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Alpha & Omega - Chapter Twenty Four.

Morning, guys :) Update is here, my lovely, loyal audience. We've reached peak angst in the story and I can only hope you still love it just as much, even though things are bleak for our little family right now :(

Summary - In the tranquil village of Little Norton, your life can be described as comfortable, quiet and idyllic. One night, though, it takes a dark turn when you finally come face to face with the eerie presence you’ve sensed watching you from afar for months, encountering a mysterious vampire on your way home. His arrival in your life sets off a chain of events that lead to you becoming inextricably tied to him and his family, learning of the complex dynamics within it, as well as the greater purpose you represent to them.

A proposition and a promise are offered, yet to agree will see life as you know it changed forever. Are you ready for such a commitment, or will you leave them beneath the dark shadow that has followed the four undead men for centuries?

Previous chapters - Prologue One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty One Twenty Two Twenty Three

Words - 7,812

Warnings - Vampire fic, mentions of blood and gore, plus lots of smut. 18+ content, minors DNI!

Tag list - In the comments, please DM/comment to be added/removed.

The revelation erupts through the night air like a thunderclap. Chaos rises within the vampire siblings who have just discovered the devastating secret that was kept from them, swirling like a tornado, ripping their insides to shreds. The elder of the two is overtaken by fury, his voice raised in shouted rage and accusations, hands gesturing wildly as he demands answers, pain manifesting in every aggressive movement.

In stark contrast, the youngest stands frozen, the weight of loss pressing so heavily upon him that words run dry. IV’s grief is so profound, he cannot even speak. The air is thick with anguish and betrayal, the siblings each grappling in their own way with the agony of impending loss and the shock of their creator’s sacrifice.

Indeed, while IV is still, III is enraged in his heartbreak, continuing his pacing, crying and shouting.

“You should have told us! To hell with what Ves said, we had a right to know we were about to lose our creator, our fucking father!”

That’s the first time you’ve ever heard him refer to Ves as that, and it knots in your chest tightly, II looking up as he dries his eyes on the heel of his palm.

“He commanded me not to, III,” he begins, looking as if he has the weight of the world and all of its problems bearing down on his emotions, his foundations loaded beyond their capacity to withstand such tensile burdens. “And we don’t know yet, whether it will take him or not. You need to calm down.”

III’s pacing halts, his arms flailing like a puppet with snipped strings, his insides fracturing with grief. “Oh, oh and that’s really fucking reassuring, isn’t it? He’s lying there motionless, eyes like a glass doll, not moving, not talking! He’s fucking gone, II!”

The barbs of those words drag through II’s brain, his emotions swirling, knowing he needs to keep calm in order to restore the balance. As the eldest, it’s on him now, a burden he was prepared to step up and take in his creator’s stead, but one that anguishes him to command strength toward accomplishing.

III isn’t the only heartbroken one here, and maybe in his own state, he has forgotten that it is II who has been with him the longest.

Moving with a summoned grace, he halts his sibling. “I wanted to tell you.” His eyes move to you and IV. “All of you. He forbade me from it. His final death is not sealed yet, either. According to the old texts, we will only know if we have lost him come the rising of the next full moon. We must show strength for him, no matter how hopeless it might feel. We have to hope and wish on all the fucking stars above that he will come back to us. Now, I need you to calm the fuck down so I can go and look after Grace. Will you do that for me?”

III nods dumbly, dropping his head, II taking his face in his hands and kissing his forehead tenderly. “Look after IV.”

You do not see this exchange between the others, merely hearing it while your entire focus is fixed on Ves. As you gently stroke his face, tears stream down your cheeks, the sorrow weighing upon you with an unbearable heaviness, sinking deep as broken glass into your soul. The grief wracks you so violently that a sound – raw and primal – escapes your lips, so guttural and fierce that you scarcely recognise it as your own.

“Don’t leave me, please, please don’t you leave me!” you wail, your vision blurred from the sea of tears, resting your forehead to his chest as your body heaves with the force of each sob. You feel as if you have lengths of barbed wire twirling around your heart, some secret agent of the sadness ripping your insides apart pulling them, tightening, the pain of it blooming in your chest.

Each thought carries with it an unsurmountable level of pressure, the levies of your skull feeling as if they are cracking under the weight of each anxious thought, each swirling tide of guilt.

It was your blood that did this to him.

“I’m sorry,” you sob, grasping his top, your fingers bunching at the fabric in some feeble attempt to pull him back from the brink, feeling someone behind you. “I’m so sorry!”

“It isn’t your fault, sweetheart.” III binds you in a bone crunching hug, kissing your cheek multiple times. “I’m gonna get IV inside, he’s fucking catatonic. Stay with II, I’ll come find you in a bit. Love you, babe.”

