Soulbound Bk. 01 Ch. 01

Hi, I'm Alina Hart. Soulbound is a dark, character-driven fantasy series with real emotional stakes, layered worldbuilding, and intimate moments that matter. This is Chapter 1 of Book One: The Awakening--where it all begins.

If you're here for a story that earns its heat--where magic, trauma, love, and power collide--you're in the right place. If you're looking for non-stop sex without plot or consequence, this probably won't be your thing (and that's okay, too).

All characters involved in sexual situations are 18 or older, and all sexual content is consensual.

Thanks for reading--and welcome to the beginning.

***

Prologue

Eighty-one degrees. Not a single cloud in the sky.

The kind of Saturday that smelled like sunscreen and garden tomatoes.

Julian sat in the sandbox, legs splayed, one shoe off and forgotten somewhere in the grass. The sand was warm from the late-morning sun--soft and dry at the surface, but cool and damp the deeper he dug. His hand was buried just past his wrist. Somewhere beneath them, a small green plastic shovel waited to be rediscovered.

Just a few feet away, on the shaded patio, his grandparents sat with tall glasses of sweet tea and the slow, comfortable movements of people who had nowhere else to be.

For a four-year-old boy, it couldn't get any better.

A flicker of movement caught Julian's eye--a butterfly. No, two. Maybe three. Yellow, mostly, but with spots of black and orange. They danced above the hibiscus, then zig-zagged over the petunias, looping through the air like they were showing off.

He stood, brushing sand from his knees as he followed them. They flitted just far enough ahead to keep him curious, always landing one flower farther than he could reach. He giggled once, softly, when one nearly landed on his shoulder.

"Julian," his grandma called from the patio, "lunch is ready!"

One last glance at the butterflies. Then he turned and ran barefoot across the lawn, still lopsided from the missing shoe.

Lunch was sandwiches--peanut butter for him, tomato and cucumber for them--sliced fruit, and a little pile of baby carrots and celery sticks.

"Well, Squirt," his grandpa said around a bite of apple, "you been chasing butterflies or chasing trouble?"

"Don't call him Squirt," his grandmother chided gently. "He has a name, you know. As a matter of fact, he was named after you."

Julian blinked up at her, chewing.

"I think that was more so because everyone knew you have a poor memory," she added, smiling. "They were hoping you'd at least remember his name."

She laughed. His grandpa laughed. And Julian laughed too, not entirely sure why, but happy to be part of the moment.

After lunch, while his grandma gathered the plates and carried them inside, his grandpa leaned closer. "What do you say, kiddo? Feel like playing a little croquet?"

Julian's eyes lit up. "Yes!"

"Think you remember where it is in the garage?"

He nodded so hard his hair bounced.

"Then go grab it, champ. I'll meet you in the yard."

He ran--fast and determined--only to drop half the balls and a mallet on the way back out. He stopped, giggled again, then carefully gathered them up before continuing.

The afternoon passed like that: laughter, sunlight, soft grass underfoot. Around three or four they went inside to cool off and work on a puzzle spread across the coffee table. It was one of those old-fashioned ones with tiny cardboard pieces and no picture on the box--just a vague idea of "scenery."

They'd just found the corners when the phone rang.

His grandmother stood to answer it. She didn't get far into the call before she gasped, covering her mouth with one hand.

"Julian," she said, but not to him. Her voice was distant. Unsteady.

Julian looked up at the sound of his name--his grandpa's name, too. He saw her face and knew something was wrong.

He rose and padded into the kitchen, saying nothing. He just walked up and wrapped his small arms around her leg.

She didn't move. Didn't speak. Just pressed the phone tighter to her ear and kept listening.

***

It rained the morning of the funeral. Not hard. Just enough to make the air feel heavy and the grass too soft underfoot.

Julian didn't understand most of what was happening. The black suits. The sad looks. The flowers on the shiny wooden boxes. He knew he was supposed to sit still, and he was trying. But his legs kept swinging, not quite reaching the ground from the edge of the folding chair.

