist bandaged from trying to restore Takuma. Across from the three vampires, Yagari sat with his head in his hands.

For the first time, Hanabusa thought Yagari looked old. Obviously, the situation was wearing on him. Unfortunately, Hanabusa did not much care. Yagari and Cross were the only people who hadn't frozen at the Big Reveal. Hence, with Cross tending to Kiryuu (and Hanabusa not being that big of a dick), Yagari was his best option for answers. Straightening his shoulders, Hanabusa marched up and stood in front the hunter.

"So," Hanabusa started, faux-casual. "What the hell is going on?"

Yagari didn't even raise his head. "Fuck off, fang-face."

Hanabusa choked on a hysterical laugh, the absurdity of the situation hitting him suddenly and all at once. "'Fang-face?' Are you kidding me? If you haven't noticed, your fucking apprentice has a pair of fangs, you hypocritical ass—"

The click of a gun aimed at his head shut Hanabusa up quick.

"I think you should just close your mouth before I put a new hole in you," Yagari hissed. In his periphery, Hanabusa was aware of Senri and Takuma rising warily, slowly. Takuma was weak from blood-loss. Senri worked best with a partner. If Yagari decided to go trigger happy, Hanabusa realized that he wasn't too fond of his odds.

"Put the gun down, Toga," Cross's voice cut in, prayer-soft and beaten. Hanabusa abruptly felt like a huge ass and he wasn't even been the one that tone was directed at.

Yagari glared. "Fuck you, Kaien," he said, irritated. He did, however, put the gun down, for which Hanabusa was very grateful.

Cross shrugged and slumped down on the couch, exhaustion in every line of his body. His head flopped on Yagari's shoulder. "Maybe when you stop threatening my students."

Yagari snorted affectionately . Hanabusa felt more awkward than ever before.

"Well," Hanabusa said, smothering the urge to stammer and blush. Gods, he thought, it was like realizing your parents still had sex. "Thanks, Headmaster. Um, but do you think you could, ah, maybe fill us in on what's going on now?"

"Yes," Takuma added, one hand on his wrist, where a neat, unmistakably Pureblood bite lay behind pristine bandages. "I'd rather like to know myself. And I'm sure Kaname-sama will be deeply interested, too. I doubt Kiryuu-san passed this knowledge along."

Cross sighed heavily. Beside him, Yagari tensed. "You are right, of course," Cross said. "However, Kaname should not feel too left out."

Takuma lent forward in his chair. "What do you mean?"

"He means," Kiryuu said, body slumped against the door jamb, newly long silver hair spilling around his waist, "That this secret's been hidden longer than Rido Kuran's walked the Earth."

And then everyone sprang to their feet, and there was a lot of yelling. Sitting on the couch still, Hanabusa watched Kiryuu's face. There was exhaustion there, and the shadow of death. But below that, tucked ever so carefully away, Hanabusa saw fear. Not surprise. Not panic. Just fear. And in the face of that fear, Hanabusa had the odd feeling that one of Yagari's bullets might have tasted better than whatever fresh Hell they were about to stumble into.

Standing was a Herculean task. Zero's legs trembled under him. His body burned. His ribs felt ground to dust and reshaped anew. His insides were a soup of molten lava. He was sweaty and cold, and he could feel the delicate new flesh covering his wounds, his gouged back and stomach, threatening to break open again. However, Zero stood mostly under his own power. And, for the first time in—how long? —he didn't at all crave blood. These were successes enough.

For now, his instincts whispered, and Zero grimaced as freshly uncapped power writhed under his skin. For now.

"Zero? Zero-rin, look at me, here, take my arm, what hurts worst? What are you doing out of bed? Silly boy, I swear—"

"You're smothering him! Dammit, Kaien, sit your ass down. Hey, brat, that's it, knew you wouldn't stay down for—"

"Fucking Hell," Zero cursed. He reluctantly let himself be manhandled until he was on the couch, a hunter on either side of him, three distinctly spooked-looking vampires across from him on the opposite couch. He noted Ichijou clutching his wrist and felt his stomach twist. Ah, so that was why he wasn't dead yet.

He gave a nod to Ichijou. "Thanks."

Ichijou swallowed, reshuffling his hands until they were neatly crossed on his lap. It was the most ruffled Zero had ever seen him. Guilt stirred. White bandages circled both of Ichijou's delicate wrists. There were dark circles under his eyes and his skin was nearly translucent. The price of saving Zero's life.

"It was the least I could do, ah, Kiryuu-sama," Takuma said.

Zero snorted. It hurt like a bitch, but he could give no other reaction to that. "I think we're past the honorific and last names bullshit," he said. "Call me Zero."

Ichijou's natural smile flickered on for a moment, then died again. His discomfort was palpable. Obviously there was no vampire etiquette established for this scenario. And so it begins, Zero thought. Dread bubbled up in his gut. He had run this situation so many times over in his head, never quite believing that it was possible—that it would really happen to him, that he would really be the one to screw up—but now it was here. Zero didn't feel ready to cope. The words Ichijou eventually settled on did nothing to soothe him, either.

"I'm not sure what protocol dictates," Ichijou replied slowly, eyes skating to Shiki, who simply watched their tableau with blank blue eyes. Aidou, for once, was silent. His fingers were steepled. He would take his cue from Ichijou, Zero realized, and so would Shiki. So would Kaname's other nobles. "It would be inappropriate, now that you are a—Pureblood," Ichijou finished, eyes wide like, for all the world, he couldn't believe his own words.

Fuck that, was Zero's immediate response. But he knew this world and the appearances it demanded, so he reined it in. "In public, fine," Zero said, "But behind closed doors? Drop the pretenses." He glared at the assembled vampires. "Let's get one thing straight. This," Zero gestured to his hair, which now fell in mussed waves around his body, "Changes nothing."

'This' changed a ton of shit, actually, but Zero would cling to any scrap of normalcy he could get his hands on. Damage control, he thought desperately. So, he'd nearly died and fucked his life up in the process: the least he could do was throw some sand on the blood. Triage. He was just manipulating the circumstances to his advantage. Kaname would be so proud—Fuck.

Kaname. In the painful rush of waking, Kaname had completely slipped Zero's mind. Wildly, Zero reached for their mental connection, grasping onto the thin strand with both hands.

Through the bond, he could feel Kaname's terrible miasma of hateangerfrustrationpossessionlossdesolationworrylovedesperation. Mentally, the brutal emotions hurt to touch. It was like sticking his brain in acid. Zero was stubborn, though. And he could remember how he'd shied away from Kaname's emotions before, too disorientated by agony and magic to realize that the ragewrathruin wasn't directed at Zero but at his attackers. Now he clung on and pushed through the bond a wave of hopereassurancepatienceI'mcominghome.

The bond went quiet, stilling as though holding a breath. Then, all at once, a surge of relieflovethankgodsyes slammed into Zero, shocking the air out of his lungs. Some of his experience must have shown on his face, because immediately Cross was fussing at him again.

"What happened?" Cross demanded, hands on his shoulders. It was jarring. Zero tried to lean back, but Cross's grip was iron-strong. "Did you pull something? Pop a stitch? Are you bleeding? You shouldn't be sitting up. Let me—"

"Damnit, brat," Yagari growled on his other side, the anxious twist of his mouth betraying his caustic bravado. "Why'd you have to set him off again? Fuck, here, what did you—"

"Shut up!" Zero snapped. After a beat, both fusspots hesitantly removed their hands. Zero swallowed, trying to slow his racing heart. "I was just—Kaname."

Across the way, the vampires winced. Ichijou and Aidou quickly covered their expressions, while Shiki merely gave Zero a look of commiseration. 

Obviously, Zero thought, Kaname's displeasure at his disappearance had not been quiet. His vampire thrilled at the suffering Kaname was willing to inflict for Zero's sake; his hunter, exhausted and hurt, was merely grateful to have a competent ally for once. Zero, caught as always in the middle of his instincts, chose not to think about it anymore.

"Okay, yeah, wonderful," Aidou finally said. For once, Zero was grateful for his snotty voice for the distraction it provided. "But what I want to know is how the fuck this happened. It's like Purebloods are coming out of the woodwork lately. What's the story behind you?"

"Hanabusa," Ichijou snapped, obviously on his last strand of patience. "Would it kill you to pretend to have some manners?"

Aidou pouted, and Cross opened his mouth to interrupt, and tension shot through Yagari, and Shiki and Ichjou shared a long-suffering look—and then Zero silenced them all. "Don't bother," he dismissed shortly. "We have more important issues than ancient history."

"Um," Aidou snarked, "Sorry, but since when are surprise-Purebloods not a big deal?"

"Since somebody tried to off me using a human and hunter wards," Zero supplied. Against his sides, Zero felt Cross and Yagari freeze. The vampires, too, looked appropriately shocked.

Zero felt something primal relax. Sure, he had never consciously thought that any of the people in this room would try to kill him, but his instincts were not easily lulled. Especially after nearly dying. Seeing their surprise was comforting.

"A human?" Cross murmured, half to himself. Zero saw that his eyes were sad. On his other side, Yagari's face had gone stormy. The vampires had adopted carefully neutral expressions. Zero didn't blame them. Incidents were always messier when normal humans were involved.

Ichijou lent forward, his expression grim. "Perhaps you should start from the beginning." He paused, then smiled glibly. "Of the attack, I mean."

Zero's mouth quirked. "Appreciated. Could we do this on the way to the Academy? Kaname's going crazy."

"-er," Shiki quipped. Zero bit back a grin. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

He snorted quietly. And maybe vampires glittered in the sunlight.

"How long have I been out?" Zero asked Yagari later, after everyone had made commiserating noises and wandered off to pack up their stuff. A while, Zero estimated from the spent blood tablet packages on the coffee table. But not long enough to settle in. Aidou had only been wearing an undershirt, probably because, as Kaname's chief medic, he'd stained his sweater and dress shirt saving Zero's life. A task, Zero had gathered, that had been done only very recently and by the skin of his teeth.

Zero certainly felt that way. He currently lay on the couch while he spoke to Yagari. The others politely ignored their conversation while they packed and made calls, handling assorted loose ends. There was no point in moving him back to bed when the goal was to reach the Academy as soon as possible.

Zero didn't want to admit it, but the ten steps from the bed to the couch had exhausted him entirely. He couldn't have lain down without Cross's help. That trial had been managed in merciful silence, the lack of Cross's teasing the true sign that Zero had scared him. He’d fluttered away moments later, leaving Zero alone with Yagari. Cross, Zero remembered, had never been able to sit still when he or Yuuki had been sick or seriously hurt as children.

Zero struggled to keep his eyes open. He was drugged to the gills by Takuma's almost pure blood—he had awkwardly given Zero leave to use his first name before walking off, probably to give a report to Kaname—and whatever heavenly cocktail Aidou had pumping through his veins. Still, all it did was take the edge off and make him tired. The pain ravaged him from beyond a paper-thin veil, angry and wrathful. Sleep would be his true refuge, the best state for his improved vampire healing to work in, but Zero needed answers first. That hunter-born anxiety had been what had driven him from the bed when he'd first surfaced, instincts pricked by the click of Yagari's gun cocking.

Pureblood senses and hunter paranoia: Zero would be blessed if he ever slept again.

Zero and Yagari had already covered most of Zero's other curiosities. His teammates had been informed that Zero had been injured mid-mission; Kaname's men were coming along as a friendly diplomatic gesture. Zero didn't mention that Kaito was too smart to fall for that, or that Yori already knew that Zero was Kaname's mate. He appreciated the attempt to protect his privacy.

Yagari had also managed to track down Zero's bike. He'd traced the seals woven into the mechanics. That had led Yagari to the scene of the attack, but time had already worn away anything useful. Someone—not the human police, Yagari had hacked their records—had already done away with the human woman's remains, too.

The thought of her left a bitter taste in Zero's mouth.

Yagari grunted. "Not long enough for you to take the bike back, if that's what you're getting at."

Zero grimaced. He had a knee-jerk aversion to anyone riding his bike but him, even his old master. But it just wasn't an option. Even Zero recognized that. "That's not what I meant," Zero said. "I just realized that I don't actually know today's date, is all. Or remember anything since entering that alley."

Yagari sighed. "Kuran really lost his shit about twenty-four hours after you left campus. The vampires are being vague as Hell—no surprise—but we think the attack on you somehow hurt him, too. He knew you were in the weeds, so Ichijou started raising alarms. That's when we got involved and figured out that the whole mission was fucked. Then we lost our shit and this crew got together. We found you in the early morning. It's almost early morning again, now."

Yagari took a long, deep breath. It rattled in his chest and seemed to make him sag. If there was one word Zero had never though he would associate with Yagari Toga, it was sag. "You have no idea how bad it was, brat," Yagari said. "We all thought you were dead. I didn't even think it mattered if the seal broke. There was so much blood. The rose vines were all dead. And you... Zero, you were just so still."

Zero's lungs felt frozen in his chest. Never, in more than a decade, had Yagari ever used Zero's given name. It was always 'brat' or 'idiot' or, when the situation was serious and Zero had really fucked up, 'Kiryuu.' Hearing his name on Yagari's lips was disquieting. So was the obvious pain in his master's voice.

"You can't do this again," Yagari said after a moment. "I know, I know, 'we live dangerous lives' and all that, and I'm not saying stay home and take up knitting. Just... Fuck. Just get a second opinion on anything anyone in the Association says, alright? Especially now that the seal's snapped." Yagari grimaced. "They'll be after you more than ever."

Zero swallowed. "You think hunters are behind this?" It was safer ground to speak on than anything else Yagari had said.

Yagari scrubbed a hand across his face. "Maybe. Wards suggest it. But after Rido? I couldn't say for sure. Maybe your—what are you and Kuran, even? Boyfriends? —will have some more input."

Dear Gods, what sort of bullshit conversation was this? Zero felt besieged by emotional nonsense. First the 'be careful' speech, and now Yagari wanted to know what to call Zero and Kaname? Practically suburban. Half of Zero felt horrified. The other half... Well. It was nice to know that someone cared. Really, really, nice. Not that he'd ever say so, of course. That would just be weird.

Shoving down his initial impulse to flee from emotion-based conversations, Zero shrugged. "Kaname calls me his mate. Like, uh, as in soulmates. That's the vampire term for what we are, and probably the most technically accurate. 'Boyfriends' works, I guess." Zero paused, biting hard on his lip. "He says that he wants me," Zero spit out. He had to do it fast or the words wouldn't come at all. "That he wants a life with me."

Yagari looked like someone had put-out a cigarette on his naked flesh. He summarily lit up his own smoke, letting out a long swirl of tobacco. Zero felt comforted by the smell, which had saturated his childhood. He knew the scent of Yagari's smokes better than his mother's perfume or his father's sword polish or Ichiru's favourite incense.

After an incredibly long moment, Yagari said, "Just be careful, Zero. Promise me that you'll be careful."

Zero nodded, and eventually let himself be loaded amicably into the van, where he slipped quietly into his head for the entire trip back to the Academy.

Yuuki was, in a word, concerned. Wary. Scared. Even 'terrified' was not exaggerating too much. As she walked the halls of the Night Class dorms, her palms sweat and her heart hurt. She felt like everywhere she walked all eyes were on her and not in a good way. She felt both like predator and prey; she felt like everyone could see that she was both. For the first time in her life, as a Cross or a Kuran, Yuuki was aware that the world was watching her—and she wanted them to look away.

The absence of Kaname had only made her life worse. Beyond the weight of Kaname's aura, which wore on the Night Class like a cloud of crematorium smoke, the gap he left behind in all their lives stood out like an amputated limb. Yuuki hadn't been aware of how much Kaname truly did at Cross Academy. He was a leader, enforcer, guide, guardian, and counsellor to the entire Night Class. He was the barrier between the social and political worlds that revolved around the Academy. He protected them, and suddenly his protection was gone.

With Takuma, Senri, and Hanabusa off campus, Yuuki was aware that many people expected her to step into her brother's place. But when she tried all she felt was wrong-footed and clumsy. Usually Siren, Ruka, or Akatsuki had to step in to fix whatever Yuuki had just made worse. These instances of failure wore on her. Still, they were not her biggest worries.

Sara had promised that killing Kiryuu would heal Kaname. She had provided books that had said as much and had bolstered Yuuki's confidence. Yet, as the hours wore on and Zero remained gone, Kaname only worsened. After sending out the search party, Kaname had refused visits by anyone—Yuuki included. Even Siren, arguably Kaname's most loyal courtier, was forbidden from his rooms.

Yuuki had first thought that this would be like lancing a boil. To pierce the skin would hurt, would bleed, but only so that the sickness could be drained. But, as hours spilled into days, clearly the sickness was not draining. The infection instead pooled around the Night Class dorms before seeping outward and tainting the flesh of the whole Academy.

What... What if Yuuki had been wrong? What if killing Zero had been the wrong thing to do? Maybe the spell (if there was a spell) had to be broken some other way? But Sara had said that Yuuki was doing the right thing. That she was doing the good and proper Pureblood thing. And if anyone would know, certainly it was Shirabuki Sara.

Yuuki smiled, thinking of Sara's trilling voice. Sara was beautiful, and powerful, and so, so clever. Yuuki adored her. They'd spoken only a handful of times, through letters and one careful phone call, and Yuuki cherished each scant contact. She felt safe with Sara's voice in her ear, and more than treasured; valued. Like Yuuki had something to contribute to Sara's life, instead of just being a bauble to be possessed.

She felt, too, that she learned at Sara's side. That's why Yuuki and Sara would have their first real meeting tonight, so that Yuuki could be properly instructed on the next step of their plans. Yes, Yuuki thought, taking a fortifying breath. There was no need to panic. That would only betray Sara's faith in her.

And, of course, the plan was the only reason she was so excited to meet Sara in person. Kaname still owned her heart, obviously. How odd to even think otherwise. She was doing this for her Kaname. Kaname.

Straightening her mussed skirts, Yuuki rose from her favorite settee in the Night Class library and walked with cheerful steps in the direction of the foyer. She was supposed to leave at noon, but if she left now she could spend some time in the shops first. Maybe find something for Sara? Of course, the shops around the Academy couldn't possibly have anything to Sara's standards. But. There was a quaint florist on the corner, there. Surely, flowers—

Yuuki froze. Her heart stuttered in her chest. Her limbs went gone cold and weak and numb. It was like been dropped in the ocean. The sensation started at the nape of her neck, chasing down her spine and into her blood. Something was wrong, Yuuki thought, her senses screaming. No, not something; someone. Someone was here, someone new, someone with an aura like a freezing tidal wave.

A common vampire—one of the maids—skittered past Yuuki with wild eyes. Yuuki recognized her as one of Kaname's personal staff and snapped an arm out, stopping the woman short.

"What is going on?" Yuuki hissed. "I thought that there were no more new students arriving."

The woman snatched her arm back. "There aren’t, though that is not your concern."

Yuuki's eyes flew open. How dare this wretch not afford her the proper respect? After everything? How could Kaname let his staff treat her like this? Hah, a nasty voice in Yuuki's mind murmured, since when has he ever done anything to protect you? Maybe...

Yuuki narrowed her eyes.

Maybe... You should protect yourself.

Throwing out a hand, Yuuki called on her power and watched with satisfaction as the maid smashed against the floor. The woman hit the carpet with a bruising thump, gasping for breath. "Answer me," Yuuki snapped. "And this time, watch your words." She released her hand, careful to keep her surprise hidden. She couldn't believe that had actually worked. She hadn't been aware she could even do that.

Heh. This showed that Kaname really hadn't taught her anything.

The maid sputtered, her face pale, but this time when she answered she kept a civil tongue. "Lord Kaname-sama's rescue party has returned. They have recovered Kiryuu-san." The maid stumbled awkwardly to her feet. "He's alive. Please, I must fetch my Lord... my Lady."

Stunned, Yuuki nodded her assent. The maid threw her one last fearful look before stumbling down the hall, no doubt towards Kaname's rooms. Yuuki couldn't bring herself to care. Yuuki could barely keep herself standing. No wonder the spell on Kaname hadn't broken! Kiryuu was alive. The traitor was alive. Her once-brother was alive.

Which meant Sara's plan had failed.

Yuuki needed to warn her. Kaname would be hyper-paranoid now that Kiryuu was back. Sara showing up in town would be as good as a confession. Yuuki couldn't let Sara be harmed for simply trying to help her! Kaname wouldn't understand.

Kaname never did.

Turning on her heel, Yuuki fled to her rooms. She would send Sara a message through Sara's hunter spy and then pull out the mirror. Maybe she would be able to find out something more to share with Sara through a little of her own spying? Surely that was the least that Yuuki could do for Sara. Sara had done more for Yuuki than anyone else ever had.

Chapter Text

Cold light cut through the antechamber window. Kaname was frozen in the glare. Zero stood across from him, breathing, heels just touching the threshold. That was what Kaname had noticed first: the steady rise and fall of Zero's chest.

The bond felt light and warm between them, easy and airy. Pure. Sweet. Kaname had felt it healing, heating, steadily since Zero had sent that first overwhelming pulse. Now here Zero stood, solid and warm and so blessedly alive, clad in worn jeans and a too-big hoody. The bond sang like a bird uncaged. The feeling drowned out all other thoughts Kaname might have had.

Kaname took a step forward, barely able to process his relief after so many hours of choking pain. He wanted to touch, to taste, to peel away the clothes that made Zero look so unfamiliar and pull him close. He wanted to run his fingers over healing wounds and old scars and chase away the memory of pain. He wanted to trace the lines on Zero's tattooed neck with his tongue and tug at his piercings with his teeth and tease him into oblivion. He wanted to wash away the wariness that haunted the edge of Zero's eyes, to sooth him body and soul. He wanted to see him whole and held, safe in Kaname's possession.

"Kaname," Zero said. Kaname paused. There was a tension in Zero's voice that Kaname hadn't heard before. Not anger. Not wariness. On anyone else, Kaname would have described the tinge as fear. Yet Zero and fear were like amicable strangers. They glanced at each other in passing, a smile or nod exchanged, but never met. Parallel lines. Zero burned too hot—his anger, for better or worse, always swallowed his fear. Kaname would know. And yet...

Kaname remained where he stood. "What happened?" Why won't you come into the room? Why has my lieutenant ignored my calls? What has gone wrong? Takuma had given him but one report, relating mostly what Kaname had already known through the bond—that Zero was alive and somewhat recovered—and nothing else.

Kaname had been in the dark since, for hours. And then, a strange Pureblood aura had broken through the Academy wards. Kaname had been moments from attacking, but the flare had died out as fast as it had come. Minutes later, a maid had stumbled into his private rooms to tell him that his nobles had returned, successful. That Zero was on the Academy grounds once more. Kaname's rational thoughts had flown out the window.

Zero set his jaw. "I was attacked in Tokyo. I can't tell you how many Es and a cluster of nobles. No one influential. It was obviously orchestrated by someone else, but it didn't have the mark of anyone we know."

None of yours, don't worry, Kaname heard. His posture uncoiled a notch. That had been a concern, though one he'd been forced not to dwell on. If one of his own people had been behind harming Zero, out of some sort of ill-placed protectiveness or other drivel, Kaname's rage would have been so much worse. An attack from a distant enemy, Kaname could understand—but from one of his own? No. There would have been no understanding. No mercy. Just raw, intolerable rage. Even now Takuma's recent silence itched at him, but Kaname held the irrational anger back. He knew he didn't have all the pieces.

"The Hunter Association is implicated, I assume," Kaname said carefully. His instincts were going haywire but Zero was coiled hair-trigger tight.

Zero nodded. "Cross and Yagari swear it's isolated, though. No one's gutsy enough to make a big play yet."

Kaname let out a long breath. "A spy, then." Kaname would have to call a mass court assembly of some sort. Something intimate, private. Where he could smoke out any pests that had made it into his own nest. Where there was one spy, there was always another.

Belatedly he remembered the Samhain Ball he was supposedly throwing. Kaname had regretted the idea since Zero had left his room for what he'd feared was the last time. All that had kept him from cancelling was the thought that if he let the ball go, it would be like admitting that Zero was dead. The ball was planned to introduce their relationship to society. Without Zero, there was no relationship and, after Kaname's rage was satisfied, likely not much left of society, either. Now, it seemed like one more headache than he needed.

"Zero," Kaname said, suddenly so tired that he couldn't care for tact. He strode forward, telegraphing his movements. When Zero didn't move away, he set gentle hands on his shoulders.

Zero tensed at the contact but he didn't reject the touch. His eyes fluttered shut a moment, as though he were savoring the touch as much as Kaname.

Emboldened, Kaname began to carefully ask his questions. "What happened? Why couldn't we find you? I must have called Takuma, Senri, and Hanabusa a thousand times but they never picked up, and then the maid burst in saying you were here, and," Kaname stuttered to a standstill. "And you're here. But I still feel like I’m missing part of you."

"That's my fault," Zero said, "I asked them to keep quiet, to let me talk to you first."

Kaname barley withheld a sigh. Zero would naturally focus on that first. "Talk to me about what?" Kaname leant in, resting his head on Zero's hoody covered shoulder. The hood was up, or he would have buried his nose in the crook of Zero's shoulder, luxuriated in his scent. Through the fabric, Zero's crisp scent was tinged with something distinctly store-bought. Was the hoody new? "You're alive. What more needs explaining?"

Kaname felt Zero's inhale. Kaname was inordinately pleased by the sign of life. "I nearly went mad, you know," Kaname murmured, only tangentially aware he'd cut Zero off. "If it hadn't taken every ounce of my will to hold myself together, I would have come for you. I almost did anyway, but I could feel you flinch from me." His fingers curled into the hoody, wary of the fresh injuries he could smell through the cloth: coppery blood, chemical medicine, and fresh cotton bandages. "There isn't anything else that needs explaining. I am only sorry I couldn't find you sooner."

"Oh, Kaname," Zero said, relaxing against Kaname's hands. But there was still that tension his voice, that unfamiliar note of awful fear. Kaname straightened, poised to take his bluntness a step further and wheedle out an answer, when Zero pulled down his hood, revealing a long tumble of silver hair.

While Kaname's brain struggled to keep up with what he knew that hair alluded to, his senses picked up again on the aura he'd felt briefly earlier. He'd forgotten momentarily, distracted by Zero, but now that crisp, cold aura grew stronger, slipping past its master's barriers to brush against Kaname's own.

Zero's aura. Sharp as a knife where Kaname's was gaseous, suffocating. Cold as ice where Kaname's was ambient but crushing to bear. Weightless, but threatening. A sniper on a rooftop. Enchanted vines on a foreboding tower. The thorns guarding that perfect rose blossom.

"How?" Kaname breathed. He was unable to look away from Zero, whose eyes had darkened to a deep, bloody plum, just as Kaname's shifted from chocolate to wine red when he called on his powers.

Now that he was looking for the signs, Kaname could easily pick out places where Zero's features had sharpened and refined. Only those who had spent time studying him would notice. Like Yuuki, Zero had always possessed the fine features associated with vampires. Because he was one, truly. Not a human. Not a hunter. A hidden Pureblood, as Yuuki was, had been...

Fuck, Kaname thought, distantly. This must be how it feels to be honestly, deeply shocked. Kaname quickly decided that he hated being on this end of the surprise.

"Kaname?" Zero asked.

There was a scant few inches between them, but Kaname had frozen again. He'd made Zero nervous. Kaname could read his emotions in the antsy twisting of his aura, in how the chilling waves of power pushed against Kaname like airless winds. Zero was strong, Kaname realized. Obviously. Zero could never be anything but. Yet, even in Pureblood circles, there would be few who would desire to tangle with him based on auras alone.

Breathing a silent hiss between his teeth, Kaname reluctantly stepped away from Zero. He went to his liquor cabinet, where he collected a very old bottle of scotch and a pair of glasses. "Something tells me," Kaname mused, "That this conversation will be a lot less awkward with alcohol."

Sitting down on an aptly placed couch, Kaname poured two glasses and then settled back. This way, Zero could choose to sit beside him or take the wingback. Best not to make Zero feel trapped, he thought. In fact, it would be best to keep this conversation as casual as possible. If there was one thing Kaname had learned, it was that Zero would fight tooth and nail against being cornered.

After a moment, Zero gave a sigh and followed after Kaname. Hesitantly, he pulled off the hoody before settling on the far side of the couch. There was a pinched expression on his face that nearly had Kaname on his feet, checking Zero's injuries. Because, increasingly obviously, he was terribly injured.

Stripped of the thick hoody, which must have been hunter-charmed to supress scent, the smell of pure blood and healing remedies was miasmic. Having seen Zero move, now, too, Kaname could easily read how he favoured his left side, how his right shoulder seemed to bother him, how he flexed his dominate hand and avoided moving that arm as best he could. Very terribly injured, then. Purebloods, even the youngest ones, healed most injuries in hours.

Takuma, Senri, and Hanabusa had all skated around Zero's injuries with varying degrees of skill. Apparently at Zero's command. Kaname would have planned punishments, but Zero was not just Kaname's mate and their tentative friend any longer. He was a Pureblood in his own right. Kaname recognized that his nobles had been put in a very hard spot.

Gods, Kaname thought, and took a long draft from his glass. When had his life become so very complicated? He grimaced. As if it had ever been simple.

Putting down the glass, Kaname shamelessly watched Zero. Unlike Yuuki, Zero seemed to have known what lie under his skin. He was too calm for his new status to be a surprise. And Kaname had seen the mystery seal on his hip. The equation only came to one answer. However, Kaname did have questions. The most important being, "Were you ever going to tell me?"

Zero didn't meet his eyes. "No. But only because I was never going to tell anyone." Zero absently twirled a newly long lock of hair around his finger, watching as the stains unwound. "The seal was never meant to come undone."

Kaname swallowed, filing that away. "Who else knew?"

Zero's eyes flickered to him. "Your three nobles, Cross—"

"No," Kaname cut him off. "Who knew? You know as well as I do that hiding a Pureblood isn't easily done. Who knew about this, Zero?" Kaname consciously softened his voice, aware that he was letting his temper out. "And why? How? Yuuki was hidden in the chaos around my parents' deaths, but, other than what Hio did..."

"This is older than that," Zero said, and Kaname, having finally learned when to shut up, did so. Zero took a quick pull of the scotch before saying, "What was cast on Yuuki was meant to be broken. She would have lost her mind, otherwise. Me?" Zero shook his head. "Not meant to happen."

Kaname frowned. "How? Wouldn't the power, the mentality, have fought to get free, just like Yuuki's?"

Zero pursed his lips. "That's the difference. Yuuki was a Pureblood who was sealed away. She lived some time with the instincts. In her, the animal was awake. Mine never was. I was born a hunter, as was my father, all the way up. But, when you get to just before the Monarchy falls, you hit a bump. Kiryuu Aibori, who just turns up out of nowhere and starts killing vampire lords like a housewife after dust bunnies."

Kaname blinked. "What?"

Zero shrugged, "My family just starts with Aibori and everyone ignores the weirdness because he was very talented at killing vampires in a time where humans had not a hope in Hell. He unites what is slowly becoming the hunters: humans who have found their teeth after living under vampire rule for so long. Everyone knows that part."

"But what does that have to do with the seal?"

Zero sighed. "Where do you think Aibori came from, Kaname? He was a Pureblood who had his vampire side bound away. The seal travels with his bloodline."

Kaname shook his head. "There would be records."

Zero snorted. "There would. Can you think of a reason a Pureblood vampire in the Monarchy period would, oh, I don't know, be erased?"

"Treason," Kaname said immediately. He should know; he'd written that law. "But that leads to execution."

Zero shrugged. "Unless your mate is powerful enough to hide you as a human."

"But who would have the resources—" Kaname stopped, eyes wide. His descendants had been up to more trouble than he'd ever imagined.

Zero nodded solemnly, unaware of the depths of irony Kaname was wading through. "Yeah. And to think, all the gossips would have been forbidden to talk about it under pain of death." Zero smirked. "Some of them must have imploded."

Zero plucked up his glass and downed the rest. After a beat, he said, "Aibori had a child, at some point, but never married. Kiryuu Ayame was even more of a badass than her dad, and the next thing you know, House Kiryuu is known for producing hunter legends. Time ticks on."

Kaname's drink sat unfinished, his mind overrun with new information. He had gone to Sleep before all of this. "Gods," he finally managed to say.

Zero nodded. "Yeah."

"So," Kaname said at last. "Why did the seal break, then? Because of your injuries?" Kaname asked. Because you nearly died?

Zero laughed, genuinely amused. Kaname, who'd been aiming for delicacy, tried not to feel insulted.

"Kaname," Zero said, grinning, "If all it took was death to wake a Kiryuu, how different do you think the world would be? No." Zero shook his head. "I can't even blame it on you, either. If it had to do with having pure blood in my system, then Ichiru would have woken instead of dying, too."

"Then, what?" Kaname asked, Zero having shot down his other theory.

Zero slowly moved to his feet. He wavered a moment, sending Kaname's heart into his throat, but steadied himself before Kaname could get up to help him. "I honestly don't know. There could have bee a kill switch to save the last of the line. Who knows?" He breathed deeply, rolling his shoulders, before heading for the door. "All that I know is that I need a shower. I smell like a morgue."

"What?" Kaname snapped, striding after Zero. "You're leaving?"

Zero shot him a look. "Well, yeah. I want clothes that didn't come from a shitty box store, a shower, a nap—"

"You can have all of those things here," Kaname cut in, putting a hand on the door, over Zero's shoulder. "You can barely move," Kaname added, both because it was true and because he didn't want to say his other reason: I need you in my sight so I can keep you safe. Zero sighed, but he must have read something persuasive in Kaname's face because his expression softened.

"Your nobles took good care of me, you know," Zero assured, "I'm not nearly as bad off as I was."

"And I am grateful," Kaname said. "But we are both too smart to pretend that you are not still badly wounded. Just tell me what you want," Kaname murmured, stepping closer. "Stay here."

Zero chuckled, "Anything?"

He placed a hand on Zero's hip and drew Zero gently against his chest. Kaname was careful of Zero's state but unable to resist touching him, smelling him, reveling in his very presence. The beast in his chest purred as Zero settled in his arms.

"It doesn't even have to be within reason," Kaname whispered. He greedily enjoying the shiver he felt travel over Zero's skin.

"You drive a hard bargain," Zero breathed. He trailed one graceful hand up Kaname's arm, leaving his fingers tangled sweetly in Kaname's hair. His chin rest on Kaname shoulder, nose turned to his neck. Kaname felt Zero inhale and smiled, happy that his mate desired his scent, too.

After a long moment, Zero lazily mumbled, "I guess I'll concede."

"A miracle," Kaname acknowledged, and went in for a kiss.

The bond sighed between them, but Kaname lost track of it. He was drowning in the reality of Zero. His lips' touch reached to Kaname's core, sweet and warm, like the first breath of spring. Zero's other hand came up cautiously, his curious fingers tracing along Kaname's jaw, joining the other in burying in his hair.

Kaname ached to touch more of Zero, but he was wary. There were too many layers. He needed to be able to see, to know where wouldn't hurt, where would pleasure…

"Not until I've had a proper shower!" Zero hissed, clamping a hand over Kaname's questing one. Kaname let his head flop forward, over Zero's shoulder and against the door, barely smothering his laughter. Zero's tone had sounded more like it belonged to a scandalized nun than a lethal hunter, but Kaname would be damned before he said so.

Kaname smirked and stepped back. "As I said, anything you want. Should I send someone to pick up clothes from your room? Books? Your laptop?"

Zero glared as though he'd sensed that Kaname had thought something that would annoy him. "I could just go get it myself."

Kaname nodded, smiling. "Or I could send one of my minions, as you call them?"

Zero huffed, but duly walked to Kaname's ensuite. He tossed, faux-casual, over his shoulder, "There's a second go-bag under my bed, my cell phone should be on my bed or close by it, and don't let Cross in or he will never leave."

"You know, only you would keep two go-bags. Even the truly paranoid don't let themselves go that far," Kaname mused. He was silently thrilled that Zero trusted him enough to reveal their existence to him.