“I love you, too.” you speak, wishing you were like them, that you could pull out a little of their pragmatism the likes of which III quickly adopted, save himself from emotionally climbing the walls even further. You turn to IV, but he’s glazed over entirely, III needing to physically lift him to even budge him from the spot at all, a statue frozen by the chill of his anguish.

You feel yourself pulled to your feet, and you collapse into the arms of II, sobbing with sharp grief goring at your insides against his thick chest. The comfort of his ancient blood swimming through your veins, along with Ves’s, does somewhat soften the edges of your pain, but not by much. His arms around you help further, though, when inside, you feel like the sorrow of it is breaking you apart.

“I’ll get him up to his bedroom. Come now, back inside.”

You nod dumbly, a sigh heaving from between your trembling lips, running a hand through your hair as the blur of II carrying Ves passes you back into the house. Your feet take you into the kitchen, although you’re unaware of the process in putting one foot in front of the other, your body guiding you in autopilot mode to your rum bottle. When II arrives back with you, you’re downing a mouthful without the aid of a glass.

“I’ve killed him,” you state, eyes fixing on one of the cupboards as the guilt of it washes over you. “My blood killed him. If I’d have known this would happen there is no fucking way I’d have agreed to it!”

Feeling your spiralling, seeing it, II moves to you in a nanosecond, pulling the rum from your grasp and once again, wrapping you in his arms.

“Do not say such things, my darling wife,” he soothes, hands stroking your back. Hearing him call you his wife for the first time, it should bring you the sublimest of joy, yet not much can shatter the wall of anguish bricking itself up like a fortress around your heart.

“He went into this knowing fully what could happen to him. He did it selflessly, so we might all be free of our curse. If not all of us, then just his offspring. And you know, you have to know, there is no way he would ever want for you to blame yourself. It would devastate him to hear you speak like this.” He kisses you, all his love poured fourth, arms tightening around you. “It isn’t certain yet, that he has departed. It’s fucking crippling, but we have no other choice but to wait.”

Nodding against his neck, your tears continue, pulling from his arms and wandering again without thought, your feet taking you up the stairs, arriving in Ves’s bedroom.

The fire isn’t lit. How symbolic.

Moving with heavy limbs, you cast down a kindling log to the rest, throwing a match atop it, all the while knowing that he’s lying there in state. It takes you a few moments to be able to turn around, your eyes fixated upon the armchairs, remembering the time you sat across from him and he urged you to buy clothes at his expense. He was nothing to you then, but now, he’s your world, and he’s possibly never going to re-enter it.

Eventually, you turn, seeing him lying there upon his bed, and you gasp, your heart thrumming with sadness. Moving to him, you lay your head upon his chest, sobbing against the muscle, wishing with your entire, shattered heart feel his arms fold around you.

The stillness in him, it feels different. You’re used to curling up with him while he rests, when essentially, he’s simply a dead body lying there beside you. Now, though, there’s something extra hollowed out within him, like a void that cannot be filled, a spark that has been extinguished, never to be lit again.

“You can’t leave me,” you whisper, stroking his face. “We’re bloody married now, or something like it. I’m not losing my husband like this, no fucking way.” The tears continue to trickle as you rest your forehead to his. “Please, please, come back to me. To us. To the family who love you.”

You know your words have no bearing over the hands of fate, whether he will wake in thirty days or forever be resigned to a final death. All you do know, can know for certain, is that life is suddenly plunged into a realm of nightmares, stitched together with threads of pure pain and grief, the sharp edges of it bearing down onto your heart with insurmountable pressure.

Curling into him, you rest your head in the crook of his shoulder, the wide planes of pectoral muscles acting like a pillow for your cheek, your face stained with tears that still cease in their falling. The pain of his stillness sticks in beneath your ribs, like a thorn wedged far too tightly to retrieve, no reprieve from its sharp poking at where you’re most tender.

The silence of the room bar your little sniffs and sobs, as well as the crackling from the hearth presses in around you, the bedroom door creaking open blooming like a siren as it announces the arrival of II and III.

“Wifey,” the latter softly whispers, his eyes saddening when you look for the third to enter behind his sibling, sighing sadly when II closes the door behind him

“Is he okay?” you sniff, reaching for III’s hand as he seats himself upon the bed.

His head gently sways from side to side. “No. Switched himself off.”

It’s something you didn’t know until quite recently they could do. In times idleness or dealing with burdens so stressful they wish to escape, a vampire can simply disengage themselves from their essence. It isn’t quite the same as their resting state, but not altogether unsimilar either. They simply sit there, staring at a fixed point, unable to be roused, like someone turning off a child’s battery-operated toy at its switch. It’s still there, but motionless.