His grandma held his hand the whole time.

There were people talking, but not like usual. Their voices were quieter, like they didn't want to wake something. Or someone. He caught his name once. And the word "tragedy." He didn't know what that meant, but it made his grandma squeeze his hand tighter.

The umbrellas were all black. Someone nearby sniffled over and over. A woman he'd never met gave him a stuffed bear before the ceremony started. He was still holding it now, one arm wrapped around its belly, the fur already damp from his fingers.

When the words stopped, people began to stand. Some walked forward to place flowers on the caskets. Others just lingered. Hugged. Whispered.

Julian didn't move until his grandpa gently nudged his shoulder. "Come on, buddy. Let's get you into the car."

He walked between them, one hand in each of theirs, across the soft lawn and past the rows of stones that all had names. Some with flowers. Some without.

At the car, his grandpa opened the back door and helped him climb in. Buckled the belt. Click. Just like always.

Julian turned toward the window and leaned his forehead against the glass.

Across the lawn, the two caskets were being lowered into the ground--side by side, slow and quiet, like even the machines didn't want to make noise today.

Julian didn't ask where his parents were going. He already knew.

He just watched, wide-eyed, silent, tears sliding down his cheeks as the earth made room for what he'd lost.

***

Chapter I

Julian stepped out of the bookstore, the bell above the door jingling once before falling silent. He paused on the sidewalk, taking in the block. He remembered when every shop on this street had been open, when the sidewalks were crowded with people and music spilled out of cafés. Now, most of the windows were boarded up. Trash collected along the gutters. A few shops remained--dimly lit, quietly defiant.

The city didn't look broken, just... hollowed out. Like something had been quietly eating away at it for years. This block used to be better--but so had all the others. It wasn't just a bad neighborhood. It was the same story across the city. Shops closed for good. Families moved out. Entire streets left to rot. People liked to blame the economy, the mayor, the weather. But Julian had started to wonder if something else was behind it-- not a single cause, just a slow, creeping rot no one wanted to name.

A woman's scream pierced the night air--sharp, panicked. The kind of sound that, in any other city, might've drawn help. But here, the few people still on the street didn't even glance toward the alley. Her two attackers advanced, the hunger in their eyes telling her exactly what they wanted.

Julian would've told himself it was nothing--just another fight, just another drunk. Everyone had problems. That's what he always said. But something in that scream made his chest tighten. Raw fear. Real.

He glanced toward the alley next to the bookstore. For a second, he stood still--caught in the old habit of pretending someone else would handle it.

Then he moved. Fast.

This time, he wasn't going to turn away.

That's when everything fell apart.

One of the two men--both older than Julian's nineteen years, both bigger--turned from the terrified young woman they were closing in on and hit him with a single, brutal punch to his sternum. Julian's back slammed against the wall behind him, his head hitting the bricks hard enough to produce stars. His head rang. Pain bloomed in his chest. He couldn't move. Could barely breathe.

The other man sneered and turned back to the woman, determined to get first dibs despite his partner in this heinous act already pulling his dirty jeans to his knees, and now pawing at the horrified woman in an attempt to open her three-quarter length jacket that had a miraculously stuck zipper.

Julian's pulse thundered. His vision blurred, not from tears but from something deeper--darker. He felt the cold of despair, a hopelessness he hadn't felt since the day his parents drowned in the river: Help her. Please, someone help her.

And something heard him.

He didn't know what it was--only that the air around him thickened, the light shifted, and a sickly greenish-gray mist began to rise from the alley floor. Shapes formed in the haze. Figures. Not fully human. Not fully anything.

"What is going on? Julian thought to himself, his head still dazed.

The shapes surged.

The men screamed--briefly.

Then silence.

The alley was still. The woman, unaware even of Julian's presence fled screaming into the night, comfortable and practical shoes slapping pavement.

Julian sat up, heart pounding, skin slick with sweat. The bodies lay still. Empty. Wrong.