Zero sauntered over to the couch, where he plucked up the hoody to reveal Bloody Rose. It was right within easy reach if he'd needed to shoot during their conversation. Kaname felt his jaw drop. Zero smirked at him. "There's paranoid, and then there's prepared. I find a good dose of both works best." The ensuite door snapped shut with a click. Kaname was left to stare after his mate, a bewildering mixture of concerned and turned on.

Pushing those feelings aside, he called Seiren to pick up what Zero had asked for. Then he sat and poured himself one last glass of scotch. He gave himself the length of time it took him to drink that glass to wonder why Zero had lied about knowing why the seal broke.

The tells weren't obvious, of course. Kaname only knew for sure because Zero didn't have complete control over his aura. That wasn't the problem, anyway. Kaname just didn't understand why Zero would be truthful about every detail except what had caused the change. Surely that mattered less than secret, convoluted family history. Kaname sighed, disappointed and fuzzy headed as the bottom of the glass became clear.

Ordinarily he'd feel guilty about the indulgence. Today, he couldn't help but feel that he deserved it. As far as Kuran Kaname was concerned, everyone deserved a drink today. Besides, vampires had fast metabolisms.

Putting the bottle away, he left the glasses for the maids and went to his chess board. He stayed there a long while, stubbornly refusing to admit that he was counting Zero's heartbeats through the rush of the shower.

Long hair was weird. It required more attention than he was used to giving to his hair—a hell of a lot more, what with the washing and the brushing and the way it got all over the place. Zero's first instinct was to whack it off with the dagger stowed in his boot and leave it at that. He'd even gotten to the point where he'd gathered it up, blade set to leave his hair just as it had been before. Then he'd realized that his Hunter's Seal had dissolved. Obviously, he'd thought. With the Rose Seal broken the pure blood in him had purged all else. Without a purpose, the Hunter's Seal had vanished.

Its disappearance left Zero looking more like Ichiru than he had in years.

There were still the piercings, bright and gleaming at his ear. But even as a kid Zero had wanted the piercings—Yagari, his dad, and his mom had all had them. He would have always worn them. But the seal? That was something else. Something concrete. Something to show how his life had been changed.

Fantasy Zero—who'd grown up with his twin, who wasn't the last Kiryuu left—would have never had that seal. And now, neither did the actual Kiryuu Zero. After hating it for so many years, Zero had never imagined missing it enough that he'd leave his hair long just so he wouldn't have to see the blank space. But then it seemed that Zero could rarely predict the next turn his life would take.

Stepping out the shower, Zero kept his eyes away from the mirror and quickly toweled off. Tucking the towel around his waist, he paused for a moment.

With another dose of Takuma's blood before leaving for the Academy, most of his wounds had at least stopped bleeding. A cocktail of drugs let him stand almost easily. Bandages still covered a good deal of his skin—which had led to some awkward acrobatics in the shower—but, for the moment, he didn't hurt, and he hadn't jarred anything enough to bleed through the bandages.

The bruising was gone, and not a single scratch remained. He looked like a marble statue, perfectly white and unmarred. He looked sharper. He was pore-less, immaculately proportioned, and even-toned. Polished. His body was more sculpted, human fitness carved into lithe, preternatural definition. His scars had disappeared, too.

Zero couldn't think about that too deeply. Like the seal, his scars had been a part of him. The clean skin covering his body felt alien. Zero could only look at it so long before he had to pull his eyes away.

He felt better physically than he could ever remember feeling before. Stronger. More energetic. The ghost of pain that had been haunting him for months had disappeared with the Rose Seal. As was to be expected, Zero guessed. It seemed the pain attacks had been caused by the seal's conflict with his wakening pure blood. Zero suspected Kaname’s presence had soothed the beast locked under his skin the same way Kaname’s affection lulled his vampire instincts. With Kaname nearby, Zero’s pure blood had less reason to fight the seal. His mate was near, ready to keep him safe.

Zero ran his hand over the blank skin where the seal had sat. His pure blood had been trying to wake up for all this time and he’d never suspected it. The failsafe had been triggered. Zero didn’t know how he felt about that, let alone what he was going to do about it. But he knew he didn’t want Kaname digging any deeper into it until he had a better idea. Hopefully the explanation he’d just offered Kaname would be enough. It wasn’t like Kaname didn’t have ample distractions.

Kaname. Zero closed his eyes a moment and focused, breathing in his mate’s scent and indulging in the security he felt knowing Kaname was just on the other side of the door. At least now it made sense why they hadn’t recognized each other as mates. Zero’s concocted mortality could have diminished their compatibility on a chemical level, making it harder for their predators to sense each other. But Zero’s pure blood must have rattled the bars of its cage loud enough for Kaname to hear. The rest, as they say, was history.

Zero stared back at his reflection. Little wonder then that Kaname wasn't bothered by the predatorial shift in his features. Zero had seen the desire in Kaname’s eyes, had felt it pulsing hot and liquid through their bond. It was thrilling to know that Kaname wanted him in any form, to know that his body wouldn't attack him anymore, but Zero still felt—wrong. His skin didn't feel like his. It felt like a borrowed suit, one that Zero wasn't big enough to fill.

Zero shook himself. The Rose Seal had broken. Someone had tried to kill him. His mate was waiting anxiously for him, minutes away from breaking down the door and bundling Zero in bubble wrap. He didn’t have time for an identity crisis.

A little smile pulled at his lip. He couldn't deny that Kaname's concern pleased him. His vampire instincts were trilling in his chest and even his hunter was quiet. In that alley death hadn't scared him—but leaving Kaname behind? Unthinkable. His hindbrain wanted to be wrapped in his mate, never again to be torn asunder.

Zero looked away from the mirror, suddenly eager to get back into the living room. But whoever Kaname had sent for his stuff wouldn't be back yet. And he didn't want to wear the clothes Yagari had scrounged up for him back in Tokyo. He eyed a pile of clothes set serendipitously on the bathroom counter. They smelled clean, but also like Kaname. He must have been planning to take his own shower before Zero burst onto the scene. Hm, Zero thought. He and Kaname were about the same size…

Chapter Text

When Zero re-entered the living room, Kaname froze for the third time in what couldn't yet be an hour. At the rate he was going, his heart wouldn't make it to the next century.

Zero's eyes glinted knowingly under his long lashes. His piercings caught the light and his long hair, still damp, swung around him. Miles of Zero's pale, sculpted legs went unhidden by the black boxers that had certainly come from Kaname's closet. He blearily remembered the clothes he’d in the bathroom, a half-hearted plan readily abandoned when he’d received word that Takuma’s party had returned. Zero's long, capable fingers deftly did up the buttons of the shirt he'd also borrowed. Kaname felt his mouth go dry as he took in the contrast of burgundy over Zero's pale skin.

Zero looked up, buttons only half-done. Kaname could see bandages in the V of the shirt, covering Zero from the collarbone down, but he was momentarily distracted by the profound effect Zero wearing his clothes had on him.

Zero smirked. He walked forward confidently, all grace and intention, until he was close enough to twirl a lock of Kaname's hair around his finger. "Do you see something you like?" Zero asked, beautiful and playful.

Unable to stop himself, Kaname growled. The sound rumbled up from the core of his chest. He covered Zero's hand with his, bending to feather kisses over his palm, letting his tongue lap at Zero's pulse. When Kaname glanced up, he found Zero's eyes closed, his head tipped back.

Gently, oh so gently, Kaname stepped closer, keeping his fingers locked with Zero's. Zero was still smirking, and Kaname could predict the quip he sensed on the tip of Zero's tongue, so instead he dipped in for a kiss—

Only to have a rapid knock at the door break them apart.

Quick as a shot, Zero slipped out of his arms and into the bathroom. He came back a moment later with jeans on. Though those were also Kaname's, he mourned the loss of his previous view for a moment before opening the door. Having told his staff that he was not to be disturbed, he was ready to be properly terrifying when he opened the door—but Seiren's blank face greeted him. He had sent her to collect Zero's belongings, so he reined in his temper. But he frowned when he noticed that she was empty handed.

"Seiren," Kaname started, but, for the first time in their acquaintance, Seiren cut him off.

"Kuran Yuuki was just apprehended using a divining mirror. Evidence suggests that this was the room she was looking in on," Seiren announced.

Zero swore behind him. Mentally, Kaname did as well. "I assume she has been taken into custody?" Kaname asked instead, letting protocol take over in the face of his roiling emotions.

If anything, Seiren's face became grimmer. "We intended to. To our shame, we underestimated her. Ruka and Akatsuki have been taken to the infirmary. Hanabusa is with them. Senri and Rima are in pursuit. Takuma has gone to speak with Cross." Seiren glowered. "She struck and ran. You have our apologies, Kaname-sama."

Kaname bit back a growl. Of all the awful times for Yuuki to lose her fucking mind. "Do you have a lead on her location?"

"We have eyes everywhere," Seiren replied. "We will shortly."

"As we should. Report to me when you have answers," Kaname snapped. Seiren took the dismissal for what it was and executed a bow before dashing off. Kaname used a moment to center himself before turning to Zero. He stood in the middle of the room, stony-faced. Kaname's anger dissipated.

"You don't need to worry, Zero," Kaname said gently. "She's been throwing fits like this since I broke off our engagement. She won't make it near you."

Zero snorted. "If I could handle your crazy uncle, I can handle your crazy sister. I was just thinking…"

Kaname raised an eyebrow. Zero shrugged. "It's a bit odd," he said casually, "that the day I get back from being ripped up in Tokyo, she runs off after using a divining mirror."

Kaname didn't let his surprise show. Certainly, Yuuki wasn't happy with being replaced, as she saw it, and none of Kaname's apologies had been enough to soothe her. Too, he had noticed the venom in her manner when Zero crossed her path. But orchestrating a hit, not just on Kiryuu Zero but on Kaname's mate, just as Kaname began to solidify his political plans… that level of cruelty and carelessness was something Kaname had never thought her capable of. The level of skill needed to not only manipulate the Association, but mass enough cannon fodder to harm Zero was also something Kaname didn't expect of Yuuki.

She did have her own nobles, but they weren't the sort who were willing to commit treason for her. Besides, Kaname thought he'd done a thorough enough job of dismantling her web the last time she'd acted out. Surely, too, she had to know that going after Zero would do anything but endear her to him.

Zero must have picked up on Kaname's disbelief, because he sighed. "On the other hand, she might have just made a habit of looking in on you once you started distancing yourself." Zero paused, as though picking his words carefully, "Either way, I think calling back your guard may be the better way to handle this."

"What?" Kaname asked, now unable to hide his surprise. Zero, suggesting a retreat? "She attacked my inner circle, injured two of their number, spied on a direct superior, and fled the Academy. Do you want to let her wander free without repercussions?"

"I didn't say that, Kaname," Zero snapped. "I mean, banish her. Recall you people, change the fucking wards, and lock her out. You've already tried locking her up in her room like a little girl and that did nothing. She's obsessed with you—taking away your attention is the worst punishment you could give her."

Kaname grimaced, hating to be reminded of just that. He'd been deluding himself by thinking that Yuuki was getting better, that distance was all they needed for the last of their old arrangement to dissolve. Obviously, he'd been both too distracted to realise the reality and too busy lying to himself about what he did notice to see the truth. Even with that in mind, though, he hesitated.

Banishment from his court would be a harsh punishment. Murder was done casually in vampire culture; banishment was not. To be banished meant not just rejection from a Pureblood's court, but from the lives of all those who belonged to that court. Even Rido hadn't been officially banished. And Yuuki was his sister. He'd woken her Pureblood nature and planted this seed of romanticism in her. Weren't her actions his fault?

Kaname was a monster, and he had made many mistakes. But he always cleaned up his messes. How could he wash his hands of the ruin he'd made of Yuuki?

Zero took his hand, winding their fingers together. Kaname looked up to meet his eyes.

"You have to stop beating yourself up," Zero said. "You woke her up, but we both know she would have gone rabid otherwise. You fed her the idea that you were mates, but you broke it off once you realised you couldn't go through with it. You've put up with her disrespect, which even I know has skirted the line of challenging your authority over your court. Anyone else would have cut her off ages ago. Now she's left you willingly. You do not have an obligation to her anymore."

When Kaname didn’t respond, Zero narrowed his eyes. "Is any of this getting through to you?"

"I—yes," Kaname said, blinking slightly. "I had no idea you were paying such close attention."

Zero, to Kaname's eternal surprise and delight, flushed a decidedly lovely cherry red. "Yeah, well. You're not the only one who's been jerked around by this whole bonding nonsense."

"Oh, really?" Kaname grinned, settling his free hand on Zero's waist. "I never would have guessed.

Zero huffed, pointedly not meeting Kaname's eyes. "There was a lot of possessive rage involved. The way she would hang off you any chance she got, how she would brag about you to anyone who would listen—I nearly ripped her throat out more than once.” More quietly Zero added, “I thought I might be falling E again, at first. I was never sure how that worked, with the seal. It always seemed the safest to assume the worst."

"I am so sorry," Kaname murmured, truly meaning the words. "I will never be able to express how very, very sorry I am. I never meant for us to wind up like this. I don't know how I let this happen. How I caused this to happen."

Zero sighed, letting his head tip forward and fall against Kaname's shoulder. They were of a height, but Zero found the position comfortable all the same. Kaname's apology struck the last remaining knot of anger in his chest, cutting at the most stubborn cords. He leaned in to Kaname, relaxing further when strong arms curled around his body. He felt like he could breathe easily for the first time in years. Kaname's hands on his body felt cradling, rather than caging. His scent was soothing. Zero felt a smile slip over his face.

"You're forgiven," Zero said, and his smile grew as he felt the tension bleed from Kaname. Kaname's aura felt gentler, too, like thick sea fog instead of toxic smoke. Even the air around them seemed to sigh in relief. Kaname's embrace strengthened, and Zero looped his free arm around Kaname's shoulders. He was just able to pick up Kaname's whispered thank you as he buried his face in the crook of Zero's neck.

This wasn't the passionate screwing around that Zero had been anticipating when he'd borrowed Kaname's clothes, nor was it the formal romance of what they'd been doing before Zero's disappearance, or even the aggressive, destructive possessiveness of their first encounters. This was something new and gentle, soft and fresh in nature. Like new growth after a forest fire. When Kaname finally lifted his face from Zero's shoulder, Zero's kiss was just as gentle as the embrace. His eyes fluttered closed as Kaname met his intentions, his lips warm and soft. Zero could still taste the brandy on him, sweet and vaguely fruity. Little flickers of want brewed in his belly as Kaname's hand drifted lower, thumb playing with the band of Zero's thieved jeans.

Gasping as they broke apart, Zero managed to dredge up a smirk. It felt regretful on his lips. "If it were any other time…"

Kaname nodded. He was a little wild-eyed, Zero thought, inordinately pleased.

"Yes, yes, of course," Kaname said, clearing his throat. His hand moved to a more respectable place, though not by much, on Zero's lower back. "Yuuki must be dealt with. The court must be settled. I must check on Ruka and Akatsuki. I must decide if Yuuki's actions warrant a banishment..." Kaname closed his eyes for longer than the standard blink. For the first time in his life, Zero thought that he looked vulnerable. Fragile, even.

Kaname took a deep breath, dispelling the impression. "She is my sister. Even if she is obsessed and temperamental." He locked eyes with Zero. "Does she really deserve this?"

There were a hundred things Zero could say to that. She was my sister, once, too. I trained her to use the Artemis Rod. She used to sneak me sweets when I had late detentions. I did her hair for the soiree Shizuka showed up at. For our last Christmas as family, she gave me a set of cookbooks that I can't even look at anymore. I hated you because I was convinced you would hurt her. This is going to hurt her more than anything. Yet, she is hurting you and I can't care about her anymore. She has made it clear she doesn't want me to.

"Let me ask you this," Zero said after a moment. "If you didn't remember her as a human, what would you do?"

Kaname sighed, turning to look over at his chessboard. Zero could see the beginnings of a game set up, a smattering of white pawns moved forward so the queen could move out. On the black side, the king was out, protected by a few other pieces. On a whim, Zero walked over and moved the black knight to stand with the king. He walked back to Kaname, who watched him with surprise in his eyes.

Zero took Kaname's hand and pressed a kiss to his palm before winding their fingers together. His hand felt right, like that. "You won't be alone," Zero promised. His voice was soft to his own ears, softer than he had hoped, but he felt the truth of his words radiate up from his bones. "Whatever you decide, you won't face it alone." He looked into Kaname's eyes and smiled. "Now, go order around your minions. I'm going to go get my stuff. Should I meet you back here?"

Kaname stared at him, awed. His loyalty stunned him. Kaname surrounded himself with competent people, or else they were employed by his enemies. Very rarely, in Kaname many years of experience, did he find people who were so blatantly loyal. Many of them were in Kaname's inner circle, but Kaname doubted any would have been so loyal coming from the past that he and Zero shared—let alone step onto a path with Kaname as a lover. Kaname, for the first time in his life, felt blessed by what fate had sought to give him.

"Hey, are you listening?" Zero said, snapping his fingers in front of Kaname's face. "You'd think I threatened to shoot you or something."

Kaname smirked, pulled from his thoughts. "No, I feel I've rather become used to that by now," he said. His smirk melted away. "Not that I didn't deserve it, I suppose." After a beat, he cleared his throat. "I'll go to the infirmary. Then, I'll have Seiren summon back the others and call a meeting of the inner court. We can discuss the situation then. If we meet while the rest of the Night Class attends lessons, then I can meet with them after class…"

Zero nodded, pleased with the plan. There was no sense in chasing Yuuki down when she'd obviously come into her powers and had no interest in staying at the Academy. At best, there would be more injuries and property damage. At worst, someone could wind up dead. Besides, there were humans on campus, too. Zero didn't want them wandering over curiously and getting caught up in this mess.

Once a prefect, always a prefect, Zero thought. It was too bad the same didn't hold true for Yuuki.

"You will, of course, attend the inner court meeting," Kaname said absently. Zero fought to keep the surprise off his face.

"Are you sure?" Zero said when it became obvious that an explanation wasn't forthcoming.

"Hm?" Kaname, the menace, said, cavalier as you please. "Am I sure about what?"

Ah, right. This was why Zero had not so long ago taken such pleasure in threatening to put Kaname six-feet-under: he was annoying as fuck. "Are you sure about having me there with the rest of your inner court," Zero bit out. It wasn't a question.

Kaname appeared unconcerned. "You already know them. Hell, you spent the better part of two days with three of them. They will help smooth any feathers within the rest of my court and in wider society."

Zero's stomach roiled. It wasn't a logical feeling, but emotions were rarely logical. Zero might be a Pureblood, he might be the mate to a Pureblood, and he might have even reached a tentative sort of acquaintanceship with a handful of Kaname's most trusted nobles. But Zero had been born and raised a hunter. The thought of belonging to vampire society created a nausea in him that had nothing to do with his still very present injuries.

And there was his team to consider. Kaito and Yori. Yori might know that Zero was with Kaname, but she had no idea about his new status. And Kaito. Zero didn't know what to do about Kaito. He couldn't even think about it.

But Kaname's words made sense. His proposed actions made sense. And no one had ever accused Zero of cowardice. "Fine. When and where?"

Kaname frowned, probably at Zero’s sharp tone, but mercifully he didn't dig any deeper. Zero was truly grateful. "Five pm," Kaname said instead. "Come here and we'll go together."

Zero nodded, somewhat appeased by the knowledge that he wouldn't have to walk in alone. He pushed himself away from the wall he'd leant against, shoving down a grimace at the angry spasm his torso gave. He needed to lie down and pull himself together; maybe pop a couple more of the pain pills Aidou had prescribed him.

Kaname was still guarding the door, lurking as though he didn't intend to let Zero pass. But it was already two o'clock, and Zero had spent most of the previous night trapped in the back of a van. Kuran Kaname would not be able to seduce him away from his room a second time, not now that Zero knew he needed to get his head on straight.

"I could just send someone else, you know," Kaname offered half-heartedly. He knew as well as Zero did that if they stayed together, even if nothing escalated, neither of them would be prepared for the meeting.

Zero smirked. Still, the attempt was sweet. "Knowing Yuuki," Zero said, "if she busted out of here, there's probably a ton of damage to clean up. I bet all of your minions have something more important to do than waiting on me. I'll see you at five."

Collecting Bloody Rose from the bathroom, Zero pulled the hoody on and then his boots. That done, he went back into the living room and pressed a kiss to the corner of Kaname's mouth. He enjoyed the heat that sparked in those dark eyes for a moment, then brushed past him and opened the door.

"I love you," Kaname blurted, just before Zero was out the door.

Zero's heart stuttered in his chest, freezing him solid. Feeling a little dizzy, he turned back to Kaname. Sure, the feeling had been implied, heavily and sometimes bluntly, but the actual words—

Just be careful, Zero.

Zero settled down. "I'm not sure if I'm there yet," he ventured, one hand on the door. "Not solidly." He swallowed. "But I know I could be."

Kaname nodded, not ecstatic but undeniably pleased. "That's what I want. Just the chance."

Zero nodded, feeling his smile come back. He left without drawing it out any further. His injuries pulsed and ached, but he left Kaname's rooms feeling light and warm.

By the time four o'clock rolled around, Kaname was exhausted. Physically, emotionally, and mentally. There was an endless list of things Kaname would have done to restart this day, or even just to go back to the hour before Yuuki lost her mind. Maybe if he'd spoken to her, or even just somehow gotten her out of the dorm before Zero came back, he could have avoided this. Not included on that list was anything that would have harmed Zero or that would have brought Yuuki closer to Kaname romantically. Those were Kaname's limits. Maybe, with that being fact, there was nothing Kaname could have done with all the forewarning in the world to forestall this mess.

Yuuki's room contained extensive damage. Scorch marks covered more than half of the carpet, peaking onto the walls. Broken glass seemed to cover every surface, while the wind and now the rain whipped in through the skeletal windows. There was blood on the floor, Ruka and Akatsuki's. They began coughing it up before Yuuki finally fled, releasing them from whatever she was doing. The smell of burnt things and people clung to the entire room.

According to Seiren, the wards had picked up a strange magical signature that Hanabusa had tracked to Yuuki's suite. Ruka, Akatsuki, Hanabusa, Senri, and Rima had all gone up together to speak to her. Apparently, none of Kaname's inner court had felt safe enough around his sister to approach her alone. With good reason, too.

Yuuki had allowed them in, grudgingly and after some debate, but when Ruka had noticed the mirror Yuuki had lost her mind. Without warning, Ruka had fallen to the floor, screaming in pain. Akatsuki had attacked immediately while Hanabusa went to Ruka, but Yuuki had been stronger than anticipated. She had struck Rima and Senri down with some sort of energy bolt while Akatsuki fell to the floor in the same sort of horrible pain as Ruka. Hanabusa had tried to reason with her, using his ice as a shield for himself and the others, but had Yuuki struck him down. She had shattered every piece of glass in the room before making her escape out the windows.

The whole event had lasted less than half an hour. If Kaname's calculations were right, Yuuki had been opening the door just as Kaname sat down to his second brandy. Kaname felt sick to his bones, looking at the evidence of his sister's rage. He only felt sicker when he saw the divining mirror, now shattered and useless from Yuuki's fit, on her bedside table.

Kaname was at least grateful that his first action had been recall Rima and Senri. Even with a pair so perfectly deadly, they would be no contest for such a strong Pureblood. Kaname was a little disturbed that he'd missed her power. His only comfort was that Yuuki had to have mastered masking her presence. That was the only way the entire dorm would have missed the fight. She had to have been not just supressing her own powers and aura, but also the sounds and smells of the fight, as well as her combatants' powers and auras.

Kaname had never taught her that. Who had, then? Perhaps Yuuki was running to them now. Kaname, at that moment, couldn't be bothered to find out. In the future he would spend time tracking who had influenced her, but now Kaname had to rally his own people.

"Have an inner court meeting set for five o'clock," Kaname said to Seiren, who hadn't left his side since he'd arrived at Yuuki's room. "I will speak to the Night Class in its entirety after lessons. Inform the teachers not to expect any of the inner court. I will be stopping by the infirmary and then on to the meeting." Seiren nodded and left with a clipped bow.

Seeing Ruka and Akatsuki did little to soothe Kaname's rage. While both were conscious and, to put it nicely, upset, they were both obviously hurt. Hanabusa was the most subdued Kaname had ever seen him, delivering his report to Kaname succinctly and without inflection.

"They both experienced what I can only describe as phantom pain," Hanabusa explained. His hands were folded neatly behind his back, a perfect parade rest that any noble courtier would have been proud of. "Except, instead of being limited to a missing limb, as seen in amputee cases, Kuran Yuuki-sama caused a whole-body sensation that proved to be completely debilitating for those afflicted."

Kaname frowned. "What caused the bleeding?"

Hanabusa grit his teeth, his face the most menacing Kaname had ever seen it. "Akatsuki nearly bit through his tongue. Same with Ruka. Such injuries tend to bleed significantly."

That he'd had them drink his own blood to heal them went unsaid.

Kaname swallowed. "And your own injuries?"

Hanabusa shrugged. "Manageable for a vampire, deadly for a human. Feels a bit like getting hit by lightning. I tried to convince Rima and Senri to stay back, but they wanted retribution." Hanabusa glanced at Akatsuki and Ruka. "I can't say I blame them. I probably would have joined them if those two had woken earlier." His voice trailed off, eyes distant.

"You did well," Kaname said gently. "Rima and Senri have been called back. There is an inner court meeting tonight. I assure you, this will not go unpunished. I can only offer my apologies for allowing a threat to reside so close to us."

Hanabusa's expression softened, letting a little of his own hurt shine through the rage. "You're not the only one who thought that she was something good, Kaname-sama." With that, he left to go sit with Ruka and Akatsuki, a guardian stationed evenly between of their beds.

Upon later reflection, Kaname would think that it was during that conversation that he decided Yuuki's fate.

Chapter Text

When five o'clock rolled around and Kaname opened the door to see Zero, his breath went still in his lungs. Granted, Zero usually had Kaname pausing, stalling, hesitating, or otherwise standing stunned, but this time the reaction didn't lie in what he'd said or done. Rather, Kaname needed a moment to reconcile the image in front of him with what he had come to know of Zero. The person who stood in his doorway, Kaname thought, bore very little resemblance.

Long hair brushed back and loosely braided, the lines of his uniform sharp and neat, his face reserved, even cold. Not with anger, which Kaname was used to, but with something like disinterest. He was elegant, composed, untouchable, proud—a perfect image of vampirism, of Pureblood propriety. The only hint of his personality were his piercings, peaking almost shyly from carefully arranged strands of silver hair.

"Kaname," Zero said, filling the pause Kaname's surprise had left. His tone was different, too, Kaname thought distractedly. Cool, polite, confident—so different from his usual cutting, sarcastic drawl, so opposite from the aggressive growl or temperamental snap that Kaname had become accustomed to.

Kaname felt like he'd stepped into a mirror world. He couldn't deny a piece of him—the piece raised in vampire courts, drilled in propriety—was pleased by Zero's apparent decorum. Yet the larger part of him, the part that thrilled in Zero's challenges, that enjoyed his flustered ire, that side felt disquiet. Swallowing, Kaname offered a smile. "Zero."

Zero quirked an eyebrow and Kaname bit back a wince. The silence stretched, growing awkward. Kaname felt thrown, having expected Zero in all his fiery glory. His composure felt like a wall between them that Kaname hadn't expected.

Abruptly, Zero's expression broke, his eyes darting to the left. "I figured this would be something like your Senate bullshit. I didn't want to freak out some idiot with my usual way of doing things."

Translation: I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your court.

Surprised again, Kaname remained silent as warmth suffused him. That Zero would put on a mask he was obviously uncomfortable with just to smooth the way for Kaname was unlike anything anyone had done for him. Even Yuuki had never quite tried: she’d complained about every tutor he had sent her way and whined about his advice. Zero, it seemed, had taken the matter unto himself. Kaname belatedly realized that he was smiling, but he didn't feel the need to hide it.

"Thank you," Kaname said simply, genuinely. "There will be times when such ceremony is necessary, but you know the inner court. I would not worry." Kaname made sure he had Zero's eye as he said, "I will never send you into a situation you don't know the full details of."

Zero nodded sharply, a degree of tension leaving his shoulders. He reached up and loosened his tie slightly, unconsciously, and Kaname had to bury the urge to pull him into a kiss. Instead, as they walked down the hall he laced his fingers with Zero's, content to feel the pulse that beat in Zero's wrist against his own. When they arrived in the meeting room, a large, closed off living space at the back of Kaname's suite of rooms, Kaname's inner court was already settled.

Rima and Senri, returned from chasing Yuuki, sat with Takuma and Seiren, Hanabusa, Ruka, and Akatsuki taking the other couch. A third couch and Kaname's usual wingback stood empty. A grand, roaring fireplace added some ambient noise, but not enough to cover Ruka's surprised breath when she caught sight of Zero.

Zero regarded her levelly, standing a moment while Kaname took a seat on the couch. The wingback was his standard choice, of course, but he wanted to give Zero as much control over their situation as possible. If Zero wanted the separation, the wingback would give it to him. If he wanted Kaname nearer, then the option was his. Kaname trusted that his inner court wouldn’t be so gauche as to comment either way.  

When Zero did sit, just a few hesitant seconds delayed, he did so beside Kaname with a respectable distance between them. Silently pleased, Kaname began the meeting.

"Several developments have arisen over the day," Kaname said bluntly. There was no need to stand on formality with his most trusted nobles. "Has anything new developed since I last spoke to you?"

Rima inclined her head. "Senri and I had tracked Yuuki-sama to the outer limits of town when we received your summons. The trail had just begun to fade. We suspect she was picked up by a warded transport of some sort."

Kaname made no reaction beyond a clipped nod. "I suspected as much. In any case, cornering Yuuki at this point would do no good." His expression shifted, growing colder even as his eyes gleamed with anger.

Zero's skin prickled with the sense of Kaname's tightly leashed power. Zero felt the new desire to try and soothe him, but he didn't feel comfortable being so familiar in front of the inner court. Instead, he attempted to project his concern through the bond, a little flare of pleasure unfurling in his chest when Kaname's shoulders relaxed.

Kaname glanced pointedly around the room, making eye contact with each of his court. "After careful consideration of the damage caused and her own intentions, I have decided to remove Yuuki from my court. She will not be welcomed in the Cross Academy Night Class or the Kuran properties in which I have taken up residence. If you see, hear, or sense her, inform me directly and I will deal with her. If she makes further moves against me or mine, I will not hesitate to banish her. This will be her final warning," Kaname said firmly. "Is there anyone who would speak to her defense or suggest an alternative plan?"

No one was so crass as to exchange glances, but Zero had the feeling that, had they been human, there would have been a lot of those going around. Personally, Zero found himself unsurprised. Though often ruthless and even cruel, Kaname was most largely characterized by the depth of his possession and protectiveness. Those he took under his purview were guarded as a dragon did his horde. Yuuki had fucked up spectacularly, yes, but no one had died and though she had been spying, there was no proof yet that she had committed treason. Kaname could not yet convince himself to let her go.

Zero had made peace with the monster Yuuki had become. Kaname had not yet managed to.

Finally, Takuma nodded. "Has Headmaster Cross been informed?"

Zero felt pain spike in the bond. He bit his lip, pushing back as much comfort as he could find.

"He will be," Kaname said, and then changed the subject. He covered Zero's—predicament—clearly and in a tone that bore no argument, commending Takuma, Shiki, and Aidou's actions in Zero's retrieval but otherwise keeping the details scant. Zero appreciated the gesture. Frankly, as the meeting wore on and his wounds began to ache more insistently, the last thing Zero wanted was an interrogation. He'd taken his pills, but there was only so much medication and synthetic blood could do for wounds as deep at his.

"The last concern, then, is the Samhain Ball," Kaname said at last, pulling Zero from his thoughts. "This event will serve as a gesture of community to society as well as a debut for Zero and I as a pair. I trust every detail has developed as planned?"

"Of course, Kaname-sama," Seiren replied. Without much more ado, Kaname gave the nod for the meeting to disperse.

Zero let out a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. He was sore, tired, and hadn't said more than twenty words, but neither had he caused a walk-out of Kaname's inner court, so he was going to count this as a win. He was just rising to his feet, intent on joining Kaname where he'd been cornered by Seiren and Takuma, when Souen Ruka approached him.

With one glance at her posture, Zero felt the urge to groan. "If you start calling me 'sama' when you don't have to, I'm going to have to do something drastic," he said flatly. Most of the twenty words he'd said in the meeting had been spent politely telling Kaname's court to drop the formal ass-kissing Purebloods expected; whenever it wouldn't be politically damaging, at least.

Ruka's face twitched with a smirk. "It would be proper."

Zero snorted and heaved himself to his feet. He could just pick up a nervous twinge in the bond as Kaname sighted them. Gods, his mate was such a mother hen. "Good thing I've spent my entire life being the exact opposite."

Ruka tilted her head, her face softening beyond what Zero had ever considered possible of her. "Yet you are willing to participate in Kaname-sama's show."

Whether she was referring to the meeting, the larger one with the rest of the Night Class later on, or the ball, Zero didn't know. Maybe all three. Maybe something else entirely. Whatever—there were bound to be several meanings layered into her statement.

"Yeah, well," Zero said, "I figure Kaname can screw it up well enough without my help."

Ruka watched him a minute, blank-faced, and then, finally, smiled. "I honestly do not think that you would let him." She offered him her hand, "I hope you have a peaceful evening, Kiryuu-san."

Zero, painfully aware that her gesture was something of a Big Deal in fanged society, managed to cover his surprise and place a genial kiss on the back of her hand. He straightened with a "You as well, Ruka-san, and please, call me Zero," to which she smiled, inclined her head, and then turned away. Noticing all the eyes purposefully not watching the display, Zero moved to Kaname's side, happy to be in the safe harbor he offered.

The details of the discussion, which was of the ever-looming ball, went right over Zero's head. He replied as eloquently as he could when directly spoken to, but otherwise he let himself not-lean on Kaname, who quickly figured out that Zero was not at his best and placed a careful arm around his back. The discussion ended quickly and soon Zero found the pair of them back in Kaname's rooms.

"You did so well," Kaname said as the door locked, the privacy wards snapping into place. He deposited Zero carefully on the couch, hands so very gentle, his expression shaped by concern. He was back before Zero even noticed that he’d gone, holding Zero’s pain meds and a glass of water. When Zero took them both without complaint, worry tightened the line of Kaname's mouth.

"I would ask that you stay here, rest—" Kaname began, cautious, but Zero cut him off.

"But you, of course, know that I wouldn't leave you to hold court while the vultures wondered where your venerated mate was?"

Kaname pursed his lips, obviously displeased. "Exactly."

Zero chuckled as he popped his pills. "Smart man."

Kaname sighed, settling beside Zero on the couch, close to Zero. One long, strong arm lay across the back of the couch, not touching him but close enough that Zero's hypersensitive body was very aware of how close. At some point, Kaname had removed both his tie and his jacket. "I would, however, ask that you indulge me and take some of my blood."

Zero's stomach flipped, acid rising in his throat. Not at the thought of being so intimate Kaname, no, those emotions had gone; but taking blood still stirred a coldness in Zero that he distantly thought of as fear. The last times he'd fed from a living person he'd been near death and too weak to refuse. Since, Zero had dutifully popped blood tablets along with his pain pills. He hadn't yet had to face feeding with his mind in place, let alone from Kaname, who he'd already had a number of unpleasant blood exchanges with. Hell, Zero had shot him the last time they'd done this, and that had been one of the less awful exchanges they'd had.

A breath hissed out between Zero's teeth. "Kaname, I can take blood tablets now."

Kaname nodded and shifted closer, his outstretched arm becoming a steady weight along Zero's shoulders. Zero couldn't help but lean in. He’d been fighting back the urge to hide himself against Kaname’s side since he’d come back from his dorm. His battered instincts insisted that it was the safest place in the world, and now that he lay there Zero had to concede the point. He breathed in Kaname’s cardamom scent and his strained body all but melted.

 "And I'm glad of it," Kaname replied honestly, drawing Zero back into the conversation. "But you are injured, exhausted, and too stubborn for your, or my, own good. Tablets are fine, usually, but my blood will help you heal. Please let me help."