“Stupid question, but are you alright?” he then asks, reaching over to stroke your cheek. You shake your head and he nods, understanding your grief all too well. He shares it with you, like you have been swathed beneath the same cloak of darkness, your sunshine blocked out entirely.

III extends his long body down then, his movements slow, eyes eventually finding Ves’s lifeless form as he rests down on his back at his side. He then takes his hand, bringing it to his chest, holding it there like a sacred object against his motionless heart.

“You can go yet, Ves,” he whispers, head sloping to rest against his creator’s. “I need more time with you. Still have so much to learn about this whole being a vampire thing.”

He pauses, swallowing hard, his lower lip quivering just a fraction as you feel II climb onto the vast bed and press himself close at your back. “Two hundred years isn’t long enough. I don’t fucking know who I am, or who I’ll eventually be without you here to show me.”

“Oi, that’s utter bullshit,” II tells him, his words delivered strongly but upon soft, loving tones. “You know exactly who you are, and if you don’t, you have us to remind you.”

III hums, but no further words follow, on a deep breath he doesn’t need to take at all, turning onto his side as he curls into his creator, like a little lamb seeking the refuge of its mother’s warmth. Seeing that vulnerability within him stirs you, pricks sharp in your chest, reaching to stroke his face, III turning his head to kiss your palm.

You search deep for words of comfort, but truly there are none. The future is clear; either he returns to you come the next full moon, or he doesn’t.

Turning to II, a little sense of practicality takes over, offers you an emotional pillar where your foundations are being slowly rocked to shaky rubble. “If he doesn’t... what happens? What do we... do with him?”

It’s a conversation already had between creator and first turned, II sitting up a little, reaching to smooth a loving hand down Ves’s arm. “If he does not wake come the next full moon, we are to lay him out and let the dawn burn him away. He doesn’t want to be interred anywhere, no grave, no urn. He wishes for the wind to take him, but did state if we want to, we could each keep a small amount of his ashes. They put them in jewellery these days, don’t they? Something like that. He updated his will, too, to reflect you being a beneficiary as his wife, even though legally you aren’t seen as such. He has provided for you in such a way.”

Being provided for financially by him truly means nothing to you, although the gesture is touching. It is a hollow consolation, with his very existence teetering in the balance, Ves neither truly alive nor dead. You would trade every penny in the world to feel him move beneath you, wrap you in his arms, speak of his adoration.

It hits you then, why over the past three months he’s been emphatically stating that you never forget it, how much he loves you. He’s been preparing you for it without revelation over his peril, of the danger he willingly put himself in, all so his offspring could be free of the curse that marked them out as different.

Just what the fuck is so wrong with being shapeshifter anyway?

Prejudice lives and breathes in all walks of life, though. You aren’t the only one who thinks that way, either.

“I’d have picked the curse every fucking time over this,” III laments, sighing, his eyes glassy. “Living as outcasts would be fine, really fucking just peachy, as long as we still had him.”

“All is not lost,” II reminds him, although you can tell from his tone he’s trying to convince himself of that just as much he is III. “And if it is, we must revere him and his memory, in what he did for us. We have to remember it always, his sacrifice, all out of his love for his family. It doesn’t make that possible reality any easier to bear, I get that, but... fuck. It’s all I have to offer you.”

That sense of practicality and reverence over Ves’s hecatomb isn’t shared by III, who simply shakes his head, tears now flowing without pause, dried on the back of his sleeve as he burrows himself a little further in at his creator’s side.

In the heavy silence that follows, your gaze drifts to the flickering fire, its orange glow casting trembling shadows across Ves's unmoving features, the dance of the flames stark against the dimness swallowing the room, and the stillness of the vampire lying in state there upon his bed.

Your breath shudders, and you grip tighter to those around you, reaching for each of their hands. II cuddles into you, his strength a silent fortress at your back, arms holding you tight as III reaches to take your hand in his.

A silence of mourning abounds, each heartbeat echoing the ache of not knowing if any of this devotion, this desperate vigil, will reach Ves where he’s gone. The weight of memory settles thick in the air, of all you shared with him in this space, the warmth of hands entwined, the comfort of a voice promising forever in the hush of night, all now suspended, waiting, just out of reach.

The night stretches out, long and slow, the three of you all reluctant to leave the space. Even when the dawn begins to break, the only movement made is to carefully peel back the covers, all three of you sinking into Ves’s bed with him, eyes raw from tears finally closing. For them, the sunrise takes them into their slumber, but you receive no such reprieve, no cease of sorrow, lying there fully clothed beneath the expensive sheets, muttering away.