His breath came in short, shallow gasps. He didn't understand what had just happened, but he knew what it looked like. And he knew the cops wouldn't listen.

He staggered out of the alley and walked a block like a sleepwalker. Then he ran. Fast and hard, until his lungs burned and his legs became numb. Only then did he collapse onto a bench in a dimly lit corner of a small park.

The wind whispered through the branches overhead. He sat in the shadow of an old oak, trying to make sense of what he'd seen--what he'd done.

Little did he know, the act didn't go unnoticed.

***

Julian sat on the bench, his heartrate now at a reasonably safe level, trying to make sense of what he saw.. of what he somehow did.

A voice slid out of the darkness--deep and sultry, with a husky rasp that, despite himself, made his manhood twitch, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "Aren't you going back to collect your kill?"

He jumped to his feet, fists clenched, adrenaline spiking again.

A figure emerged from the shadows--slender, graceful, and composed. A young woman, a year or two older than him by the looks of her, though there was something timeless in the way she moved. Her dark hair framed her face in a sleek, razor-sharp French bob. Her eyes glimmered with amusement. She was tall, just four or so inches shorter than his own 6'1", but somehow she felt taller. More commanding. Like she owned the space she walked in.

"Sorry, you scared me there," Julian said, voice tense. "And what do you mean by 'my kill?'"

The stranger giggled.

It was the kind of laugh that didn't belong in a city park at night. Sweet, lilting--like music played in sunlit fields. Julian's breath caught. It wasn't just the sound. It was what it did to him. In his mind's eye, he saw white clouds, caught the scent of fresh grass, and felt the nostalgic warmth of a summer breeze beneath a grand oak tree.

He blinked--and realized he wasn't looking at her.

He had been staring at the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on so hard that he was actually looking inside her, seeing her soul.

Seeing something behind her eyes that no one should ever see.

"What are you!" he said a little too loudly, stumbling back.

"Oh boy," she sighed. "If I had known you had just woken up, I probably wouldn't have bothered--you're not likely to last the night on your own."

She tilted her head, assessing him.

"My name is Aurora. And I'm a vampire. And you're a necromancer--although I'll bet you have absolutely no idea what that means."

***

Julian sat on the park bench once again, staring in a mix of wide-eyed fear and fascination at the woman casually kneeling on the grass before him. Once she had assured him that she was different--that in all her three hundred and thirty-three years of living with the vampiric infection, she had never forcefully consumed human blood or turned anyone into a thrall by allowing them to become addicted to being drained like a juice box--he was able to relax a bit. Not completely, but enough to listen to what she proclaimed as his first lesson since his magical ascension.

Aurora had just given him a crash course in magic -- or, as she called it, the deeper laws of reality -- and he was still trying to remember how to breathe. Thirty minutes ago, the strangest thing in his life had been the color of his landlord's hair. Now, he was apparently a necromancer -- one of the rare few who could walk the razor's edge between benevolence and corruption, between healer and harbinger.

He'd mostly sat there wide-eyed and slack-jawed as she outlined a hidden world teeming with power and danger. Witches, warlocks, sorcerers, druids -- entire hierarchies of spellcasters woven into the seams of history. And beyond them, the legendary bloodlines: vampires like Aurora, bound by ancient codes; werewolves, fractured and feral; wendigos, cursed and ravenous; puca, tricksters cloaked in illusion; and banshees, whose screams were said to mark the end of fate's patience.

Aurora had spoken casually, like someone explaining local traffic laws -- her red-tinted brown eyes glowing faintly in the gloom, a smirk on her lips, as if daring him to disbelieve her. But disbelief was a luxury he'd forfeited two minutes earlier, when a vampire -- seeking an early nighttime snack -- spotted them, and Aurora told him to concentrate on the mass of black in its center, then pull it out and toss it aside, as though he were throwing a banana peel into a trash can.