A low fire had begun to stir in Zero's veins, stoked by the sweetness in Kaname's voice, the heat of his touch. Through the bond, the authenticity of Kaname's feelings was on display. There was no trick here, as there might have been before. This was trust forming, Zero thought, that he had not expected to find one.

With his free hand, Kaname undid the buttons of his shirt, revealing the elegant curve of his neck and a slice of the marble paleness of his chest. Zero's pulse spiked, his fingers curling into the couch. He didn't realize he'd turned his face away until he felt fingers at his jaw, gently guiding him back.

Kaname smiled at him, and Zero was so caught up in how the expression softened his face that he didn’t fight Kaname's arm curling around his shoulders, drawing Zero closer until they were nearly flush. Zero's fangs pulsed in his mouth, wanting. His skin was tight and too warm. He wanted out of his uniform, but he wasn't sure what he would do if he moved. His wounds ached, the stab in his chest pounding in time with his rabbiting heartbeat. Spicy ambrosia filled his nose.

"Please, love," Kaname murmured, and Zero could hold out no more.

Melting further against Kaname, Zero wound his arms around his neck and pulled his long hair away. Against his fingertips Zero could feel the fast, excited beat of Kaname's heart, the heat of his skin, and, yes, the hot red race of Kaname's blood. Their legs seemed to slip together like puzzle pieces, Kaname bending into Zero for better access, for better closeness. Almost without intention, Zero's lips brushed the junction where Kaname's shoulder met his neck in a mimicry of a kiss. Then, as Kaname paused between one breath and the next, he bit.

The rush was the same as the night in the glade. An overpowering wave of powerlustsatisfactionyes flooded Zero's senses and his starving cells and his half-healed body. He could barely make out the world around him, could just feel Kaname's fingers tangling in his hair, pressing Zero closer rather than pushing him away. They seemed to fuse tighter together, closer and more intimate than ever before, even than during that harried night of rushed sex. Kaname was boiling against Zero, almost painful but in the best of ways. He could feel his tension unwind, his wariness and concern unravel in a hot blast of raw, power-leaden blood.

"Zero," Kaname groaned, molten and wanton, head falling back, giving up pretense and leaning against the arm of the couch. Following Kaname's recline, Zero found himself straddling his mate, Kaname's hard length pressing against his own, supporting himself on Kaname's shoulder. Lapping at the wound apologetically, Zero withdrew to share a hazy, salacious look with Kaname, whose eyes shone bloody red.

"So much for this being about healing, hm, Kuran?" Zero murmured, breathless and playful. He felt higher than he ever had after feeding from the source; perhaps another perk of letting his Pureblood nature free? Or just Kaname. Zero liked that idea better.

Kaname chuckled, warm and low, sending a tremor along Zero's back. With a deft hand he reached up and undid Zero's tie, tossing the irksome thing away. Zero's breath hitched, but he followed Kaname's lead.

Kaname adjusted him to lie on his back, Kaname a support behind him. The position took all the stress off his injured torso, which Kaname's blood had dulled to a sharp throb, and allowed Zero to revel in the heat Kaname radiated. Those clever hands sneakily went after his jacket next, and Zero found himself divested of it with minimal movement on his part.

"You know, this spooning thing is sort of awkward when both people are the same size," Zero murmured, feeling sleepy and distant. He vaguely realized that he was exhausted, having not been able to take his intended nap between fielding calls from Yori and Kaito and a sudden anxiety that had briefly taken him over. He might have panicked a bit about the inner court meeting, and maybe he'd still been a bit wound up from, you know, being nearly murdered. Now, though, with Kaname wrapped around him and his mending body silenced, he couldn't help but doze.

"Really? I think we fit quite neatly," Kaname replied, and was pleased when he realized that Zero was too far into sleep to hear him.

"You are even more lovely in person than in photograph," Sara murmured to herself, aware that Yuuki had heard her and reveling in the pretty blush that rose on her cheeks.

Yuuki was looking down again, having scarcely been able to meet Sara's eyes since the moment Sara had picked her up from the market. Her hands both clasped her tea, her entire appearance vaguely ruffled. Not bad, Sara thought, for having battled some of the strongest nobles in Kaname's court. So much potential in such a delicate package. Sara was very attracted to potential. Actually, she was very attracted Yuuki. In fact...

Sara smiled, slow and filled with pleasure.

"I'm so sorry, Sara-san," Yuuki said suddenly. They were in Sara's private sitting room, settled on two luxurious divans. "I shouldn't have been so obvious. I should have hidden the mirror better. Now I won't be able to help you at all." She placed the tea Sara had given her on a side table, her hands curling into fists.

The poor thing sounded so wretched that Sara felt her heart twinge. Such insecurity—it was the fault of the elder Kuran that Yuuki had such a delicate character. He should have fostered more confidence in her. She could have been eaten alive by any rabid noble who wandered along, manipulated and hollowed out until there was nothing left of her at all. Or worse, gone mad like Hio Shizuka. Hers was a tragic fate that too many Pureblood women had been consigned to over the generations.

Sara would not allow that to happen. Not now that she knew that what she had suspected was true: Kuran Yuuki was hers. Sara had felt the fire light in her veins the moment she'd laid eyes on the girl in person. How could Kuran have ever made such a mistake? Arrogant fool. Sara had felt much less turmoil about destroying him once she’d realized that he’d nearly taken her mate from her.

He still had, in a way. Though she was sure that Yuuki had, at least subconsciously, realized what Sara was to her, her brother had infected her with his prior delusions. Those had taken root much deeper in Yuuki than in Kaname. Breaking through Yuuki's infatuation would take time, but it would be a worthy investment. Every queen did need a consort. Yuuki would make a most beautiful one.

Turning more towards Yuuki, who had gone silent and tense, she gently took Yuuki's hands in hers. Yuuki's head shot up, ruby red in the face and eyes jewel-bright. Her sweet mouth was open in a surprised 'oh.' Her hands were soft, delicate, and Sara felt she would be happy to hold them always.

"My dear," Sara said, warmth and gentleness coating every syllable. "You have done your part admirably. I know what I have asked of you has been hard, and you still did what was best. You have in no part failed." Still so gently, carefully, keeping her eyes locked with Yuuki's, she lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to Yuuki's knuckles. "Thank you, my dear, for you help."

Sara could feel how the tremors in Yuuki's hands traveled from her fingers up her arms, until Yuuki trembled from head to toe. Sara found herself fascinated, as one would be while holding an injured bird. If she tightened her grip even a little, she would break Yuuki entirely. Yes, she must be cosseting, or her little bird would doubtlessly fly back to the nest from whence she'd come. Sara couldn't have that.

Sara noted clinically that Yuuki's eyes were bright because they were full of tears. Her bird was on the edge of weeping. How strange, Sara thought. She couldn't remember crying since the death of her parents, how many years ago, now? The whole affair stood out like a grim, dark morning in her moon-lit memory. A dreary start to new things. Sara had thought naturally to focus on those new things that came after, like wresting control of the vampire world. That didn't leave much room for crying. However, from that dark sad time, she could remember one instance very early on...

Soothingly, she ran her hands up Yuuki's arms and drew the girl to her, pressing Yuuki's head against her shoulder. For a moment, Yuuki was still, and Sara was terrified that she'd crushed the bird in her hand. But then, slowly, Yuuki's shoulders jumped with repressed sobs, and her thin arms slipped around Sara's waist, fingers curling in the fabric of Sara's dress. Her head fell with a gasping inhale to Sara's chest, where Sara immediately felt the wet bloom of tears.

"Thank you," Yuuki sobbed, and some long-buried part of Sara proved itself alive enough that she was able to murmur comforting nonsense through her surprise. Yuuki sobbed again despite Sara's efforts. Concerned, Sara readjusted their awkward posture and pulled the girl onto her lap, curling around Yuuki so her head lay on Sara's shoulder, hushing her all the while.

"I just never," Yuuki said after several minutes, inhaling gustily. She seemed to have calmed down some. "I just never felt like I had any control until I met you." She looked up at Sara with wet, grateful eyes.

Sara's heart throbbed in her chest. Oh, her poor, dear little bird. How fortunate that they had met when they did. If Yuuki, so young, had already been worn down into the sobbing creature in her lap, what would have been left of her in even ten years? Something dim and subservient, no doubt. Now, Sara was here. Nothing of the sort would happen. Sara had a plan.

"Worry not, dear heart," Sara replied, running her fingers through Yuuki's long, silken hair. "I will never leave you alone."

Yuuki grinned, fresh tears spilling over her blotchy cheeks, and held Sara tighter. Sara smiled gently and closed her eyes, reveling in the contact. Yuuki felt even sweeter against her skin than the clear moonlight pouring in through the window did. And even better, Yuuki would never leave her. Sara would make sure of it.

Chapter Text

After the meeting with the rest of the Night Class, the soiree invitations shot into Zero’s mailbox hot and heavy. The Night Class was just about a third the size of the Day Class, but Zero had enough mail that some people must have invited him to two or three (or four, or five, or six) events. They were mostly all from the children of families loyal or otherwise subservient to Kaname. The few others were from neutral noble families curious about goings-on in Kaname’s court— “cowardly scum-suckers, and probably spies,” Kaname had tipsily declared, several brandies in, alone with Zero in his sitting room one cool dawn. But they were all nominally members of Kaname’s court and under his guardianship while at Cross Academy, so they had all been entitled to be introduced to Zero, pure-blooded and to-be mated to Kaname as he now was. And every single one, it seemed, had conveniently had a society celebration of some sort waiting in the wings to invite the new, powerful, scandalous couple to.

“You know,” Zero said, flipping through his newest stack of invitations, “when I killed Rido, the Association only punished me for being weirdly more powerful than expected by electing me to the council.”

Sat at his desk, Kaname hummed. “Murder by paperwork,” he mused aloud, “how despicable. Cunning, but despicable.”

“Sure,” Zero agreed amiably. He sat himself on the edge of Kaname’s desk and added, “but at least there was no dancing.”

Finally, as had been Zero’s goal, Kaname looked up. He smiled wryly. “Dancing offends you, but not murder?”

“I’ve survived murder,” Zero replied cautiously, but easing when Kaname’s smile didn’t drop, “I have no idea about dancing.”

It had been a few weeks since the attempt on Zero’s life. Kaname had barely let Zero out of his sight, the first few days. Too weak to fight him off and assert his independence, Zero had grudgingly allowed the mothering. Admittedly, he hadn’t much wanted to push Kaname away, either. The bond had been so beaten that Kaname’s constant presence had been a balm to Zero’s abused psychic senses. Even now, Zero found his senses reaching for Kaname when he wasn’t paying attention. Kaname’s mind was so different from the terrifying darkness that the attack had pushed Zero toward. It was a calm place, lit by biers of brilliant fire. Zero could sense moonlight on his skin, but the flames kept him warm and safe. Sweet smoke filled the air, Kaname’s cinnamon-cardamom scent slipping into his body with every dreamy inhale.

When Zero had followed the bond to that place the first time, it had taken a damned long time to detangled from it. Every time he’d drifted up from those soothing depths, he’d panicked and pulled himself back down. His body high and pain-free from Kaname’s blood, Zero had sunk into Kaname’s solid support so deeply and so easily that his consciousness had stumbled along the bond until he’d wound up tucked safely away in Kaname’s. Terror that leaving his new-found safe space once would bar him from ever returning had haunted his wounded mind. Mercifully, Kaname had noticed him there and carefully, slowly, guided him back along the bond.

A hand appeared in front of Zero’s face, palm-up in gentlemanly offer. Broken from his thoughts, Zero noticed the first notes of delicate music drifting through the air. He followed that hand up along Kaname’s white jacketed arm to his face, where a small smile greeted him.

Zero quirked an eyebrow. “Really?” He asked.

“There’s no better time to learn,” Kaname replied, “and, to be honest, few better partners to learn from.”

Zero snorted. “Your modesty is astounding.”  

Kaname smiled brighter. “But you like my honesty better.”  

With a little huff, Zero clasped his palm and let Kaname pull him to his feet. Nimble hands smoothly maneuvered him into position at the front of the room. Kaname had moved the chairs that usually sat in front of his desk against the far wall, freeing up enough room for a simple waltz. Against Zero’s better intentions, he started counting the music. Ballroom was worlds away from what Zero had done in Vermillion, but some hunters schooled their children in the arts both lethal and not. A dancer’s grace could be invaluable in a swordsman, after all, and the upper classes of hunters patrolled mostly vampire soirees. Zero had memories of being very, very small and watching in awe as his parents whirled lightly across the floor, perfectly in time with the ethereal monsters they were meant to be policing.  

Zero had lost the dance lessons along with his parents, but some skills sunk deep. When the music swooped into the next movement, Zero and Kaname moved on the same note. Kaname’s delight tingled along the bond.  

“So, you don’t dance?” Kaname murmured through his smile, pivoting smartly and bringing Zero easily into the turn.

“Not like this,” Zero said, “not for a long time.” He was breathless, but not from exertion. Kaname felt so good around him, his smooth, warm hand cradling Zero’s. His body felt weightless, held in frame and pushed into motion by the lightest suggestion of Kaname’s lead. Because, of course, Kaname led. If Zero had learned anything over the last few weeks, it was that Kaname always led.

The song ended with a sweet final note. Kaname spun him into the end, pulling him close as the music faded out. Chest to chest, they breathed the same air. One of his hands lay pressed to the small of Zero’s back, a firm weight, while the other parted from Zero’s fingers stroke along his cheek. Without thought, Zero’s eyes flickered shut. He lost himself to the mindless moment.

“It’s a little odd, isn’t it?” Kaname asked, bringing Zero back to reality again. “Dancing today to a song that is so many thousands of years old. According to my father, it’s exactly the same as the version that his father played.”

Zero smirked. “And that takes us all the way back to the Wasting Years?”

Kaname smirked in reply. He carded his fingers through Zero’s long hair, winding the strands carefully and then watching them unspool. “There’s a few more generations,” he acknowledged, “but not too many.”

Zero sighed, turning away from Kaname’s playful touch as much as he could with Kaname fingers tangled in his hair. “If this is another awkward segue into talking about my new, even more be-fanged life, please spare me.”

Kaname said nothing. Cross had exempted Zero from classes until November first, citing to the Day Class his recovery from a vague and undetailed motorcycle accident. Part of Zero galled at his skill on his bike being disparaged to the general public, but Cross couldn’t exactly reveal to the world that Zero had been almost murdered by vampires. Or hunters? No one yet knew the culprit, and certainly no side was confessing to it.

Kaname kept his fury over the stalled investigation admirably contained, Zero thought. Probably because he had plotting out the rest of Zero’s exhaustingly longer life to distract himself with. They had been fighting, more or less, about Zero’s new future since Zero was healed enough to think properly.

“I’m only speaking of what inevitably needs to happen,” Kaname said. His voice was careful but pointed. They had passed the point of screaming at each other sometime around the end of the second week.

Kaname was used to being listened to, so he didn’t naturally incline to yelling—but Zero had driven him there. Healed enough to crave his independence but still so injured and unused to his new body that physical activity was an unwieldy adventure, Zero had set himself a fun game of slipping the watch dogs Kaname had assigned to hound his every move. Kaname’s chosen guardians, a revolving shift of his inner court, were excellent trackers, but they hadn’t been the ones to re-ward Cross Academy after Rido. Zero had built in several bolt holes for himself around campus, and he’d grossly abused his advantage. The funniest moment had been dealt to poor Hanabusa, who’d successfully hunted Zero down only to find him at tea with Cross. Hanabusa had returned Zero to the Night Dorms, but only after a three-hour interrogation about his life choices from the world’s most nosy vampire hunter.

Kaname had tolerated his game for longer than Zero had expected, perhaps taking pity on Zero’s noticeably painful boredom. But then Zero had fallen asleep one late afternoon in White Lilly’s stall. One of the most warded spots on campus, the vampires hadn’t been able to find him for hours. Takuma, who was fast becoming Zero’s favorite vampire, had actually teared up when Zero had stumbled into the Dorms the next morning.

Of course, Kaname had been furious. Once they were locked behind closed and warded doors, he’d yelled himself hoarse. In bed that day, he’d clung to Zero so hard in his sleep that Zero had woken with light smudges of purple on his waist from Kaname’s clenching fingertips.

Zero had made sure that Kaname never found those bruises. He’d crept out of bed on silent hunter-feet, keeping his aura out and thickly spread so that Kaname wouldn’t find him missing and panic, or be woken by his physical absence from Kaname’s side. Zero had always been shit at apologies, but he had known that one was due here. And while words tripped him up, food never had. The kitchen staff had put up a fight, surprised and almost scared that a Pureblood would want to cook, but eventually he’d secured the right to make breakfast for Kaname and his inner court that evening himself.

“You cooked?” Kaname had asked, surprised and, dare Zero think it, touched. There had seemed to be an unsaid ‘for us?’ on the end of Kaname’s question that made Zero think that, while nobles vampires were served by various staffs all the time, family or friends’ meals were few and far between.

Zero had shrugged. “I’m not good at apologies. Or thanking people. But I know I’ve caused you all trouble lately. So.”

His words had been a shitty apology, Zero thought in retrospect, but Kaname had melted like butter on oven-fresh bread.

“You’re forgiven,” he had murmured, pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of Zero’s mouth. Relief had spread through the inner court—to Zero’s embarrassed dismay, Hanabusa had actually clapped.

“Yay, no more fighting!” He’d chirped, and promptly devoured one of Zero’s laboriously crafted nigiri. He’d made an obscenely pleased noise through a mouthful of rice and sweet pork. “Actually, Zero-san, you could do so much worse and I’d still forgive you for these.”

Ruka had clipped him upside the head. “Gah, could you try not to be so embarrassing? At least pretend to have manners!”

“He’d have better luck pretending to be human,” Akatsuki had quipped. Rima had smirked, while Senri snorted into the mug of rich hot chocolate Zero had brewed him from scratch. Takuma had sighed in put-upon despair as the table dissolved into lively bickering.

“You know, your court’s a lot less terrifying than you let everyone think,” Zero had said, amused. Un-aging bloodsuckers or not, apparently all teenagers liked to goof off with their friends when no one was watching.

As if reading his mind, Kaname had smiled. He lowered his tone conspiratorially, “It’s a dark secret, and known only to a trusted few. But we can trust you, hm?”

Zero had paused. “You know,” he’d replied carefully, and purposely not looking at Kaname, “I think you can.”

“Zero?” Kaname asked with the carefully—but not successfully, not to Zero—hidden concern of someone who had tried to gain Zero’s attention more than once.

Unfortunately, that tone of voice was becoming a trend among Zero’s circle of ‘people who cared.’ The circle kept growing concerningly, which was giving Zero something like socially induced hives. It was also making hiding his slipups harder. Zero had gone months with the pain attacks without anyone the wiser, but with Kaname’s devoted attention and that of his court, Zero was having a hell of a time pretending he was fine post-murder attempt.

Still, no one had ever called Zero a quitter. “Yes, dear?” he snarked, blinking his lashes innocently at Kaname.

“Talk to me,” Kaname said. His hands gripped Zero’s shoulders, forcing Zero to meet his eyes. He was terribly earnest, staring into Zero with his dark gaze. “I just need you to talk to me.”

Zero sighed. “I’ve never been chatty.”

Kaname snorted, “Oh, I know. And I know you think I haven’t been listening to you.”

“Kaname,” Zero said, coaxing words on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t like the look of concern on Kaname’s face, the pulsing worry he could feel fluttering through the bond. He wanted to soothe it, to reassure Kaname that he was fine, but Kaname continued first.

“I’m sorry that’s the way I’ve come off,” Kaname said, genuine apology in his voice. Zero briefly wondered if he’d woken up in an alternative universe, but Kaname’s words distracted his thoughts. “I never meant to give you that impression. I don’t mean to try and run your life for you, Zero, but I know the way this world, my world, works,” Kaname insisted. “I am only ever trying to protect you, but to do that, I need you to talk to me.”

“What do you need me to say?” Zero asked, suddenly tired. He was often tired, lately. Sore and achy, too. It was like his body had gone through years of growth spurts overnight and now he was suffering through the shock of it. His mind felt weighed down, too, easily distracted by his heightened senses and his own swirling thoughts. His fangs throbbed with the want for blood almost constantly, but not with the madness of a level E—more like a constant craving for a specific food. Zero pushed it aside, still not comfortable with the whole process. He nearly drowned himself in blood tablets to satisfy Kaname and the court, but in his darkest heart Zero knew that only real blood would satiate the need. Another thing he was keeping from Kaname, for the time being.

Soft hands caressed Zero’s face, gentle and sweet and keeping Zero’s wandering attention focused. “I don’t need you to say any particular thing,” Kaname said, his face and tone serious. “I just need to know what you’re thinking. I can’t make you safe, or even happy, if I’m only guessing about what you need.”

I need to not feel like even more of a monster in my own skin, Zero didn’t say. I need this thing in my blood locked up back where it belonged. But was that entirely true, even? Because in the glimpses Zero had experienced, when he felt good, he felt really, really good. Running, jumping, shooting, seeing, tasting, smelling—all were so much better than he had ever experienced before. And in those moments, when Zero wasn’t thinking, it felt right. Like he had been walking around with a blindfold on until the moment the Rose Seal broke. Zero was growing a little stronger every day, and now he could almost see a horizon where his body felt like his own. But did he even deserve that?

Zero pushed the thoughts away. He was so tired. He didn’t want to think in moral quandaries right now, or maybe ever again. That’s why so many vampires gave up on morality altogether, Zero thought. It was simply less exhausting to float shallowly through life when your body only functioned properly when glutted on the blood of others.

“I don’t know what I need right now,” Zero finally said. He looked away. “I should have died, Kaname. And, in a way, I think I did.”

Kaname frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t go back to the Association,” Zero said. It felt like a confession, even though it must have been glaringly obvious to everyone with an ounce of common sense.

A fucked-up level D former hunter? Sure, the Association could find a way to use that. Keep him contained, sealed, and sustained on enough missions that Zero’s hunter instincts didn’t spin him over the edge of a cliff. And after killing Rido, well, Zero had become a house-hold name. For most hunters it must have seemed like a redemption—House Kiryuu returned from vampiric shame by killing an insane Pureblood. Except Zero had still been a vampire. No amount of spilled pure blood could cleanse away that. So, they had put Zero on the council and given him paperwork to do. A distraction, something to keep Zero from causing trouble. But Zero wasn’t just an afflicted hunter and, with the Rose Seal broken, there was now no way to hide it. He was a vampire in his own right. The Association would never accept him again.

“I would never stop you from hunting,” Kaname said, evading the point entirely.

Zero’s lips quirked in thanks, grateful for Kaname’s judiciousness on the subject. They were learning brilliantly a language of silences, together. “The Day Class is out of the question, too, isn’t it?” Zero asked. He already knew the answer.

Kaname rolled his shoulders. He was picking his words, but there was authentic sympathy in the line of his mouth. He was figuring out how to break hard news gently. Zero appreciated the care, his heart warming slightly as he watched Kaname struggle to be kind. “It would be possible,” Kaname finally said, “but difficult.”

“I thought as much,” Zero admitted. He was more stable than he’d been as a D, but more exhausted during the day than he was used to. His body was tired from fighting to adjust to a new way of being, Zero guessed. Human blood certainly smelled more potent than ever before. Even on the opposite side of campus, behind the Night Class’s incredible wards (if Zero did say so himself), he sometimes felt like he couldn’t breathe for the danger of losing control. Living in the Day Class dorms, surrounded by that smell, would almost assuredly drive Zero mad. That, and Zero was sure that the questions rejoining the Day Class would stir would be absolutely breathtaking. Zero was confident that he could silence the rumours eventually, but… was it worth the effort? Zero had no plan. No goal. He was so far off the plan that he couldn’t even remember where he’d gone wrong.

Zero had only a few certainties to work with. The most important was that Kaname was in the Night Class. He was the only person who gave Zero any kind of peace—ironically. But for the time being, that sweet irony was all Zero had. He couldn’t think about Yori or Kaito. He hadn’t seen them since being rescued, only having exchanged calls ands texts to assure them he was alive. He wasn’t sure if they hadn’t wanted to come, or if someone—Kaname? Cross? Yagari? —was keeping them away.

In the part of his mind where Zero kept the things he didn’t want to think about, he could quietly admit that he was almost grateful for their absence. He’d yet to find the words to explain his Pureblood revelation to them. He wasn’t certain they would want to be anywhere near a Pureblood, especially Kaito, and, coward that he was, Zero didn’t want to hasten their loss. His was slowly growing closer to Kaname’s inner court, gaining their first names and friendship, but the thought of essentially replacing Yori and Kaito made Zero ill.

Brushing that sickness away, Zero clapped his hands. “Well, that’s two decisions made, then,” he said, hoping he could change the topic. “Anything else you feel needs discussing right now?”

“Yes,” Kaname said, squinting like that would help him read Zero’s deepest thoughts. “Are you okay?”

For one insane, utterly unrestrained moment, Zero nearly laughed in Kaname’s deeply concerned face. He felt it bubble up from the tips of his toes, flowing through his veins like champagne. Zero was not prone to wild laughter. He wasn’t prone to laughter at all. Perhaps this was the pure blood peeking through, he thought for a blurry moment. Insanity was a trait, wasn’t it? Perhaps Zero would just go mad early, get it over with. He would reap whatever rewards there were before the Association locked him in a nice little cage from which he could plot his bloody revenge.

Thankfully, however, Zero managed to catch himself at the last second. Instead of falling into maniacal hysteria, with great control and maturity, Zero said, “Did you know that I turned nineteen on the twenty-forth?”

Pure surprise lit Kaname’s face. “October 24^th?”

Zero nodded. “I think I was unconscious, or maybe killing something, but yes. But that’s not the point, its just—Kaname, my life has disintegrated at least three times in less than two decades. Maybe more than that, if you count last year as a rolling cascade of upsets rather than one fast detonation.”

“Gods, Zero,” Kaname choked, paler even than his usual porcelain complexion, “I am so sorry.”

Zero waved his hand. It wasn’t okay, and if Kaname ever did anything even slightly similar again Zero would kill him, but Zero couldn’t be bothered to fight about it. His life was in ashes. The thing he had been trying to avoid since his conception, and trying doubly hard to avoid since his parents’ deaths, had happened. Zero was living now in the wind. And in his castle in the wind, fighting with Kaname was the least of his small list of concerns. “What I mean,” Zero said instead of fighting, “is that no one has even died this time. Sure, I’ve lost every scrap of right to be a vampire hunter that I ever possessed, and yes, being a vampire hunter made up probably ninety percent of my personal identity—”

“Zero,” Kaname said again, stricken.

Zero rolled right over him. “But, by the Gods, Kaname, no one died. So, all past precedent considered, I’m doing just fucking fine.”

There was silence. A long, tense silence. Zero actively didn’t play with his hair and directed his face toward the window. He felt Kaname’s stare on him like two sniper points lighting up the side of his head. Finally, the silence became too much and Zero stood, brushing the imaginary lint off the crisp dress shirt he’d borrowed from Kaname. He needed clothes, Zero thought idly. Probably no one had missed that Zero was living out of Kaname’s closet, and, knowing vampires, probably they thought that it was some kind of cutesy mate-bond thing. The truth was that Zero had no clothes that weren’t Day Class uniforms, hunting equipment, or worn-soft t-shirts; not exactly the look the Night Class went for. And Zero would be damned before some bullshit courtier sneered at Kaname because of him.

Apparently, Zero had begun to care at some point. Disgusting.

“Where are you going?” Kaname asked, painted in confusion. He was sitting in one of the pushed-back chairs, eyes fixed on Zero like he had the secret to life printed on his forehead.

Zero checked the grandfather clock sitting arrogantly in the corner of Kaname’s office. He gestured to the clock. “That’s accurate, isn’t?”

Kaname blinked. “Of course.”

“Then I have an appointment with a costumier, whatever the hell that is, in ten minutes,” Zero said.

“A what?” Kaname asked, blinking again.

Zero shrugged. “Again, hell if I know. I asked Takuma what I was supposed to wear to this stupid ball of yours. He replied by grinning joyously and making me this appointment. Ruka and Rima are helping, too.”

“You’re being fitted for a costume. Willingly,” Kaname clarified. He was so confused, Zero thought fondly. His beautiful face at least helped him look handsomely uncomprehending.

“It’s a costume party, isn’t?” Zero asked, knowing full-well that it was.

“Yes,” Kaname said factually.

Zero rolled his eyes, hard, and walked over to his mate. Zero was trying to get used to that word before he was inevitably bombarded by it at the ball. On a complete whim he stopped and dropped to one knee so he could press a kiss to Kaname’s porcelain-pale cheek, pleased when he felt Kaname’s reflexive smile against his lips. “Then, of course, I need a costume,” Zero murmured. “I’m not dumb enough to stick out among the enemy, you know.”

“Of course not,” Kaname said, his eyes filled with an affection that made Zero’s heart stutter. “I’m just amazed by your brilliance, is all,” he continued, hand guiding Zero’s chin and locking him into a proper kiss. Zero sighed into it, senses swimming leisurely in Kaname’s warm touch and spicy taste.

“Flirt,” Zero accused as they parted, reveling in the smile he felt curling his lips. It was such a strange expression, still, but against Zero’s best predictions he thought that he was slowly beginning to live a life where it might become familiar.

“Never,” Kaname denied, eyes sparkling, and brushed Zero’s hair back from his face. He closed his eyes a minute, like he was trying to preserve the moment in his mind, then looked seriously at Zero. “Thank you,” he said in the softest voice Zero had ever heard him use.

“For what?” Zero asked, frowning. If anything, Zero thought ruefully, at this point he should probably be thanking Kaname.

Zero’s mate relaxed further into his chair. He gestured lazily to the room. “For making this all so much easier than I thought it would be,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss Zero’s lips in a chaste intimacy.

The sweet kiss broke almost the moment it landed. “Okay,” Zero said, smiling but bemused. He rose carefully to his feet, his wounds pulling only slightly, then paused at the door. “I’ll see you later, won’t I?”

“I would never miss dawn with you,” Kaname answered, his expression so warm that, as Zero walked down the hall to his appointment, it was nearly able to chase away the chill Kaname’s other words had sent down Zero’s spine.

Chapter Text

For some reason, finding out that Kuran Manor was two days’ travel from Cross Academy had shocked Zero. He knew that vampires liked their privacy—the Academy was surrounded by thick forest for a reason—but he hadn’t imagined Kaname liking it that much. Possibly because Kaname’s involvedness in every aspect of Zero’s life didn’t give off much of an isolationist impression.

Zero guessed Kaname’s ancestors could have been cut from different cloth. The estate wasn’t quite as far as Japan’s barren southern coast, still marred by cataclysmic warfare even after all these years, but it was pretty damn close. The ancient Kurans must have been able to taste the ashy fallout in the air. Assuming the manor had existed then. History, Zero had discovered, was murky before the Kurans established their monarchy.

Zero had been reading a lot lately. Barred from classes while he healed and unwilling to antagonise Kaname’s court anymore than he already had, Zero had taken up residence in the Moon Dorms’ well-appointed library. It wasn’t exactly stocked with forbidden knowledge, but you could learn a lot about a culture from its favourite books and Zero was tired of being a stranger in a strange land. A hunter Zero may be at heart, but he could no longer deny that every drop of blood tablet he consumed drew him deeper into the night. He had to learn how to live in that darkness if he was going to keep trying his hand at living. And, against all odds, Zero felt increasingly more vested in trying.

So. Books. At least until he felt confident enough to ask questions of the inner court without feeling like an idiot.

With that goal in mind, Zero had delved into the history books the library stocked. Hunters always began with the ravenous Kuran Monarchy and the rise of their people, but the vampire histories started much earlier. They devoted entire chronicles to the years before the Monarchy was established. Many works followed the lives of the ancient Ancestor Purebloods, the vampires who’d clawed their ways out of ruined laboratories and stalked nuclear wastelands looking for sustenance and kin. Of these, the Kuran Ancestor was obviously the most revered—a man almost entirely ignored in hunter lore.

Weird, Zero thought. The Monarchy itself was the pet project of the Kuran Ancestor. It took him several gruesome decades to accomplish. But once he had the throne no challenger could shake his grip. He ruled Japan and a swelling number of client states for most of a millennium, shoving civic reforms down the throats of his followers and killing anyone who opposed him, then disappeared. Dead? Maybe. Vacationing on a forgotten beach somewhere? Could be. Details were sparse and conflicting.

Before delving into the Moon Dorms’ library, Zero had only caught mention of him in footnotes. It was like someone had tried to keep him out of the hunters’ narrative. Because he seemed to have advocated coexisting with the humans? Or at least had taken a much less violent line against humans than his heirs. Zero was wise enough to the politics of propaganda to recognize that it would be hard to paint all vampires with an evil brush if their favourite king had been a relatively okay guy.

Sources on his descendants, however, agreed with hunter accounts that his retirement was bad news for anyone with a smattering of conscience. The other Kuran monarchs seemed to spend their time throwing lavish parties and waging pyrrhic wars against uppity Pureblood vassals. The required armies of Level Es had never been seen before or since. The humans that weren’t made into cannon fodder were kept like cattle. The amount of consumed blood historians alluded to at just one of the Kurans’ infamous balls was staggering. The royal family truly cut loose without their Ancestor around.

Little wonder then that his family had done what they’d done, Zero mused. He then smashed his eyes shut and forced the thought away.

In the weeks since his rescue, Zero had struck a deal with himself. If he was going to try and be whatever he was—a vampire, a Night Class student, Kaname’s mate, a Pureblood—he mustn’t hold onto the past. Otherwise, this new identity would die.

Zero had lived one long funeral already. He didn’t think he’d survive another death.

Breathing out slowly, Zero rubbed at the headache he felt coming between his eyes. Yeah, he recognized the irony. Here he was, focusing on the future by researching his dead in-laws. But know thy enemy, right? Especially if you were marrying into their family.

Zero’s gut twisted. Now there was a concept to brood over. Kuran Zero. As Kaname’s fated mate, Zero would be naïve to think that there was any other culmination available to the flirty, protective thing they had growing between them. Zero was so tangled up in the man that he’d even given up lying to himself about enjoying it. They spent too many lazy days together for his denials to hold water. But a wedding, a marriage…the thought made his hands shake.

Zero and Kaname had been involved, to say the least, for two months. It had taken Kaname less than a year to propose to Yuuki, and she hadn’t been his mate. How much time did that leave Zero before Kaname brought it up?

Zero tossed in his ridiculously soft bed. A thin line of sunlight forced its way through the crack in his heavy curtains. He’d been watching it grow brighter for hours. Now it was beginning to fade. It would be time to get up soon.

Zero turned his back, growling with frustration. This was the worst he’d slept since moving to the Mood Dorms. He blamed Kaname for it. Aggravatingly, Zero had gotten used to passing out in his bed. With Zero having slipped all but entirely into a nocturnal lifestyle, they had fallen into a habit of spending the days together, sleep-mussed and cuddled under Kaname’s downy duvet.

In a windowless room, Zero could tell immediately when dawn hit by the wave of exhaustion that dragged his eyes down. Kaname would come back from his classes in the late night, collect Zero’s bleary-eyed self from the library, and have him bundled into his bed before the first streaks of blue light could peek over the courtyard. The whole Night Class thought it was the cutest thing ever. Zero would glare them into submission—if it didn’t take his whole focus just to keep standing.

Zero would sleep a while in Kaname’s bed, then wake up groggy and fuzzy, slipping in and out of dreams. His human habits were at war with his needs even in this, pulling him out of the sleep his vampire body demanded he take.

Young Purebloods had a higher sensitivity to the sun, Kaname explained one day in reply to Zero’s petulant whining. As Zero grew older he would be able to push those limits more, but Kaname had admitted that even he was prone to dozing in the back of his town car when he was conducting daytime business.

Zero had struggled to smother a snicker. “Is that why you wear sunglasses? So your driver thinks you’re just settling in stoically for the ride?”

Kaname’s lips had twitched. “Maybe,” he’d hedged, looking absurdly like a child with stolen cookie crumbs stuck to his face.