“There was a time when I disliked you so much that this would have been a welcome outcome for me,” you speak, and the words, that time, it all feels so foreign to you now, lying there against his motionless body. “Back at the start, I would have fled and run away, as far as I could have gotten from this place, from all of you.”

A bittersweet tilt turns your lips, looking up at him, reaching to gently shut his eyes, unable to witness that cold, dead stare a moment longer. “I couldn’t leave any of you if I tried, so don’t, don’t you dare leave us behind.”

The statement feels redundant since you know your words will have no true sway over whether or not he stays or goes, the heartbreaking truth of it fissuring deep into your very bones, your limbs heavy with grief. You manage a few hours of sleep, but it’s fitful, ultimately disturbed by the doorbell chiming through the house and rousing you to go and answer.

An Amazon package is thrust forward, one you’d completely forgotten you’d ordered, leaving it there by the front door and wandering through the house, jumping when you reach the lounge. There, sat stiller than a marble statue, is IV in his switched off state. Moving to the armchair, you know you won’t rouse him, but still, you seat yourself on his lap, wrapping your arms around him.

“I love you,” you whisper, breathing in his scent. Sauvage; you never enjoyed that particular aftershave until you smelled it on him. “Don’t you leave me for too long, too. I need you, and I think you need me, don’t you?” More redundant words, being that he can’t hear you, but you speak them all the same. “I get it, though. You’re protecting yourself. I wish I could do it, too, rather than deal with this fucking heartbreak.”

Moving, you continue your aimless wandering around the house, slipping from room to room with no clear direction. Within each of them, you see Ves everywhere, in his design taste, his belongings placed around, from artwork to sculptures, everything that he had so carefully chosen over the breadth of his long life, here now decorating a home you’ve no idea whether he will move around within and enjoy for himself again.

There they all sit, the last vestiges of a vampire whose existence hangs so perilously in the balance, neither here nor truly gone. That is the most torturous part about it, that for the next thirty days you will be hanging in a tormented limbo, not know whether he will awake again from the near-death state the broken curse put him into.

Taking a seat in the mostly unused second living room, you suddenly feel that familiar creep of fog coming over you in swathes, opening your eyes to see Ves and II here in this very room. Well, you’re seeing it through II’s eyes. II’s eyes which are blurry.

“We’ve been together for centuries, and only now, do you tell me?”

Standing by the mantlepiece, Ves turns, his mouth a thinned line. “I couldn’t before. I needed you to be on side with me for this. I hate to have deceived you, but there was no other way.”

“Being truthful with me and not treating me as if I am a child was the other way, Vessel!” II grits, and it hurts your heart to see it in his memory, to feel the waves of pain radiating through his ancient form. He scoffs, shaking his head. “Now I know why you never let me read the ancient texts. Tell me, give me a fucking estimate. Out of ten vampires, say, how many of them die along with the curse?”

Ves moves to the adjacent sofa, sitting slowly, steepling his fingers. “If you seek statistics, it’s roughly eight out of ten who never wake up again.”

“Oh, fuck off!” A huge, dismissive sweep of his hand is followed by II’s swift exit from his seat, beginning to pace up and down. “You can’t do this! Not with those odds. We can remain cursed, it’s fine. I never minded it much anyway.”

His creator sighs, and you witness it in him, the summoning of his patience. “No, II. I will not allow the risk that hangs over you all, not with how half breeds are treated. You also deserve the freedom of a life unmarked by what my blood sullied you with. Not just for me, but for our beloved Grace.”

II thrusts a finger towards the door. “You mean to tell me you’d honestly gamble her tender little heart like this, on am eight out of ten chance that you’re going to your final death? You’d really do that to her? Because I am fucking telling you now, I’d do anything to protect her from that, anything!”

“Even lay down your life?”

“Of course!” II rages, before it hits him, the realisation smacking him with all the sharp intensity of a spiked bat.

Ves opens his arms wide. “And therein you see my devotion. That is how much I love her, and all of you.” He stands then, moving slowly to his first created, the vampire who means the world and beyond to him, pulling him into a hug. To be in his arms, even though it’s through someone else’s memories, brings you the tiniest shard of peace as you watch it playing out.

“I have lived for over fifty thousand years, II. If it is my time, then it is my time.”

II stands stiff, allowing the comfort of the hug, but pulling away as his eyes blink tears down his face, jaw setting in a hard clench. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”

He laughs, a soft burst from his nose. “You do not have dominion over me. Now, I command you not to tell the others. I will give you some time to adjust to it, but II, it will happen. I will not be swayed.”

