Bloodbound – The Edge of Him

Something you need to know about Caelan: he is cold, rough, sometimes rude — but not stupid.

And eventually, Caelan picked up on things.

Rhiannon acting strange. Dad avoiding him more than usual. Me set off by a fly sneezing on a wall. Cesare dodgy at best. Riordan refusing to meet his eyes.

Caelan wasn’t gifted with emotional intelligence, but he was a sharp man otherwise. He recognized patterns — and deviations from them.

One afternoon, after a routine perimeter check, we were all tripping over our own words again — the kind of awkward, stilted nonsense that would have fooled exactly no one, least of all Caelan. We must have seemed like guilty wives caught tiptoeing home.

He had little patience to begin with, least of all for nonsense. He finally snapped.

His collar burst metaphorically — and then literally, as he slammed his flat hand onto Riordan’s desk so hard that Riordan’s soul temporarily left his body.

“I have had enough of this nonsense!” Caelan barked.

He stormed out, leaving the door wide open. Before my dad could close it, Caelan returned — dragging a reluctant Rhiannon with him. He slammed the door so hard two books tumbled from the shelves.

He flung Rhiannon into the room; she stumbled toward Cesare’s desk, catching herself on the edge. At that exact moment, Great-Grandmother Branwen entered, looking around with mild curiosity, as if she’d walked into a tea party instead of a brewing catastrophe.

“My petal, this is a coven matter,” Cesare said gently, rising to usher her out. “Nothing for you to concern yourself with.”

“I am not leaving, Cesare.” Branwen planted her feet. “I demand to know why our son has the forehead to remove his wife so abruptly from our afternoon tea. Pray tell, have you forgotten who I am? I demand to know what is going on here!”

“Good question, Mother,” Caelan snapped. “Ask your husband and grandson what is going on — because something is. Or ask your daughter-in-law. Something very fishy is happening here and it reeks to high heavens, and they are all in on it. I’d like to know as well. So pardon me for interrupting your afternoon tea, but this is more important right now.”

Branwen’s eyes went straight to Cesare — who now had his back against a very hard place.

“Cesare, what is Caelan talking about?”

“It’s because of me,” Rhiannon said softly.

All eyes turned to her.

“Mom, no,” Dad tried — but she smiled at him, kissed his cheek, and stroked it gently.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. This has gone on too long. He deserves to know — and I should be the one to tell him.”

Branwen’s gaze flicked to Cesare. He sighed, closing his eyes, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop the explosion now.

Rhiannon stepped toward Caelan. She tried to kiss him; he pulled away.

She nodded, looked down, then met his eyes

“Caelan… I swear to you I didn’t know. But I followed every trace I could, trying to find out who I am, who my ancestors were — maybe why our longing for more children never came to be. I felt there was more… and there is. My love, please stay calm, but… I found my brother. He is the last prince of the fae.

Mother knew our uncle would kill us if he found out, so she took our powers, separated us, and left us in different places — him with trusted fae, me at a mortal orphanage. After our uncle died, the couple returned him, a grown man by then. On her deathbed she begged my brother to find me. He has been searching for me ever since.”

Silence fell like a curtain — thick, suffocating, absolute.

Caelan stared. I swear I saw fuses burn up in his brain.

Motionless. Empty.

You could have heard a pin drop.

I don’t know how long it lasted. It felt like hours. It wasn’t.

Suddenly, Caelan turned and walked toward the door.

Rhiannon ran after him, begging him to stay, to talk, to listen. “I’m sorry…”

He shook her off like she weighed nothing. She stumbled and fell, folding into herself on the floor, sobbing.

He reached for the door handle — and Branwen stepped in front of it.

“Mother,” he warned. “Let me go or I will—”

SLAP.

Branwen struck him across the face. Then she stepped aside and went to Rhiannon.

Caelan didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. Just stood there, processing.

Then he tore the door open and was gone.

If you thought that was rough, buckle up.

Caelan’s Spiral

Caelan became unmovable.

He didn’t speak a single word to Rhiannon. Didn’t look at her. Didn’t acknowledge her existence. He barked the occasional command at Dad and me — clipped, cold, mechanical — but otherwise, we were ghosts in his periphery.

He knew he’d messed up with his mother, Branwen, too.
She refused to speak to him, refused to look at him, refused to give him even a moment of her time. And Caelan, who could face down armies without blinking, couldn’t handle that.

His sister, Scarlett, tried to talk sense into him, Rhiannon was her friend, but even that only ended in more arguments.

And me? Still doing the world’s worst impression of a fugitive, dodging Cerys at every turn. Missing her. Sneaking around the medic ward on thin pretexts just to catch a glimpse. She hated my guts — and honestly, she had every right.

After the umpteenth failed attempt to talk sense into his son, Cesare finally relented and agreed to Caelan’s request for divorce. If he refused, Caelan might find his own solution to the problem — a permanent one — and Cesare wasn’t willing to take that risk.