Zero’s composure had cracked. Laughter had bubbled up in his throat and spilled out his mouth, unfamiliar but enjoyable. They had been lying in Kaname’s bed, the fluffy duvet snuggled around them.

“You have a beautiful laugh,” Kaname had murmured. He’d lay on his stomach, chin propped on his palm. He’d worn a silk sleep shirt and pants, his hair mussed. He was Zero’s favourite Kaname, the version that watched him with happy, guileless eyes.

Zero had looked away, still unable to meet that sort of happiness head-on. He’d smirked instead. “Yes, well, you’re easy to laugh at.”

Kaname had chuckled, the sound rumbling in his chest, sending sparks skipping down Zero’s spine. He’d lunged forward and pushed Zero back against the pillows, caging him in. “Only you would dare,” he’d said forebodingly. He was having fun, teasing Zero. His glittering eyes gave him away.

Zero had swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Kaname was always his sexiest when he was playing. Living in the Moon Dorms, where Kaname had his court and, of course, Zero himself to cheerfully harass, was terribly distracting. “Someone has to,” Zero had quipped stubbornly, ignoring his red face. “Or your big head wouldn’t fit through the door.” 

Zero had been expecting Kaname to say something witty back, continuing the banter that they were falling into easier and easier these days. Instead, Kaname’s expression had melted into true happiness. “Then thank the gods that you were given to me.”

His whispered words had curled up in Zero’s breast and made his heartbeat stutter.

Something of Zero’s emotional sprawl must have shown on his face. Kaname’s smile had bloomed further, bringing his idiotically overwhelming beauty to the fore. Zero had bit his tongue to keep from saying something stupid, like I love you.

Zero hadn’t yet named the thing that made him smile at Kaname. He’d hated Kaname’s cruelty and arrogance for so long. Years. Two months should not be enough to burn out that hate, let alone sprout a seedling of something else. The problem was that Kaname hadn’t been cruel at all for those months, and his arrogance now felt like a joke that Zero was on the inside of. His instincts craved the man and so did his body, and Zero increasingly sought his company. What could he do but let this thing in his chest grow? It had so much fertile soil to flourish in.

Part of it was obviously how good Kaname had been to him these last few weeks. Zero didn’t like to think of what he would have done if he’d woken his pure blood a year or even three months ago. But was that love or dependency? Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the difference not mattering was enough.

Kaname had lent forward and pressed a kiss to Zero’s forehead, the bond granting him at least superficial awareness of Zero’s conflicted emotions. “If only for the sake of the doors,” he’d added, his humour offering Zero an escape hatch from his thoughts. They’d sunken into the pillows together, snark traded between lazy kisses until Zero slept again. 

Now, Zero puffed out a breath. If he was being so pathetic as to dream up memories of Kaname to try and quiet his mind, sleep was obviously a lost cause. He sat up in his bed resentfully, putting his back against the headboard and wrapping his arms around his legs. As much as sleep seemed impossible, getting out of bed didn’t hold any appeal either.

He looked around his bedroom, the almost-pure darkness not hindering his vision at all. He didn’t spend a lot of time here. It was a beautiful room, but absent of anything personal. At least Kaname’s room had a stack of his most recent reads piled by what had become his side of the bed. But he had asked to keep a separate room. Kaname had pouted initially, pointing out that new mates flouted propriety and moved in together all the time. Society would only chuckle indulgently. But he had noticed Zero’s hesitation and silently backed off. To his credit, he’d never brought it up again despite the weeks of regular sleepovers they’d been having.

Zero had been silently relieved. Maybe it was a hunter instinct, or just a habit from keeping secrets all his life, but he had always enjoyed having his own space. He hadn’t been eager to move into Kaname’s rooms and give that up. Even with the number of daytime sleepovers growing all the time and the few hours he spent in his room, Zero still liked having it.

Zero stared at the bare, elegantly cream wall. So why hadn’t he moved his things here from the Sun Dorms yet? Yori had gently offered to help him clear out the room. She’d been nothing but supportive since the day Zero privately thought of as The Big Reveal.

When Zero was certain he could control himself around the pair of humans, Kaname had dutifully shuffled Yori and Kaito into the Moon Dorms to see him. Zero had dropped the Pureblood bomb immediately, obviously unable to hide it, and explained the situation—with moderate truth.

An inherited seal from the beginning of his family line had snapped. No, Zero didn’t know what the seal did; it was a supposedly harmless family quirk, the history of it long lost. No, he could not return to the Day Class or the Association. No, Kaname wasn’t a delusional creep. They really were true mates, a genetically and instinctually perfect match.

No, Kaito. There was no possible way to reaffix the seal.

Kaito had stormed out of the room after that, taking what felt like Zero’s whole gut with him. As Zero had known but dreaded, Kaito had nothing to say to one like the monster who had destroyed his brother. And Zero could not say anything to Kaito that would not come from a Pureblood vampire’s lips. The silence between them was deafening, as painful as a scream that had run out of air.

Yori was Zero’s saving grace. As the door had slammed closed behind Kaito, she’d thrown herself into Zero’s arms. “Don’t leave me,” she’d demanded, her callused hands knotted tightly in his shirt.

Zero had brought his arms across her back, tucking her under his chin. He’d held Ichiru this way, when they were small and his brother felt especially sickly. He’d held Yuuki like this too, when strange and indescribable nightmares had haunted her dreams. He could hold neither his twin nor his foster sister now, but he could hold Yori. And despite the fates of his other siblings, Zero was just greedy enough, just lonely enough, to be willing to take the risk.  

“Not unless you ask me to go,” he’d murmured into her hair. They’d stayed like that for long minutes, drawing strength from each other. Every time he’d looked at his phone over the last few weeks and seen a text from her, that sensation of being held fell over him again like a warm blanket.  

Kaname had watched this drama unfold with a carefully neutral expression. Zero knew Kaname didn’t consider his human hunter friends very consequential. They would be dead in a few decades, while the vampire blood burning in his and Kaname’s veins would keep them youthful and alive for many, many more years. But Kaname understood Zero well enough now to know that the future was barely something Zero thought about, and that today Kaito and Yori were close to Zero’s heart. This acknowledgement had likely been what kept Kaname from snapping Kaito’s neck for the rudeness done to his mate and been what nudged him into giving Yori a free pass to visit the Moon Dorms—and therefore Zero—whenever she liked.

Another gentlemanly gesture from the man Zero had formerly hated. Little wonder Zero was falling in love with the bastard.  

Sighing, Zero flopped back down in his absurdly silky sheets. Something about this stupidly comfortable bed made it easy to layabout and ruminate. He glanced at that crack in the curtains. The light was barely creeping through now. Twilight was coming.

Zero groaned into the nearest pillow. The days had gone by much quicker than he’d been expecting and now this awful ball was upon him. Kaname had already gone ahead to Kuran Manor, taking Seiren with him.

Zero was loathe to say anything, and in fact he hadn’t protested the plan at all when Kaname had run it by him. But he didn’t like that Kaname had left without him. Zero had never traveled so far before. He would have to take a plane. Air travel was for the rich and famous. Zero could barely imagine it.

His instincts didn’t help matters. They screamed that a small container thousands of feet in the sky was the absolute worst place to be, let alone traveling thousands and thousands of miles away from his own self-warded territory. The thought swirled with—unease, Zero allowed. It certainly wasn’t fear. But he still didn’t feel secure in his body, and he hadn’t sparred since Tokyo. If they were attacked, Zero didn’t really know what he could do. Fight, obviously, but to what degree? The insecurity made his hackles rise. The fact that they still had no leads on his would-be murder didn’t help, either.

He hated to admit that the thought of traveling with Kaname, imperious, impossibly strong Kaname, soothed him. He was a hunter, a lethal killer, and now a Pureblood vampire. He didn’t need anyone to hold his hand. But he’d be damned if he didn’t wish that Kaname hadn’t left the fucking Academy without him.

Zero would be much more irritated by Kaname’s annoying choices if Akatsuki hadn’t pulled him aside a few days before Kaname left. Zero had maybe said three words to the man before he’d moved into the Moon Dorms, but he and Zero had formed an immediate understanding. Takuma was jokingly jealous about it, having worn away at Zero’s defences for weeks before getting a civil word from him. The trick, Ruka had astutely pointed out, was that Akatsuki and Zero didn’t talk. They mutually, silently enjoyed spaces, books, and the occasional judgemental look together. Which was why when Akatsuki had pulled him into the library, sighed resignedly, and began to talk about feelings, Zero had listened.

“He wants to make a good impression,” Akatsuki had explained reluctantly. “Introducing his mate into his ancestral manor is a big deal. He’s not any less invested you. If anything, it’s a sign he’s even more invested in you.” Akatsuki’s shoulder had slumped. “Trust me. The lecture we got about keeping you safe for those forty-eight hours was—intense—to say the least.”  

It said a lot about how much time he and Akatsuki spent in each other’s company that he’d diagnosed Zero’s issue faster than anyone else. It was also a testament that his words had actually eased something in Zero’s chest. He still wasn’t entirely pleased that Kaname had gone ahead to—what, exactly? What needed Kaname attention so badly? —but it irrationally made Zero feel better that Kaname had officially burdened the inner court with watching his back. Ugh. Fucking vampire instincts. Any gesture that made it clear that Kaname prized Zero above all others was guaranteed to make them purr like a kitten.

Harried knocking echoed from the anteroom door, breaking Zero out of the stewing thoughts he’d once again tripped into. Damn this sinfully soft bed!

The knocking came again, echoing uncomfortably loud through Zero’s suite. The anteroom was only the first room in the set. Technically, it was a formal receiving room for privately hosting guests without allowing them the privilege of seeing Zero’s bedroom. Zero treated it kind of like a living room. Off of it were an indulgent bathroom complete with ridiculous clawfoot bathtub, his obnoxiously large bedroom, and a private balcony that seemed to spite gravity for how large it was. “No kitchen?” he’d remarked dryly when Takuma had shown it to him. Takuma’s impeccably polite threat to have one added to “Kiryuu-sama’s” suite had been both terrifying and genuine. Academically, Zero had always known that high-class vampires lived in excess. Living as one of them was an entirely different, unnerving experience.

The knocking was giving him a headache. Damned Pureblood senses. Level-D senses had already bordered on too much to handle when added to Zero’s already keen hearing and sight, gifts of his proud hunter lineage. His newly active pure blood dialed the whole package up to a hundred, leaving Zero sometimes stunned in their wake. He’d teased Kaname about the sunglasses, but Zero would have to get himself a pair if he ever managed to stay up past six am again.

“Zero-san!” Takuma called through the door, the knocking silenced for a moment. “If you have woken, please do let me in!” The knocking returned with enthusiasm.

Zero sighed. He could have ignored a maid or runner sent to fetch him, but Takuma’s presence meant serious business. He glanced at the ornate clock hanging across the room, his eyes having no problem reading the small numbers even twenty feet away in the pitch darkness. Four o’clock in the afternoon—they were meant to be catching the six o’ clock train to the airfield. No wonder Takuma sounded moments away from politely breaking down the door.

Stretching, Zero stood and shrugged on the silky robe he’d found hanging in the closet when he’d moved in. Padding out of his bedroom and across the anteroom, he threw open the door and revealed Takuma. He beamed at Zero, his fist, still raised for more knocking, falling gracefully back to his side. Ruka and Rima, an unexpected but not surprising bonus, flanked him like especially pretty bodyguards. All three were dressed beautifully, in casual clothing that spoke of quality and money. Takuma had a garment bag thrown over his arm. Ruka cradled a makeup box with motherly devotion.

Zero’s headache gave an insistent pulse. He rubbed his eyes and turned his back to them. “I guess you’d better make yourselves comfortable.”

Neither Takuma nor the women needed further invitation. “Good afternoon to you too, Zero-san. Have you eaten yet?” Takuma asked, tossing the switch by the door and flooding the anteroom in light. He looked around the space with a strategic eye before opening the bathroom door and hanging the garment bag he’d been burdened with on the back of it. Ruka broke off to begin setting up her tools and potions on the coffee table that stood between the dainty chesterfield and the two elegant sitting chairs. Rima oferred Zero a strawberry pocky stick and a commiserating glance.

Zero took the stick and slumped on the chesterfield. “I won’t pass out on you,” he assured Takuma, nibbling on the candy. Kaname had bullied him into feeding from the vein excessively before he’d left. Even a day later, Kaname’s pure blood still pulsed through his system like lightning. A day of poor sleep barely touched him. Which was probably exactly how Kaname wanted Zero feeling ahead of his first time traveling like vampire royalty.

Zero still had a craving for something warm and full of carbs, but that was mostly because the dorm kitchens were pulling fresh bread out of the oven to prepare for what passed as breakfast in the nocturnal world. Though Zero’s suite was on the highest storey, the smell drifted through the room.

As though reading Zero’s mind, Takuma whipped out his cellphone and sent a text. “The staff will just bring up some light refreshments, then,” he said, smiling beatifically.

Zero sent a falsely sweet smile back at him. “Very good of you, thank you,” he simpered. He trusted Takuma to know that he meant his thanks—all the polite formalities just bored him. Though better controlled about it than Zero, Takuma was thankfully also something of a bastard.

Ruka snorted. She’d taken up her station behind Zero. She tugged lightly on a lock of his hair and Zero sighed, straightening up against the couch. He knew the routine.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that he’d gone to Ruka for hair care help. Ignoring his long locks was not a feasible plan; a week of tangles and splitting ends had taught him that. He’d been inches from cutting it, had even stood in his bathroom with a pair of pilfered kitchen scissors. But the bare skin on his neck still bothered him. He still looked too much like Ichiru, like a Zero who’d never had a chance to grow up. So, he’d come to the decision to trust Ruka with it. He used the fancy products she ordered, oiled his hair with the tiny bottles of gods-knew-what she provided, and invested in a brush that cost more than some of his daggers on her recommendation. And, when the times came that Zero needed to be seen a certain way by people who were somehow important, he trusted her not to make him look ridiculous.

Neither of them missed that she was the only person he’d allowed to hold a bladed edge near his skin since the attack. They just mutually chose not to talk about it. It was a quality he valued in friends.

…And if Zero was silently shocked that he’d made enough friends to have noticed a preference, that was no one’s business.   

“You’re just lucky we had the time to come up here and help you,” Ruka said, drawing Zero’s attention. “Servants could do this just as well.”

Zero snorted. As if any of Kaname’s inner court would ever leave Zero alone with the servants. While nominally loyal to their employer, they could always be swayed for the right price. That Zero had been perfectly capable of killing C-level vampires since he was thirteen held no sway.

Phantom pain flared in his chest. Zero grimaced. He couldn’t blame the court. Not when a human had nearly killed him.

Shaking away the thought, Zero gestured broadly to Ruka’s hair tools. They were lined up like soldiers on the coffee table in front of him, so he could pass them to her at her command. “But then you wouldn’t have the joy of torturing me personally.”

Increasingly used to his sarcasm, Ruka only smirked at him. “If you try and escape out the window, I’ll sic Hanabusa on you.”

Zero blinked. “Why Hanabusa?” Honestly, saying she would go herself would have been scarier. She wasn’t the most organically powerful noble Zero had ever met, but Ruka was both creative and mean. That made her one of the most intimidating. And the most fun to hangout with.

“He’s finally stopped twitching every time someone brings up Headmaster Cross,” Rima said tonelessly. She had taken the chair across from Zero. Her job seemed to be to keep Zero complacent with pocky sticks. As he nibbled on yet another, he was loath to admit that it was working. “Ruka was disappointed. But if Hanabusa failed to retrieve you again, Kaname-sama would surely terrify him afresh. She’s setting him up to fail. She thinks its funny.”

“So do you!” Ruka defended. Zero imagined her wielding a comb like a sword. In her hands, it probably would be a weapon.

Takuma sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. “It’s a little funny,” he allowed. Then he held up a hand and that made them all shut up long enough that Takuma could open the door and accept the tray of finger foods without letting the whole staff know that Kaname’s lauded and feared inner court was filled with henpecking children. 

Zero snagged a croissant once the tray was in front him. “Poor Hanabusa,” he said. “The great trauma of my childhood was definitely tea with Cross.”

There was a beat of shocked silence. Then Rima giggle-coughed, spraying pocky crumbs everywhere, and the rest of them dissolved into laughter.

Zero smiled into his croissant. He wouldn’t say it—didn’t know how to say it—but he was glad Takuma had come knocking at his door. Zero would have gotten up eventually and made himself presentable, his bags already packed and spirted away by the servants the night before. But this was better. Warmer. His shoulders relaxed. His headache slipped away with the rhythm of Ruka’s hands brushing gently through his hair.

His life was still a hot mess. The past chewed at the back of his mind with sharp teeth. The future stretched out like a long shadow in front of him. He didn’t know how much or with what to trust Kaname, though he grew closer to loving him truly with every day. But for the moment, there was peace. And Zero was just desperate enough to focus on that instead of everything else.

Chapter Text

It was October 30^th. As a rule, the natural world was falling asleep. The trees around Cross Academy had lost most of their leaves, blanketing the ground in splashes of red and orange. The army of gardeners had clipped away the dead parts of every flowering plant, covering the roots in a layer of peat. Winter was on its way and all living things had taken note.

Except for all those living things residing at Kaname’s house, apparently.

Zero’s jaw dropped as they drove up the long road through the grounds. He tried not to crucify himself for it. He’d faced a lot of shock already on this trip, and he’d borne it all admirably up to now. Flying? Zero was firmly convinced that people weren’t made for the air. The sensation of hurtling through the sky in a tin can while relying on an unknown man to pilot and keep them all from dying was something Zero was not eager to repeat. And then there was the whole spectacle of disembarking. Zero was aware that most noble vampires were celebrities—Rima and Senri were obvious examples—but it was a different reality living that life. A vanguard of security personnel had kept the worst of the fans and paparazzi back, but no number of black-clad bodies could stop the flashing lights and screaming.

Zero had followed the example of Kaname’s courtiers and kept his face blank. It was made easier by the sunglasses Takuma had pressed into his hand. They were no doubt designer and obscenely expensive, but most importantly the special lenses filtered light away from his newly Pureblood eyes. He’d have been blinded without them.

He’d kept them on even in the limousine that picked them up from the runway, the regular tint on the windows not quite enough to convince Zero to take them off. Surrounded by Kaname’s most trusted courtiers, who were also slowly becoming his friends, he'd closed his eyes behind the lenses and let himself relax. His usual daytime drowsiness had taken him easily, exhausted as he was from the travel and his shit sleep the day before. The thought that Kaname had napped in the back of a car at least once had sent him to sleep with a smirk.

But as the vehicle brought them hours away from the city, the sun began to set. Zero had woken and eased the sunglasses off his face. Though the traveling and Kaname’s notable absence had admittedly made him bitchy, he couldn’t deny that he was incredibly curious about the manor. It wasn’t just that he’d read so much about it now that he felt ready to apply to be a tour guide. The place was also Kaname’s home. It was the place he went to rest. For all that he felt like he was learning Kaname, he couldn’t imagine what that place looked like.

Now, he was beginning to get a sense. And it was stunning.

The imposing iron gates had swung openly silently, the touch of their warding breaking over Zero’s skin with a waterfall’s force. He’d gasped as they’d passed through their power, instantly aware that the wards would have burned through any trespasser like acid. The car then curled along a snaking road, towering trees pressing in form either side. And, when Zero thought they might drive through the forest forever, then there came the gardens.

Defiant of the seasons, tall cherry blossom trees wept petals with unseasonable persistence. Purple wisteria flowers tumbled from thick leafy branches; hydrangea bushes heavy with flowers growing as tall as Zero’s shoulder. When Hanabusa excitedly rolled down a window, sweetness filled the whole limousine in a blissful wave. And the roses. Each plant was crown with dozens of heavy blooms, endless vibrant colours pressing up toward the sun, sprawling from beds, pots, and trellises with gleeful abandon. These flowers were forgotten by time and they gloried in it.

Red petals, Kuran Roses, naturally dominated the grounds. They held court over the garden, sharp-throned and arrogantly beautiful. Zero thought of fresh blood splattered over a regal tapestry, brilliant against every other beautiful color.   

With some effort, Zero managed to pull his jaw up off his chest. The rest of the court was just as awestruck, all grins and wide eyes. All the windows had been rolled down now, Hanabusa leaning forward over Ruka’s lap to stick his head out to look better. Ruka was so spellbound she didn’t even make him bleed for it. Akatsuki looked out the same window, though with more dignity, while Rima, Senri, and Takuma leaned over to look out Zero’s windows. Zero sat in the seat with his back to the driver, equally enchanted by the passing landscape.

He caught sight of other things through the overwhelming flowers. What might be stables, tall and well-kempt, with a charming terracotta roof. A huge, shining glass building that might have been an ornate greenhouse or pool—or, hell, an aviary. Who knew what the Kurans constructed to help them spend their endless time and money. Gods knew they had the space. The entire estate must be tens and tens of acres, perhaps hundreds. Zero had no idea how much of the surrounding forest was private property. Specifics like acreage and exact layout weren’t included in any books he’d read. Probably as a security measure, Zero guessed. The wards on the place were incredible, humming against Zero’s skin like a physical touch, but there was no reason to go spreading information around.

Zero was just coming to grips with these details when the driver rounded the final curve and the house came into view. But house didn’t really cut it. Mansion couldn’t keep up. Even manor, which was its rightful title, felt tongue-in-cheek. Castle jumped into Zero’s head, but he discarded it. The word didn’t carry enough elegance.

Palace, Zero decided numbly, the limousine pulling smoothly around the huge courtyard to paused some feet from the marble steps that led up to the towering front doors. Palace was the only word that came even close to honestly describing its grandeur.

He met the eyes of one of the woman-sized marble angels dancing in the fountain. It sat at the rounded courtyard’s centre, full of nubile bodies that glistened in the fading sun. Her arms and wings were raised in jubilation, her clasped palms shooting water into the air. Her smile was serene, her finely carved eyes full of happiness.

Zero swallowed. He hoped silently, childishly, to share her happiness here.

He felt eyes on the back of his head. Turning, he looked away from the window and met Takuma’s gaze. His friend was watching him with a strange smile. Zero didn’t really want to know what inspired it, but he felt the urge to fill the silence. “Any tips?” he asked.

Takuma softened, a more natural expression changing his look. It was only in the contrast that Zero realised that Takuma had looked sad.

 “Not really,” Takuma said. “I haven’t been here since I was very small. A babe in arms. After his parents died when we were small the manor was closed and Kaname came to live with my grandfather and I.” His smile brightened. “It feels very good to see this place open again. Like the healing of a great wound.”

Zero felt the ache of it in his own chest, like he’d suffered the blow to his people just as Takuma had. He knew Kuran Juri and Haruka had been emblems of benevolence, a bridge between the vampire and human worlds, and dearest friends to Headmaster Cross. But they must have been worth as much and more to their own people, a pair of royal Purebloods who were measured and fair leaders in their own right.

A pair of parents, cut down mercilessly, leaving behind two young children to be fostered and hidden away for their own protection.

Zero sighed. Their world had been drowning in spilled blood for his entire life. Takuma might be right; a party could be just what they all needed. A first layer of bandage over the injury.

Without further ado, the limousine door on Takuma’s side was opened and any more conversation cut-off. His friend smiled once more at him, then slid out of the limousine. As with every aspect of vampire society, there was a tradition guiding their entrance at Kuran Manor. Takuma went first, as Kaname’s second-in-command. The rest of the court followed, stepping elegantly out of the vehicle. And then, last but never least, it was Zero’s turn.

As the mate of their lord, it was his due to be protected by them should something evil be lurking outside their transport. He was to be saved as they would save Kaname’s life. He was to be guarded at the expense of their own lives.

The practice was feudal. Vampiric. Zero’s hunter snarled for it to be imposed on him. But the vampire he lived as more and more each day purred, soothed and made peaceful by the obvious affection of his mate. Zero, caught in the middle of both mindsets, closed his eyes and summoned his composure. And not a moment too soon, as the limousine door clicked open and twilight smiled on his face.

Takuma grinned as he walked around the limousine’s hood. Kaname’s shoulders relaxed a degree, an instinct born of their childhood together assuring him that if Takuma smiled nothing could be too impossible to fix. It was a balm to the worry he’d spent the last two days fighting. Necessary as it had been, he’d loathed leaving Zero’s side and hated the thought of him travelling the country without Kaname. It was only his trust in his court and Zero himself that had allowed Kaname to focus on his tasks.

“My friend,” Kaname greeted, accepting Takuma’s offered forearm and indulging them both in a brief embrace. There was no one to judge them here; to see Kaname’s affection as weakness or Takuma’s as untoward. The divide between Pureblood lord and aristocratic vassal eased without any watching eyes around, leaving space for a more equal friendship.

Many thousands of years ago, Kaname had built this manor to be a haven from the world and its judgements. To use his home for its true purpose was a joy he’d never expected to experience again. It was a private victory, but one he also shared with Takuma.

They’d built their genuine friendship secretly, aware that Takuma’s grandfather would use any angle against Kaname that he could. Takuma had killed Asato Ichijou to protect Kaname, and only coincidence had preserved his life and returned him to Kaname’s side. If Kaname had his way, Takuma would always feel as at home in the manor as Kaname himself did.  

Takuma squeezed his shoulder, as though to state that he perfectly understood Kaname’s thoughts. “Your home is beautiful, Kaname,” Takuma said, beaming. “I know I speak for all of us when I say that I am so happy to join you here.”

“And it is my honour to host you, my most trusted courtiers and friends,” Kaname said, including his entire inner court in the greeting. They had hung back until Takuma made his entrance, following traditions long established. In turn, each of them smiled and offered bows to acknowledge Kaname’s words.

Kaname swallowed, his attention caught by the one face that was still absent from the assembly. In a lowered voice he asked Takuma, “I trust the journey went well?”

Takuma pursed his lips, his eyes bright. He was laughing at Kaname. “Why don’t you ask the person you want to hear from? Before he loses his patience with you.”  

Kaname fought down a glare. “Your advice, as always, is appreciated.”

Takuma smiled another of his endless smiles, then stepped past Kaname to greet Seiren. Kaname’s court followed in Takuma’s stride, expressing their happiness and thanks to Kaname before being shepherded into the manor under Seiren’s hand. The manor did have staff to fulfill such functions, but Seiren would never let strangers situate her court without her supervision.

With these formalities out of the way, there was no step between he and Zero. Only a car door and Kaname’s own nerves. Even the driver and the porters had cleared away, tucking themselves discretely inside the manor’s expansive staff quarters.

As old as he was, Kaname still didn’t remember how this particular tradition came about. As with most vampire cultural staples, it was likely born out of a deserved sense of caution and an equal craving for drama. But the result was that it was only proper for Kaname to receive his mate alone, so that they might have a private moment together before facing their court.

Kaname could remember thinking it an over-romantic hang up, once upon a time. Such reunions had made various receptions and functions drag on, slowing down arrivals and departures from any important home. But now that he stood as one half of a pair, he intimately understood the grace of this tradition.

His hand closing around the limousine door, Kaname took a deep breath and tried to quiet his racing heart. Would Zero be irritated from the waiting? Annoyed with Kaname’s absence on his travels? Probably both. But if he was also happy to see Kaname, that in itself would be a blessing. So resolved, he tugged the door open.

“Zero,” Kaname said. It was the sweetest word he’d spoken in two days.

Beloved violet eyes smiled at him despite the irritated frown Zero wore. “I was beginning to think you forgot about me.”

Warmth flooded Kaname’s chest. He’d felt cold these last two days, numb in a way that worried him. It made him think of those long years in the time before Zero. He’d blamed the weather and the lingering ghosts that haunted the manor and yes, finally thought that it was Zero’s absence that caused it. He was so used to being alone, independent to the bloody end, that there was still a streak of resistance in his core to the idea that he needed anyone. But the sudden peace he felt on Zero’s return, even with that fearsome frown staring him down, only confirmed that his days content in isolation were truly behind him.

Life simply wasn’t worth living without it, now that Kaname knew this warmth.

 Kaname offered his hand to Zero, palm up. “I could never forget you.” He hoped Zero could hear how dearly he meant his words.

The hard edges of Zero’s frown eased, suggesting he had. He gamely accepted Kaname’s hand, allowing Kaname to pull him to his feet.

Kaname brushed the bare knuckles of his other hand over Zero’s cheek, revelling in his presence. He followed the gesture with a chaste kiss to his lips. “My home welcomes you, my mate,” he murmured. His words were a traditional and timeless phrase.

The quirk of his lip said that Zero was only allowing this pageantry for Kaname’s sake. Kaname couldn’t deny that the ancient core of him appreciated the indulgence. Old dogs could learn new tricks, but it was nice to be thrown an old and well-practiced one now and then.

Kaname smiled his happiness at Zero, turning to lead him into the manor. He’d had the staff set refreshments in the main drawing room. Kaname didn’t remember a drawing room existing in his floorplan, but it was, he could admit, a helpful addition. The rest of his court would be gathered there, waiting for Kaname to show them around.

Zero’s hand on his shoulder stopped his turn. Kaname looked at him curiously, then paused, struck by the image Zero made. The sun was setting over his shoulder, the last golden rays clinging lovingly to his long silver hair. His eyes were bright. His smirking mouth slid into a smile as he gently took Kaname’s hand and dropped a kiss across his knuckles. Easily, unexpectedly, he brushed another kiss on Kaname cheek and whispered against his skin, “I look forward to making my home with you, my mate.”

Kaname inhaled sharply, warmth becoming heat as the old words curled around his heart. “Someone has been studying,” he said. He raised his hand and dragged his thumb over Zero’s full bottom lip. Heat became a fire in his gut when Zero caught the tip between his teeth, teasingly nipping his skin.

“Takuma is a font of valuable information,” Zero replied. He stepped further into Kaname’s space, pressing their chests together. His chin tilted down. “I am trying, Kaname.”

Kaname’s denial was a physical thing. As if he would ever doubt Zero’s tenacity, his stubborn unwillingness to be a passive presence. As if he wasn’t slowly coming to trust, to rely upon, this thing between them. His love, and the growing affection he could read in Zero’s eyes. He fit his palm to Zero’s jaw and pulled his face up, fitting his mouth immediately over Zero’s. He swallowed Zero’s gasp and fisted his hands in his thick leather jacket, pouring every scrap of his adoration into the kiss.

Zero met Kaname with only a moment’s hesitation. Then surprise passed and he surged forward, flooding into Kaname’s senses like a tidal wave. His nails scraped as he grabbed Kaname’s hair, his other arm thrown around his neck. The cool breeze, the roses heavy in the air, all of it disappeared under Zero’s hot touch and crisp scent.

Kaname broke the kiss, his lungs tight, but didn’t let Zero get any further away. He held him tightly and caught his gaze. “I would never accuse you of anything less.”

Zero watched him. He’d become watchful, lately. He tucked himself in the Moon Dorms’ library, his nose buried in books, but his eyes were always trained on passersby. He never relaxed, he never eased, not until the sun made him too tired to do anything but fall asleep in Kaname’s arms. He was adjusting to a whole new world. Kaname knew it wasn’t easy. Waking to this age had been like a nightmare that didn’t end, and Yuuki’s own Pureblood awakening had all but erased the girl she’d been. Zero was doing incredibly well. But Kaname would do anything to grant Zero peace.

Zero must have seen the desire in his eyes. He relaxed a little, settling more naturally around Kaname. “Then why did you leave me at the Academy?”

Kaname breathed deeply. He should have known his absence would have itched at Zero. In truth, a part of him did know. But he’d needed this time alone at the manor. After destroying the Senate and settling Yuuki, he’d barely looked at the place. It hurt him, he could admit now. This place that had once been his home and haven had been changed down to the studs, made both familiar to him and not by hundreds of years. He mourned, too, for Haruka and Juri, taken long before their time. For the child Kaname, who Rido had slaughtered to wake him from his Sleep. For Yuuki, who seemed determined to betray their family at every turn.

His fleeing the Academy had nothing to do with Zero. It had been a wretched two days without him, alone but for his staff and Seiren’s silently concerned company.  But Kaname could never do Zero the disservice of introducing him to his home when it echoed so loudly with all those old ghosts.

Two days wasn’t really enough to banish them all. Two centuries might not be. But it was long enough for Kaname to familiarize himself with the grounds and seal off Yuuki’s suit of rooms, enough that Kaname didn’t feel like a stranger in his own halls.

But what did he tell Zero? What could he reveal that was truth, but also not the biggest truth? The truth that Kaname was more ancient and more tainted than the very concept of vampires.

And what did it mean, Kaname wondered, that he didn’t want to moderate the truth at all?

Gently, Kaname rested his forehead against Zero’s. His oldest secret was too much to think on right now, and this was not the time to reveal it. He settled for a lesser one. “I needed time,” he said. “I wasn’t in the best state of mind the last time I was here. I didn’t want to bring you to my home only to fall apart in front of you.”

Zero pulled back and watched him, judging his sincerity. Finally, Zero softened with a long sigh. The fingers he still had wound in Kaname’s hair stroked his nape affectionately. “Next time,” he said, “let me help you pick up the pieces.”  

Kaname kissed him again, helpless against his desire. The fervour had eased some, burning down into a comfortable glow, so Kaname tasted him slowly this time. He savoured the lingering taste of blood tablets, the unique sweetness that defined Zero. His cool scent, like wind whipping through the mountains, filled his senses and made him languid, molten against Zero’s touch. Against his hand cradling his skull and the one on his waist, the long press of his body against his own.

“Is that an agreement?” Zero asked, speaking the words over Kaname’s lips, his eyes light and keen. A blush bloomed over his cheeks, reddening the tips of his ears. The contrast only made his eyes look more purple, like amethyst in the sun.

Kaname swallowed, taking comfort in Zero’s nearness. And that was all Zero was asking for, really. An increase in their closeness. Kaname could not bear to deny him entirely, even as ancient instincts insisted it was too much too soon. “It is an agreement to try.”

Zero considered him. Kaname wondered what he saw. A monster hiding something from a hunter, or a vampire with a terrible secret plot. Something else Kaname couldn’t imagine.

Whatever it was, mercifully Zero deigned to tolerate it.

Nodding to himself, he pulled his hand out of Kaname’s hair and made a pretense of straightening the wrinkles he’d put in Kaname’s shirt. “Do you want to take me inside, then,” Zero asked, “Or do you want to keep making out in your courtyard?”

Happy to play along with Zero’s light tone, Kaname raised his eyebrows. “Is that what we’re doing? You should have told me.” He slipped his hands lower on Zero’s body, finding the hem of his jacket and the soft button-up he wore under it. He slid an exploratory touch under the fabric, enjoying the silk of Zero skin. “You’re far too overdressed for making out.”

“Pervert,” Zero breathed, his accusation lost. His hand dropped from Kaname’s shoulder to his chest, like he wanted to feel the heat of Kaname’s skin through the fabric.

Kaname bit back a chuckle. They hadn’t touched like this in a long time—not since September, the hot and tortured beginning of their new acquaintance. They’d been careful since then, focused on knowing each other better outside of their ravenous need for each other’s skin. But Kaname couldn’t deny he’d missed it, nor that he was gratified to find a matching longing in Zero.

“Come,” he said, extending a hand to Zero as if they weren’t as closely twined together as two standing men could be. “Let me show you home.”

Zero paused, the hand he’d raised from Kaname’s waist still in the air, not meeting Kaname’s. “You mean your home?”

Kaname closed the little space between them, silently amazed by the easy way their hands fit together. “Ours,” he said. “If you would have it.”

He couldn’t imagine how Zero would take his offer. He thought of the little boy Zero had been, splattered in blood as horrified strangers pulled his bitten body out of his family home. Those strangers must have come back later to pack his parents’ bodies away. To seal up the rooms he and his traitorous twin had played in, tossing cloth over their childhood to keep the dust off. Had they cleaned the blood off the walls, ripped up carpet stained beyond cleaning? Had they thought at all about that child, left to prowl the grounds of Cross’s pipedream academy like an angry ghost?