“Please, Vessel.” His voice comes out as a strained hiss, but with eyes filling with tears, you see it clearly, feel it, the despair coiling tight beneath his ribs. “Please don’t do this. I am not the type to beg of anyone, but I am begging you now. Reconsider, for all our sakes.”

Ves stands back, touching a fond hand to his cheek before leaving the room, his departure a finality II is not willing to accept. The thought sticks in his brain as if it has grown spines, tumbling its way out of his skull, into his throat, through his chest and barbing itself to a halt in the pit of his guts.

Blinking, you find yourself back within your own consciousness, crying all over again. Not just for yourself, but for your beloved vampires. For Ves, having to keep it a secret for so very long, live under the burden of it, the constant shadow that the odds would be stacked against him, should he ever find an omega willing to bond. And for II, too, to be told, with no room to argue, that his creator would not be convinced otherwise in his decision.

Rising, you move through to the usual lounge, carrying on into the kitchen and standing at the back door, staring out into the sunshine. It has a fucking audacity, to be such a beautiful, spring day outside when within Norton House, the atmosphere remains so starkly bleak.

The birds carry on their song beyond the glass, utterly indifferent to your turmoil, to the weight of loss pressing into each room and heart of the house. After opening the door, you let the warmth of the light touch your skin as if it might sear away some of the sorrow, hoping that perhaps the warmth might reach you where you need it most.

You realise, though, as your cheeks are kissed by the cool April breeze, that the only warmth that will thaw the grieving chill that’s frosting around your heart is that of Ves’s love. His love in real time, not a memory of it.

You linger in that threshold between the old world and the new, acutely aware that everything has changed, but unwilling to accept a future without Ves in it. It sends pain surging through you that a fate of a life bearing his absence is the likely outcome here, that more vampires perish than survive the lifting of their curse.

Closing the door behind you, you are plagued by thirst, deciding to make yourself a tea. You’ve always been more of a coffee girl, but the comfort of smelling one of Ves’s favoured blends is needed. You choose the raspberry and nettle, busying yourself with the machinations, not quite boiling the water so as not to scorch the loose leaves, smelling it while it infuses in the cup, his cup, feeling a fraction less lonely for the scent of something that you always equate with his presence.

Seating yourself at the table, you let it cool, your thoughts all washing over you in a ceaseless tide, trying to imagine what it’ll mean for each of you going forward, a life lacking the vampire who binds you all together. Resting your head down for a second, you’re only aware of your consciousness faltering when you open your eyes again, feeling softness beneath your body.

“Hmm?” you hum sleepily, turning to see the body of III beside you on your bed.

“Found you about an hour ago at sundown,” he speaks, reaching to stroke your forehead with the tip of his little finger. “Guessed you probably hadn’t slept much.”

Sitting up, you stretch and yawn, resting back down again after shuffling a little closer to him. “I think about two hours this afternoon, and much less this morning after you and II had fallen asleep. Where is he?”

“In the bath,” he confirms. “I was gonna take you back to Ves’s room, but I didn’t know whether that might make you feel more upset, seeing him lying there, just... still.” His mouth twitches, turning onto his side. “It was with me.”

Not really knowing how you feel about that, you simply shuffle nearer to him, wrapping yourself around his lean form. “I don’t know.” You sigh, pausing, III holding you tight, his hand sweeping affectionately between your shoulder blades. “I don’t want to be far from him, not that anything will happen either way if I am. Like you, though, it’s hard to see him just lying there so still. So...”

He presses a kiss atop your head. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

“I can’t even bear thinking it, that he isn’t coming back.” Your throat pinches with emotion, and III continues to offer comfort, his other hand moving to gently finger comb the hair at your scalp, and action he knows you always find soothing. “What do we do without him?”

“I dunno,” he confesses, his voice hollow at the prospect. “Carry on somehow? I don’t think we’re meant to have all the answers just yet. It's the fucking limbo of it that I can’t deal with. It’s gonna drag out a bloody month yet, a month! Thirty fucking days of not knowing either way.”

With a heavy sigh, you curl closer still, desperate for comfort in the aching hush, the shape of absence pressing into every corner of the room. There's a fragile hope buried beneath the grief that, somehow, the coming days might offer the smallest spark of reprieve, even if only found in the shared quiet between you and your remaining vampires.

At least you have two out of four to weather the agonising wait with.

“Would you mind going to crash II’s bathtime?” he asks softly, voice laced with cautious care. “I want to go for a walk, be on my own for a bit. Nothing against you, beautiful. I just need some time alone to process it all. Head’s a fucking screaming mess.”