He had wrinkled his brow at that, but she explained: because he was a necromancer -- not a witch, warlock, sorcerer, or any of the other spellcasters bound by strict ceremonies, incantations, and rituals -- his magic was more about intent than execution. The act of using his hand in a pulling motion signified drawing the soul out. Tossing it, while focusing on the idea of discarding something would send the soul to the afterlife.

What exactly that "afterlife" was, she added, depended on the soul.

Remembering what he had seen in her soul, Julian asked Aurora, "That wannabe Lestat I just sent to who-knows-where had a soul darker than the blackest black. It almost seemed like it was eating any light that came near it. But when I looked inside you, I didn't see that. Your soul is mostly golden, with just a little bit of blackness in the center--like it's reaching out into the gold around it, but then it looks like it's being pushed back in on itself. Why is yours so different?"

Aurora's eyes widened, as if she'd just been told the most wonderful news of her life. Then she closed them. When she opened them again, she was smiling slightly, but her expression had turned more somber than joyful.

"It seems that because I have strong willpower, and have always followed my beliefs about feeding, I haven't personally tainted my soul. Unfortunately, all that means is I'll likely succeed at holding to my vow never to take what isn't given freely--and even then, only when it's given responsibly. But in the end, vampires can only go to one place, no matter how clean they keep their soul."

"Honestly, I'm surprised vampires even have a soul," Julian said. "I get it--I shouldn't base my views on Hollywood or urban fantasy, especially after everything you've shown me. But I really thought that if vampires were real, they'd be soulless creatures."

"No, Julian," she said softly. "That's what makes it worse. When we're turned, not only are we murdered, but our souls don't move on to the destination they've earned. The true curse of vampirism is that our soul remains. And each time a vampire feeds, their soul becomes darker--more tainted."

"But that means--" Julian began.

Sensing where he was going, Aurora gently placed her hand over his. "No, dear boy. All it means is that I may spare myself from a fate worse than the void. But even that place--" she paused, her voice quieter now, "--is so destitute that those destined for it would trade anything for a one-way ticket to Hell instead."

***

Julian glanced up at the night sky, then checked his phone. "It's almost one. Do you need to.. get inside before sunrise?"

Aurora smiled faintly, the corners of her mouth turning up without any real amusement. "No. I won't suddenly burst into flames when the sun rises, if that's what you're thinking."

"Well, yeah," Julian admitted. "I kind of was. Isn't that how it works?"

She shook her head slowly. "That's the story humans tell themselves. In truth, vampirism is a kind of infection--one that rewrites the body. It rewards blood with speed, strength, looks that never fade, and immortality... all in exchange for your soul after the life finally ends."

Julian studied her face. "So sunlight doesn't do anything?"

"It does," she replied. "But not like the stories say. It doesn't kill--not unless you're already half-dead from starvation. What it does is weaken. Dulls the senses. Slows healing. Makes even the most powerful of them vulnerable."

She paused, her gaze drifting toward the quiet trees that lined the park.

"They've avoided the sun for millennia because it made them easier to kill. In the old world, when humans still lit pyres and called it justice, being sluggish during the day was a death sentence. The night was safer. More controllable. Eventually, it became part of their identity. Myth just caught up to practice."

Julian nodded slowly, then narrowed his eyes at her. "You keep saying 'they.' Like you're not one of them."

Aurora turned to meet his gaze. Her voice was quiet, but there was steel in it. "Because I'm not. I am one... but I have never--and will never--accept it."

Julian held her eyes a moment longer, unsure what to say.

"I was turned against my will," she added softly. "My body changed. My soul didn't. That difference matters to me."

"You were turned against your will. That's what I don't understand. The vampire who turned you obviously wanted you to become part of their clan--"

"Nest," Aurora interrupted with a hiss, a look of contempt flashing across her face as her eyes seemed to stare, not into the distance, but into her past. "A den of rattlesnakes would have been preferable to them."