If they had, it hadn’t been for very long. Long enough to lock the door, long enough to throw away the key. Cross, Kaname knew, had done his best to offer Zero a haven, but it couldn’t have filled the loss. Kaname thought of himself, his body younger than Zero’s had been, his childish mental capacity too small to cope with the ages of memories crammed into his head. His heart bleeding. He thought of wandering the halls of the Ichijo Asato’s house in the noonlight, wishing desperately, crazily, for just one familiar thing. For one life spared.

But he didn’t know how to explain his thoughts to Zero. He had no words for the rage and sorrow Zero’s tragedy sparked in him, nor any to describe the wounds he himself carried. He only had an enchanted manor, built by his own hand and sustained by his bloodline, and a flickering hope to offer. He had as clean a slate as his dark resurrection could grant him—and he wanted Zero to join him on it.  

He was silent on these details. An insurmountable blockage of secrets and pain stopped them in his chest. He had to rely on Zero to know him, to know him at least as well as he had made it possible for Zero to know him. He had to rely on faith that Zero, at least in this, would not turn him down.  For what reason did he have to build another home, if not to share it with Zero?

His mate was watching him again. Those clever, cunning eyes glittered in the vanishing sunlight, alive with a thousand facets Kaname could not hope to read. “You mean it?” His voice was rough with something larger and more tired than grief. The yawning need for peace. Safety.

 “I do,” Kaname swore. He brought their hands together and kissed their tangled fingers, trying to push his faith into Zero’s skin.

Zero shoulders relaxed like Kaname had taken a quarry of stones off his back. He hands tightened around Kaname’s, and he took a long, struggling breath. With that breath, his pain disappeared. His long lashes fluttered, dispersing emotion like so many stray clouds.

He turned a crooked smirk on Kaname. “Lead the way, then.”

And Kaname smiled, and welcomed his mate home.

Chapter Text

Their first meal in Kuran Manor—breakfast for vampires, Zero reminded himself, dinner for anyone else—passed on the wide stone patio that reached out the back of the family great room. A dining table had been set up with chairs and places for each of them, and Zero, Kaname, and the court served themselves from large platters set out by liveried servants. The servants only returned to clear the dinnerware and bring out trays of delicate cakes and tea, cutting down dramatically on the number of ears that would usually be around to overhear conversation.

Zero took it that casual dining wasn't the usual procedure for the welcoming meal of a vampire lord to his court. Takuma had blinked, Senri snorting like they all should have expected as much. But neither looked put-out. Far from it, actually. Takuma's smile lost the plasticine edge it gained as he'd smoothly negotiated their travels, and Senri's shoulder slumped out of their perfect posture. They tangled their fingers together, peaceful. The others followed suit, shuffling off their courtly personas like uncomfortable masks.

Zero empathized. He was slowly learning How-To Vampire from Takuma, and it was exhausting. He still felt off-balance from Kaname's formal greeting in the courtyard. Kaname had shown him to his room personally after, directing Seiren to settle the others. The short walk to his suite, every brush of their shoulders and casual touch of hands had felt like sparks against his skin. When their eyes caught, heat flashed in his gut. It flustered Zero, refusing to make sense. These last weeks he and Kaname had been attached at the hip. More days than not, they shared a bed. Zero had craved his touch, his attention, but not been triggered by it like this. But for a few kisses, it was like they'd fallen into innocence after Tokyo.

Zero shifted in his chair, trying not to look like he was thinking too hard. Vampires, even increasingly tipsy ones, were an observant bunch, and this lot especially were prone to prying when they thought Zero looked too pensive. But he couldn't help it. The courtyard was fresh in his mind, and he felt as far from innocence as possible. He ate cake to distract himself, but even the excellent frasier wasn't enough to banish the ghost of Kaname against his lips.

Zero hadn't intended to be so…flirty, in the courtyard. He'd been tired and overwhelmed, feeling Takuma's complicated sadness like his own and unsure what to do with it. He'd decided moodily on the plane that Kaname deserved some snark for putting him through all this dumb vampire bullshit, but that irritation had passed during the car trip. He didn't want to fight with Kaname. The last two days—he'd missed the bastard, alright?

He'd felt haunted, too. The thought that two days alone would be enough to remind Kaname that he and Zero had hated each other for good reason wouldn't leave him. Cranky as vampire balls and social rituals made Zero, the hunter and the vampire sides of himself set too clearly against each other, the thought of losing Kaname threatened to stop his heart in his chest. Zero hadn't been so scared of that, once. Had even looked forward to it. But not anymore.

The car door had popped open, then, leaving Zero to look up and interact without any kind of plan, and—

"Zero." Kaname had said, like he loved the word. Like he felt grateful for its presence in his mouth. He'd stood there, gallant and beautiful and powerful, and he'd smiled at Zero like he was the one who should be worshipped.

Thinking wasn't really something Zero did, after that. Kaname was so genuine, his honest happiness flooding the bond. Zero felt his defenses slip through his fingers. By the time Kaname murmured those traditional words to him—words of welcome and respect for a beloved mate, Takuma had explained seriously one evening, beloved—Zero couldn't help himself. He couldn't let Kaname turn his broad back without letting him know that Zero appreciated exactly what Kaname meant by those words. He couldn't refuse him the answer he deserved, couldn't turn him away without a touch. Without explaining that he was trying, that he wanted this thing of theirs to work.

Kaname kissed him, then. Kissed him like he was trying to win a war, like Zero was something worth fighting for. A promise of home.

More had happened in that conversation than Zero could unpack in one dessert. An immortal lifetime might be enough, maybe. He looked around the table—Hanabusa, babbling about his newest science experiment. Akatsuki, obviously subject too often to this topic, rocking back on his chair as he looked up at the stars. Seiren sitting with her usual silence but with a dust of alcoholic blush across her cheeks. Ruka with her long hair twisted into a messy knot and gossiping with Rima. Senri dryly responding, and all three laughing. At the sound, Zero saw the last of the stress release Takuma's shoulders. He finally finished the glass of wine he'd been nursing all night and giggled—giggled—as Senri poured him another, draping himself teasingly across his mate's shoulders. The happiness at the table was palpable, as real as sweetness in his mouth. This could be Zero's life.

Zero looked down into his glass, watching the amber liquor shine. With dessert and the fall of night, the servants had lit candles and torches. Not many, not with a vampire's vision being so strong in the dark, but enough that the air felt warm and intimate. Zero cut his eyes toward Kaname, unable to resist any longer seeing the fall of light over his face.

As he'd thought, the result was beautiful. Shadows graced the cut of his cheek, light catching the high arch. His eyes were bright, glowing jewels set in inky lashes. His soft mouth was smiling, truly smiling, with no trace of anything but happiness. Zero wanted to taste that happiness, suck Kaname's lip into his own mouth and savour it. He wanted to crawl into his lap and tangle his fingers in his hair, so dark and silky it blended into the night.

Zero looked away, fleet as a thief. His stomach fluttered nervously. He had no experience with feelings like these, not really. Life hadn't given Zero a lot of opportunities for lust. A couple of glances at older hunters who hadn't made too much of an issue of working with a level D. His foolish infatuation with Yuuki. The initial inferno Kaname's return had brought had been all-consuming and alien, a frightening torrent of desire and aggression. He'd been thoughtless, dragged around by instincts he didn't understand. Kaname had met him with feral need, desperate to claim whatever Zero offered and push his advantage. In another life, they might have destroyed each other.

This—earlier in the courtyard, and now—was different. This was a fire growing under Zero's skin; banked, but leaping at the grate. It didn't threaten him. It didn't scare him, not like before. It tempted him, encouraged him to indulge longer in its heat. And Zero, well. He wasn't as good at refusing temptation as he used to be.

Sipping, sitting in the cooling night, Zero let himself slip a little lower in his chair, cradling the sweating glass in both hands. It was good whiskey, extraordinarily good, and Zero felt its warmth travel his bloodstream. When he tipped it to drink, he felt himself smiling against the glass. The weather was warm still, the breeze gentle against his cheek. Zero had pulled his hair into a loose braid after showering off the travel sweat. It kept his neck covered, that disquieting blank place on his skin forgotten under his hair, but the pieces out of his face. It felt good. Zero felt good.

Revelling in that realization, Zero relaxed enough look more casually around. He was always situationally aware, his hunter paranoia unceasing, but that was different from enjoying a view. The smooth flagstone patio overlooked the grounds Zero had glimpsed from the road. Through the towering trees loaded with unseasonable cherry blossoms, his Pureblood eyes could see the Kuran Manor' amenities laid out like jewels. His attention stuck on the red terracotta roof he'd seen driving in. With this direct view, he knew for sure it was a stable.

"My family has kept horses for thousands of years. A special breed adapted to a vampire's handling," Kaname said, his voice low and casual. He sat at the head of the table, Zero on his left and Takuma on his right. He'd turned left in his seat, leaving no doubt that the comment was for Zero's benefit alone. He gave Zero a charming smile. "I know how you like to ride."

Zero bit his lip, his heart recklessly soft. Of course, Kaname remembered. After Zero sent the Night Dorms into hysterics by falling asleep at White Lilly's stables, he'd introduced Kaname to his girl. True to form, the horse cared naught for Kaname's insanely powerful predatory presence and proceeded to snort threateningly at him.

Far from being annoyed, Kaname had laughed. "She has your attitude. As lovely as her master, too."

Zero had turned his face down, then, to hide his red cheeks, and watched under his lashes as Kaname tried to tempt Lilly's affection with apple slices. Now, Zero smiled. "Naturally, you have special vampire horses. Of course."

"Of course?" Kaname quirked an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"

Zero smirked and gestured to Kaname broadly. He made an image, reclined in his carved dining chair, candlelit and gorgeous, a glass of red wine and blood tablets hanging from his fingertips. His shirt matched his drink, a dark merlot that set-off his marble skin. It was buttoned to his throat with little pearls that Zero wanted to rip free with his teeth.

Swallowing liquor to distract mouth, clinging to his senses with his fingernails, Zero said instead, "You know, it's kingly. Matches your personality."

Kaname looked at Zero. His lips had frozen mid-word, his lashes fluttering. Surprise, Zero clocked the expression. The same surprise Zero had seen when he'd revealed his long hair. Silence beat between them, a pause long enough that Zero started to read back over his words. What about his comment could surprise Kaname as much as Zero's pure blood?

Before Zero could find the sour note, Kaname smiled. A slow, beautiful thing, resulting in a laugh like melted chocolate, sweet and soft and addictive. Zero felt himself smiling along, enchanted entirely by the sound.

"I suppose you have a point," Kaname allowed, lips twitching still. "In any case, we should ride together. The forest here stretches for hundreds of acres. Most of it has never been touched by humans. There are few places like it."

Few was overstating it, Zero thought, blinking back his own surprise. Though the Wasting Years had returned many human settlements to the earth, the forests that sprung up on the ruins were marked by their history. Trees shoved aside ancient asphalt; crumbling skyscrapers overburdened with flora slumped in place of mountains. Archaeology was casual, with just a little digging producing human remains. But real forests—forests that sprung from dirt, forests older than the Waste—were exceptionally rare, priceless ecological jewels ruthlessly guarded by the few nations who still possessed them. The Canadians famously shot to kill trespassers.

Even Cross Academy was built on thousands of years of wreckage. Zero didn't know what it was like to walk in a place that wasn't grown out of destruction.

"In fact," Kaname suggested lightly, accurately reading Zero's interest, "We could go tonight. If you're feeling well enough?"

"You really shouldn't sleep before dawn," Takuma chirruped. He'd mostly crawled into Senri's lap, prevented only technically by the chairs' arms. "Don't want to mess up your sleep schedule. We'll find you around dusk." He winked exaggeratedly, then broke into giggles when Senri poked him.

"I'm doing your hair for the ball!" Ruka declared loudly, fending off her invisible competitors. She was sitting in Akatsuki's lap, his long arms wrapped around her waist. He buried his face in her neck, smothering his laughter.

Zero smiled, letting the quips slide past him. He turned back to Kaname. "I'd like to, tonight. Honestly, I could probably use the stress relief."

Warmth filled Kaname's face—then, his smile turned wicked. "I'd be happy to relieve your stress anytime, Zero."

Zero smiled, his heart beating fast, happy to play this game. He got up from the table, intent on the stables. At the last second, he caught the edge of Kaname's chair and ducked down so his mouth was right beside Kaname's ear. "Catch me," he breathed, "And we'll see how you do."

He felt Kaname's pulse jump against his lips; heard the catch in his breath, his heart's double-beat. His mate turned his face to Zero's, their noses brushing. "There's an outlook maybe an hour's ride from the stable, in the north-east of the property," Kaname murmured. "You'll be able to smell the water of the lake below. The heavy blooms of the lilacs." His eyes trailed languorously over Zero's face, lingering on his mouth, then meeting his eyes. "I'll give you a twenty-minute head start from the time I reach the stables."

Zero barely breathed. He hadn't anticipated this tonight, hadn't planned for it, and the heat in his gut burned brighter for it. The unexpectedness was proof that Kaname burned for Zero, too, just as badly. He thought of the forest, the darkness, the heaving horse under his thighs. Kaname just minutes behind him, all his predatory focus fixated on Zero's trail. Of being, inevitably, caught by him.

"Deal," Zero agreed, the word a rasp. Kaname's lips curled, a primordial expression of animal pleasure—and Zero, instincts thrashing under his skin, turned on his heel and fled.

Kuran horses were huge, barrel-chested animals with dark colouring. Some were lither, meant for fleetness and maneuvering tight paths, but each was indisputably a warhorse. The companions of conquering kings.

Of the twenty horses stabled that night, Zero had been drawn to a tall, snorting stallion with a totally black coat. The stumbling stablemaster had tried to foist a tired-looking gelding on him, warning that Zero's horse was, "Stubborn, prideful, and wont to disobedience."

Zero had reached out a hand to the beautiful creature, quietly marvelling as he was warily sniffed and deemed acceptable by a soft snort. "You promise?" he'd asked.

His choice had been a good one. The stallion had a few years to him and knew the property. And Kaname had been right—Zero could smell the lake. The lilacs. He'd taken the horse north-east, then stopped thinking. It was like his bike, almost, but better. The bike was amazing, it was his freedom and his sanity, but it wasn't alive. It didn't pulse against his hands, hot and vivid in the cool night. It didn't guide him, correcting him to follow the path when Zero's nose wanted to take them directly through whatever feral woods lay between him and the outlook. The horse was like a partner. All Zero had to do was trust him.

They moved like that, thoughtless and instinctive, at a fast enough clip that Zero felt his braid loosening. Wind caught at his clothes, whisking over his face. Zero didn't notice the passing of the hour until he caught the glimmer through the trees, moonlight dancing on water. It was only then that it occurred to him how strange it was that he hadn't sensed Kaname yet. Zero couldn't imagine he would choose a less spirited horse than Zero's, and he had to know the trail better. Was Kaname hiding, planning to catch him unaware?

His skin prickled. He could imagine Kaname tracking him through the trees, preternatural eyes keen for flashes of Zero's bright hair. He wore black, otherwise, and on the black horse the shadows covered him from the neck down. His braid was a long silver tease, trailing intentionally behind him. A clue Zero left with only a little hesitation, an invitation he couldn't resist making.

There wasn't much time for Kaname to catch up. The lake's scent filled Zero's nose with clean-wet, cool-sweet, and the earthiness of freshwater plants. The lilacs were subtle still, a light perfume. Zero focused on parsing that gentle fragrance from the cacophony of scents, pulling it away from the animal horse smell, his own scent, and the thousands of other things living and rotting in the woods. The Kuran forests were a new sensory world to him, as he'd thought from Kaname's description; organic and old in ways the thriving forests at Cross Academy couldn't match. Always, even in the deepest of those woods, humanity lingered. A sweet, decaying tang, oily and synthetic. A chemical soup the trees could not help but carry in their bodies as they grew from roots wound around human ruins. War and time had long destroyed whatever metropolis had once stood on the Academy's grounds, but the earth remembered. Try as it might, it couldn't forget.

The Kuran forests stood in defiance of this rule. So old, Gods, so bastardly old, they knew how the air tasted before gun smoke and gasoline. Before humanity. If mortal hands had once claimed these trees, the trees had consumed them before long. Miraculously ignored by nuclear devastation, forgotten by warring human nations, their roots touched rock and earth and nothing less.

If the history books Zero read were to be believed, after years of wandering the devastated earth, the Kuran Ancestor found this forest and inexplicably built his citadel on its edge. He weaved wards of unthinkable power until a lethal border struck down any invader. Wards that, if capable of it, other Pureblood rulers would have woven around their people, things, weapons. They thought the Kuran Ancestor mad to protect trees with such power. This place had no political significance before the Ancestor claimed it, so why expend so much energy on such a useless place?

Idiots, Zero scoffed. Less than an hour spent riding through the forest and Zero understood why. It wasn't its priceless value or incomparable scarcity, like the historians suggested. The forest wasn't a bragging right, something the Ancestor protected just because he could. It was respect. A gesture of devotion to beings that the Ancestor loved.

For a second, just a bare second, Zero could see it. Feel it. A tall man dressed in simple clothing, clean but patched and mended. He was just beginning to realize his power, still uncomprehending of how long he would live. Knowing it would be longer than anyone else he knew. Humans were becoming a blink in his eye, common vampires barely any longer. Nobles had more of a presence, but Purebloods—they were his only real likeness. And even then…

The Kuran Ancestor was beginning to understand loneliness. It didn't hurt yet, hadn't begun to burn his brilliant mind from the inside, but he could start to see the shape of it. He could imagine the pain. And, like all feeling things, he was trying to forestall it. Cure it. These trees, these old, old trees, they were like him and like companions to him. They had stood before him and they would outlast him, given the right protection. He couldn't see them destroyed anymore than he could destroy himself.

Distantly, he knew the forest wouldn't be enough to save him. But he could find solace here, quiet, peace. Mitigate the loss until he had a real answer. He had begun to hear rumours on the wind, in the mouths of his followers, his spies. Mates, they were called. Everyone of his kind—vam-pire, a new word blown in from the West, a bloodsucking monster, a story of a man looking for a homeland—had one. A perfect match biologically, chemically. Spiritually, said those who believed vampires had souls. The trick was to survive long enough to find them, to touch and scent and taste and be known.

The Kuran Ancestor wove his wards and wondered how long he would survive. How long he would have to wait, to show his mate these trees and finally, mercifully, be understood. He firmed his hands, his intent. No matter. The years would pass but he would stand like his forest, resolute. And then he would walk here with his mate, hand in hand, and ache no more.

Zero shook head as the second passed, disoriented. How had he— could he have, imagined that? It wasn't like anything Zero had read. Out of respect, it seemed, vampire authors did not muse on the Ancestor's personal life. They reported facts, wrote what was said by others about him, but he was not fictionalized. And Zero doubted he could have dreamed all that up on his own. He felt the Ancestor's loneliness like a knife in his chest. Hastily, Zero looked around. He didn't know what he expected. A spellcaster, or a sign of a ward he'd accidently tripped? Something that could show the past like it was preserved in amber. But he saw only the trees, tall bodies standing silently as Zero raced by.

He was so fixated, so caught in his empathy for a man he could never know, lost to time, that he almost missed it. A scent in the wind, just the barest scrap. Cardamom. Cinnamon. Heady, rich, the nameless scent of power. The spices came closest to capturing it, to describing the complexity. The sweet undercurrent of violence, the spiced, tightly leashed propensity for spilling blood. Desire, opulence. Protection, possession, and claim. The scent raged across Zero's senses, dragging his attention away from all else. It was just a second, just a snatch, but he would have to be dead to miss it.

Ah, Zero thought, the echo of the Ancestor's pain fading, another lost thing, as his heir consumed Zero's senses. There you are.

He curled his body closer to the horse, clenching his thighs, urging the stallion faster. Zero had to focus. He didn't hear Kaname, could neither feel his aura nor his presence in the bond, but Kaname was near. Part of Zero wanted to stop and throw himself into that scent, those arms. But the hunter and the predator were waking in him. Zero could no more stop riding than stop breathing. Kaname had to catch him, had to take him. He had to subdue the thing under Zero's skin, or Zero didn't know how he'd ever have peace.

He wanted Kaname. He might even need him. But to love him, to let himself love him, he had to trust Kaname. The thing driving him forward—instinct, vampire and hunter—wanted this game to be a test. To be alone, truly alone, with Kaname, and at his total mercy, and see what his mate would do. If Kaname could satisfy the hunter and the predator Zero had loved and hated all his life, then by right he owned Zero's heart. If not, a blankness existed there, a horizon of despair.

Cardamon spiked again across his senses, silencing his thinking mind. Zero inhaled through his mouth, tasting the scent, stealing it down into his lungs. The thunder of hooves on earth became a white noise, a muted symphony with the horse's sharp breaths and Zero's more measured ones. He had the sense that the trail was opening up, moonlight pouring in through the thinning canopy. Excitement sparked, adrenaline pumping through his veins. If he could go just a little further—

A raven cawed above him, swooping low over Zero's back, a huge black bird whose merlot eye Zero saw out of the corner of his own. He'd smelt the bird before but dismissed it. Now, as it called again, sentry screamed over his senses.

Zero gasped and pushed the horse harder, but there was no outrunning the bird. It kept pace above him, calling to its master. Zero caught the clatter of more hooves, felt the press of familiar power. So close, Kaname didn't care to hide anymore. When Zero whipped a glance over his shoulder, Kaname rode undisguised.

It took every ounce of Zero's strength to face forward again. Fire raged across his body, want livid in his veins. Behind him, seconds away, Kaname was—words could not describe him. Zero had only overwhelmed flashes. Kaname's tall frame settled onto a huge roan, rich as blood and hands taller than Zero's horse. Kaname's long, pale fingers fisted in the black reins, his posture like Zero's, tight and low for speed, his face bestial, fixated on the prey he chased. His eyes glittered, bright and cunning, every fine feature of his face held taunt with intent, the threat of violence and claim. His aura, unleashed now, rolled through the forest like poison gas, warning everything with a pulse to run. Promising to kill anything that didn't. The bird, having fulfilled its duties, fell back over Kaname's shoulder and dispersed into shadow, a creation of Kaname's power. A casual display few, very few, vampires could even dream of mastering.

The world belongs to him, and he wants me, Zero thought, dazed. His heart beat in his throat, stomach alight, and somewhere lower wakening, craving. Zero felt shivery with it, sensitive, overwrought. The horse's rhythm, so smooth before, suddenly felt jarring on his most delicate places. He sunk his teeth into his lip to halt a whimper, knowing Kaname would hear it and wanting to deny him the satisfaction, stubborn to the last as he searched for some sign the end of this race was near. The trail was ever widening, and Zero had to strain to keep Kaname behind him. He could feel his horse beginning to flag, even a vampire's steed unable to run forever.

"I will take you apart," Kaname promised lowly, confidently. Over the horses and panting breaths, Zero had no choice but to hear him, his Pureblood senses tuned to Kaname. "I smell your desire, I taste it. I will slake it until you think no more, feel nothing but me."

Zero turned again, scandalized, but Kaname was unrepentant, his eyes red with power. Lust poured into the bond, hot and thick and sliding between the shoddy walls Zero tried to throw up in his defense. "Cheat," Zero hissed, unable to think, hands like claws in the reins as he fought the urge to submit to that red gaze. To open himself to the pleasure Kaname promised and be consumed.

Kaname laughed, deep and throaty. "Never. My claim is paramount. I will lay you down, take you wholly, consume you. My hands, my cock, my tongue inside you. Cheating you is cheating myself, beloved."

Zero's heart stuttered, gut bottoming out. He was so struck, so bombarded, tongue and mind in knots, that for just a second he lost his focus on the horses' positions. The path gaped open, the moon staring down. Zero had time to realize his error, but no time to fix it.

Like a streak of lightning, utterly unstoppable, Kaname charged forward.

Chapter Text

Zero held the reins in a death grip. Driving his heels hard into the stirrups, he forced the stallion to halt. The horse reared, forelegs wheeling at air. With a furious cry, he dropped down; dancing in place as he realized what Zero had.

Any attempt to cut off Kaname would lead to disaster. Kaname had put all his horse’s power into his charge, soaring past Zero and occupying all the space in front. To maneuver, Zero had to fall back.

“Bastard,” Zero snapped, his stallion crying in agreement. He glared at Kaname’s broad back, trying to convince himself that he was only hot with anger. Irritatingly, he had to give it up for a lost cause.

Kaname was laughing, his shoulders shaking with it, his voice on the edge of breathlessness. His hair caught the wind and the moonlight, covered by shadow and glowing by turns. When he turned and looked at Zero, he was flushed with wind and victory.

Fucking gorgeous, Zero thought mutinously. And every inch of Zero’s body knew it.

Zero shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. His skin was too sensitive, protesting the fabric it was bound by and the friction of the ride. Hid attraction would be easier to ignore if Kaname weren’t competent, too, Zero despaired. But Kaname rode excellently, each of his movements a compliment to his horse. And, by the Gods, he trusted Zero to match him.

Months ago, weeks ago, that trust would have sent Zero running. He’d devoted himself to isolation, convinced he was a timebomb waiting to go off. Now, heat bloomed under Zero’s skin. He couldn’t deny wanting Kaname’s attention, craving his intractable, visceral focus. He desired to be let into Kaname’s secret places.

He was done being chased. All Zero wanted now was to be held.

With a deep breath, Zero eased his grip on the reins and slowed his horse to a walk. He pulled the stallion over to the side, opening enough space for another horse to join beside him.

To be held, Zero had to let himself be caught.

With an awareness of Zero that he was now coming to expect of Kaname, the roan instantly slowed and drifted into place.

“So,” Kaname grinned, high on his success. “You admit defeat?”

Zero snorted, letting attitude cover his dry mouth. Kaname was far too beautiful when he smiled. “I admit that you’re not awful on a horse.” He didn’t dare meet Kaname’s eyes. Quick glances under his lashes were going to have to do, or Zero was going to combust.

Kaname inclined his head graciously, the perfect gentleman. “Thank you.” His eyes swept over Zero with animal focus. “You are also most satisfactory.”

Zero sunk his teeth into his lip, trying to ignore the way those words tugged at his gut. Kaname’s low tone hardly suggested a compliment to his horsemanship. He glanced around the forest, looking for anything to take his mind off his hypersensitive body. “The outlook, its just ahead here?” The path they road was now more of a clearing.

His stomach fluttered. Eagerness or nerves, Zero couldn’t tell. The question of what they would do at the outlook twisted under his skin.

Kaname nodded, throwing Zero a smirk as he took the roan into a faster clip.  Zero swallowed down his distraction and followed him, taking his horse toward a thick tree with convenient branches.

When they arrived, Kaname dismounted and looped his reins around a limb. “They’ll return to the stable if we don’t give them a sign we’d like them to remain.” He extended his hand to take Zero’s reins and do the same.

It was on the tip of Zero’s tongue to refuse. No one helped Zero with his horse. He’d learned to ride from his mother, who’d been adamant a hunter should never rely on another person in the field. The lesson cast a shadow over Zero’s life.

But Kaname wasn’t testing him. He wasn’t trying to jab at a weak spot. He was being… romantic. And though it might make his ancestors roll in their graves, Zero liked it.

Before he could think about it anymore, Zero set the reins in Kaname’s hand and let his stallion be led over. Kaname looped the reins, then offered Zero his hand again. Zero blinked at it uncertainly before realizing that Kaname also wanted to help him down.

Like he was about to touch something dangerous, Zero gingerly slipped his palm into Kaname’s. He watched his face as they stayed like that, hand in hand. There was a sense of unreality between them, a quiet disbelief that this was happening.

Kaname’s eyes never left their clasped hands. It was almost like he was scared to look away, like the magic might disappear if he did.

Zero forced his breathing even. Kaname was always so indomitable; now, he looked delicate. Vulnerable. Zero almost couldn’t watch, the realization striking that he was the thing putting that look on Kaname’s face.

Gently, Zero placed his free hand on Kaname’s shoulder. “Help me down?” He asked unnecessarily, almost a whisper.

Kaname’s lashes fluttered, his lips parting on the edge of words. But he only nodded. He guided Zero’s other hand onto his shoulder before cradling Zero’s waist. Each gesture was full of care, a consideration that made Zero’s breath catch.

Seamlessly, like a step in a dance, Zero’s boots met grass. His thighs were spongy from the hard ride, his knees not quite as strong as usual. Kaname might have been right to help him; the ride was the most physical exercise he’d had since being stabbed. He held tight to Kaname’s shoulders for a moment, helplessly grateful that Kaname didn’t pull away as he fought to find his feet.

As though sensing his weakness, Kaname curled around him. “Okay?”

“’Course,” Zero said, refusing to meet Kaname’s eyes and pointedly ignoring his grip on Kaname’s arm. 

Kaname mercifully didn’t comment, but he brushed a kiss over Zero’s hair that sent sparks down his spine. “Then let me show you the way.”

Zero could never have refused him. He stepped closer, even, tucking himself into Kaname’s side, making it easy for Kaname to keep an arm around his waist as they walked. His mate was warm. Zero found it comfortable to let his hand rest on Kaname’s shoulder, less of a hold than a reassurance. His legs strengthened as they walked, but Zero had no desire to put any space between them. Not when Kaname’s touch felt like the only thing soothing the buzzing under his skin.

They walked like that, tethered together, until they rounded the last corner. The trees gave way, a cool breeze brushing his cheeks. Then Zero stopped, too busy seeing to walk.

It’s huge, was the first thought about the lake that Zero managed to pull together. The mountains on the other side looked like hills from so far away, each clad in thick green trees. Zero lost time to those trees, his Pureblood sight able to examine exquisite details that would have been lost to him before. And then the water caught his attention. Silver pooled in the basin—like moonlight trapped under the water’s surface.

The outlook was a cliff hanging over the lake, the earth covered in soft wild grasses that waved with the wind. Overhead, all around, lilacs burst with purple flowers, filling the air with heady fragrance. Even when he tried to listen, to scent, he could find no hint of humanity. It was like the rest of the world didn’t exist beyond the mountains.

Zero may have stood still, content to simply stare, until the end of his days. But then Kaname pressed a kiss to his cheek, his arm leaving Zero’s waist as he stepped away.

Zero’s attention clung to him, and he finally noticed the leather satchel slung over Kaname’s shoulder. With a flick of his wrist, Kaname produced a thick blanket from inside and spread it over the grass.

Tossing the bag down at the edge, Kaname bent himself onto the blanket. He offered his hand again to Zero.

Zero smiled. “You put some thought into this.” He stepped over and folded himself into Kaname’s embrace. Moonlight spilled down over their heads. The blanket was soft against his hands.

“Only twenty minutes’ worth,” Kaname replied, laying Zero against his chest. “I dare not give you any further advantage.”

Zero snorted. “I should have asked for more time.”

His lips right by Zero’s ear, Kaname hummed. “I couldn’t be away from you any more than I offered. I didn’t enjoy these days apart.”

“I would have come with you,” Zero said, trying to ignore the shiver Kaname’s hum sent down his spine. He tilted his face to catch Kaname’s expression better. Shadows swirled there, a sadness in Kaname’s eyes that Zero didn’t like. “I didn’t like being away from you, either.” Zero admitted it like a secret, like a child revealing their favorite hiding place.

If possible, Kaname softened further. “I’m sorry,” he said, his arms tightening around Zero as if to make up for their separation. “I needed the time.”

Zero took a breath to steady himself, then shifted carefully onto his knees. Then, he slid his leg over Kaname’s lap. “I know. I’m just saying I missed you.”

Under his thighs, Kaname shifted from his recline to clutch at Zero’s hips. His grip seamed to burn through his jeans, stoking the heat in Zero’s blood. Stirring the ache in his lowest places.

“Zero,” Kaname sighed, his face finding the crook of Zero’s neck. Scenting him, Zero realized.

He was struck suddenly by the urge to do the same. His mouth flooded, his body desperate to touch, smell, and taste. His mind felt alight, focused on Kaname in a way he had no experience with. The bond surged, alive with desire.

“I want you,” Zero said, breathy even to his own ears, his head falling to the side as Kaname ran his lips along his carotid. “I want all of you.” He slid his hands up Kaname’s arms, feeling the hard muscle under his palms.

Kaname pulled his face from Zero’s throat and set gentle fingers against his jaw, forcing Zero to focus on his eyes. A deep, lustful gaze met his, dark and growing red, Kaname's human mask dispelled.

“You’re sure?” Kaname asked. When he spoke, Zero caught a hint of fang.

Zero swallowed. Far from dissuading him, these feral hints teased his own nature. Zero wanted to bite and touch and— “Yes, I am,” Zero swore. He wrapped his arms around Kaname’s neck and dragged him into a kiss.

Hands buried in his hair, fisting tight, but Zero barely noticed. The kiss consumed him, white-hot and burning. He licked and bit, answering Kaname’s growl with a gasp. He gloried in the taste of Kaname’s blood as Zero's fangs met skin and spilled it.

It wasn’t a human kiss, or even a hunter’s. It was violent and obsessed, seductive and brutal. Zero fed it eagerly, offering no resistance, pushing until he had to breathe or die.

He wasn’t given the choice. The hands knotted in his hair pulled, forcing Zero to expose his throat and break the kiss.

Kaname’s gaze was as red as the blood dripping from his split lip. He was breathing heavily, nostrils flaring, his hands a vice keeping Zero close enough to smell Kaname’s own blood on his breath. “You’ll be mine,” Kaname warned—promised. “Give me this and I’ll take all you have. You will never escape me.”   

Zero should be terrified. Anyone sane, with normal human boundaries, would be. But Zero hadn’t been human in a long time. He couldn’t pretend anymore.

“Keep me, then.” Zero willed his nails to sharpen into claws, something he’d seen vampires do thousands of times. As it had always looked, it was as easy to do. He snagged one of the infuriating pearl buttons on Kaname’s shirt and cut the thread. “Don’t let me go. If I run, find me.”

He snapped more pearls off the shirt, spilling them onto their laps. With each fallen treasure, Zero bared more of Kaname’s skin. Finally, the last pearl disappeared into the dark and Zero shoved the shirt open.

He paused, then, and stared, realizing that he’d never had a real opportunity to look before. They’d been careful around each other, since Tokyo. Scared of asking for more or taking it by accident. And that night they’d fumbled around together, just weeks ago but feeling so far away, had been harried and chaotic. Zero remembered flashes of skin, hard muscle and soft flesh. But had he spent time truly seeing Kaname? No. If he had, Zero knew they would have wound up like this much sooner.

Kaname’s shoulders were broad, defined by hard muscle. Zero reached out and traced the dips and curves of them, feeling the warmth of Kaname’s skin and the power coiled underneath. He was alabaster pale, with fine, soft body hair. The planes of his thick chest rose steadily against Zero’s questing palms, catching only when Zero swept over a dusky nipple. His waist was trim but sturdy. Zero had no doubt he was a formidable combatant. The corded muscles in his abdomen played against Zero hands as he trailed lower, until the way was blocked his trouser waistband.

A fine hand caught Zero’s in an unbreakable grip. Zero looked up from his explorations to find Kaname’s expression cut from marble, no softness, no ease. Anyone else would have quailed before that expression, Zero thought. But then, anyone else would not have understood the look in his eyes. The tortured, almost unbearable pain.

“You have to mean it,” Kaname rumbled, his aching voice risen from somewhere dark and hidden. “Zero, I need to ask your mercy. If you give yourself to me, you cannot ever leave me.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” Zero said quietly, his free hand splaying over Kaname’s chest. Over his beating heart. “I drove the whole way to Tokyo wishing I hadn’t left you.”

Kaname made a sound like he’d been stabbed. His grip around Zero’s hand went tight, almost painful. “I wanted to prove I could let you go.”

Zero brought their tangled fingers to his face and kissed Kaname’s knuckles. He met his eyes. “And haven’t I proved I will come back?”

Kaname trembled. His strong warrior’s frame, powerful even through the thighs Zero could feel bracing him, the forearms he could see tensing, rattled. How many times, Zero wondered, had Kaname heard that promise made in bad faith? How often had he been left behind? This pain spoke of long, awful experience, the kind of horrible loneliness that even Zero hadn’t known. Yagari, Kaito, Cross, Yori, even Yuuki, they had kept him from being truly alone. But Kaname had been alone for a long time. And, Zero was realizing, he thought of Zero as his only reprieve.