“Of course, go on. It’s fine, I know you like to deal with your thoughts in your own space,” you speak, moving to climb off the bed, his gangly, tall form following. He seeks a kiss you offer immediately, a soft exchange that lingers upon your lips, makes a tiny spark of want flicker into life, but not brightly enough that it isn’t immediately extinguished by the black of grief.

“Love you.” he whispers, lips pressing a kiss against your head.

You return the sentiment, and in a blink he’s vanished, leaving you to head to the bathroom, opening the door and peeking around.

“Mind if I disturb your bathtime?”

II smiles weakly, jerking his head back. “Not at all. Get in here.”

Entering, you strip off and shut the door behind you, throwing your dress and undies into the laundry hamper for Fiona to find in the morning. II moves up the bath a little, leaving ample space between his legs for you to climb in and seat yourself, resting your head back against his wide chest.

“How’s my wife?”

You’ll never tire of hearing him call you that. “Sad.”

“Mm, I felt as much,” he confirms, “although it’s polite to ask.”

You can feel it in him, too, picking up on his mood and emotions through his blood. It’s a beautiful part of final bond, that link you have to one another, except for at times like this, when all parties are so clearly devastated.

Turning, you kiss his gritty cheek, hand moving to smooth the other as he tightens his arms around you. “I can feel the same in your, but also that you’re working your gorgeous little Scandi arse off to try and block it as much as you can.” He gives you a little eye roll, mildly unimpressed that you picked up on that. “You don’t have to hide how this has made you feel from me, II. I saw it earlier, in one of your memories. Ves telling you what was to happen.”

“Fucking blood link,” he fumes lightly, kissing your temple. “And of course I’m going to want to hide it from you, the depth of my devastation. I’m your fucking husband; it’s my job to protect you. From everything.”

Turning to him, you shake your head. “And I’m your wife. Your burdens are mine. We’re in this together, and that means I support you as much as you do me. I know that’s going to take you a lot of getting used to because you’re so fiercely proud of your strength, and you seldom allow people to witness you emotionally waver, but simply, suck it up, buttercup.”

His face further sours. “Stop crinkling your nose, Magnus.”

“Fucking hell,” he snorts, a smile beginning to spread. “You called me by my birth name. You must mean business.”

It’s a moment of levity when all around, your world feels so very bleak. Humming softly, you kiss his cheek again, resting back against him as you watch wisps of steam rising from the water. It offers a comforting cocoon of warmth.

“I do, you know I always do,” you chuckle, although the sound is a little hollow. His arms tighten around you in an instant.

A short silence falls over you, until II’s sudden words take you by surprise. “He told me that I had to step up and lead the family, raise III and IV like they were my own offspring, should the worst befall him. I wonder if I have the temperament for it, since their follies often leave me easily agitated.”

Stroking his forearm, you gather your thoughts together in offered reassurance at this, him offering vulnerability in his confession to you. “You’ll do just fine, love. Trust me, if you’re open to the idea of raising actual babies with me again, a couple of baby vampires will be no trouble for you at all. Besides, I see them improving with leaps and bounds compared to what they were almost eight months ago.”

“Eight months,” he scoffs, “it feels like I’ve known you for eight bloody years.” He pauses a second, his chest stiffening a little. “With Ves, it’s almost like I can’t remember a time where he wasn’t around. Of course, I carry my human life within my thoughts, but you know what I mean, don’t you?”

“I think so,” you confirm, kissing his forearm, your fingers chasing water droplets as you trace the intricate lines and dots of black tattoo ink. “You’ve never really told me about it, an in-depth account of when you first met him. I’d like to hear it one day.”

Right now might be too much for him to bear, so you do not expect it, for the words to then flow so easily from his mouth.

“I remember it well, almost as if it happened yesterday.”

Northern Jutland, 806AD...

The sun sank low into the frozen horizon, the breath of the warriors clouding the inky night as they made camp. Still two days from home, the men built fires the size of which could be seen from the home of their gods, a huge stag being cleaned and gutted after a successful hunt.

Triumph had run through the men just two days before, the territory of their leader, king Magnus the Bloody, defended from an oncoming army, their chieftain challenger slain upon the battlefield by the mighty ruler of Jutland himself.

It was, however, not without great personal sacrifice.

“Sigurd,” Frode spoke, coming to the side of Magnus’s right hand. “The king, is he...”

The tall man ceased his slicing into the hide of a freshly slaughtered deer, wiping the blood from his hands upon the dark hessian cloth of his trousers. “He hangs on, though I am yet to visit with him since we halted.”

Frode nodded, removing his own knife from its sheath. “You go and do that while I skin this stag. I was always the better.”