Seeing her hand tremble and her lip quiver slightly, Julian gently wrapped his right arm around her shoulders where she sat beside him on the bench.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I keep forgetting how much you must hate them. And I really have no idea what you went through."

He hesitated, then added, "Can you tell me? How long did that murderous bastard--the one I honestly wish was here right now so I could rip his head off and personally drag his soul to the void--how long did you have to stay?"

Aurora considered the question in silence for a moment, then thought, Why not?

"Until the day a necromancer found us," she said softly. "He killed everyone else. Then he enslaved me... and bound the knowledge of his vast archive of magical tomes to my soul."

***

Julian sat there, unmoving, not knowing what to say. He understood she had just told him something profound--and he should probably be asking how she could sit there beside him, acting like she truly wanted to help him through the most jarring change of his life. Puberty had been rough enough, but learning you're a master of the dead? That was something else entirely. Especially coming from someone who, by all rights, should probably hate his kind.

But right now, all he really wanted to know was how she could be a walking, talking archive.

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head slightly. "Can you explain that in a whole lot more detail, please? An evil necromancer bound you to a magical archive? What was his name?"

Aurora didn't answer. Her expression didn't harden, but it stopped being soft.

She looked past him, to something he couldn't see.

The floor was slick with blood. Aurora didn't notice the cold, or the sickly smell of burnt flesh. All the smaller things had vanished. The world had narrowed to pain--constant and consuming.

And still, somehow, she found her voice.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she rasped.

Malric didn't look up from his glyphwork. He moved with the calm detachment of a battlefield surgeon treating a wound.

"Binding a mere spirit to an archive?" he said, voice pleasant. "That's clever. Binding a soul--now that is brilliance. But binding an immortal being with a soul?" He finally looked at her. Smiled. "That's not just brilliance. That's legacy."

Aurora's fingers curled against the stone floor. Her throat felt raw from screaming. "You're going to regret not killing me along with the others."

She let out a breathless, humorless laugh.

"I'd thank you for that, but I'm too busy thinking of ways to kill you."

Malric didn't smile--but something in his eyes gleamed. Interest. Amusement. Possession.

"That's the spirit," he murmured, turning back to the glyphs. "It won't last, of course. But it's charming while it burns."

"You're a monster," she gasped.

He crouched beside her, one hand cupping her chin. Not gently.

"No," he said. "I'm a visionary. And you, dear girl, are a marvel. You've never forcefully fed on a human. Why is that, I wonder? Tame. Docile. Ripe for direction."

He released her face and stood, brushing blood from his palm with a handkerchief.

"I don't care how much it hurts," he said as the final binding rune flared to life. "Pain means it's working. You should be grateful."

She screamed as the light surged again--searing into her core, not her body but her soul.

And somewhere beneath it all, the archive opened its first page.

"Yes. He--" she paused again, jaw tense. "I won't say his name. Some say necromancers are never completely gone, and I'd rather not draw his attention. He decided I was everything he needed for his archive. I'm immortal, unless someone manages to kill me, and he was confident he could prevent that. Even if I died, he believed he could keep a fraction of me here--as his eternal librarian--while the rest of me rotted away wherever souls like mine are meant to go."

"I really hate hearing that you've had to go through so much pain and ugliness," Julian said, sighing as he gave her hand a few small squeezes.

She leaned into him, the gesture soft and natural--then, as if on impulse, turned her face and gave him a quick, full kiss on the mouth before pulling back. She could sense he still had questions and didn't want to distract the poor boy more than she already had.

The kiss was amazing.

Julian sat there, dumbfounded. His lips still tingled from where hers had touched them--cool and soft, like something between a breeze and a warning. It wasn't like any kiss he'd had before. Those had been awkward, quick, forgettable. He was pretty sure he'd remember this one for the rest of his life.

Which reminded him of something else she'd said.

"Not that I'm complaining," he said slowly, "but didn't you tell me I'd be lucky to survive the night? That vampire didn't seem so tough..."