Little wonder he’d fought so hard, Zero thought. Little wonder he held Zero so tightly.

“There are things I still haven’t told you,” Kaname said, in that same aching voice. “Secrets. Plans.”

Zero huffed dryly. “Unsurprising.” He leaned closer, carding his fingers through Kaname’s hair. It was as soft as he’d always thought, like silk threads. More carefully, he said, “Could they hurt me? Or someone I—care for?” It wasn’t a big list, really. The people Zero wanted to keep safe.

“No, never you,” Kaname swore, swaying into Zero’s touch. His lashes fluttered, the sweet intimacy almost drugging. “Others… my court is mine to command, but I care for them, Zero. More than I thought possible.”

“I know,” Zero assured. “I see how well you look after them. I meant Cross, Yagari, Yori, Kaito...”

Kaname’s mouth tightened. “I owe you happiness. They are crucial to your happiness. I will not risk them needlessly.”

They would fight over what ‘needlessly’ meant, Zero could see. There would be angry nights, long days. But that was the nature of compromise.

Zero drew Kaname’s face up, brushing a kiss against his mouth. “I can live with that. But you have to known I will always protect them as best I can.”

Kaname returned the kiss slowly, savoringly. Against Zero’s lips, he breathed, “I cannot risk you.”

 “Not asking you to,” Zero said between kisses. “Just want to keep them safe. I owe it to them.”

Kaname nipped his lip. “I will make peace so that you do not need to.” A growl edged the words.

Zero didn’t push him further, kissing him again instead, swallowing his promise. Tasting the truth, the devotion that Kaname could not hide. The brilliant, lingering trace of his blood.   

As they parted, Kaname’s mouth went tight. “Our world is in chaos.” He dragged his thumb over Zero’s lip. “So much blood spilled. I didn’t care, haven’t cared, in so long. But now I want to make a safe world. A happier world.”

And suddenly, at least part of the mystery that surrounded Kaname solidified. “The Monarchy,” Zero whispered, as though saying it out loud would make it real. “You want to start it again.”

The night hung silently around them, waiting.

“It’s my legacy,” Kaname said guilelessly. Solemnly. “My responsibility.”

The hunter that Zero would always be screamed with horror. The Vampire Monarchy was his inherited nightmare. Every hunter was raised in defiance of it. To watch a vampire kingdom, the Kingdom, rise again… Zero felt cold sink into his gut.

To be crowned its queen, its consort, for there could be no king but Kaname—unimaginable.

But, whispered another instinct, growing more natural to Zero every day, what other choice was there?

The Vampire Senate was ash. The Hunter Association was in shambles, and corrupt as shit besides. Cross and Yagari were holding the world together as best they could, but they couldn’t do it alone. Zero suspected that Kaname had already taken on the work of keeping the human governments pacified and away from vampire business. Doubtlessly, that job would be a lot easier if Kaname could claim formal authority over vampire society.

And Kaname’s authority, what would it look like? Zero knew that answer. He saw it in microcosm every day in the Night Class. Kaname preferred to be a guiding hand. His disappointment, not his wrath, was enough to correct most misbehaviour. But Kaname was merciless against true threats, as powerful as an old god and as cunning. He was born to leadership, at ease in it. Zero had no doubt Kaname could lead a government.

Zero frowned. Puzzle pieces danced in his head. A dozen moments that didn’t make sense, but Zero had lacked the context or care to think about too much.

Kaname was only nineteen. Known as a royal Pureblood prodigy reared by the political monster Ichijou Asato, people waved off that fact if they weren’t totally in awe of it. But Kaname’s ability to lead was no less preternatural for others’ ignorance. Kaname mastered people and manipulated outcomes as easily as he breathed. He had never been outmatched, never so much as stumbled. Despite being circled by society’s most powerful since birth, despite growing up with no loving guardian to defend him, Kaname immerged immaculate from every challenge.

From the minute Kaname showed interest in Yuuki, Zero had watched for news, listened for every whisper. Two thirds of hunting was knowing your prey. The fact stood: despite being barely an adult, Kaname was an impossibly perfect politician.

And then there was his power. Intoxicating or lethal as the wind changed. Zero had always known that Kaname sat on the higher end of Pureblood potential, but the bond blew away all veils. Kaname was past nuclear, in a bracket of raw power unquantified by hunters or vampires. If Kaname chose violence, Zero knew no one could force him to stop.

Even if, by some genetic fluke, a young vampire held all that power, all science argued that they should be destroyed by it. Driven utterly mad trying to keep it contained.

It’s my legacy. My responsibility.

He thought of Kaname’s loneliness, expertly hidden to everyone but Zero. Kaname’s mate, so long awaited. Longed for more than seemed reasonable for nineteen years.

Zero had only felt the same sadness from one man. A ghost of a man, even, a forgotten echo. The trees, Zero thought, so long steeped in his magic, in the Ancestor’s loneliness, had shown Zero a glimpse of history, of memory. But why show Zero? Kaname the heir was his mate, a young vampire who’d barely spent any time at all on these grounds. Such primordial magic shouldn’t care about untested strangers. Kaname wasn’t their friend and protector, lost to time, missing from history.

Missing, Zero thought, his mind catching on the last puzzle piece and turning it over and over. In every book he’d read, the Ancestor was only ever described as missing. Never dead.

The question jumped to his lips without thought. It was formulated by Zero’s gut, his instincts and intuition. The same animal faculty that froze you still and made you really look to make sure the darkness was empty. His mind lagged behind it, slow and heavy with shock.

The question was insane. His lips weren’t capable of speaking, and so it sat locked behind his teeth. Yet Zero dare not move until he knew the answer. Its magnitude was so huge, so unspeakable, that Zero didn’t know how he would ever move past it.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a question Zero needed to voice to receive an answer.

Kaname stared at him with huge red eyes, his arms like steel around Zero, seized like a machine caught between conflicting operations. “Please,” he said, barely a whisper. A thousand cries in a word, a scream through the bond, a ceaseless begging don’t go don’t leave don’t scream don’t be scared of me.

Zero’s soundless gasp got stuck in his throat, almost choking him. He tightened his hold around Kaname, unable to do anything else as panic and fear shrieked through their bond. He clung like he could press the man he felt shattering in his arms back together again through his strength alone. I won’t I won’t I won’t, Zero passed back hurriedly, closing his eyes, forcing himself to calm down with a hunter’s militant precision.

He compartmentalized. His own shock, the ripples of horror, the anger that threatened to rise—all reasonable reactions to discovering your boyfriend was ten thousand years old—he gathered them up and shoved them into a box, desperate to keep Kaname from feeling the echoes of any of them.

There would be a time and place for Zero to process. It was not now, when Zero felt Kaname’s bone-deep devastation like acid in their bond.

Slowly, irrefutably, Zero moved closer, until his head lay against Kaname’s chest. He listened for the heartbeat that had so quickly grown to be his lodestone. Kaname’s heart ran a mile a minute now, alight with what Zero could only call terror.

Zero swallowed, hating the sound. Kaname, his Kaname, was never scared, and certainly never scared of Zero.

“I was going to tell you,” Kaname grit out through a clenched jaw, his fingers easing only slightly from their death grip in Zero’s hair. “Tonight. I wanted to explain myself, so you would know everything—”

“But I beat you to the punch,” Zero supplied lightly. Looking past the insanity of it all, Zero was honestly a little pleased with himself. He wasn’t exactly fast stringing the clues together, sure, but he was faster than the literal geniuses Kaname kept around his court. Heh. Hanabusa was going to have kittens.

Zero blinked, assessing that thought. “Wait,” he said. “Who else knows?”

Kaname stared blankly at him. “No one. I couldn’t risk it. Kuran Rido had that advantage and he abused it grossly.”

Before Zero’s eyes, line by line, a horrible story began to write itself. “That was why you needed me,” he realized. “He made it so you couldn’t kill him, somehow.”

It had never made sense. Rido had been powerful, but Kaname was limitless. He should never have needed Zero to be a knight on his chessboard.

Old anger set Kaname’s eyes aglow. “He Woke me from my Sleep by sacrificing his newborn nephew, Kuran Juri and Haruka’s child, my namesake. He tried to consume me and take my powers. When he failed, he tried to bind me as his slave.”

Zero swallowed. He could see it, almost. Hear it. A dark, abandoned crypt that wasn’t abandoned at all. A shrill, infant scream.

“But he fucked it up,” Zero said. He pressed his palm hard against Kaname’s chest, needing to feel his living heartbeat as well as hear it. “You beat him back.”

Kaname nodded slowly, like he was piecing the night together for the first time himself. Maybe he was. Who would he have been able to tell the story to, before now? To keep his secret, he could confide truly in no one.

No one but me, Zero thought, shivery with chaotic emotion. The mate he waited millennia for.

“I used what power I had to injure him as much as possible,” Kaname said, his anger smothered down to smouldering blankness. “My form was ruinous, damaged by time and Rido’s magic. With my last magic, I shrank my body and memory to infancy. I was found by my descendants.” He took a sharp breath, pushing the anger Zero felt licking the bond down even deeper. “Despite losing their child to my Wakening, they raised me with love and kindness. I hadn’t known parents, before. Juri and Haruka will now always be mine.”

So deep in the bond, feelings flowed between them like water. Kaname mourned Juuri and Haruka like a part of his heart was cut away; like Zero mourned his own mother and father and brother. Zero would never dare pry into that pain, ordinarily. He knew the hurt too well. But this was a conversation overdue between them, and Zero had to do his part. So, very softly—his hand tucked over Kaname’s heart like that could guard it from further assault—Zero said, “But Rido wouldn’t leave you alone.”

Kaname closed his eyes, a tiny indication of the pain that lanced him. “Haruka sensed Rido first. He sent me with Juri and little Yuuki into the house. When I scented too much of Haruka’s blood in the air, I told Juri to hide with Yuuki in the basement. There, Juri turned Yuuki into a human child.” Sorrow filled each word. “She was determined not to lose another baby to Rido’s plots.”

Zero’s heart went out to her, the mother desperately trying to save her family. He hoped she knew her daughter lived, that Cross and Zero and Kaname had all fought to keep her safe. He hoped she and her husband knew peace.

“You almost killed him,” Zero said, continuing his part of this terrible dialogue. He kept his hand a firm guardian on Kaname’s chest, but consciously relaxed every other muscle. He let Kaname hold his entire weight, let his body prove how much he trusted Kaname. His deep, unshaken affection. That yet-nameless thing that was growing so strongly in Zero’s heart.

Kaname’s arm curled over his back immediately, holding Zero like he was terrified he might never get the chance again. “I ripped him limb from limb,” he confirmed. “But his binding magic prevented me from taking his heart. His slavering minions from the Senate appeared, then, and if not for Cross Kaien’s love for my mother and father, and Asato Ichijou’s conviction that he could control the Kuran heir, Yuuki and I may have both wound up in his grasp.”

“Small miracles,” Zero murmured. A few years after the Kuran massacre, Rido murdered Hio Shizuka’s lover. He used Zero’s parents to do it. Shizuka, mad with grief, destroyed Zero’s family in revenge. And so, a devastated, angry boy and a timid, innocent girl would grow up at Cross Academy, unaware that the monster who’d wrecked their lives was still out there until it was too late.

Zero took a deep breath, sensing the story had ended for the night. He shuffled up and kissed Kaname’s cheek, indulging in the softness against his lips, drawing Kaname out of the memories as gently as possible. He waited until Kaname met his eyes to say seriously, “Thank you for telling me.”

Kaname looked quietly devasted. “I don’t understand how you’re being so calm about this.”

Zero pulled back a little, though he was still lying entirely in Kaname’s arms. “I won’t always be,” he admitted. Shock was definitely doing some of the work. “But I also know a thing or two about keeping secrets.” He brushed a hand through his long hair pointedly.

Kaname drew him close again, burying his nose in Zero’s neck, holding him like he couldn’t believe he still had the privilege. “Your family was running from mine when they made this seal,” Kaname murmured, reminding him like Zero might have forgotten.

Zero kissed him, to distract Kaname from his brooding and because he wanted to. “You are not your descendants, and I am not my ancestors.” He gave more kisses, indulging in Kaname’s taste, his touch. It was better, somehow, now than before. The nerves were gone, the cautiousness. Against Kaname’s drugging mouth, he promised, “We’ll do better than they did. Together.”

“Gods, Zero,” Kaname groaned. His hands trailed down Zero’s back, then hesitated at the hem of his shirt.

Zero shivered under his touch. He shrugged off his leather jacket with a jerk of his shoulders. His hands found Kaname’s and pulled them forward. Slowly, holding Kaname’s dark gaze, Zero guided his hands under his shirt and over the contours of his stomach.

“Christ,” Kaname hissed, and they both stilled. Christ was an ancient curse. Pre-Wasting Years. Zero had read about it in a journal, once. But Kaname—Kaname must have been around to watch the faith die out.

Zero smiled. Christ was a slip, a little crack in Kaname’s masterful facade. He liked it, liked that it suggested that Kaname didn’t feel like he needed to keep his guard up around Zero anymore. He hoped Kaname would give him more of these pieces. He hoped they would become easy to give.

Leaving Kaname’s hands alone, Zero stroked lightly over his bare chest. He shoved Kaname's open shirt down his arms and tossed it into the dark. “You really do look incredible for ten thousand,” Zero said, smirking. He gripped Kaname’s bare shoulders and pushed him flat on his back.

Kaname laughed, high with disbelief, and let himself be pushed. “You’re incredible, impossible. I—I waited for you for so long.”

It was on the tip of Zero’s tongue to say, I know. The forest you saved, they showed me. They wanted me to understand. But even in a world of hidden vampires and immortal kings, some things sounded too crazy. Maybe they’d get into one day, but for now Zero would enjoy his confidence with the trees.

Hushing Kaname, Zero straddled him. Running on instinct and lust, he pulled his own shirt off and let the cool night sweep over his skin.

Zero hadn’t been raised with much body shame, beyond the self-hatred becoming a D had inspired. But he still didn’t want to think about how he might look compared to Kaname’s ethereal perfection. He felt alien in his own uncalloused, smoothed-out Pureblood body. And what parts of him didn’t feel unfamiliar and awkward were scarred by his attempted murder. Pink lines stood out on his chest and back. Gouges pocked his torso, his shoulder, his thigh.

But staring up at Zero from the darkness, Kaname said, “Beautiful.” The word was reverent, his eyes intent on Zero. “So incredibly beautiful.”

Zero looked down, his stomach twisting weirdly. Embarrassment, maybe? He was used to vampires whispering about his pretty face. Every soiree, twittering socialites compared him to Hio Shizuka like his life was a delightful joke. But Kaname watched him with an awe Zero didn't understand and couldn’t cope with. “Yeah,” he deflected. “The seal breaking really did a number on me.”

Kaname rebuked him immediately. "No," he said, his hands claiming purchase on Zero’s hips. His grip was greedy. He sat up, his hands tracing over Zero’s sides, heating Zero’s blood, heedless of the scars he passed over. Those big hands caught in Zero’s hair, pulling him into a consuming kiss. “You have driven me mad for years,” he breathed against Zero’s mouth. "A broken seal did not start that fire."

Heat broke over Zero. He breathed shallowly, unable to speak, unable to think. Kaname stared at him with a predator’s intent, his lust flowing molten through the bond. Zero didn’t know what to do with it, held helpless against Kaname’s strength. His cock was hard in his jeans, the ache spreading into his very core.

Kaname smiled at him, a slow and knowing expression. One hand stayed tangled in Zero’s hair, keeping complete control of his head, while the other cupped his cheek. “Exquisite,” he said, passing a thumb under Zero’s eye. “Even when you hated me, when I had no idea what to do with you, your eyes haunted me. I found myself looking forward to every glare. Every chance to have your attention.”

“Kaname…” He was unable to say another word. To have any other thought.

“And these lips,” Kaname said, undeterred. “This mouth tortured me. Utterly defiant and fearless. But these lips are so soft and full. I never want them to leave my skin.” He smirked. “I can’t wait to fill them with my cock.”

Zero gaped, scandalized. But he couldn’t deny that heat seared through his body. He couldn’t stop himself from looking down to Kaname’s lap, where his black trousers were full and tempting. Hot waves of lust washing over his brain, he had to touch. Carefully, watching Kaname’s encouraging expression, he reached forward and felt Kaname’s hard flesh through the fabric.

They both moaned; Kaname, more a heavy breath than a noise, and Zero loudly, surprised by how immediately he craved more.

He looked at Kaname through his lashes, his face burning. “Can I?” he asked, undeniably shy of the answer.

Kaname smiled, dark and hungry. “You may.” He looked like a king receiving tribute.

Zero must be red across his whole skin. Gods, Kaname was such an arrogant prick. And yet, his indulgent tone made Zero’s gut clench with need.

Zero took a short breath and reached forward. He remembered that night they’d exchanged blood and hand jobs in his dorm room. He hadn’t felt nearly so hesitant then. But tonight Zero wanted to go further, to have Kaname totally, and that put a sensitive edge on every move he made.

Thankfully, Kaname’s fly was easy to deal with. He trousers pealed away without issue, revealing dark curls and hard, silken flesh.

Zero’s face flamed. Naturally, the sinful bastard went around without underwear.

Unaware of Zero’s thoughts—not that they would have bothered him, anyway—Kaname made a pleased noise and shifted his hips. “You can touch, if you like.”

Zero glared. “You don’t have to patronize me.”

Kaname looked at him gently. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of Zero’s mouth. “I’m not.” Forthrightly, he said, “It’s important to be clear with sex. I know we stumbled into it last time, and I don’t regret it at all. But I don’t want you to think sex should always be like that.”

Zero bit his lip. “I just don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never done this before,” he confessed. He met Kaname’s eyes straight on. “But I want to learn.”

The predator flashed across Kaname’s face, possessive and dominate. “And I will teach you.” He darted forward, catching Zero’s mouth in a hot kiss.

 Zero gasped. His arms curled around Kaname’s naked shoulders. His hands seemed to be everywhere, letting Zero’s hair tumble free as Kaname mapped his contours and curves. Zero couldn’t think, couldn’t predict where those hands would be next. He could barely keep up with the kiss.

His hands fell to Kaname’s hips, where his fingers finally slipped inside Kaname’s trousers. He explored the firm globes of Kaname’s ass. The skin was soft in his hands, thrilling and new. Zero felt lust surge through him, leaving him no choice but to pursue more touch.

He was so absorbed, lost to smooth skin and Kaname’s demanding kisses, that he jumped with surprise when Kaname’s hands found his own fly.

“Okay?” Kaname asked, voice rough from kisses, his hands frozen at Zero’s waist.

His eyes were wide and dark as the sea, his mouth swollen and wet. Zero would deny the gods before Kaname.

“Yes, please.” He clung to Kaname’s shoulder and mouthed wetly at the skin there, unwilling to lose Kaname’s taste.

“Thank you, beautiful, beautiful boy,” Kaname praised, and then his clever fingers were working Zero’s jeans and boxers down around his knees. When he finished, Kaname leaned back and stared. “Gods, Zero. Perfect creature.” He kissed down Zero’s neck, over his chest. “My angel,” he breathed against his nipple.

Zero moaned loudly, his head falling back. No one had ever talked to him like this, touched him like this. So intimate, so devoted. He felt desire, desired. He felt powerful and vulnerable and like a single breeze could blow him to pieces, like all that held him together was Kaname.

A sharp nip drew him back into his body. Kaname straightened up and smirked at him. “Take the rest off. I want to see all of you. Taste all of you.”

“Fuck,” Zero sighed. The mouth on this man. But Zero could hardly deny wanting all that he described.

Zero didn’t waste anymore time thinking about it. He unlaced and kicked his boots off, then stripped the rest as fast as possible.

Kaname watched each step with covetous eyes. Zero could barely keep his gaze, almost more undone by Kaname’s attention than anything else.

Kaname was painted pearlescent by the moonlight, perfect and divine. But, it felt like, Zero was the only thing he cared to want.

“You look like a god,” Zero said softly, not used to giving praise but determined that he wouldn’t be the only one receiving it tonight. “Like something out of my dreams.”

Kaname offered his hand again, and Zero accepted without a thought. He curled them together, so tightly that Zero almost lost the sense of himself. “I intend to be better,” Kaname promised. “I intend to be your reality. Every dream, Zero, I will make real for you.”

Zero bit his lip. “I don’t need all that to stay,” he said, meeting Kaname’s eyes. “I just need you.”

Kaname gave him total honesty. “You have me utterly, in my entirety. For better or worse.”

“The better,” Zero swore, drawing Kaname into his own kiss. “Us, together, it’s always for the better.”

Kaname didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Words could not speak the relief, the joy, that pulsed through the bond. Zero wrapped himself in those emotions, and knew they were love. A love Zero would never let go of, would never leave unprotected, so long as he lived.

Hands trailed over Zero’s body. They caught on his nipples, pulling at them until Zero keened. They lingered over his scars, tracing the lines.

The scars twinged still, his body echoing with the memory of his near-death. The travelling, the hard ride, the fucking emotional upheaval—none had helped stifle the pain. Honestly, it was taking a lot of effort to keep sitting on his knees. But Zero was loathe to do anything that might dissuade Kaname from his present path.

But Kaname must have caught his discomfort through the bond. He pulled Zero properly onto his lap, a strong arm supporting his body. He opened his mouth, but Zero cut him off.

“Please, we’ll be careful,” Zero said—begged. “We can’t stop now.”

Kaname chuckled, his amusement sending fresh want through Zero’s veins. He whined, nipping at Kaname’s skin petulantly, sucking at the crux of his shoulder.

Kaname cradled the back of his head, keeping Zero in place. “Bite me,” he said, holding Zero close.

Zero froze. Old fear flickered in his gut, like it always did when living blood was offered to him. “I feel fine, Kaname, please—”

“Ssssh,” Kaname soothed. “I don’t care if you ever drink from the vein in your life.” He paused, then said carefully, “But Zero, my love, I must ask that you make peace with drinking from me.”

Zero’s jaw flexed. He wanted to drink. He wanted Kaname’s blood like he wanted air. But he hated the monstrous feeling of ripping into flesh, hated the pain and struggle.

Zero looked down. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Kaname guided his chin up. “You cannot hurt me with this,” he said seriously. “Between vampires, it’s a kindness. Between mates,” and here, Kaname pressed a kiss to Zero’s mouth, "It’s the greatest pleasure.”

Zero remembered. That night in the grove, Kaname had almost undone him with his bite. Only hardwired instinct beaten into him by a lifetime of family secrets had prevented Zero from losing himself entirely.  And blood had definitely been exchanged during their first tryst together, adding to the craze of it.

From what Zero remembered, the “greatest pleasure” was a goddamn understatement.

Kaname held him tighter, unwavering. He whispered into Zero’s ear. “I have looked forward to feeling your bite again. I’ve dreamed about it.”

Zero breathed heavily. Kaname’s scent sunk into his every sense. Waking his own pure blood gave him more control, but… Having the control did not mean he wanted to exercise it. He leaned in close to Kaname’s neck, luxuriating in the pure scent of ancient blood, of his own fated and chosen mate. The old fear tried to rise again, but it was harder now. It was the fear of a Level D, of a traumatized child. It had ruled his life, once. But Zero had grown since then. He was more than the fear.

And even if he wasn’t, Kaname would always protect him. He believed that now, more than he’d believed anything in his life.

Emboldened, he licked along Kaname’s carotid artery. He was thrilled by the heavy pulse of Kaname’s heart against his tongue. By his salty, heated skin. Kaname only encouraged him, holding him and crooning in his ear.

Zero opened his mouth wide. His fangs sprung forth, eager and hungry. He inhaled the sweet scent of ambrosia.

“Please, Zero,” Kaname said, hot as sin. “Give me the pleasure of your bite.”

Zero couldn’t refuse him—more, he didn’t want to. Submitting to instinct, to desire, he bit.

Blood spilled into his mouth. His fangs had sliced through Kaname’s flesh effortlessly. The blood crashed into his senses, taking him away on a red wave. Spices and luxury, conquest and royalty. Power flooded his body, stealing into every crack and vein. All pain, all tiredness, obliterated. He clung to Kaname, desperate to have more of him, to be part of him.

Kaname’s moans filled Zero’s ears, his hands holding Zero together as his blood shook Zero apart. His body ached for Kaname, his cock so hard he could barely understand it. Lust raked him with claws of fire.

Zero was scared he wouldn’t be able to stop. But the other desires rose over the blood. Zero felt needy and wanting, an aching emptiness spreading in his core. He pulled his fangs away with a bloody kiss, lathing his tongue over the wound to seal it. He mouthed kisses over the hinge of Kaname’s jaw, to his lips.

Kaname groaned, surging against Zero like he wanted to consume him.

When they parted, Kaname’s blood was everywhere. Kaname’s mouth—his face, his chest—was smeared with it, bloodied by Zero’s kisses. The moonlight spilled down over him, casting the bloodstains black against white skin. The only true colour was Kaname’s eyes, glowing red like hellfire. He was truly a vampire, truly their King, and Zero had never wanted him more.

His blood-scent hung in the air, coating Zero’s throat anew every time he breathed.

Half-delirious with lust and blood, Zero fell into his mate. “Fuck me, Kaname, please.” He begged like a man possessed, pawing uselessly at his mate’s chest, every instinct crying for his other half. To be claimed by him, to consummate and strengthen their bond in the oldest of ways.

Kaname caught his hands easily, pinning them still as he turned Zero onto his back. The change was good, giving Zero the blanket to grip onto and a firm, soft surface to lie against. He needed it as Kaname rose up above him, a supernatural legend given flesh.

“Darling Zero,” Kaname said, indulgent and sweet. “Beautiful, perfect mate. My consort, at last.”

For the first time in possibly his life, Zero relaxed. The instincts that hounded him went silent, the hunter lulled by the safety assured by the stronger predator and the vampire at peace with its mate’s protection. “Yours,” Zero said thickly, his throat sticky with blood and need. He tossed his head against the blanket, rolling his body up in a prayer for touch. “Gods, Kaname, please.”

“No need to plead, my Zero,” Kaname comforted. He sat between Zero’s parted thighs, his hands investigating the naked skin offered up to him. Zero’s gut jumped as those clever fingers found the juncture of his legs, that needy place Zero had never dared to touch before. He cruelly ignored Zero’s cock, standing up brazenly and begging for his attention.

“I’m going to open you up slowly. You will take three of my fingers in here first,” his thumb swept over Zero’s clenched hole, sending tremors through his whole body, “And only when I’m satisfied with your pleasure will I fuck you.”

If Zero knew one thing, it was that Kaname was an intolerable perfectionist. How long did he plan to string Zero along? “Please,” he begged, his body twisting already under the petting Kaname gave his tight furl. “Please, Kaname, I need you.” He was drunk on his mate’s touch, glutted on his blood. Even the air felt like too much against his skin, let alone the slow agony Kaname inflicted.

Kaname replied only with a kiss, setting fire to Zero’s brain at the same time he silenced him. The hand at his hole disappeared, leaving Zero to whine into the kiss, before long fingers returned covered in slippery wetness. Zero jerked against the unfamiliar feeling, then cried as Kaname bit into his bottom lip. Caught in sensation, he was almost limp when Kaname’s first finger slid slickly in.

The kiss broke with Zero’s gasp. He felt blood leak down his cheek, his lip cut on Kaname’s sharp fangs. His hole burned, tight still despite the laxness of his whole body. He whined needily, not sure what he wanted, what to do.

Above him, Kaname licked Zero’s blood from his lips. Zero was so focused on Kaname’s mouth that the finger curling inside him caught him off-guard. He groaned as Kaname did it again, laying claim to Zero’s virgin channel, exploring his most intimate, untouched skin. Deep inside, sparks lit as Kaname brushed the edge of some sensitive place.

“That’s one,” Kaname purred, flicking his finger pointedly again, just at that place. He wouldn’t look away from Zero’s face, forcing Zero to give him his full attention even as the sparks made Zero twist and moan. “You’re blushing so prettily for me. So sweet for me, my pretty mate.”

A second finger began to prod at Zero’s rim. He couldn’t stop a needful whine. One finger felt so good, pressing at that place, burning and branding him from the inside. He desperately wanted another.

“Ah,” his mate cautioned. “Not until I decide you’re ready. Tell me, dearest, does the first one feel good yet?”

Zero could scream. “So good,” he panted instead, trying to thrust himself down onto it. “I need more.”

Kaname kissed him, opening his wounded lip up fresh. “So good for me, Zero,” he said, then sucked hard on the wound. While Zero cried into the vicious kiss, Kaname thrust the next finger in.

The burn doubled. Zero sobbed, clenching tight around the intrusion. Kaname lay on top of him, holding him against the blanket, or else he would have flung to pieces. He barely had time to adjust before Kaname was spreading his fingers wide and truly opening him up, then curling them together and thrusting as deep as possible. Kaname spoke hot words into his ear while he did it, praising him like a man at worship. And then Kaname hit that place deep inside him, harder than before, and Zero thought the pleasure would kill him.

“That’s it,” Kaname said approvingly, his eyes hooded and dark. “So sensitive. I might not even need to touch you cock, hm?”

Zero heaved, soundless cries arching his back. He panted into the night air, barely able to keep his mind straight. Kaname had touched a livewire inside his core, sending electricity charging through his body.

He spared a glance for his poor, ignored cock. It glistened, desperate for touch. He was tempted to wrap a hand around it and be done, be finished, but he dare not move while Kaname watched him with such satisfied, predatory eyes.

His resolve shook when the third finger began to tease his straining hole. The burn of it was still good, but Zero couldn’t imagine how anything more could fit inside.

Kaname swallowed down his whimpers and whines, kissing him unrelentingly. He sucked hard on Zero’s bitten lip, milking the wound and stealing any trace of Zero’s blood. Zero could barely stand it, but his mind truly shattered when that third finger pushed him open.

“Kaname, Kaname, Kaname,” Zero chanted, eyes screwed shut. He gave up holding the blanket, sinking his nails into Kaname’s shoulders instead. He needed to feel him, needed to hold his mate. His knees came up instinctively, clinging to Kaname’s hips and dragging him impossibly closer. He couldn’t relax, couldn’t command his body at all. Everything was sensation, hot and burning and shivery.

“Beautiful, Zero,” Kaname said, dragging his nose along Zero’s neck, drinking in the scent of his mate’s arousal. “You’re taking this so beautifully. Just give me a little more. Relax. Let me in.”

Zero moaned, almost insensate. He was overwhelmed by the stretch and burn, by his weeping cock. But even more powerfully, by the feeling of Kaname’s lips against his neck.

He thread a hand in Kaname’s hair. His fingers were wet, slippery with Kaname’s blood. His nails must have ripped into his skin. He idly wanted to lick them clean, but that would mean giving up his purchase on Kaname. He couldn’t bear to, not when he needed something else. Something he needed to feel Kaname to do.

Taking a deep, strangled breath, Zero said, “Bite me.” He didn’t recognize his ruined, plaintive voice. He felt outside his own body, unable to think clearly. But that was a good thing, a delicious thing. His every wall, his every defence, everything was torn away, leaving only what Zero wanted, what he needed. And he needed this. To take and be taken, in everyway.

“Zero,” Kaname groaned. His red eyes were blown wide, blurred with need. His fangs caught the moonlight, livid white against his bloodstained, swollen mouth. Zero pulled him down by his hair, his other hand digging nails into his back. He pulled unit Kaname’s face was sheltered between his neck and shoulder, barely an inch from his skin.

“Please,” Zero asked croakily, desperate for it. “I want to feel how it is when I want it. When I…when I love the person who does it.”

He felt Kaname freeze, from the fingers that were curling and stretching inside Zero to the breath that warmed his neck.

“You love me?” Kaname asked, his voice as delicate as a spider’s web.

Zero pulled Kaname’s face away from his neck, wanting to be completely understood. “You’ve loved me for weeks now. And I’ve refused to let myself love you back.”

“Zero,” Kaname called softly, almost fearful. “I don’t need to hear this.”

“You do,” Zero said, dragging bloodied fingers along Kaname’s cheek. “I couldn’t love you if I didn’t know you. But you’ve given me that now. And I love the man I know.” He sat up, careful of the fingers still stroking inside him, and caught Kaname’s slack mouth in a kiss, coaxing him. When Zero lay back again he took Kaname with him.

Using his grip in Kaname’s hair, he broke the kiss and guided him back to Zero’s neck. “Let me show you,” Zero said. “Taste it in me.”  

“My god,” Kaname hissed, frazzled and almost mad. “My love.” He shifted onto his forearm, tangling that hand in Zero’s hair, dragging the long lengths of silver away from his neck. His other hand, and those wicked fingers inside Zero, pulled away, leaving only slick emptiness behind.

“Shh,” Kaname soothed, before Zero could cry out. He distracted Zero with kisses, with taunting twists to his nipples and lingering explorations. He eventually gathered Zero’s hips in both hands. With easy strength, he pulled Zero closer, until his ass rested on his thighs.

“Kaname,” Zero sobbed, driven to the edge of his tolerance.

“Easy,” Kaname chided. Zero caught the shine of glass in his hand, a bottle. He tipped it over his fingers, then slicked up his long, thick cock, standing hard against his belly.

With a teasing smile, he splashed more oil over Zero’s hole, chuckling when Zero cursed at him. Kaname kissed him silent.

“Relax for me, my love,” Kaname said. “Let me show you how to feel good.”

Zero could only gasp at breath as Kaname rocked forward, the tip of his cock pushing at Zero’s pucker. The head slipped in easily, his hole slick and stretched, but feeling so strange Zero couldn’t hold back a crying whine. Kaname cooed to him, soothing him as he inched inside Zero, stretching him wider than three fingers could hope to manage, filling up all the emptiness. When the burning was almost too much, when the width felt too great, a hot touch began working his cock.

Zero jackknifed against it. He had focused all his attention on his hole, on Kaname’s rapturous face above him. The pleasure ambushed him, burning him up inside.

“How does that feel?” Kaname coaxed, rolling his hips while he thumbed the leaking head of Zero’s cock. “I have only a little way to go, then I’ll be in you fully.”

“Good,” Zero gasped, fire licking up his spine. “So good, Kaname.”

Encouraged, Kaname thrust harder, making that last way in, bringing Zero down on the thickest part of his cock. Zero sobbed. He tried to shove his wrist into his mouth, to stop the desperate sounds, but Kaname struck too fast. He grabbed Zero’s wrist with one hand and pressed it into the blanket. He was flicking his hips in some terrible, maddening way, working that dazzling place deep inside Zero. Zero could do nothing but sob and moan, breaking the silent night to pieces.

“I can feel you like a vice around me,” Kaname groaned into his ear, nosing Zero’s head to the side. “I have lived beyond the world, and nothing has ever felt so perfect. My gorgeous, beautiful mate.”

Teeth set against his skin, the fine pinprick of fangs. Zero clung to Kaname, his nails lodging in his back again, whimpering into his ear. He rocked with pleasure, shook with it, fear and wariness pushed outside of his cognisance. His old demons demanded he should flinch, he should fight away—but he couldn’t, not from Kaname. Not from this man. Not from his mate, who offered him the world in the palm of his hand. “Please,” Zero whispered, the only word he could gather. The only word he wanted to speak.

Kaname bit. Pain sliced through Zero, the pain of a million lonely nightmares, the pain of a childhood murdered. But gone in a second. Scrubbed out by pleasure, by Kaname’s scent, his touch, by Kaname’s need and desire and love. Zero was filled with it, even as he felt his blood spill from the wound. His instincts were delirious, riotous, but both were in agreement. He would rather die than push Kaname away.

Kaname thrust into him as he drank, his rhythm as unrelenting as the sea. Zero’s cock was trapped between their stomachs, teased by every bit of friction. It built in Zero like a crescendo, the lust-flooded bond and Kaname’s venom and every potent movement inside him all soaking him in impossible pleasure. He was crying with it, his mouth gapping for air as tears rolled down into his hair. His nails carved bloody tracks into Kaname, but nothing could shake his mate’s devotion. Kaname’s blood, Zero’s blood, their scents filled the air. Zero breathed in the red haze and found it totally addictive, the most beautiful thing he’d ever scented, tasted.