A knowing, mischievous smile is given, Sigurd laughing through his nose, cupping a big, weathered hand to his friend’s shoulder. “Just don’t butcher it as badly as you do your enemies.”

Moving over the frozen ground, the snow and ice thick beneath his boots, Sigurd entered the tent to find his liege lying as still as he’d left him when they made camp, skin pallid, sweat slicking his wheezing form. The fever was setting in, yet to remove the fur pelts covering him would be an exercise in accelerating his perishing.

Still, the warrior refused to accept this fate, that his beloved king would soon dine with the gods. An honour, surely, for Odin to send the Valkyries and pluck him from his death bed, for King Magnus to be raised into the halls of Valhalla where he rightly belonged. It still did not mean he wouldn’t miss the man he had come to love like a brother, until his own time came to join him.

“My king,” he spoke, lowering to a knee at his bedside. “How do you fare?”

Magnus turned his head, sickly yet still proud, even though he was days past being able to hide that the infection in the wound upon his side was slowly festering enough to kill. “I await it, for death to arrive here. I will see its face before I am taken in its clutches, to wherever I am destined. I can only hope that it is Odin who calls me home.” A small smile plays his lips. “It better not be Hel come to fetch me, although perhaps I might be deserving of Helheim. My death, after all, will be from battle. Not in it.”

“You are so resigned to it, Magnus,” he spoke with candour. “I sense you are ready.”

He would have liked to see his children again, this much was true, but Magnus did not shy from his destiny. He never once had upon that realm, and he wouldn’t now he was awaiting his transition into the next. At least, he thought with a smile through the pain and the stench of the festering wound at his side, he would finally be reunited with his beloved Ingrid.

How he had missed his queen, the mother of his children, his closest confidant. He had longed for her companionship, her touch, her wisdom, the way she so seamlessly blended her roles as wife and mother with her formidable force as a shieldmaiden.

Closing his eyes, he could see her, a smile tilting his lips as the moss green of her eyes, so luminous, glittered to him like beacons marking the path to the other side.

“I’m coming, my love,” he croaked, opening his eyes. There she was in all her radiance, his lost love, standing over the other side of his bed. “I’m coming home with you. Not long now. Wait... wait for me just a little longer.”

Sigurd looked on at him, deliriously muttering into an empty space, knowing it wouldn’t take long. Exiting the tent, he arrived with the rest of the men, his face drawn with the weight of his burden.

“The king, he is soon to join Odin.” He sighed, watching the others all grapple with the news separately, some looking to the skies as if imagining Magnus’s ascent to Valhalla, some more solemn in their reaction. “We are to wrap his body and bring him home with us upon the inevitable. His wound, it is too far gone to save him. I smell death in the air.”

His body would be committed to the water while blazing within a longship, as was customary for any important notable within their hierarchy. This notable, though, would never receive such revered a ritual over his remains. Not that his men knew this.

The creature who had unearthed himself from the ground upon the falling of dusk sat poised within the thick of trees near to the camp, waiting for a moment of quiet, for a pause between the king’s men going into the tent to check on him, make him as comfortable as they could while he languished.

Watching keenly, he waited for the last to leave the tent, knowing there would be a stretch of time long enough before his return, smelling the air as he jumped down from the tree. The stench of death was ripe, stronger now that it had been. He had to act fast.

Lying beneath the covering of warm pelts, Magnus shivered, the pain in his side excruciating. He could barely move other than to take sips of water offered to him, his entire body thrumming sharply, vision beginning to falter a little.

“Why, by all the gods, Odin, do you not send the Valkyries for me now?” he muttered weakly, groaning in pain. “My torment... and for what?”

Blinking a few times, he wondered if the tall figure who suddenly appeared within his tent truly stood there at all, Magnus squinting through the low light provided by the oil lamps.

“You... you are here for me,” he spoke, feeling it, the aura radiating from the young man before him, dressed not unlike he and his men, but looking so other worldly to the faltering king. He couldn’t quite put his finger upon why, though. He was, he recognised – and regardless of his steadfast appreciation solely towards women – a creature of consuming beauty. Truly, Magnus had never seen another quite like him, his radiance utterly ethereal.

He lifted his head all he could manage, watching him approach. “You are death, and I am ready.”

The man smiled, crouching his long, slender form at the side of the bed. “Some call me death, others life eternal. Then there are those who simply call me Vessel. I have watched you for years, Magnus, watched you ascend to the status of a king, of a man so great that death truly should not be the end for him.”

He coughed, reaching weakly to wipe the sweat from his brow before pointing at his mysterious visitor. “And yet here you are.”