I probably don’t have to explain that weddings and divorces worked differently for us. Humans had courts, judges, waiting periods. We had Cesare — and Riordan, with his ink and ledgers and terrifying attention to detail.

In our world, Cesare wasn’t just a father or a leader. He was the arbiter of law, the keeper of tradition, the final authority on every binding coven matter. If he blessed a union, it was sealed. If he dissolved one, it was over.

Weddings were still celebrations — music, feasts, vows spoken before the coven — but the heart of it was always Cesare, standing before the couple with the weight of centuries behind him, Riordan recording every word in handwriting so precise it looked carved rather than written.

Divorces were the opposite. No festivities. No witnesses. Just Cesare’s approval — or refusal — and Riordan’s pen scratching the decision into the record. When Cesare signed a dissolution, it became law. Permanent. Binding. Immediate. Irreversible unless he himself chose otherwise.

So when Caelan and Rhiannon ended, they didn’t just separate. They were divorced in the only way that mattered to us.

Rhiannon moved back in with us. Just like last time.

Sad? Maybe. But honestly — best-case scenario. Nobody who’d known Caelan longer than five minutes expected him to forgive her. Most feared he’d try to kill her. Or blow up the fae town. Or both.

Caelan really was the type to act first and ask questions never. And as heir to the Vannucci lineage, if he went nuclear, Cesare wouldn’t sentence him to more than the proverbial slap on the wrist. Understand now why he is so feared? He is Cesare’s best weapon and biggest liability rolled into one.

And that was the terrifying part — the part none of us said aloud:

This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Fallout

And we were right.

Caelan didn’t implode all at once. He eroded.

The divorce decree wasn’t even dry in Riordan’s ledger before Caelan began dragging random women into his chambers. Not lovers — not even companions. Just bodies. Mostly mortals, easier to cast aside after the fact. Warm, willing, and meaningless. He didn’t care about their names. He didn’t care about their faces. He didn’t care about anything except the distraction.

He didn’t rest. He didn’t feel. He just used.

And the castle heard every moment of it.

Branwen lasted exactly one week before she swept into Cesare’s study, slamming the door so hard the hinges shuddered in their sockets.

“My love,” she hissed, voice low and trembling with fury, “if you do not command our son to cease this debauchery, I shall. And that will be the next scandal this town whispers about our family.”

Cesare closed his eyes, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose with the weary dignity of a man who had carried centuries on his shoulders. “I will speak to him, cuore mio.”

“You had better,” she snapped. “Before I drag him out by the ear as I did when he was five. I understand heartbreak — but what he is doing is vile. He shames himself. He shames us. This is still the castle of the Grand Master Elder, is it not? Your son seems to mistake it for a brothel, and I am out of patience, Cesare!”

Her voice cracked like a whip across marble.

Cesare rose at once — not in anger, but in reverence. He crossed the room to her, taking her hands gently, lowering his head so his brow touched hers in the old way, the way of their youth, the way of vows spoken long before kingdoms fell.

“Branwen,” he murmured, voice soft as aged parchment, “forgive him not — but forgive me. I should have reined him sooner. You are right. You are always right where our children are concerned.”

Her fury wavered, only slightly — but enough.

He lifted her chin with two fingers, the gesture intimate, solemn. “I swear to you, on my honor and on the blood that binds us, this disgrace ends tonight. No more strangers in these halls. No more shame upon our house. I will restore order — for you, my winter rose.”

Her posture eased, the storm in her eyes dimming to a simmer.

“See that you do,” she whispered. “Or I shall.”

Cesare bowed his head to her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles — not warm, not living, but reverent all the same.

And that was how Caelan’s parade of strangers ended.

But the damage was done. The coven whispered. The servants avoided the east wing. And Rhiannon — living with us now — heard every rumor.

She didn’t cry where anyone could see. But I heard her, behind the bathroom door. At night in Jaymie’s old room, the sound of a soul cracking.

Caelan didn’t stay celibate for long.

He found a replacement.
A mortal.
Pretty enough.
Soft enough.
Fragile enough.
Obedient enough to be exactly what he wanted:

a pet.

He brought her everywhere — perched on his arm like an accessory, her pulse fluttering under his fingers as he fed from her whenever he pleased. He made sure Rhiannon saw. He made sure everyone saw.

He smiled more in those weeks than he had in years. It was all fake. Every inch of it.

While he had found a way to circumvent his mother’s embargo of him whoring in the castle by restraining himself to just one woman, eventually, even the pet annoyed him.
Her voice grated.
Her laugh grated.
Her silence grated.
Everything she did — blink, speak, breathe — irritated him.
He snapped at her once in the great hall, loud enough that the entire coven froze.

She sobbed.

He didn’t apologize.
Didn’t even look at her.

And then she was gone. I never saw her again, but I also wasn’t called to a mortal body being found — so for all intents and purposes, let’s assume he returned her to wherever he found her.