After an eternity spent trapped on the knife’s edge, Kaname’s hips stuttered in their assault. Fangs retracted from Zero's neck at the same moment, drawing another piercing cry out of him. Zero felt dazed, blindsided with endorphins and desperate for solid ground. Kaname gave it to him immediately, pulling him into a slick, wet kiss, a kiss filled with Zero’s blood. The cold of his own power assaulted him, and under that the incinerating heat of his mate.

Kaname growled into the kiss, animalistic. Zero had thought he'd seen the monster before, but he was realizing that even Kaname on the hunt, chasing prey, wore a civil face. He did not now. He let Zero see every brutal, gluttonous part of himself, fully unleashing his terrible power as he took every inch Zero offered and another mile beyond that. And still, Zero clung to him, mesmerised by the man he loved.

“Mine,” Kaname hissed through bared fangs. Blood dripped from his mouth. He bent to lick the drops off Zero’s cheek, dissolving into messy kisses.

When Zero finally got his mouth free, he gasped, Claws sprung from his fingertips, leaving wounds behind that could become scars even on Pureblood skin. “Mine.”

Kaname grinned, absolutely feral—as absolutely feral as Zero. His grip turned bruising as he fucked Zero so hard Zero could do nothing but submit. He cried into Kaname’s growling moans, making noises fangless human mouths could never produce, reaching a place beyond words where only Kaname existed. And then, with the power of a lightning strike, every tortured muscle in Zero’ body clenched with excruciating pleasure.

He lost track of things.

Kaname, coming hard and filling Zero with hot seed, inevitably brought him back to earth. Zero found he could do little more than hum at the sensation, the animal inside winding his legs tighter around Kaname, pulling him deeper, determined to keep his mate and his scent close. He lapped lazily at his bite on Kaname’s neck, worrying the tender wound and milking the last drops of brilliant blood from it as Kaname jerked inside him.

When no speck of blood remained in easy reach of his mouth, Zero settled for placing little butterfly kisses on any bare skin. His mate panted wetly against his neck. They lay like that for years, Zero thought. Sunk into their mate-bond deeper than ever before, cleaning up each other’s bloodied skin with lazy kisses.

Eventually, even the kisses were too much effort. Zero settled for lying limply on the blanket, Kaname drawn like a shield over his body. He spared energy only to run his fingers through Kaname’s hair, picking apart the bloody matts he’d made earlier. He discovered he liked listening to Kaname’s breathing as much as his heartbeat.

Zero paused his motions only when he felt Kaname’s gaze, radiating against his skin like heat from a flame. He looked away from the night sky to catch his eye.

Kaname looked at Zero with love writ plainly on his face.

Caught, something like shyness flashed across Kaname’s expression. It should have been incongruent, with what they’d just done, but it wasn’t. The throws of blood and lust were one thing, but, to Kaname especially, being seen and known was an uncertain other. Zero understood, and he was maybe the only living person who did.  

Zero smiled at him. “I do love you, Kaname.”

His sense of peace didn’t dissipate when Kaname didn’t say back, or when he tucked his face into Zero’s shoulder. Zero didn’t need to hear what he could feel in the bond. The wet tears hidden against his skin were only another evidence.

Chapter Text

Zero woke to fingers carding through his hair. He knew the touch immediately—Kaname.

Zero was in Kaname’s bed, Kaname’s scent and physical warmth all around him. The matebond shone in his mind, bright with strength and the joy of their union. He felt something pleasant, gentle, warming his chest. An emotion like he’d never known before. Love, or peace. He didn’t care to parse it. He only relaxed into it, letting himself enjoy the golden glow.

Only one thing could make this morning more perfect. Zero turned, shuffling the downy bedding aside until he could see that lovely face.

Warm eyes met his. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” Kaname said. He sat up against the headboard, naked but for the duvet pulled up to his waist. A book lay abandoned at his side. He looked soft. Happy.

His hands found Zero again, pulling him nearer.

Zero moved with him. His head rested on Kaname’s lap, his arms curling around that warm, naked waist. The powerful Pureblood, the ancient king, melted into his touch.

“S’okay,” Zero said blearily, rubbing his eyes. “Just don’t hold it against me if I fall asleep during your party.”

The room was thick with a darkness human eyes couldn’t have seen through, the heavy drapes drawn. Zero’s internal clock told him that it was late afternoon. Too early to be awake, for Zero’s newborn nocturnal sensibilities. He wasn’t annoyed, though. Not if being woken gave him a few more hours with Kaname. To live in their world alone together, before the intruders arrived.

Zero tucked his face into Kaname’s thigh, grimacing. Soon, within hours, vampires Zero did not trust would flood the manor. He had their identities memorized from dossiers provided to him by Seiren. He’d even met many of their children since moving into the Moon Dorms. But Zero’s quip about falling asleep during the Samhain Ball was a lie. Zero wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t relax, until the last of the strangers left. And only then with Kaname beside him and the rest of the court sleeping safely down the hall. Cross, Yagari, and Yori, too.

Zero’s stomach twisted, a separate anxiety stirring. His trio of hunters would also attend tonight, staying a few more nights besides. They would meet the court, and most importantly Kaname, in a way that was less formal than the Academy could provide. More intimate. More like a family.

Family. The word smelled like blood, like cherry blossoms. But it undeniably fit. Maybe it had for years, as Cross washed his parents’ blood off his hands and Yagari’s shadow spread protectively over his life. Then Yori, slotting in like a piece he’d always been missing. His family.

Kaito’s absence stood out, as unavoidable as an amputated limb. After Zero revealed his new body, Kaito had stormed out of the Moon Dorms. Hate bright in his eyes, he had left Zero’s life. But Zero had chosen that wound. He’d known what he’d lose if he became the monster sealed in his bloodline. He’d gained many invaluable things, Kaname not at all the least of them. But there were also parts of himself, of his life, that he would never touch again. Kaito, his lifelong friend, was one of them.

By Kaito’s loss, Zero’s gratefulness for Cross, Yagari, and Yori grew. Their presence at the ball tonight was a saving grace. Yeah, he was nervous about his hunters meeting Kaname’s court—like families on the eve of arranging a marriage match, ugh—but they had Zero’s back. And he was more nervous about being caught without backup again. Like in Tokyo.

His hunters. Kaname. The court. The private vampire security detail Seiren ran like a personal militia for Kaname, and whatever hunters the Association saw fit to throw at the event for security. Surely, surely, all these forces and Zero himself could keep the ball from becoming a bloodbath. Surely.

Zero bit his lip. He’d thought he’d been making up a lot of ground, lately. Healing old traumas, building new relationships, whatever. But being trapped, stabbed, and left for dead had done nothing to ease his intense paranoia. Instinctively, tonight’s ball felt like the worst idea Zero had ever played along with—and he’d participated in some really convoluted bullshit over the last twelve months. Even with Kaname wrapped around him, their bond as powerful and sincere as ever after last night, Zero’s gut knotted anxiously when he thought about the ball.

But the vampire world needed a leader, and Kaname was the only one Zero trusted to be king. Ergo, Zero had to convince these bloodthirsty society leeches that Zero wasn’t a detriment to Kaname’s place on the throne. And, asinine as it was, making a good show tonight was the best way Zero could do that.

It was bullshit, but bullshit even Zero couldn’t rebel against. Not anymore.

Kaname didn’t comment on Zero’s discontent. There was nothing left to say. But though he didn’t comment, his presence was hardly mute. Kaname flooded the bond with comfort and strength, his love an endless warmth closing over Zero’s soul. The power, the sworn safety, stroked Zero’s raised hackles until his body and spirit sunk into the touch.

With Zero’s heart beating slow and his face cradled against his stomach, Kaname took to Zero’s hair next. He gathered the long silver lengths up and lay the collection flat over the sheets. Then, he produced a pearly comb from his bedside drawer. Zero caught flashes of the handle as Kaname gently unpicked the snarls in his hair and smoothly stroked the teeth through.

Zero hummed. Kaname had brought him to bed with unruly wet hair that morning, both of them warm and nude and tired after the bath they’d taken to clean up. They’d ridden back from the lake under a rising sun—or, Kaname had. Zero had sat side-saddle in his lap on the roan, too tired to take up reins himself. Getting into his jeans and jacket had already been a monumental effort, done only because Zero was certain Kaname would kill anyone who caught sight of his bare ass. Kaname had handled all the other details, including making sure both horses returned to the stuttering stablemaster.

The rhythmic passes through his hair, Kaname’s hands so gentle with each strand, was enough to make Zero’s eyelids nearly close again. Being taken care of felt so nice. Nicer still was Kaname’s genuine care, his enjoyment of making Zero happy.

“Thank you,” Zero said, quiet in the dark. The brushing had become all strokes now, the knots undone. The comb had disappeared, warm fingers taking up the soothing motion.

After a final pass, Kaname leaned over him and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. “It is my honest pleasure, my Zero.”

Zero felt his cheeks heat. “Flirt.”

“Only for you,” Kaname swore, pressing more kisses to Zero’s hair and face. “My mate. My heart. I will care for you always.”

“I know,” Zero said, turning over to meet Kaname’s eyes. He reached up, cradling his handsome face in his palm. “I know, Kaname. I trust you. I love you.”

Kaname closed his eyes, like he was in awe or rapture. “Just this one night,” Kaname promised, to himself and to Zero. “Then, we retire a while.” He fluttered hooded eyes at Zero. “I want to know all of you.”

Zero swallowed, lust sparking in his gut. He checked his internal clock. There were hours still until sunset. Takuma and Ruka would descend upon him then, to work their magic on Zero. To turn a tainted hunter into a royal vampire.

 “You know,” Zero said, pulling himself up on Kaname’s shoulders, letting the sheets slip down his naked body. Eager to be distracted. “We could do some more knowing right now.”

Kaname grinned, wicked and delighted. In an instant, Zero was on his back; Kaname’s strong body locked around him. “You, my love,” Kaname sighed, “Always have the best ideas.”

Yuuki stood in the ballroom of Kuran Manor, dripping in jewels, utterly out of place.

She shouldn’t be. Yuuki had lived in this building for months. She’d come to think of it, distantly, as home.

She didn’t have any other homes, after Kaname whisked her from Cross Academy. And it was such a lovely place. The place her parents had grown up. The home of her brother. It should be hers, too. In any just world, Kuran Manor would he hers.

But it hadn’t been, and she was just realizing it now.

In her memories, Kuran Manor was a quiet place. Empty. Uninhabited, outside of what she guessed were the staff quarters. She knew her bedroom, the solar she took lessons in, and whatever rooms Kaname favored. All other doors had been locked to her, the furniture presumably bundled up in dust clothes, the drapes pulled tight.

Tonight, Yuki felt like her memories lied to her. Kuran Manor wasn’t empty. Hardly! It was full of people. Hemorrhaging them. The halls and the grand foyer and the master drawing room—even the library, and the innumerable sitting and gaming salons—were aglow with warm light, wreathed in crimson Kuran roses. Every elegant turn of stone and wood was highlighted with glamour.

Even the servants were more beautiful than usual, Yuuki thought. They smiled. She didn’t remember them smiling, before.

“I’ve never seen anything so lovely,” Yuuki said, staring around the ballroom, the most glorious room of all. She meant every word with all her heart.

The air was full of music. Every chandelier glowed with golden light, the black marble floor gleaming like a midnight sky. The night, so full of shining stars that it seemed like even the Heavens were conspiring with her brother, peered in through windows swathed in thick velvet drapes. Beatific servants filled every free hand with mouth-watering delicacies. Fantastically clad guests floated all around her, like walking fairytales.

They were the best part, the guests. Awe and glee beamed out from behind their masks. Yuuki could taste the excitement, the joy, in the air. The eldest vampires held their hands to their smiling mouths, fluttered fans in front of their grinning lips, whispering to the younger ones, Yes, this is what Court was—how it should be.

The King’s Court?

Of course, child. Who else?

And the younger ones would look at each other, pleased and even hopeful, and start to smile and grin, too.

Yuuki’s mask kept her safe from the many sparkling, curious eyes. Sara’s magic and science tricked even the manor’s ancient wards. All of her was hidden behind the mask’s golden face and the long, black veil that fell over her hair. Her voice was even disguised. Shiki Senri welcomed each guest personally into the ballroom and he’d made no notice of her at all.

Yuuki, of course, knew him immediately. He wore a mask, like all the masquerading guests, but he was unmistakable—the Kuran clan symbol was woven along the hem of his kimono. As Kaname’s beloved cousin, Shiki was one of three welcome to use the symbol. She and Kaname were the others.

As one of the most valued members of Kaname’s elite inner court, and Kaname’s claimed blood-kin, Shiki’s greeting was a very big honor, apparently. A sign of Kaname’s trust in and respect for the guests, to leave his darling young cousin alone to guide them inside. The fact that Shiki was a bastard, the product of Kuran Rido’s final, flagrant affair, didn’t taint him at all. Kaname’s love was that powerful.

Yuuki chewed her lip bitterly. And his scorn was powerful, too.

“I have seen lovelier things,” Sara replied, looking at Yuuki pointedly. She stood at Yuuki’s side, where she had spent her every free moment since Yuuki had arrived at Sara’s doorstep.

Her cheeks warm behind her mask, Yuuki smiled. As always, Sara’s words made Yuuki feel golden inside. “You are too kind, Lady Sara.”

Sara smiled at Yuuki. Her small mouth was as delicate as two flower petals, lightly touching. A thin shimmer of gloss made her lips glitter. It was the only makeup she wore. Her splendor was otherwise entirely her own.

“Not nearly as kind as you deserve,” Sara said. She took Yuuki’s arm gently. “Now, chin up. The show will start soon.”

Yuuki swallowed, her mouth paper-dry with nerves, but she didn’t drop her gaze. Predators did not look away from another’s eyes. Sara had taught her many lessons, these last weeks, but Yuuki thought this lesson was the most important.

As Sara tilted her an approving nod, Yuuki searched the room. She’d been doing it periodically for the last hour, as they arrived at the manor and began making circles through the ballroom. And yet, Shiki was still the only one of Kaname’s favorites Yuuki saw.

The inner court’s absence made her nervous. And where was Kaname? If this was her ball, Yuuki thought, she wouldn’t wait a whole hour to make an appearance. Sara had told her to expect a delay, that noble hosts never showed themselves early, but surely an hour edged on rudeness. And what if Kaname and his pet courtiers never turned up? Sara had said that their presence was key to her plan. That anything short of the full presence of Kaname’s power and influence would render her actions meaningless.

Yuuki still didn’t know exactly the details of the plan. Sara had explained that it was safer for Yuuki that way. Yuuki was a powerful Pureblood, doubtlessly, but young still and learning her strength. Sara didn’t want to risk hurting her.

It irritated Yuuki a little, being talked to like that. But, somehow, it felt more endearing than when Kaname used similar words. Maybe because Kaname had never recognized her power. His words were always about protection, never recognition.

Tonight would show him. Sara had told her that much, at least. After tonight, Kaname would never look at Yuuki and see a fragile little girl ever again.

The music stirred, catching Yuuki’s attention. The musicians—excellent ones, she had to guess—played more boldly. She recognized the high soar of violin but didn’t know the song. She didn’t like classical music. But she liked movies, and she knew what climactic music sounded like.

What a relief. Her brother was finally making his entrance.

Everyone else knew it, too. As one, almost, the most powerful vampires on the planet turned to look at the top of the stairs.

All manor ballrooms had the same basic layout, Yuuki thought, watching. Huge, sweeping rooms with grand staircases swooping from mezzanines designed for dramatic arrivals. But tonight, for the first time, she realized that this room must be the original. The ballroom that all other noble vampires aspired to recreate in their own homes. The ballroom of the Vampire King.

But it wasn’t Kaname, uncrowned for now but always so regal, who stood on the steps. Rather, her brother’s missing courtiers stood there, arranged like the most beautiful dolls in all the world. As the music rose and fell, each masked couple took leave of their step and glided down to the dance floor. Akatsuki and Ruka, waltzing together, masked as a pair of resplendent blackbirds. Aido and Rima, a couple of bejeweled butterflies. And finally, Ichijou and Shiki, each with glittering koi fish swimming over the matching midnight blue of their kimonos, splashing along the masked curves of their cheeks.

Seiren was missing, Yuuki noted distantly, in the part of her mind not consumed by the seamless dancing. But missing wasn’t the right word—unseen, that was better. Lurking in the shadows. Hunting for any hint of a threat against her master.

And her master, he was—

He was—

Beautiful.

He walked out of the shadows. No stairs or doors. Simply, Kaname was absent one moment and present, draped in darkness, the next.

He stepped into the light with a smile on his face. The shadows didn’t disperse, didn’t weaken, but clung to him lovingly—less about the way the fabric of his kimono draped, and more how his power physically took form over his skin. He controlled the darkness so perfectly that his aura of shadows flowed like a haori down his back, a dark promise of safety and a threat all its own.

Flowing into his hair, his shadowy mask whisped up like the tines of a crown.

Kaname said words. Beautiful words, in his beautiful voice. Words of joy and welcome—

“On Samhain, we illude dread spirits by wearing masks. But tonight we also mark a new unity among the society of vampires. So that you, my people, will not need to wear masks among your own kind again.”

And then he extended his hand, his beautiful hand, pale as milk against the black shadows that clung to his touch.

Yuuki, foolish idiot that she was, took a step forward. Like he was asking for her, beckoning for her. But he didn’t even know she was here. That was the whole point!

Thank the saints, Sara’s hand caught her shoulder, holding her still before she could run to him. Because, obviously, Kaname was not asking for her. Kaname—Kaname was calling for Zero.

Yuuki’s heart shriveled in her chest. She felt sick. And then, even stupider, she felt hopeful.

Maybe Zero wouldn’t answer Kaname. Kiryuu Zero, once her brother, always a rebel. Always a hunter, even when he was a Level D sucking the blood out of her throat to keep his sanity.

Zero could leave Kaname’s hand empty. He could have stormed off, left in a temper. Zero hated doing what he was told. He always thought he knew better.

She’d heard the rumors, of course. Whispers about Zero being a Pureblood. Being like Yuuki. Hidden. But that couldn’t be true. Not any truer than Zero being Kaname’s mate.

Yuuki was Kaname’s mate. Yuuki belonged to Kaname. Kaname had destroyed lives for her, and she had murdered Yuuki Cross for him. If they weren’t mates, what did that leave her?

Her thoughts tore at her, in the moments Kaname’s hand lay empty and extended into the air. Hope and sorrow, warring inside her. As the silence stretched longer, she felt her spirits bolster.

And yet, between one breath and the next, another pale hand met Kaname’s. And it did not belong to her.

Sara’s fingers curled Yuuki’s dress, behind her shoulders, subtly keeping Yuuki still and upright. Yuuki was too grateful for words. If Sara hadn’t held her up, she would have fallen to her knees.

It’s true, was her first numb thought. Followed by, Gods, please. Mercy.

But the gods didn’t materialize, and mercy didn’t either.

If Kaname was beautiful, then Kiryuu—Zero—was something more. Something bright. He glowed against Kaname’s shadows, immaculate, silver hair shining. His kimono was styled like Kaname’s, but coloured white and the palest lilac, woven with silver thread. Little bursts of light floated over his skin, a delicate manifestation of a new Pureblood’s power. Lesser than Kaname’s sprawling cape, but sharp and glittering as diamond.

His violet eyes cut through his mask, the curling white lace no match for his gaze.

Zero spoke, too. Unlike Kaname, though, Yuuki didn’t catch a word. She was too shocked. She heard his voice, pleasant and genuine, giving welcomes and wishes that echoed—his mate. The man everyone would now believe was Kiryuu Zero’s mate.

And how could they not believe it, Yuuki despaired. Zero and Kaname looked codependent; interwoven, not to be parted.

Kaname’s arm never left Zero’s waist. His hand rested on Zero’s ribcage like Kaname was born to lay it there. He watched Zero with warm eyes, adoring eyes, eyes that caught every detail of Zero and delighted in each one.

When Zero stopped speaking to the guests, he turned to look at Kaname. It wasn’t planned. It was instinctive, a searching did I do alright? As natural as the way he curved against Kaname’s side, residing in the dark miasma of Kaname’s power as though it were his birthright.

But vampires were supposed to be powerful, to be perfect. Kaname would never plan for his partner to show insecurity, weakness, at a time like this. But Zero did it anyway, looking for reassurance.

Yuuki cringed, expecting Kaname’s polite disappointment. Like he knew you would fail, and accepted it, but had wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. A chance to impress him.

Yuki was very familiar with that look. She’d seen it often. The depth of her sudden sympathy for Zero surprised her.

Sympathy, it turned out, that was wasted.

No disappointment, polite or otherwise, clouded Kaname’s face. His smile was warm, and gentle, and so full of love it made his face even more beautiful than Yuuki thought possible. And then he leaned in, and his hand left Zero’s waist to brush over his cheek, and then he was kissing Zero.

Zero all but fell against Kaname, his long, flowing layers of kimono shimmering, fluttering against Kaname’s black shadows like the petals of a white rose. Roses were woven in his hair, Yuuki saw as his mouth met Kaname’s kiss and his head turned, but red as blood. Kuran roses, rightfully woven into the hair of the Kuran lord’s fated bondmate.

“We should go,” Yuuki murmured dazedly. Her words were drowned out by the thunderous applause rising up all around her.

The guests were ecstatic. And why shouldn’t they be? They stood in their king’s court, safe and delighted and reassured. They should be rapturous as he welcomed home his queen.

“Why would we do that?” Sara asked, because even in the midst of history in the making Sara still paid attention to Yuuki.

“Zero is Kaname’s mate,” Yuuki said, her throat tight with the terrible truth of it. “I—I hadn’t seen them together, before. How they are together. It’s not at all like Kaname was with me. I can’t be Kaname’s mate.”

She blinked back tears. For herself, and for Kaname, and even for Zero. Gods, she’d been so stupid. She should have listened when Kaname tried to explain, but—fuck.

You try giving up everything about yourself for a man and see how rational you are when he tells you he made a mistake. He wants to fuck and marry your brother instead of you, actually, sorry.

“No, you are not,” Sara said mildly, as if it were no surprise to her.

Yuuki whipped her head around to stare at Sara, jerked out of her thoughts. “What? But, you gave me all those books—”

“I needed to be sure, and to be sure I needed you near me,” Sara said. Her fingers rested heavy on Yuuki’s shoulders. “And a certain way to accomplish that was to tell you what you wanted to hear.”

“…You wanted to be sure of what?” Yuuki asked, horrified and fast approaching furious. She’d been manipulated again? Seriously?

Zero was right. Vampires sucked.

Sara smiled. It was gorgeous, and perfect, and it made Kaname’s pale to nothing in Yuuki’s mind. She felt her anger waver, looking at that smile, and somehow that just pissed Yuuki off more.

“To be sure that you were mine, of course,” Sara said. She drew her fingers leisurely down the cheek or Yuuki’s black mask. “My Kuran Princess. And, once I kill your brother, my queen.”

They made it through the speeches, and the dances, and no one died. A minor fucking miracle, if you asked Zero.

“Tonight has been remarkable, and you have been unparalleled,” Kaname said, as self-satisfied as a cat with a songbird in its paws. He swirled a glass of blood wine in one hand, his other arm laced around Zero. His hand had barely moved all night, laying like a brand over Zero’s ribs.

As a gift, Zero decided to let Kaname have his bravado unchallenged for one night. Kaname was, after all, so far correct. Zero hadn’t fucked up. He hadn’t even felt the urge to shoot anyone, yet. Dare he say it, he might even be having fun.

“There must be something other than blood in the wine,” Zero mused. “Everyone is in a good mood.”

Zero had been at a lot of fancy vampire functions in his life. He’d been running security as a hunter, of course, so usually the guests he had to talk to hated him immediately, but he also spent a lot of time at those events just watching. People usually turned catty about an hour in, when the room became too hot and the new gossip ran dry. By the second hour, the first wallflowers began to depart. Those still going strong by the forth hour were either using the event as an alibi or were too lonely or bored at home to leave without prompting.

Zero had been expecting the Samhain Ball to be the same, but worse—because Zero would be at the center of it. He’d seen beleaguered society hosts before: smile-pained vampires desperately hoping to cover up some fanged faux pas with a party, only to be met with artillery fire. With Zero’s track record (hunter-born, suspiciously Pureblood, formerly Level D, killed Kuran Rido, torpedoed Kuran Yuuki’s wedding, took beloved Kuran Kaname off the marriage market, need he go on?), he’d expected to join that socially decimated class. He’d prepared himself for backhanded compliments, subtle insults, and probably another assassination attempt.

Honestly, with his gut in knots over all the unfamiliar social niceties he needed to perform, he’d been praying for the assassination attempt. Just to help him unwind a little. He was at least familiar with those.

Yet, as Kaname led him off the dance floor to make their first round of greetings, Zero found himself bombarded by a barrage of—friendliness.

“Ah, Kiryuu-sama, thank you for all your work against Rido. My daughter was in the Night Class when he struck the Academy.”

“Kiryuu-sama, my nephew tells me you have an interest in vampire history. I do as well…”

“You dance so beautifully, Kiryuu-sama! My little brother mentioned it is a hobby of yours?”

Kaname hummed. “It does seem your fans in the Night Class have encouraged their families to ask after you.”

Zero snorted. “I don’t have fans. I just…”

“Look out for the younger ones?” Kaname inquired, indulgent and knowing.

Zero didn’t deign to give a response. Sue him, okay, but three years a prefect and a whole life as an older brother left Zero with a certain set of instincts. And as much as the Night Class would like everyone to believe that each member was a perfectly coiffed automaton, a lot of them were just kids. Vampire kids, sure, but some were shy and lonely, and some missed home, and there was always the odd nightmare (daymare?), and sometimes Zero was the only one around willing to deal with it.

He'd been living in the Night Class dorms for a month since getting stabbed. He’d talked to people, alright?

Kaname was laughing at him. Not out loud, but his eyes sparkled and Zero felt his amusement in the bond.

Zero sent back a wave of his own humor, giving the impression of rolling his eyes. He was in too good a mood to pretend to be annoyed.

After all the ups and downs, Kaname deserved a night of everything going right. And, honestly, so did Zero.

It was like thinking that thought gave his body permission to relax. His shoulders dropped, releasing tension he hadn’t been aware of. He stood a little taller. His smirk felt less mean.

“It probably helps that I’m hanging off your arm,” Zero said. “I hear you have a temper. Blew up some senators, once?”

“All the senators, actually.” Kaname said, like his insane, murderous wrath was a point of pride. And it probably was, among vampires.

“Excellent problem-solving,” Zero said dryly.

Kaname tilted his chin up. “I’d say so.”

“Now, now, Kaname-san,” Cross Kaien chirped, swanning up to Kaname and Zero for the first time that night. He looked cheerful in an elegant cream suit and feathered mask. “Perhaps we could keep the talk of explosions to a minimum?”

Kaname smiled and inclined his head. “Of course, Headmaster.”

Through the consummated bond, now stronger than ever, Zero felt the affection and respect Kaname genuinely held for Cross. Which, of course Kaname felt that way toward Cross, Zero realized.

Cross had been the dearest friend of Juuri and Haruka, who Kaname loved as his own parents. He had carried on the Kurans’ dream of peace between humans and vampires after their deaths, abandoning the Hunter Association and founding the Academy to do so. Kaname had trusted Yuuki to Cross’s keeping, and Cross had instantly loved and protected her as his own child. Warm and undemanding, Cross had been a constant friendly presence in Kaname’s latest nineteen years of life. Naturally, Kaname cared for him.

It boggled Zero’s mind a little, that he and Kaname had this person in common. Zero hadn’t appreciated it, but Cross had taken every nasty word and sullen glare Zero had thrown at him with love and care. He’d coaxed Zero into living when Zero had only wanted to die. He’d promised that, one day, Zero wouldn’t regret each breath he took. And now, Zero would be damned if the silly bastard hadn’t been right.

He was going to have to invite Cross to tea, wasn’t he? And bake him a cake. A ‘Sorry I was such a self-destructive nightmare child’ cake. Ugh.

In his usual place behind Cross’s shoulder, Yagari skulked like a resentful grim reaper. He wore a tux—just what kind of blackmail did Cross have on him?—but the bow tie was gone and his shirt was unbuttoned to his clavicle. His mask had devil horns.

“Kuran can blow up whoever he wants if it means keeping the brat alive,” Yagari announced. He eyed Zero up and down. “You armed under all that?”

Kaname’s jaw twitched a little. Zero bit back a snort. Yagari was definitely Kaname’s least favorite in-law, to no surprise.

“I assure you, Zero is perfectly safe,” Kaname said with a smile that only looked tight to those who knew him. “But weapons are not to be carried by guests, as per Hunter Association rules.”

Yagari raised an eyebrow at Zero.

Zero sighed. He brushed his hand casually over the cleverly concealed pocket at his waist.

Yagari laughed like the lunatic he was. Though, thoughtfully, he didn’t reach forward to mess up Zero’s hair like he usually would.

Zero was grateful. Ruka had spent an hour accounting for every strand and braiding in the roses. Zero was loath to mess it up before the last intruder—guest—was gone.

Yori, the last third of Zero’s hunter family, grinned. She reached forward and pulled Zero into a tight hug. “You look so beautiful! And so happy! You were floating across the dance floor!”

Her glee was infectious. Zero’s smirk became a smile. “You know I can dance.”

“Yeah, but not like that!” Yori beamed, releasing him after a final tight squeeze. “It was like watching a fairytale!”

Zero thought Yori looked like someone out of a fairytale. Her pale blue ballgown glittered with crystals. A snowflake tiara matched the sparkling swirls on her mask. The Snow Queen, indeed. He told her as much.

Yori blushed. Her eyes swept away from Zero, quickly, like she couldn’t help it. “You really think so?”

“Yeah,” Zero said, suddenly suspicious. Since Yori had started training as a hunter, he’d never known her to be shy. But, then, he’d never known her to have a crush on anyone, either. Zero followed her eyeline intently for a minute until he could figure out who she was looking for—and landed on Aidou Hanabusa.

Hanabusa was holding court over a flock of vampires with useful business connections: medical engineering, computer development, capital investment, etcetera. All industries that Kaname was intent on keeping under his thumb. As Kaname’s resident genius, keeping these people intrigued and happy was Hanabusa’s job. He understood what they had to offer and his technical brilliance and effervescent personalty made them want to offer it to him.

Yet, Zero noticed that Hanabusa wasn’t as focused on the businesspeople as he could be. He appreciated them, for sure. They laughed and pitched forward with interest, hanging on his words, their glasses full and eyes bright. But Hanabusa’s own eyes slid away from them regularly. They landed not too far away from Zero. Right on Yori.

“Hanabusa?” Zero mused quietly, trying the thought on for size. Hanabusa and Yori?

Yori, having heard him, stared at him with wide eyes. “It’s nothing serious,” she claimed. “We talk. We get coffee.”

Zero couldn’t help it—he snorted. “Kaname took me to a coffee shop for our first date, too.”

Yori gaped at him. “It’s not the same thing. We’re just talking.”

Zero was snickering now, almost laughing. “That’s what all the vampires say. The next thing you know, you’re wearing twenty layers of kimono and being trotted around a ballroom.”

Yori smacked him on the arm. “I’m serious,” she whined. She tugged at a curl, a nervous gesture. “Besides, it can’t really be anything. I’m just human, and he’s—"

“Lucky to have you,” Zero said, making his voice warm and serious. “He would be so incredibly lucky to have you, for as long as you want to have him.”

Yori gave him a soft look. “Thank you, Zero.”

He took her hand and squeezed it, letting the topic fall to a close.

Looking around, Zero noticed that Kaname had been drawn deep into conversation with Cross and Yagari. Other notables had gathered around them. Political types, people with influence. It was only to be expected, when the presumptive Vampire King stood chatting with the Association’s President and his right-hand man. The foster-father and training master of that King’s mate, too.

But the conversation wasn’t the type Zero was interested in having, nor the sort Zero was expected to be involved in. Vampire Queens—or Consorts, if Zero wanted to masculinize the position as some pairs had done—didn’t debate politics. They ruled the court, and through the courtiers, society. They hunted out liars and executed threats. With the intelligence they gathered, they advised their King.

They also raised the King’s children.

Children. Zero’s heart stuttered. Oh, boy. No, he was not going down that rabbit hole tonight.

“I’m going to get some air,” Zero said. He smiled at Yori. “You should go ask Hanabusa to dance.”

Yori frowned at Zero, but then Hanabusa laughed. He had a clear laugh, high and bell-like. It caught her attention and held it like a vice. She watched him for a full minute before she could make herself look back at Zero. “I’ll go with you,” she said valiantly, even as her eyes fixed back on Hanabusa’s golden head.

Zero snorted. Loudly. “I haven’t had a moment to myself in a month. Please. Go dance with Hanabusa.”

Yori bit her lip. She looked longingly over Zero’s shoulder, where Hanabusa and the businesspeople stood.

Her mask had snowflakes spread around her eyes, Zero realized. And Hanabusa had ice powers. Hanabusa, who was wearing a mask decorated with the butterflies Yori loved to watch in the summer.

Gods. They were going to be an unbearable couple.

“But should you be alone?” Yori asked, finally dragging her attention off Hanabusa again. “I mean, after everything.”

Zero blew out a breath. She was only saying everything Zero had been thinking since he’d been stabbed. But Zero was feeling good, now. The ball was, by all accounts, a success. If someone were going to raise hell, they’d have done it before there were just a couple hours left of the night.

And he was hardly going somewhere sketchy. The balcony of Kaname’s ballroom was not a back-alley in Tokyo. Seiren patrolled with a pack of Kuran security shadows through the whole room. Hunters in full kit stood attentively at each exit. The court and his family, Kaname—all were just a word away. As everyone had taken turns assuring him with soft looks and gentle voices, Zero was safe here.

He just had to believe it. To that end, “I’ll be fine,” Zero said, giving Yori a pat on the shoulder. “You go put the moves on The Idol. I bet he’ll blush for you.”

Yori laughed, her curls bouncing. “Okay. But I’ll find you later, yeah? Don’t go to bed without saying goodbye.”

Zero sent her off with a promise and a smile. Then, turning on his heel he worked his way to the balcony. It took some doing, with all the people who stopped to greet him, but eventually he made it. And he caught Seiren’s eye as he put his hand on the door, so she knew he was outside.

Cracking the doors open, feeling that first brush of cool nighttime air against his hot skin, made Zero think he’d made the right decision.

Chapter Text

The slicing, white-hot pain that cut through his chest, right after the balcony door snapped shut behind him—

Now, that pain made Zero think twice about his life choices.

“I’m sorry,” Takamiya Kaito said, hazel eyes bubbling with tears. His hands held the sword sticking out of Zero’s chest. “I’m so sorry.”

Zero’s first thought, ridiculously, was He actually came. Zero had sent Kaito an invitation to the ball at the last second. He’d wanted to reach out to his friend, just one more time.

Seiren, mistress of the guest list, had given Zero judgmental eyes. She’d borne witness to Kaito’s furious tantrum at the Moon Dorms. But she’d humored Zero. She’d sent the invitation.

She must have informed Kaname of the addition, Zero thought. But Zero and Kaname hadn’t spoken about it. As the ball drew nearer and no word came, Zero had assumed that Kaito was too betrayed to attend. And there had been so much else to worry about. Kaito was just one problem, and a personal one at that. Angry as he was with Zero, Zero hadn’t considered him an actual threat.

He’d thought that Kaito cared enough about Zero not to hurt him.

How human of me, Zero chastised himself, blinking through the shock. Hunters weren’t human, not really. Not in the ways that mattered.

Zero thought of Kaito’s beloved brother. Turned by a Pureblood, slain by Kaito’s hand. The greatest act of love Kaito, a hunter, could give him after he fell Level E. After he became a vampire. A monster.

Like Zero, now a Pureblood. Purebloods were even worse than an E, to some. To Zero, not too long ago.

In hindsight, Zero should be hurt that Kaito had taken this long to try and kill him.

But Zero wasn’t Kaito’s brother. And he was not ready to die yet.