“I am here for you,” Vessel spoke, reaching for the small, carved wooden bowl, wringing out the cloth within of the cool water it was soaking up, gently dabbing the king’s face with it as he took him in further. “But I bring to you no ending, only a brand-new beginning.”

“Yes, I understand that. In Valhalla. Or does the goddess Hel send you?”

He shook his head. “You are not yet destined for the great halls, or the baren lands of Helheim, king Magnus the Bloody. Not if you do not wish to be. What I can offer you, is as some refer to me as; life eternal. Walk with me in the shadows, in a different existence, one where death fears to touch us. Come with me, away from this, and I promise you great adventure and the cease of pain. I promise you strength unlike anything you have ever known. I promise you a world beyond what your eyes have ever seen before.”

Leave it all behind, or stay, tied to this enigmatic creature, a person Magnus was unsure of entirely, but saw clearly the depth of his sincerity.

“My people... my family... my kingdom,” he croaked, Vessel continuing to diligently mop his brow.

“They would be yours no longer.”

A disquieting thought, to a man who had built so much, to have it taken away. “And what would be mine?”

Vessel smiled, eyes glittering like sapphire shards through the dim light. “Me. You are mine, and I am yours. Kin, everlasting. I will be your father and brother merged into one, your greatest ally and loyalist, fiercest protector.” He hummed a chuckle, then, seeing the Viking in his mind’s eye, when he had forced his waking and hidden in the shadows, simply to watch him fight. “Not that you will need much protecting.”

He lay there in thought, as much as he could make sense of in his state, the appeal not lost upon him. Immortality, hmm. He could do much worse.

“Do you agree, Magnus? Will you pledge yourself, to walk under the moonlight with me?” He waited patiently, the king finally nodding. “Then receive the gift I give,” he began, fangs popping with a slick snap, “of life eternal.”

With the pain fading into the background, Magnus felt the world shift around him as Vessel leaned close, his hand cold as a northern wind as he grasped his jaw to tilt his head back. The moment the fangs pierced his skin, sharp yet gentle, Magnus shuddered, not from agony, but from a sensation so foreign it chased away every trace of fever and despair.

Time seemed to slow, and for a second, he regretted it. Confusion abounded, and he recognised his fear, afraid that he had invited this, this creature, to feed upon him, sucking his life source from the pulsing wound upon his neck. The air remained silent except for the quiet humming of his mysterious benefactor, and Magnus’s vision filled with spectral colours and the echo of his entire life flashing before his eyes.

As the transformation took hold, the last remnants of his mortal suffering slipped away, replaced by a powerful vitality pulsing through his veins. Pulling away, the creature bit into his own wrist, offering the wound to his mouth.

“Drink.”

Every action was on sense, impulse, Magnus knowing that the blood offered to his dried lips contained within it something special, an essence, the vitality that would tie his soul to the fibres of his flesh forevermore. And so, he drank, gulping the cold crimson that flowed onto his tongue, feeling a brilliance, a strength roaring fiercer than a billion warriors unafraid of death entering his veins.

Vessel pulled his wrist free, the wound closing over, Magnus’s eyes widening as he watched, sitting up properly for the first time in days. “Come now, my vampire. We must go to ground until the night is upon us again tomorrow.”

Without hesitation, he rose from the bed, taken hold of by his companion and removed from the world, the men he had presided over, transported rapidly into the thick of the forest. He didn’t remember much other than an overwhelming desire to rest, not until a full day had passed and moonlight became his new rising sun.

Vessel dug them out from the grave they shared, watching him, his first created, viewing the world around him for the first time as a creature of the night. The king opened his eyes anew, feeling the weight of centuries gathering at the edge of his consciousness, and realised he had crossed into an existence both wondrous and terrifying.

The journey had begun, and with Vessel at his side, Magnus would soon discover what it meant to walk immortal beneath the shadowed stars.

“How do you feel?” Vessel asked, watching him carefully.

He took it all in, every sound, every scent, his senses sharper than a thousand blades, the darkness more beautiful to him than he had ever imagined it could be.

“Powerful.” Turning to his creator, he smiled. “I will never stop thanking you for this gift.”

“And I never did,” II speaks, after detailing the entire story to you, tears slipping down his cheeks as you turn to him. “But now, I have to possibly imagine a life without him in it, and I think it’ll take me another thousand or so fucking years to overcome a fate so horrific, to walk this earth without the one who made me all that I am.”

As he breaks down, you move to straddle his thighs, pulling your beloved into your arms and letting him cry against your neck. Finally, your powerful Viking, your ancient love opens himself up to showing you vulnerability, and there isn’t a part of you that doesn’t wish you could ease even one drop of his pain in doing so.

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Chapter Twenty Five

#vampires!sleep token

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