The Edge of Him

One night, Caelan vanished.

Right after an Enforcer debrief — instead of going up to his chambers, he slipped out the front door. No word. No glance. No explanation.

Caelan wasn’t the type to take cleansing walks in the crisp nighttime air. If he needed to think, he’d stand by the window in his chambers with a stiff drink. If he needed to blow off steam, he’d go to the armory or the training hall. Not out.

And he definitely wasn’t the type to randomly take long, romantic moonlit strolls by himself.

Which meant he was up to something.

Knowing him, likely nothing good.

So, I followed.

His path took us to the lake.

The same lake where he used to bring Rhiannon decades ago, when they were still dating, back when he was still capable of gentleness — back before the world had finished carving him into the creature he’d become.

I kept my distance, silent through the trees.

He stood at the water’s edge, staring at the reflection he didn’t cast. His shoulders were rigid, his jaw locked, his hands trembling with a fury he couldn’t name. Or wouldn’t.

And then she stepped out of the shadows.

Rhiannon.

She froze when she saw him.
He froze when he saw her.
I froze when I realized they hadn’t been trying to meet — they’d both ended up in the same place at the same time, probably for the same reason.

My hand closed around the hilt of my spatha, ready to intervene if I had to.

The air between them tightened — a held moment, a thread stretched to breaking.

“Please, Caelan… I want no trouble. I will leave…”

She tried to retreat.

“Stay.” His voice cut through the clearing like a blade. She stopped instantly.

I tensed.

They looked at each other. Distant at first. He, bitter. She, heartbroken.
And then, slowly, painfully, inevitably — they inched closer.

“I love you, Caelan,” she said, voice steady but hollow. “I didn’t know. You have to believe me…”

Silence.

Then his voice — low, rough, frayed. “I know.”

She went still. He continued.

“But now you know, and I know, and they know — and I can’t live with this,” he continued. “You have to go, or I will have to kill you. I don’t want to do that, Rhiannon. Don’t force my hand. Disappear.”

“Where am I supposed to go, Caelan? I have no place in this world.”

“Talk to Leeora.”

“To Leeora? About what?”

“She will know. She can help you. She will explain.”

“Caelan… Leeora is a witch. Your daughter from that affair long before me — and you know she doesn’t care for me much. But you love her even though she isn’t vampire. Why can’t you love our son the same way? Why can’t you love… me?”

He stiffened.
His head snapped toward her so sharply I thought he’d strike.
I drew my spatha.

“You think you would still exist if I didn’t?” he snarled. “You think your fae family would be anything more than ashes and dust if I didn’t? You think Connell would be my Enforcer if I didn’t love our son? Connell will be fine. He is all I will have left of you, of us. Ask him if he still remembers I am his father. He poisoned Damon against me too. Their insolence borders on mutiny.”

A beat. A fracture. Rhiannon realizing there was no way back.

“This,” he said — and though I couldn’t see the gesture, I felt the weight of it — “is my final gesture of love to you. Do not squander it. I don’t have much left in me after this.”

He stepped closer.

Too close.

Rhiannon didn’t move.

His hand rose — slowly, almost tenderly — and cupped her jaw.
She leaned into it, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“Caelan…” she whispered.

He leaned in and kissed her.

Not soft. Not gentle. A desperate, breaking thing, filled with passion and pain — like he was memorizing her mouth, her eyes, her shape, her emotional warmth, because he knew he was about to lose it forever.

Her hands clutched his coat. She kissed him back, sobbing.
I was starting to feel like a total creep, sitting in the bushes watching my grandparents make out as if auditioning for the next sequel to “Fifty Shades”.

And then his hand slid from her jaw to her throat.

I froze.

Rhiannon froze.

“Caelan—” Her voice came out strangled, a thin, cracked rasp forced past his grip. “Please…”

His thumb pressed lightly against her throat — testing, weighing, deciding.

I stepped forward, ready to intervene — but something in the air held me back. A force. A warning. A truth:

If I moved, he would kill us both.

His grip tightened—
She gargled. A terrible sound.
You couldn’t strangle a vampire. But I could. My dad could. Caelan could. Cesare could do it without even having to touch you. I won’t explain. Just take the fact.

And then he broke.

A sound tore out of him — not a word, not a growl, something raw and wounded — and he stumbled back like he’d been burned.

Rhiannon collapsed forward, catching herself on her hands, sobbing.

Caelan stared at his own hands, fingers curled like claws, horrified by what he’d almost done.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do it. I can’t hurt you. Even now.”

He turned away, shoulders shaking, and for the first time in my life, I saw Caelan look… defeated. Was he—crying? No. No, that couldn’t be right. But something in him had cracked.

Rhiannon reached for him. “Caelan, plea—”

“Don’t.” His voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t sharp. It was wrecked, scraped raw from the inside out. “If I stay,” he said, still facing away from her, “I will finish what I started.”