A sharp flash of alarm crossed her face, and in a blur, she pivoted off the bench into a crouch in front of him. With a swift motion, she tore open his shirt and used a long, ruby-red fingernail to gouge an inert rune into his chest.

He exclaimed, "Ow! What the hell?" as he looked down at the blood running down his chest--and at the look of hunger in her eyes.

She shook her head sharply. "Be quiet and listen. That's a ward--it won't stop the most powerful, but it'll keep most magic users from identifying you unless they're close enough to read your soul. And they'd have to be very close for that. But it's not active yet."

"Repeat these words," she told him, reciting something drawn from the tomes within her. "Then give me your life essence twice, and it will remain active until tomorrow's sunset."

"My essence? Twice?" he asked, catching that hungry look in her eyes again--then realizing what she wanted. She was waiting for his permission to lick the blood from his chest.

"Um... yeah. Go ahead. Drink my essence. Twice," he said awkwardly.

A flicker of relief crossed her face as she reached back and pulled her raven-black hair behind her ears.

If he'd thought she moved fast getting off the bench, what she did next made that look slow. It was so quick it felt like déjà vu--one second he was blinking, and the next her cool tongue was lapping the blood from his chest. Then came the sound of a zipper pull and fabric slid down his thighs, and before he could even register what was happening, he felt the most incredible sensation of his life and looked down to see her head in his lap.

***

Her tongue wrapped around him--halfway down his length--forming a perfect sleeve as her slender, feminine hand closed around the base, pumping in rhythm with the sucking, slurping, and bobbing of her head as she quickly worked him toward the edge.

The dire situation he was in had slipped from his mind. All he could think was, I can't believe this is finally happening.

It was his first time, and he didn't want to disappoint her by finishing too soon--yet she seemed determined, almost as if she were on a mission, intent on making it happen. She stared into his eyes, and the feeling was indescribable. It was too late to stop.

Aurora moaned as Julian released into her mouth. "Mmm," she murmured as she swallowed the last drop. Then her eyes widened as the rune on his chest flared bright. The wound sealed in an instant, leaving behind the invisible protection she had meant to give him.

Oblivious to what had just happened, Julian quipped, "Swallow my essence twice? As misunderstandings go, I gotta tell you--that was unbelievably incredible."

His post-orgasmic bliss was shattered by a muffled cry. He turned to see Aurora hunched at the waist, clearly in excruciating pain. Her expression was tight, eyes bulging, mouth wide as her short breaths came fast and ragged.

She looked at him, scared. "Julian, I don't know what's happening to me--I like you... I want--" She cried out again, this time in greater pain. "I just wanted to protect you..." she cried out in pain.

She was afraid. She didn't want to die. She knew what awaited her kind. But it wasn't fear that had kept her willpower strong all these years. The reason she never drank blood without permission was because doing so would have made her no different than the shopkeeper who nearly took her most precious possession... or the vampire who ended her life after that same shopkeeper's wife branded her a harlot and sent her fleeing into the woods--as the wife stormed off to make accusations against her of witchcraft to the village council.

Aurora screamed and collapsed to the ground--only to be lifted into the air by bands of golden light. Runes etched into the spinning bands flared to life as they spiraled around her, encircling her from head to toe. Julian instinctively looked around, panic rising, but the park was empty at this hour. No one was around to witness this.

The golden bands twisted and crossed over each other faster and faster, until they formed what looked like a single seamless sleeve of light around her body.

Then Julian heard it--a horrible, inhuman scream--and saw a mass of blackness tear free from her chest and shoot straight toward him.

Acting on pure instinct, he summoned a wall of spectral green magic, stretching it out in front of himself just in time to block the dark mass. It hit hard but didn't break through.

Thinking fast, still guided only by pure instinct, Julian wrapped the energy around the mass, sealing it inside.

When he looked back up, Aurora now stood above him, her feet just barely touching the ground. Her eyes were white and sightless as she chanted something under her breath. Then came the sound--a deep, guttural growl that sent a shiver through Julian's entire body. He felt the mass in his grasp swell violently as whatever was inside tried to break free.