Pushing the pain back, Zero forced his brain to focus. Kaito’s left hand was clamped on Zero’s shoulder. His right was curled around the grip of the sword. The blade was lodged in the left side of Zero’s chest. Too far over to strike his heart but hurting like a bitch all the same.

Ironically, Kaito’s grip helped keep Zero standing. Zero did the rest of the work, locking his knees and breathing shallow. Kaito hadn’t withdrawn the sword. If Zero fell, he’d slice himself against the blade no matter which way he collapsed.

While Zero did this analysis, Kaito kept babbling apologies. They were wet with sobs and confused. Zero could barely follow his words.

“Why?” Zero asked. He choked the word out around the pain. “Because I’m… a…?” Vampire, monster, Pureblood?

Zero knew the answer, of course. But he was scrabbling to buy time. Where the hell was security? Kaname? Shouldn’t he be crashing onto the balcony, summoned by Zero’s pain as it flooded the bond?

But, as it turned out, maybe Zero didn’t know everything.

“No!” Kaito cried. He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t barely breathe. Certainly, he didn’t move to strike again. His eyes were wide and sodden, emphatic. “No, no, no, no.”

Zero frowned, totally confused now and not just from the rapid blood loss. “Then…why?”

Kaito cringed. “She’s in my head. She’s been there for months. I had to—she told me to put a sword through your chest, so I had to.”

She? Fuck. Zero hated conspiracies.

He coughed. Breathing hurt. Kaito must have nicked a lung, if not run it right through. But Zero needed to focus. “Who?”

“Shirabuki,” Kaito hissed. His face twisted weirdly, as if the name burned his mouth. “She—she forced her blood in me. She’s inside my head.”

Shirabuki. Zero scoured his mind, coming up with a Pureblood family. The family was almost dead, though, just a daughter left behind.

Sara, he thought. He remembered a Shirabuki Sara from the guest dossiers. Long blonde hair, quiet, reclusive.

Not so quiet, maybe. Not so reclusive. Not if Kaito was being truthful, and not just insane.

“She’s here,” Kaito insisted, uncaring of what Zero might be thinking. “She’s here, and she’s coming for you, and for him.”

Forcing his numb fingers to move, Zero wrapped his hands around Kaito’s clenched grasp on the sword grip. There, now he had at least a little control of the sword.

“She’s going to kill you, kill Kuran, kill you all,” Kaito was muttering, wild-eyed. “She’ll kill everything.”

Zero turned his head left and right. Hunter sigils were scrawled on the manor’s stone walls. Kaito must have been out here for an hour, at least, weaving subtle hunter seals to swallow sound and the scent of blood. Even psychically, Zero felt numb and dumb. The bond sat like a hunk of led in his brain, smothered with hunter magic. Useless.

“You need to let me go,” Zero said, panting around the sword. “Kaito, do you hear me? If Kaname finds me like this, he’ll kill you.”

Kaito laughed. It was a horrible sound. High and reedy, totally unlike himself. With bloodshot eyes, he stared into Zero’s face and grinned. “It would be a kindness.”

Zero felt sick in a way that had nothing to do with his injury. Whatever was going on, Kaito believed he had to do this. And that this Shirabuki woman was responsible for it.

He squeezed his hands around Kaito’s. Blood, Zero’s blood, was leaking over their tangled fingers. It was a sick parody of every other time they’d locked bloodied hands together: pulling each other out of fucked up missions, off the training room floor, away from danger.

“Let me help,” Zero said. “Let me help, Kaito. Someone is hurting you. Let me help stop her.”

“You can’t,” Kaito cried. The tears clinging to his lashes finally spilled over. “She’s going to kill you, Zero.”

Zero wanted to laugh. Hysterically. He had a sword sticking out of his chest. What was Shirabuki going to do that Kaito hadn’t, exactly? Twist the blade in deeper?

Zero stilled. He looked down at the blade. Kaito hadn’t moved it at all. Actually, Kaito was actively holding it still. And the blade—it wasn’t Kaito’s. There was no tell-tale agony of a weapon designed to hurt vampires biting into vampire flesh. This blade was as human as a kitchen knife. And yeah, Kaito had clipped his lung. But he’d missed Zero’s heart by a mile.

Zero, young as a Pureblood though he was, would heal from this wound in a day. Hours, maybe, with enough blood.

“She told you to put a blade through my chest,” Zero said, staring at Kaito’s white face. “So, you had to do it. But you didn’t come here to kill me.”

Kaito closed his eyes, sending tears coursing down his cheeks. “No. I don’t want to kill you, Zero, never. She picked me because I was close to you, so I tried—I tried to get away from you, to make it harder.”

“But I couldn’t let you go,” Zero said, weeks of behavior suddenly recontextualized. “Fuck.”

Kaito looked away, shame-faced. “I’m sorry, Zero. I should have tried harder.”

Zero shook his head. “If she’s that deep in your head, you’ve done as much as you could.” The pain became more bearable the longer Zero felt it. He could think through it, now. Using some of that clarity, he tugged sharply on the bond between his soul and Kaname’s—and still got nothing.

Zero’s tugged harder; no dice. An unnatural barrier stood between Zero and his mate, like someone had wrapped a psychic hand around the middle point of their connection and choked it. Zero couldn’t send a message along, nor could he receive anything from Kaname.

It was like he was alone in his head for the first time in weeks, and he fucking loathed it.

“You’re trying to call Kuran,” Kaito surmised, staring at Zero’s face. “Fucking desperate for him.” He laughed, ugly and short. “It’s why she wanted the Princess so bad, you know,” Kaito said, disturbed. “She figured out that the Princess belonged to her. So, she sent me to help her. To draw her deeper into Sara’s hand.”

“The Princess?” Zero asked. He blinked. He only knew one Vampire Princess. “Yuuki?”

Kaito nodded miserably.

Fuck. An aching dread mixed in his gut with Zero’s sickness over his deadened bond. It sounded like this Shirabuki Sara’s mate was Yuuki. Kaname’s beloved little sister, complicated as the feelings were; his descendent, the lone surviving child of his parents Jurri and Haruka, the girl he’d devotedly protected for years.

To kill Yuuki’s mate would damn Yuuki to insanity. And Kaname would always hesitate to hurt Yuuki, Zero knew. Shirabuki could easily use Yuuki to hurt Kaname. To kill him, even. Was that her goal?

Shirabuki had sent Kaito to kill Zero—had attacked Zero already, in Tokyo? Shirabuki could have had her hooks in Kaito that long, using him to manipulate the Association and to lure Yuuki closer. And Yuuki—had she been involved in Zero’s murder attempt?

Gods. He knew she hated him, but to hate him that much—

Not human, Zero reminded himself. He was dealing with hunters and vampires. Murder could be a love language, between them. If Yuki was involved, he and Kaname should probably take it as a gesture of her affection.

Zero shook the thoughts away. He could worry about Yuuki later. He needed to get to Kaname. Right now, that meant he needed to remove the goddamn sword from his chest.

“Kaito…” Zero said, keeping his voice as calm as he could manage, given the hunter seals and psychic deafening and the fucking sword held in his chest by his mind-controlled best friend. “Kaito, I need you to take the sword out of my chest.”

Kaito immediately went ridged. “I don’t—I don’t think I can. She didn’t say I could.”

“She didn’t say you couldn’t, either,” Zero coaxed, using all the tiny amount of patience he’d been born with. “What do you think she meant, huh? To stab me and then hang around holding a sword in my ashes?”

He didn’t point all the ways Kaito had already stretched Shirabuki’s orders. Kaito looked one wrong move away from shattering. Zero had no idea what the repercussions of that would be. Would Shirabuki know? Would she be able to take some kind of horrible revenge on Kaito? Would he survive it?

No. Better to work inside the bitch’s commands. She thought she had total control? Let her.

She obviously hadn’t met Zero before.

Kaito took a shuddering breath, the kind that shook his entire body. It also jerked the blade in Zero’s chest, which was terrible, but Zero gritted his teeth and swallowed the pain. Light was entering Kaito’s eyes now. A light that had brought Kaito back from his brother’s death, had helped drag Zero out of his own grief. It was the kind of light that forced you to live, not just survive.

Zero wasn’t going to dampen it just because he needed to swallow back more blood.

He moved his hands around Kaito’s. “On the count of three, you pull, I push.”

Shakily, Kaito nodded. “One.”

Zero tightened his grip. “Two.”

‘Three’ was silent. It was always silent, since they were small kids learning how to kick in a door.

Just like then, they moved in perfect tandem. The blade slid out of Zero’s chest in one smooth motion. Hatefully, that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“Fuck,” Zero cursed, clamping his hands over his weeping chest.

The pressure barely coped with the bleeding, and, of course, did nothing for the exit wound on his back. All his beautiful white clothes were ruined with blood.

Zero spared a moment to be sad for that. Takuma and Ruka had been so proud of how pretty he’d turned out. Beautiful, they’d said, after all their hard work. And when he’d looked at Kaname’s face, his softly dropped jaw and wide, brown eyes, felt the awe and love and want that poured through their bond, Zero had believed his friends.

All that hard work, ruined now. Soaked in blood. Just like always, Zero thought, tired.

In front of him, Kaito was cursing a bluestreak. “Sorry, fuck, shit—I’m so sorry, Zero.”

“It’s fine,” Zero said, though, in fact, it was not. The wound wasn’t going to kill him, but it hurt. And loosing all that blood sucked, too. Sucked worse than the pain.

The blood loss would leave him weak, dulled. The more blood a vampire lost, the easier they were to kill. And Zero wasn’t used to his Pureblood body. He didn’t know how to fight in it yet. He’d only just figured out dancing, for fuck’s sake. He couldn’t imagine what fighting blood-starved was going to be like.

Kaito stared at him. The guilt rolled off him palpably. “You have to let me help.”

Zero laughed. He struggled to shift his weight, testing how his body bore up. He couldn’t feel his fingertips, but he was positive he could still shoot Bloody Rose. He turned, trying to get a sense of what lay beyond the hunter magic and inside the ballroom. But heavy crimson curtains covered the glass balcony doors and the seals hid everything else.

“You can’t help me,” Zero said. “Not if Shirabuki can say one word and make you stab me in the back.”

That, and the last place Zero wanted Kaito was anywhere near Kaname. Both because of the mind control, and because Kaname would kill Kaito the minute he found out who caused Zero to stain up his pretty kimono. Better Kaito be on any other continent than this one when that news broke.

“No, you’re right, I can’t help you against her,” Kaito said. He looked down. “I’m compromised.”

Zero shared in his misery. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was worse than losing control of your mind. Of becoming something that would hurt your friends and family without care. Fear of falling to Level E had driven Zero to the edge of suicide so many times he’d honestly lost count. He’d never loved Yagari more than when he’d pressed his shotgun to the back of Zero’s head and promised not to make him suffer.

Privately, Zero was in awe of Senri. He’d come back from being Rido’s puppet with barely a stutter. Zero hoped that meant there would be hope for Kaito, too.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Zero said bluntly, clinging to that hope, before Kaito could make the argument. “I’ll knock you out and leave you under a glamour.” Hopefully, that would keep Shirabuki from using Kaito again or disposing of him like a broken toy. “We’ll figure out how to fix you.”

Kaito’s shoulders slumped. “You always had a soft heart.”

Zero snorted. “And you always had a soft head.” He raised a hand, already wet with his blood, ready to draw a seal on Kaito’s chest that would keep him in sleep until Zero let him go or the seal was broken.

But Kaito caught his wrist, stopping him from drawing. “Wait. I can help another way.”

Zero drew his hand back, the blood congealing on his fingertips. His chest and back ached with every breath, radiating pain into the rest of his body. The ghost of the pain from his older injury seemed to be stirred by the new one, each pain echoing and compounding until his whole body hurt. Which was to say, Zero really didn’t have any patience for whatever harebrained scheme Kaito had dreamed up. “What do you mean?”

Kaito stared at his chest—the blood still spilling out and growing the stain, blooming like a rose across the white fabric. “I did that,” Kait said, and shrugged off his leather jacket. He wore short-sleeves underneath. He raised one rippling, bare forearm and offered his inexplicably delicate wrist to Zero. “Let me help heal it?”

Zero stared. His fangs pulsed with want, his injured body instinctively craving a powerful hunter’s blood. But this was Kaito. The trauma of a Pureblood’s bite was the cornerstone of their friendship. Even in Zero’s wildest fantasies, where Kaito had accepted the monster lurking sealed in Zero’s bloodline, he’d never expected—never wanted—to take Kaito’s blood.

“I was a shit to you when you told us you were a Pureblood,” Kaito echoing Zero’s thoughts further. “I wanted you away from Shirabuki, and that meant keeping you away from me. But you’re my best friend, Zero, the only brother I have left. And if you have to fight this bitch without me, I can’t let you do it with a hole I made in you.”

If Zero had anymore time, any less anxiety about what he’d find inside the ballroom, he might have cried. His blood was the greatest gift Kaito could offer. Yes, to fix a wound he’d made, but not by choice. Kaito was as blameworthy for the hole in Zero’s chest as the sword itself was.

But it was Kaito’s choice to fix the damage. His choice to heal Zero, and to sacrifice his fear and anger to do it.

Gingerly, giving Kaito all the time he could afford to spare to withdraw, Zero drew Kaito’s hand forward. Zero’s instinct was to decline anyway, to spare Kaito the painful choice, but he found he couldn’t bear to. What if the blood loss made him a little too slow and Kaname paid the price? Kaname, or Cross, or Yori, or any of the others Zero loved? Kaito wouldn’t offer what he wasn’t capable of giving, and Zero just wasn’t in a place to refuse.

Sensing Zero’s hesitance, Kaito nodded firmly. “Do it, Zero. What’s a little blood between you and me?”

Zero smiled. Kaito’s bravado had mustered him through a hundred scary situations as a child. It was as warm and familiar as a favorite winter sweater.

Letting Kaito’s mock confidence guide him one more time, Zero bit.

The scene on the other side of the balcony doors was, in a word, disorienting.

“What the fuck?” Zero muttered, staring around the room. He’d slipped quietly through the doors, hoping he’d go unnoticed in the fray. He’d wanted a couple seconds to get the lay of the battlefield. But his seconds were now drawing rapidly to a close, and there was no goddamn battlefield in sight.   

The orchestra played gaily on. Beautiful vampire couples waltzed across the ballroom. Clusters of wallflowers gathered around drinks and plates of snacks. They were ostensibly watching the dancers, but mostly they were gossiping and laughing.

Zero, having prepared himself for a bloodbath, spent his valuable stolen seconds gaping at the tableau. A mistake. He should have called for Seiren.

But instead of Kaname’s capable guardian, one of the dancers was first to catch sight of Zero. She was grinning, fully enjoying the spin her partner turned her out on. Her eyes met Zero’s through a mask covered in music notes.

Her eyes flew wide, immediately seeing the blood still spilled all down the front of his kimono. Smelling it, now that her brain had made the connection between coppered scent and wound. She froze. Her partner frowned as she refused to be reeled back in from the turn. And then she screamed.

Fuck! Zero scanned around the room, doing his best to look uninjured and nonthreatening. Very difficult to do, given that chest wounds bled like a motherfucker. “I’m alright—” he tried, but the effect was ruined by the little wheeze that slipped through as his weak lung fought to get its act together.

Damn Kaito, anyway. Bastard couldn’t have tried for another inch to the right?

Someone cried out on his left. “Zero!”

Zero turned his head and saw Takuma cutting through the crowd. Unsurprising. Takuma had a sixth sense for social scandal. Zero’s addition to his life had doubtlessly honed that sense to a sword’s edge.

Senri followed Takuma, naturally, and Seiren materialized at Zero’s elbow before either man reached Zero. She put herself bodily between Zero and the horrified guests, tucking Zero’s back against a solid wall. Takuma and Senri fell onto his either side. An easily defensible position, Zero realized.

“I’m okay,” Zero said, before the jumpy vampires could interrogate him. “I’m not hurt.” Much. Kaito’s blood had stopped the wound from bleeding, but it would take more time for the hole to fill.

“Wonderful!” Takuma chirped. His smile was bright but showed too much fang to be friendly. “Let’s get you cleaned up then, hm?”

“Great idea,” Zero said, uncomfortably aware of the growing attention from the guests. Most looked upset, scared—others were simply curious and bad at hiding it. No one looked smug or pleased, or like they had any idea that Zero was supposed to be dead right now. Were Shirabuki’s supporters not among the crowd?

Zero grimaced. Maybe they were just excellent actors.

Takuma, Senri, and Seiren hustled him out of the ballroom in record time. Hanabusa met them in a small blue sitting room, empty of guests, and the doors were sealed. Before Zero could catch his breath, he was being pushed onto a low couch.

“You were alone for twenty minutes,” Seiren hissed, frustrated beyond even her legendary iron control. “On an empty balcony. How did you manage to be bloodied up in twenty minutes on an empty balcony?”

“The balcony was not empty,” Zero said blandly. He batted away at Hanabusa, who was pawing at the layers of Zero’s kimono.

“I’m trying to see where you’re bleeding from, idiot,” Hanabusa snapped. With his mask still on, spreading the broad wings of a monarch butterfly over his face, he looked like an especially pissed off fairy.

Rolling his eyes, Zero shuffled the bloodied fabric away and let Hanabusa at the wound.

“Holy fuck,” Hanabusa said, bending closer to examine it. Zero sat up straighter to accommodate him. “That’s from a sword. You were stabbed with a sword. Again.”

“It’s becoming a habit,” Zero acknowledge irritably. “But the sword was not the vampire-killing kind of sword, this time.”

“Oh, joy,” Hanabusa snarked, beginning to rummage through a medical bag dropped at his side.  “Give the man a gold star. Only a normal-killing sword, this time.”

“Who had. The sword. Zero.” Takuma said, each tiny phrase its own tightly controlled sentence. Zero had the feeling that, had Takuma said all the words as one sentence, it would have been at a much louder volume than he was currently using.

“Ah,” Zero said intelligently, cringing as Hanabusa hit him with the disinfectant. “That’s complicated.”

“In the sense that there is a body on the balcony that I need to collect, or in the sense that your assailant got away?” Seiren asked.

Zero rubbed at the headache building between his eyes. “Bit of both. Hey, does the name Shirabuki Sara ring any bells?”

Takuma blinked at him. “Yes.”

“She liked to make eyes at Takuma during social functions,” Senri said, as though this were a cardinal sin. Which, to Takuma’s mate, it probably was.

“I think she’s been trying to kill me,” Zero said. “And she’s after Kaname. And, allegedly, she’s Yuuki’s mate. And there’s a mind control element involved, too.”

Dead silence. Zero was unbothered. So deep in the on-going psychosis of his life, disbelief really didn’t touch Zero anymore.

He took a couple deep breaths. Tried to calm his racing heart. Reached for Kaname in the bond again and still, fuck, couldn’t touch him. The bond must be stifled on Kaname’s end.

Fuck. Kaname could be dying and Zero would have no idea.

“Where is he, anyway? Kaname?” Zero asked, trying not to let his rising anxiety show in his voice. “I can’t feel him, but I thought he’d smell my blood by now.”

Takuma was pale as milk. With purposeful calm, he untied the mask from his face and set it aside. “Ten minutes before you came back into the ballroom, Shirabuki Sara requested a private conversation with Kaname-sama. As a fellow Pureblood heir, he was obliged to indulge her.”

Zero stared. “Of course, he was,” he said. He focused on the pinprick-rhythm of Hanabusa’s neat stitches.

Let the anger build with each tug and weave.

Let something bloodthirsty rise up with it.

Later—much later, years later—Zero would think it all happened too fast.

One minute, Hanabusa tied off his stitches. The next, Zero was stalking down a quiet hall of Kuran Manor. Takuma, Senri, and Seiren flanked him, Hanabusa sent off to go genially shuffle any wayward guests into the ballroom, out of harm’s way.

Takuma took the lead, the only one who had been to Kaname’s private office. Officially, it was the manor’s observatory.

The observatory would have a beautiful view of the forest, Zero thought as he walked. It was on that side of the manor. Kaname, the ancient Kuran Ancestor, guardian of those ancient trees, would appreciate that view. It would comfort him, as he stood in a home he built but that must feel so different, now thousands of years after he last saw it.  

Zero hated the thought that Shirabuki was standing in that room. She didn’t deserve to be let inside, her sweet face hiding her malicious intentions. Her pale, white hands clean of the blood she’d spilled. Of the blood she wanted to spill.

Zero scowled. Fuck her. If she wanted to kill Kaname, she should have done a better job of killing Zero.

The observatory was tucked behind tall, black doors. Zero had never seen them before. He tried not to think of them as ominous.

Takuma paused, raising his hand to knock. Zero, however, was fast on his heels and not in the mood for politeness. The doors opened with a crack.

Again, Zero expected blood. Again, he was bemused by quiet.

He found Kaname first. It wasn’t hard. The room, though spacious, contained little furniture. An expansive desk dominated one end, with a pair of simple leather armchairs set before it. Windows curled around the room, blending into the ceiling, giving the impression that nothing stood between the inside and the trees. It was, in a word, beautiful, and it took no imagination to understand why it was the room Kaname had claimed for his private business.

Kaname sat in one of the armchairs, mask gone, but face mask-like all the same. He looked on Zero, Zero’s bloodied clothes, and his wide-eyed courtiers with perfect calm. He gave no indication anything was out of the ordinary.

The bond was silent, suffocated. Hunter magic was rife in the air—a ward had to be in the room. Zero had no psychic hint of what Kaname was feeling.

He didn’t need the bond, though. He didn’t need Kaname to do or say anything. Zero was a hunter of monsters, and a monster himself. He recognized predatory stillness, the careful waiting for violence.

Zero matched it, easily. His shoulders dropped, anxiety becoming something purposeful. Lethal.

“Taking my mate into a private meeting at my debutante ball is untoward, Shirabuki-san,” Zero said. Takuma had drilled him on the dos and don’ts of this night, aware that some asshole might try to trick Zero into embarrassing himself. But he probably hadn’t anticipated a murder attempt. Though, vampires being how they were, maybe Takuma had.

Either way, Zero owed him. A batch of sweet tarts, maybe? Apples were coming into season soon, and Takuma loved caramel. Of course, before Zero could go back to his baking, they’d all have to survive this next bullshit first.

Zero took his place behind Kaname’s chair, just to the left. The position was his due, as Kaname’s mate, and let him stare down his nose at Shirabuki. She was seated opposite Kaname in the second chair, escorted by a short woman in a black mask and veil. Zero could taste the magic coating the figure, hiding her scent and aura.

She might have been a mystery to everyone else in the room, but not to Zero.

“Take the mask off, Yuuki,” Zero said, with a tiredness and pain he couldn’t quite smother. “You shouldn’t need to play these games with family.”

A ripple of surprise passed through the room. No one else had guessed, then. Not shocking. Zero wouldn’t have guessed either, if not for Kaito.

Hesitantly, the woman in black raised a hand to her mask. Then, she paused and looked at Shirabuki. The blonde nodded her golden head. The woman drew off her disguise.

The missing Kuran Yuuki was revealed, in the flesh. She shuffled nervously, eyes fixed on Shirabuki. Her body leaned toward her like she was tethered to Shirabuki by an invisible cord.

Irritation flashed in Zero’s gut. The part of him that saw Yuuki and still thought sister was furious. Yuuki stood at Shirabuki’s shoulder, seeking to please her. This psychotic bitch who’d mind-controlled Zero’s best friend, attempted Zero’s murder twice, and might want Kaname dead.

But if Yuuki was Shirabuki’s mate, pleasing Shirabuki was as much in Yuuki’s nature as pleasing Kaname was in Zero’s. He couldn’t expect Yuuki to fight what Zero himself had not.

And maybe Yuuki deserved to try and kill Zero, at least once. He had broken up her last relationship. And stolen her fiancé. Gods, she must think he was some kind of homewrecker. Though, really, it should be Kaname she was trying to kill over that.

Zero looked Yuuki over. Killing Kaname might be her goal tonight. But she didn’t seem like it.

Her chocolate hair was braided back and up, in a crown around her head. It kept the waist-long mass of it easy to hide under the veil, Zero guessed, but it also left nothing to hide her eyes. They were huge and wet, set in a chalky white face over a pursed pink mouth.  She didn’t look angry, Zero thought. She looked scared.

“You have a clever mate, Kaname-san,” Shirabuki said pleasantly of Zero. “Beautiful, too. He does you credit.”

Her eyes roved over Zero’s body as she said the words. Her attention hung on his face, his hair, the bloodspill staining his chest and waist and all down his legs. But while she watched Zero with disturbing focus, she spoke to Kaname. She spoke to Kaname like she was talking about an especially lovely pet of his.

Thoroughly creeped out by Shirabuki, Zero tried again to reach Yuuki. “What was your plan tonight?” He gestured to his blood stains. “The murder attempt didn’t work. Again.”

Yuuki flinched. “I’m sorry,” she croaked. Her hands were clasped behind her back. “I thought you were trying to hurt Kaname. You always wanted to, when we were kids, and last year—”

“That’s enough,” Shirabuki snapped meanly. Like a hand had been clapped over her mouth, Yuuki fell silent. Shirabuki softened her tone. “My princess always has the best intentions, doesn’t she? She’ll make a lovely queen.”

“And legitimize your rule as Vampire King, you must imagine,” Kaname said, finally roused to speaking. Though, honestly, Zero had given more appreciation to his pre-calculus classes than Kaname seemed willing to grant this meeting. And Zero had slept through most of pre-calculus.

Glancing at Kaname from the corner of his eye, Zero saw that he appeared very much like he’d rather be asleep than having this conversation. He was relaxed and laconic, his eyes nearly half-mast. He spread his knees wide and lounged in his armchair, as lazy as a panther at noontime.

He was everything Zero loathed about vampires: arrogant, idle, and spoiled, careless with power and uninterested in consequence. Had Zero stood in this room six weeks ago, Zero would have let Shirabuki try her hand at dusting the repulsive Kuran Prince. Hell, he might have helped her.

This insidious creature, Zero knew, was Kaname. It was a part of him just as real as the cozy bedmate who brushed a comb through Zero’s hair, or the lover who stalked him hungrily through the woods. But, it was also only just that. One side of Kaname. Real and truthful, but not the whole man. It was a sword to be wielded. A shield to hide all he held dear behind.

It was working, too, Zero thought. Shirabuki hated this display of Kaname’s as much as Zero ever had. Even a beauty as delicate and sweet as Shirabuki’s could not hide it. Her doll-like body was tight and tense in her chair, her jewel-bright eyes cutting rather than sparkling.

Hatred was distracting, Zero knew intimately. Hatred could destroy you.

“There is nothing to imagine,” Shirabuki chimed tightly. The ring of funeral bells. “You sister is mine, a part of my own soul. And even if you care nothing for her—”

Yuuki flinch like she’d been struck.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shirabuki said. “This game is mine.”

She looked at Kaname like she expected him to have something to say to her. Chin tilted up, shoulders back and proud. She waited.

As the silence settled and then began to stretch, Zero realized that the air wasn’t just tense. It was heavy, too. Weighty. Zero’s gut tightened, his lips parting with a vampire’s instinct to snarl and bite. By his side, his right hand stiffened as he fought of the urge to pull Bloody Rose from her hiding place in his kimono.

Shirabuki was using her powers, Zero realized. The weight was her aura, twisting and condensing as she rallied whatever psychic gift her pure vampire blood granted her.

Fuck. Zero hadn’t known she had powers. It wasn’t a guarantee with vampires, even Purebloods. To his knowledge, Hio Shizuka’s powers had only been her ability to plot.

Zero scanned the room, the people in it, looking for ice like Hanabusa or fire like Akatsuki, or Zero’s own rose vines. But nothing materialized. The room was calm and perfectly still.

Zero flicked his eyes at Kaname. The Ancestor lounged still, superficially unbothered by anything at all.

After another long, terrible minute, Kaname smirked. “Troubled, Shirabuki-san?”

Zero hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman for longer than it took to check on Kaname, and so he had a perfect view of Shirabuki’s living, seething hatred as it splashed across her beautiful face. “What are you doing?” she spit, furious.

“You are not the only one with power,” Kaname said. He tapped his temple meaningfully. “Did you think silencing my bond would not put me on guard?”

Shirabuki sneered. “I thought killing your mate would be worth it.”

Zero heard Takuma gasp. It was the subtlest sound; a bare, quick snatch of air. He only caught it because there was no other sound in the room.

The world hung around them, over an abyss, suspended on a strand of spider silk. And as Kaname began to laugh, Zero felt that black darkness swallow the world whole.

His laugh was low and melodic. Deceptively gentle. Beautiful, in the way of venomous things.

Kaname snatched Shirabuki’s throat between one chuckle and the next. It was instant. One moment he sat idle and amused, and the next he was wrath manifest. No living eye, mortal or vampire, could have seen the change.

The sleeve of his kimono slipped down his arm as he drew Shirabuki out of her seat. His forearm flexed. Zero was transfixed by the careful placement of his fingers, curled delicately over her windpipe. He could kill her in an instant, Zero knew, his fist crushing her neck while his free hand carved her heart from her breast.

Yuuki was crying. Loud, sorrowed sobs. Her whole body shook with them. Her black gown—it consumed her. Like grief was eating her whole.

Kaname snarled. Yuuki screamed.

It happened so, so fast, Zero would think later. A sliver of a second, less time than it took to think. Just an instant. Instinct. Born of hunting and bloodlust.

When he thought about this night later, trying to reason out why he did what he did, it was Shirabuki’s face that would stick in his craw. She didn’t look scared, Zero would think. Her throat was in the crushing grip of the ultimate predator. Kaname was a weapon beyond counteraction—the thing vampires were designed to be. He need only twitch a finger to destroy her, and he would.

Shirabuki, Yuuki. They hadn’t striked a Kaname. They has threatened Zero, the mate the Ancestor had craved for millennia. A horrible error. They were only fallout, now, realized. Kaname would have someone sweep up their ashes later. Spare a moment of grief, for the sister who had pushed him just a heartbeat too far.

Shirabuki’s whole life hung in that emotionless grip. Years of effort, and the future of her mate. All squandered. And yet not a twist of fear existed in her.

Why wasn’t she scared?

Kaito’s face—no, his wrist, neatly bitten by Zero’s Pureblood fangs, a gesture of brotherhood—flashed in Zero’s periphery.

Yuuki’s crying was so loud. She was terrified, plainly. But she wasn’t watching Shirabuki. No, her eyes, sunshine brown swollen with tears, looked right past her dangling mate. They looked, begging, at—

“She’s in my head—"

Zero.

Vines burst forth from Zero’s veins. It hurt—it always fucking hurt—but they sprung forth, immediate and vicious. They sprawled from his grasp around Bloody Rose, where his hand had so naturally curled. His whole arm crawled with thorns, burrowing out of and burying into his skin, slicing his kimono to ribbons. He fell, keening, as the vines dragged him to his keens.

“Shoot Kuran Kaname!” Shirabuki howled. A primordial scream, the wrath of a goddess. Just a second after the first rose bloomed.

The command pushed through Zero’s brainstem like a lightning strike. Synapses fired, his muscles seized and struck. Zero couldn’t resist her; had been tainted with her poison blood, delivered to his system by Kaito’s offered wrist.

Kaito had never been meant to kill Zero—only open a door Zero was too stupid to see was a trap.

No wonder Shirabuki wasn’t scared. Her greatest threat to Kaname stood at his shoulder, loved and trusted by him. Armed, only a command away. She’d made sure of it.

Zero screamed. His arm struck forward to shoot, but his body broke against Bloody Rose’s vines. They held his body down, still. Once only leaves, the vines were hard like diamonds now. His pure blood had perfected them. They sprawled relentlessly. Glittering. Unbreakable.

His Pureblood aura glittered white. Kaname had taught him only this morning to manifest it. Zero had stared at the diamonds of power, fascinated by their beauty. Barely wondering what they meant for his powers. He hadn’t needed to, swathed in the darkness of Kaname’s own protective, pervasive power. Zero had felt like he had all the time in the world to learn.

He knew now. Knew these vines were shatter-proof. Knew they pulled power, not from Zero’s own blood any longer, but from the life of the thing they swallowed. Nothing would stop the vines once he set them lose. Nothing could slow their starving hunger. Pity, then, that the only way to save Kaname from a shattered skull was siccing his powers on himself.  

More screaming. Shirabuki. She was screaming at Zero to shoot. Her aura was screaming. Every inch of her entire considerable being was put into the order. All that power charged through Zero, demanding compliance. But Zero’s body simply couldn’t function. He’d crippled himself at just the right moment.

Sacrifice. It had always been Zero’s best move. He threw all his power behind that intent, to shield and protect, and the screaming cut off with a horrid crunch.

Another shriek. Glass screamed—exploded, all around. It fell with a sparkling crash. Splinters of pain lit up Zero’s skin.

Face screwed, body bound to the floor, Zero couldn’t see anything. His mouth and nose were filled with blood-smell—his own, overwhelmingly. A chaos of confusing noise filled his ears. Pain filled every nerve receptor he possessed. His psychic senses were deadened. Still, he felt it when Kaname knelt at his side.

“Let go, Zero,” Kaname said. “It’s over.”

“Can’t,” Zero cringed, gasping the words. “She fucking got me. She’s in my head, I can’t stop her, I can’t. I can’t—”

His chest crushed in. His heartbeat thundered. He couldn’t fucking breathe. She was in his head, she was in control, he couldn’t stop her. He shot—he almost killed—

It was like falling E again. Red haze, no thought. Just killkillkillkill—

Zero wanted to die.

Arms locked around his shoulders, over his chest. A chin tucked over his head. Kaname wasn’t taller than him—an inch, if that—but he curled around Zero’s body in a way that made him feel small. Protected. His aura settled over Zero like a safety blanket. His scent overpowered the smell of spilled blood.

Zero stuttered. His breathing, his heart. He tried to get in air, failed, tried again.

Power pulsed in the air. Hunter magic. Zero flinched, seizing in Kaname’s arms, readying to attack, but, no. The power pulsed, then broke. Zero had a second to be confused, but then—

The hunter ward in the room had been broken. The bond flared to life. It raced through his mind like fire, golden with strength. Concernloveworry charged through his brain, his soul, so warm that Zero was immediately drunk on it. He slumped into Kaname’s arms like a ham-strung marionette, almost insensate.

The pain blurred, grew more distant. Zero felt his consciousness sag.

“Shirabuki?” Zero asked, pulling against the warm darkness. It was Kaname’s darkness, Zero thought, his mate’s warmth. Calling to him, lulling him.

But Zero was a hunter. No threat could be ignored. No weakness tolerated.

“Neutralized, my love,” Kaname purred, soft and bloodthirsty. He pressed an adoring kiss to Zero’s crown. “Look.”

Zero gasped. His eyes jerked open. At once, the burning technicolor world jumped into his vision.

Blood, he saw first. Ghastly sprays of red blood soaked into the floor, or else lay in pools. Zero was surrounded by one, leaking from his chest and crushed arm. Another grew at Shirabuki’s feet.

Crystal vines slithered around her crumpled body. Her blue eyes were shuttered. But, she breathed. Each breath bubbled blood out of the ruined gap where her mouth had been. A vine had struck her, wrapped around her face and crushed.

In a puddle of black fabric, Yuuki lay collapsed beside her.

Relief and nausea crashed through his body. Zero heaved. His pain skyrocketed. Gods, had he hurt Yuuki, too?

Kaname pulled in all around him, holding him close and careful. His aura rose to heights Zero had never felt before, smothering all else. It was like existing in a vacuum. Like being cosseted in the heart of a blackhole. Zero slumped into him, all tension taken away.

“That’s right, my love,” Kaname soothed, one broad hand sweeping over Zero’s hair. The other carefully found Zero’s vine-strangled arm. He lay his fingers delicately over Zero’s fingers, curled around Bloody Rose, just avoiding the thorns. “No threat remains.”

No threat but me, Zero thought numbly. He stared at their hands together over the gun. No threat but us.

He tucked his face into Kaname’s chest. Closed his eyes. Let that thought comfort him, quiet him, as Kaname took the gun from his hand, allowing the vines to wither and rot.

Allowing Zero, finally, to close his eyes and rest.