He swallowed hard — a thick, painful sound, like the words were cutting him on the way out.

“You need to go. See Leeora, she knows what to do. I know you didn’t know. I didn’t know. This is nobody’s fault—” his voice cracked, barely holding together, “—but it’s undeniable now, and I can’t live with it. I can’t let it stain the Vannucci line.”

His shoulders trembled once — barely — but enough to show the break underneath.

“You were my one true love,” he said, the words sounding like they were being torn out of him. “The only woman I have ever loved… and the only one I ever will. But we can’t be together. Not now. Not knowing what I know.”

A long, shuddering silence.

“It is bigger than all of us. So go. We both will begin anew, the way it was meant to be. I cannot fix this. You can’t. Nobody can. You must go, and I must… salvage what I can.”

His voice dropped to something hoarse and hollow.

“It’s the only path left. For you… and for me. And for my entire lineage.”

He didn’t turn. He couldn’t. And somehow that was worse than if he’d screamed.

And then he vanished into the trees, leaving her kneeling in the dirt, crying his name into the night.

I left. Some moments aren’t meant to be witnessed. Rushing to her now would only shame her further.

I lay awake for hours afterward, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of our world — my world. Maybe I was too human in some ways even though I had been born a vampire, born into this world, into this life.
Vampires weren’t inherently bad, but we weren’t good by mortal standards either, and we most certainly didn’t live by their rules.

This was the vampire way.

The Other Wound

My own life wasn’t much better.

I had this curious misfortune of ending up injured a lot lately — nothing dramatic, nothing noble, just enough to land me in the medic ward. And I will never admit this out loud, but… I may have ensured I was hurt just enough to warrant a medic looking at it.

Several times.

And maybe I wouldn’t have gone this far if I hadn’t watched Caelan — the most emotionally constipated vampire alive — fall apart over the woman he loved. Seeing him break like that, seeing what it did to him… it messed with me. Made me wonder if I’d thrown away something real with Cerys. Made me wonder if pushing her off “for her own good” was actually just cowardice dressed up as duty.

So, I kept getting hurt just to see her.

Pathetic, right? Yeah. I know.

But it was the only excuse I could think of to see her without rousing questions. Apparently first dumping someone in the harshest way imaginable — as if I were competing for the “Douchiest Douche Worldwide” award — only to then crawl after them like an obsessive‑compulsive dog in heat wasn’t socially acceptable.

Cerys walked in, eyes distant and professional.

It was torture. Actual torture. Not the heroic kind — the kind where you sit there knowing you did this to yourself and now have to pretend you’re fine and this is what you wanted and it’s all for the greater good.

Pah.

She worked in silence. I tried to match it. Failed instantly.

Every touch took me back to moments shared — intimate ones, sweet ones. My brain queued up a highlight reel of everything I’d thrown away, looping it like some sadistic director’s cut. Not helpful.

Every time she reached past me, every time her sleeve brushed my arm, every time she didn’t look at me — it was like being stabbed with a very tiny, very polite dagger.

When she reached for another instrument, I grabbed her hands before I could stop myself.

“Cerys… I’m sorry. I know I messed up. Please — meet me later. Somewhere private. I will explain best I can. Please come, if you still care about me. Midnight. Behind the old oak.”

And even as I said it, some part of me winced — because “explain best I can” was code for “lie around the truth and hope she doesn’t notice.” I hated myself for that. Hated that I couldn’t give her the real reason, the real problem, the real everything. So basically I was begging her to give me a slice of her day so I could stutter half‑truths and hope she’d stick around platonically, which was neither of us wanted but as far as I could take this. Good Lord.

She didn’t answer.

She just pulled her hands back, expression unreadable, and kept working like I hadn’t just thrown my dignity into a woodchipper.

Which, to be fair, I had.

I felt like something that had been in the sale basket for a long time and my price had just been lowered again.

I waited that night.
And waited.
And waited.

She didn’t come.

Eventually, I left. Frustrated. Heartbroken. I had my answer.

Well, what did I expect? That she’d run to me to love on me?

I threw myself onto my bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about how stupid I’d been, about what could have been but now never would be — when something hit my window.

I ignored it. Bug or bird.

Then again. And again.

I raised my head. Listening.

Again.

That wasn’t a bug or a bird. Those were…

Pebbles.

Pebbles didn’t tend to fly around on their own.

I sat up so fast I nearly fell off the bed. Stepped to the window and looked out — just in time to see Cerys below, tossing another one.

I knocked on the glass and waved, then ran downstairs, out the front door, around the house.

“What changed your mind?” I asked when I reached her.

“Nothing,” she said. “I was going to come. But this is what happens when you invite a medic — an emergency came up.”

“Oh…” Relief hit me so hard I had to steady myself.

We sat on an old tree stump together, in silence.