In a final burst of light, the writhing energy hardened. The green spectral magic and the black entity within solidified into a single object, its surface glowing as unfamiliar runes burned themselves across its shell. The growling stopped. The pulsing stilled. The thing went quiet.

Julian sat frozen, dumbfounded, still cradling the object in his lap.

Aurora dropped to her knees in front of him, gently pushed the mass from his hands to the ground, and rested her palms on his thighs. Then she laid her head down on them and let out a soft, contented sigh--before drifting into sleep.

***

Julian didn't move. He sat there on the cold park bench, the most beautiful woman he had ever dreamed of asleep on his thighs. At least, he hoped she was asleep. He couldn't tell if she was resting, unconscious, or if that heart-throbbing sigh of contentment had been her last act. But no--she wasn't dead. He was sure of that. He would've seen her soul leave. And if it had, knowing where she was destined, he would've done everything in his power to hold it here.

He'd have to ask her about that. There might come a time when circumstances forced him to keep someone from crossing over. But only if that sort of thing was even allowed. She'd told him magic was all about intent--but intent could be selfish. Focused. Desperate. And he was pretty sure doing the wrong thing for the right reason could still stain his soul.

Then, softly, she stirred.

Aurora let out a small breath through her nose and slowly lifted her head. Her hair fell across her face, and she blinked a few times before brushing it aside. Her eyes met his--they were back to normal, or at least what is normal for her.

"Are you okay?" Julian asked, barely above a whisper.

She didn't answer right away. Her expression was dazed, her lips parted as if she were about to speak but forgot how. She sat up straighter, pulled her knees under herself, and placed a hand against her chest.

Then her eyes widened..

Aurora looked down at her own hands, flexing her fingers. Then she pressed her palm against her neck, right over the artery.

"I have a heartbeat," she murmured, more to herself than to him. Her voice cracked as tears streamed from her eyes. Before Julian could react, Aurora lunged from the ground, her knees leaving the grass as she vaulted into his lap. Her thighs wrapped around his hips as she straddled him, arms locking around his neck as she pressed her lips to his--hard.

It wasn't graceful. It wasn't planned. Her kisses landed everywhere--his mouth, his cheek, the corner of his jaw--ravenous and desperate, like she couldn't decide where to plant them next. Her breathing was uneven. She kept laughing through the tears, then diving right back in to kiss him again. The joy pouring off her made it impossible to care about precision. Her lips slid against his, warm with emotion, messy and perfect.

Julian barely had time to breathe between kisses. He felt her hands in his hair, on his shoulders, her forehead resting against his for a split second before she kissed him again. It wasn't sensual--it was alive. Like something inside her had exploded and kissing him was the only way she knew how to thank him for it.

Then she pulled back, grinning through her tears. "Get up," she said breathlessly. "We're going to a hotel."

Julian blinked, face flushed in embarrassment. "I... I can't afford a hotel."

Aurora kissed him on the cheek, brushing a tear from her own with the back of her hand. "Julian, my heart beats because of you. It belongs to you."

She leaned forward and kissed him again--quick, firm, giddy.

"Also," she added with a smirk, "I have more money than some cartels."

Then she laughed at the shocked expression on his face.

***

Whew. First magic surge, first orgasm, first vampire--and that was just the first chapter.

Thank you so much for reading! Don't forget to cast your rating--the more stars I get, the closer I come to ascending... although let's be honest, if I had Aurora's willpower, I'd 100% trade magic to be a vampire.

Also, that was a bit of a ride. So go stretch. Hydrate. Treat yourself to something delicious--preferably not haunted, but hey, I don't judge. Maybe a cinnamon bun. Maybe something stronger.

Hope to see you next time. What trouble will our young--and not-so-young--couple get into next?

P. S. The next chapter drops in two days. That's right. I said DAYS.

See you soon!