“I heard about your grandparents’ divorce,” she said quietly. “Bummer. I understand now why you’ve been acting so strange.”

“Yeah… if you knew the half of it.”

“Does that half I don’t know about have anything to do with why you’ve been bleeding all over my infirmary lately?” Her tone was soft, but sharp enough to cut.

I swallowed.

“It’s complicated.”

“It always is with you,” she said, not unkindly. “But this time feels different.”

“It is.”

She waited. I didn’t speak.

She sighed, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Damon, I know something is up. Something is weighing on you. Not at first. Initially I thought you broke up with me to get back at me for dumping you first. Some male ego trip. And I was very upset and angry. But… eventually I got to thinking. As a medic you’re also a bit of a psychologist, and it seemed out of character. Then you kept showing up with new, random injuries, and while I’m not well‑versed in armed battle, I know you’re way too advanced and skilled for this to keep happening. And it occurred to me: you don’t want this. Do you?”

“No,” I said, barely above a whisper. “I definitely do not.”

“Then why?” Her voice cracked. “What happened? Talk to me.”

“I can’t.” The words scraped out of me. “That is the problem. Cerys, there’s something about me I can’t — I am tainted. I can’t say more than that. But you not knowing is not fair to you. My grandmother didn’t know, and you see how that ended. I do know, and I just… can’t.”

She stared at me for a long moment, searching my face.

I knew my ramblings made zero sense to her.

Then she leaned in and kissed me.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t gentle. It was desperate — the kind of kiss that tries to pull truth out of someone’s bones.

I kissed her back before my brain caught up. Then I tried to pull away, mumbling against her lips, “I can’t… I can’t…”

She held on.

“But I can,” she whispered. “And together we can. The real question is whether you want to.”

“I want to,” I admitted, voice breaking. “But you don’t understand — I am…”

“Confused,” she said. “Hurt. Affected by your family falling apart. By your grandmother being treated dismally. I get that. But don’t throw this away. Don’t be like your grandfather. Don’t throw me away, Damon. Don’t throw us away. Whatever this is — it’s not stronger than what pulls us together. I don’t know what you mean by tainted, but I do know that whatever it is that has you so distraught, it won’t change my mind about you. I thought I couldn’t live with you taking lives. Then I had to, and realized the truth isn’t black and white. Whatever has you trying to set fire to all we’ve been building isn’t black and white either. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I couldn’t.

She was so close to the truth.

My shoulders shook. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I’m scared,” I whispered. “I’m so damn scared, Cerys.”

An Enforcer never admits fear. Never.

She cupped my face with both hands.

“Then let me be scared with you. Don’t break us up. If you can’t tell me that terrible secret, then don’t. But read my lips: I want the man beneath. I don’t care about the rest.”

And for the first time in my life, I let someone hold me while I fell apart.

I’m not proud to say this — but not too proud to admit it either: I cried.
Vampires don’t cry, especially males — we’re a few centuries behind on what is and isn’t socially acceptable emotional behavior for both men and women, apparently.

Enforcers most definitely do not show emotions freely. We’re trained from youth to be tough, to withstand pain, to identify threats and form plans. And here I was, shaking like a child, knowing this situation had no plan. Not even the beginning of one.

I couldn’t be with Cerys.
I shouldn’t be with Cerys.

But I didn’t want to be without her.

I had treated her cruelly thinking it was what I had to do, for her.
She just gave me a way back in, despite all that.
Yet, the facts hadn’t changed.
I wanted to tell her everything but now I was afraid. I am not even exactly sure what I was afraid of, maybe a combination of many things

So now what.

I said nothing, she didn’t press.
She even hinted at us spending the night together, and man, I wanted nothing more than that, but knew I couldn’t trust myself so we parted ways.

This had to be platonic. The rest was too much.

La Bella Spina

The Beautiful Thorn

I wish I could say things got better after that.

They didn’t.

Not for me.
Not for Dad.
And definitely not for Rhiannon.

Because the night after my breakdown, Caelan made his next move — the one none of us saw coming.

He brought home Lucrezia Belaspina.

The name alone carried weight.
The Belaspina were old‑blood Italian vampires — wealthy, influential, and respected far beyond their borders. Their insignia bore a single black thorned rose on deep crimson, wrapped in the family motto:

Spina che punge, sangue che lega.
The thorn that wounds, the blood that binds.

Lucrezia embodied it.

Tall, statuesque, with the kind of beauty Renaissance sculptors tried and failed to capture. Hair like dark silk. Eyes almost black — bottomless, unreadable, weighing the worth of everything she saw. Skin pale as marble. Cheekbones sharp enough to cut. A mouth made for secrets and diplomacy. She moved like someone raised in marble halls and war rooms — elegance wrapped around steel.

La Bella Spina.
The beautiful thorn.

She was everything Rhiannon wasn’t — not better, not worse, just different. Sharper. Colder. Political to her marrow. And most definitely not tainted by fae.

But she didn’t come alone.

Her younger brother, Valentino Belaspina, followed her into the Hollow like a shadow made of charm and trouble. Handsome in a way that felt intentional — dark hair, sharp jaw, eyes that sparkled with mischief or malice depending on the angle. His coat alone probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

Their family had once led a thriving coven in northern Italy — until the night everything burned.

A rival coven razed the Belaspina estate in a single night — a calculated usurpation drenched in treachery. Their parents were cut down first, then the grandparents, then the aunts and uncles, every elder of the line slaughtered before they could rally their defenses.
The halls fell silent long before dawn.

Their father, knowing the end was upon them, had sent a courier to beg Cesare for aid. Then, with no time left, he hid his two remaining children in a stone cellar beneath the old chapel, sealing them inside with his own hands before turning to face the invaders.

He bought them minutes.
Only minutes — but enough.

Cesare received the plea and dispatched his Enforcers and his army at once, moving with the swiftness of a falling blade. But by the time we reached the estate, the usurpers had already drenched the floors in Belaspina blood.
The elders were gone.
The line was shattered.

We annihilated the attackers to the last — but not in time to save the family.
Only the two children of an ancient lineage remained.

Lucrezia emerged from the cellar with ash in her hair and a silence that felt older than she was.
Valentino followed her out, jaw set, eyes burning with a fury far too ancient for someone his age. They did not weep. They did not tremble. They simply watched the ruins of their home smolder.

From that night on, the remnants of their father’s coven followed them — and would heed Cesare’s word because he had answered the call, even if fate had allowed him to arrive only moments too late.

Lucrezia was an icy beauty.
Polite and proper, but I could see right through it — she was not someone you crossed and lived to tell the tale.

Her brother was trouble.
I knew it the moment I saw him.

Valentino bowed to Cesare with perfect courtesy, then implied a hand‑kiss to Branwen, drowning her in charm and compliments until she actually giggled like a schoolgirl. He tried the same with Scarlett, but Blaine nearly unleashed one of his gutter‑mouthed tirades on the spot. My father Connell and mother Emmy greeted him with cool formality, despite his attempt to lay the charm on my mother too.

YUCK.

Then he looked at me.

Not at my uniform.
Not at my rank. At me.

And he smirked — slow, amused, like he’d just discovered a new hobby.

Yup. Trouble. Somehow I knew instantly he and I would never be friends.

Fantastic. Another vampire who hated me on sight.

And when he noticed me glancing toward Cerys — who was watching from across the hall before quickly averting her gaze — his smirk sharpened.
Things were still tense between us; she had wanted me to retract the breakup, but I told her I couldn’t. So, while we were on better terms than before I broke us up initially, she was still hurt, reading my restraint as stubbornness.
And I… I was still torn between what I wanted to do and what I felt I had to do.
It was so hard to keep convincing her that this was the right thing when I didn’t even believe it myself.

Valentino picked up on my connection with her in an instant.

He gave her a second smile — warmer, smoother, practiced.
And then he went to her.

My blood boiled instantly.

He laid it on thick — charm, compliments, the whole performance — and she blushed and giggled, and I wanted to pull his spine out through his throat.

Yes. That man would be trouble.
Nothing but trouble.
Arrogant bastard.

The Belaspina siblings stayed.
Caelan flaunted Lucrezia proudly; she looked regal by his side.
And Caelan looked at her like she was the answer to a question he hadn’t known how to ask.

The coven whispered.

Branwen went silent — she knew neither she nor Cesare could stop this, knew there was no path back for Rhiannon now. Clearly, her son was already shopping around for a new woman by his side.
Scarlett was fuming about her brother’s behavior.
Blaine would not shut up about that ‘slimy spaghetti wrangler having balls the size of Lear jets trying to come onto HIS wife!’.
Well buddy, same, man, same.
Except you had a ring on yours, while I told mine we were platonic.

ARGH!

Things can always get worse though.

When the engagement announcements were posted – oh yeah, Caelan went there – Rhiannon’s face went white as bone.
I just about fell over.
Oh hell no!
THAT chick was gonna be my step-grandmother?! Poor dad!
And that Valentino… Part of me hoped he would go back wherever he had come from again soon.

Then things escalated and then the real bomb dropped:

Lucrezia was pregnant.

A vampire pregnancy — a miracle, considering Caelan was close to that age where most vampires went barren, but Lucrezia was still young, by our standards.
Maybe a few years older than me — which made the whole “step‑grandmother” thing feel like the universe was personally trolling me.
She was clearly fertile.
Valentino looked about my age.
Maybe a year older. Maybe a year younger.
Hard to tell with vampires who age like fine wine and bad decisions.
But definitely close enough that the whole situation felt even more ridiculous.
Among the occult communities, this was a political earthquake.

Another heir for the Vannucci line — one in name again, since my father and I had chosen to go with O’Cavanaugh.

Caelan married her within the week.

Yeah.

The wedding was a spectacle unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Three days and three nights of feasting, music, and more vampires in one place than I have ever seen before even in battle.
Dad and I were forced to attend in full Enforcer uniform, pretending we were there to keep order, not because we were commanded to show face.
Shock reveal: originally, we both were not gonna attend.
Cesare knew that, and he knew it would send Caelan through the roof so … he ordered us to be there … as Enforcers.

Clever man.

We both hated every second of it.
Mom, who originally wanted to boycott this nonsense too, came by with my older sister Fiona as moral support for us, since Fiona was a vampire, though she wisely left her mage husband and daughter at home. My other sister, Jaymie, would have probably come too, but she was a werewolf and would have gotten shredded before ever setting foot in the castle, but both couldn’t deal with ‘that woman!’ and just wanted to leave before they insulted someone and we’d have to arrest them overnight.

And then — because, apparently, he was determined to speedrun his way into an untimely death — Valentino showed up and turned that saccharine smile on Fiona.

I swear my soul left my body.

He complimented her hair, her dress, her “radiant presence,” and actually reached for her hand and kissed it over and over until Mom finally stepped in and gently curbed his enthusiasm.

Fiona froze, caught between politeness and the instinct to set him on fire with one of the many chandeliers illuminating this travesty.

And all I could think was:

If her husband, Gwydion — the ancient mage known for ruthless behavior — finds out about this, he is going to kill him in the worst possible way.

Fiona’s mage husband had about the same level of patience as Caelan — meaning none — and much like Caelan, he had been documented throughout history as striking first and asking questions… never. The man once leveled half a courtyard because someone insulted Fiona’s cooking. If Valentino kept this up, we weren’t just risking an argument — we were risking a war.

But apparently, he wasn’t done tempting fate.

Because next, he turned toward my mother.

Emmy — eternally looking younger than even me in that soft, girl‑next‑door, warm‑sanguine way, all gentle blond hair and warm brown eyes, cute as a button despite being a great‑grandmother — smiled politely when he approached. And Valentino lit up like he’d just found his next victim. He bowed, took her hand, and laid on the charm so thick I could practically hear the gods placing bets.

He called her “enchanting.” He called her “radiant.” He called her “a vision.”

I nearly blacked out.

And then — because the universe has a sense of humor — my dad, Connell, abandoned post.
Enforcers only ever do that if they sense an issue and move to diffuse it before it escalates. I guess this technically counted… but mostly it was him being jealous.

My father didn’t start a fight.
He didn’t growl.
He didn’t even speak.
Not a single word.

He simply stepped between them, slid an arm around Emmy’s waist, kissed her like the world didn’t exist, and walked her away without breaking eye contact with Valentino.

Valentino just grinned — slow, wicked, delighted — like he’d been waiting for that exact reaction.

Yup. I had him coded properly right off the bat. This guy loved stirring shit up.

Then his eyes met mine. And he grinned more.

That was the moment I knew he was doing all of this on purpose. Weaponized charm. Calculated chaos.

And then — because apparently, he wanted to gamble with his life — he turned toward Cerys.

But this wasn’t the warm, smooth charm he’d used earlier. This was different. Sharper. Focused. Predatory.

He stepped into her space, one arm braced casually against the wall beside her head — not trapping her, but making it very clear she’d have to move through him to leave. He leaned in just enough that she had to tilt her chin up to meet his eyes.

Cerys froze for half a heartbeat.

Then he smiled — that devastating, deweaponizingly handsome smile — and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear with two fingers, slow and deliberate, like he was testing how far he could push before someone snapped.

He murmured something low, something meant only for her, and she laughed — soft, breathy, surprised.

My brain went dead for a moment.
WTF?!
Out of all the girls at this party, he needed to encroach on mine?!

…Except she wasn’t mine. Not anymore. Not officially. Not in any way that gave me the right to intervene.

Oh, I REALLY hated my life and everything in it right now. And I couldn’t even move — I was supposed to keep post. ARRRGH.

She glanced at me. Just a flicker. A tiny, sharp look that said everything:

YOU wanted this.

And then she tilted her head at Valentino, smiling up at him like he’d hung the moon.

I stepped forward anyway — pure instinct, pure stupidity — trying to do what my father had done with my mother, trying to walk her away before this became something I couldn’t unsee.

“Cerys,” I called out, low, strained. “Come over here. Please.”

She didn’t move.
She didn’t even blink.

Instead she looked at me with that same quiet, wounded fury she’d been carrying since the breakup — the one that said you made this bed, Damon – for both of us.

Valentino’s eyes slid to mine. And he smirked — slow, wicked, triumphant.

Then he offered her his arm like a gentleman in a portrait.

And she took it.

They turned to walk away, and I moved to follow — but stopped dead when I saw Connell back at his post, giving me a warning look sharp enough to cut stone. Cesare’s gaze joined his, colder, heavier, a silent command:

Stand. Down.
If you wanted to move about like a guest, you should have attended as such.

I stood there, fists clenched, watching Valentino lead her away like he’d won something.

And maybe he had.

Because I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Naming Conventions

Even before the wedding, Rhiannon was forced — again — to renounce the Vannucci name. She was supposed to do it right after the divorce but she had dragged her feet on it. Now it was done for her, forcefully.
But she didn’t become an O’Cavanaugh again. Now that she knew the truth, she took her real birth name: Rhiannon O’Rhiain. And somehow, that single – understandable – choice managed to deepen the split already tearing our family apart.

Dad, Mom, and I had never changed our names back after Caelan and Rhiannon’s first divorce — not because we forgot, but because we refused. O’Cavanaugh was the line we drew between us and Caelan after the way he treated her. It was our distance. Our solidarity. A choice we kept even after they reconciled and remarried.

And now we knew the truth: O’Cavanaugh wasn’t anyone’s birth name. Not Rhiannon’s. Not ours. Just the name an orphanage gave a baby with no past.

But none of us was going to entertain — even for a split second — taking her  fae name. No way. Not ever. Not for all the love in the world!

So we talked about it, the three of us. Vannucci or O’Cavanaugh.

We unanimously landed on O’Cavanaugh.

So, for better or worse, it was the name we had chosen decades ago. It was how people knew us. It was ours now. We decided we would be the beginning of a new lineage — the O’Cavanaugh one — whatever that would ultimately mean.

Well… it would be the beginning of a lineage if I ever got off my ass and did something meaningful about my relationship status.
A legacy needed heirs.
Kids.
And for that to be a true lineage, I would need a girl — ideally a wife.

I’d been on the way there, until the fae bomb dropped and Caelan lost his fucking mind, pulling some beautiful Italian survivor out of nowhere and procreating with her while our heads were still spinning from the divorce.

Now that walk to the altar with Cerys seemed pure fiction again.

Fantastic legacy heir, me.

Probably goes without mention, but my father was — to put it mildly — unsettled by the idea of a sibling incoming.

Rhiannon had been pregnant multiple times after him, decades ago now, but only two of those pregnancies had led to births. Both daughters. Both gone young from mysterious illnesses no healer could explain — illnesses that had even puzzled the all‑knowing Cesare.

Now we could guess the truth: her subdued fae blood fighting the vampire blood inside her children, tearing them apart before they ever had a chance.

And now he would be a big brother again — to a sibling younger than his great‑grandchildren. And if I were a betting man, I’d wager there would be more kids. That Lucrezia would burrow her way deep into the Vannucci lineage and if she had to pop a new kid out every year from here until doomsday.

We were vampires, and this wasn’t unheard of, but for all of us it was still… cringe. Uncomfortable. Wrong in a way none of us wanted to say out loud.

And not just that. There was another aspect worth considering.

This new child – and any future siblings – would be a Vannucci in name and blood.

My father was a Vannucci by birth — but with tainted blood and no longer the Vannucci name. So the question hung there, heavy and ugly:

Would the incoming heir replace my father in more ways than one?

Would Dad slide down the food chain and take Mom and me with him, until we were only Enforcers in the eyes of Caelan — and Cesare — from now on?

This wasn’t just status. This was structural. Foundational. A shift in the hierarchy that could change everything.

Now the divide between my father and his father wasn’t a rift. It was a canyon.

And I was caught in the middle.

Tension Rising

We still had to function. Three Enforcers of the Hollow, professional obligation forcing us into the same places day after day. But it was bound to explode — and one day, it finally did.

It happened in the training hall, where the air always smelled faintly of steel and old blood. The sound of fists hitting leather echoed like distant thunder.

“You’re destroying her,” Connell said — his voice normally warm and steady, but now shaking with fury, deeper than usual, like something old had cracked inside him. “You’re destroying all of us.”

Caelan didn’t even look up from wrapping his hands. His voice came out low, raspy, dangerous — the kind of voice that made the air feel colder.

“You think you get to judge me?” he growled. “You know nothing.”

“I know enough.” Connell’s voice hardened, still strong but trembling with hurt. “I know you humiliated her. You humiliated us.”

Caelan’s eyes lifted — cold, bright, lethal. When he spoke, it was a quiet rasp, like a blade dragged across stone.

“I humiliated us? If you want to see the source of humiliation and disgrace for the Vannucci family, you need only look into a mirror, my boy. You abandoned your name. Your legacy. You abandoned me.”

“You abandoned her. You abandoned us. And you abandoned yourself,” Connell shot back, voice cracking but unbroken. “You are a cold‑hearted coward.”

Caelan’s jaw twitched — and then something in him snapped.

“Oh, spare me,” he snarled, voice dropping into a deep, throaty rasp that vibrated through the hall. “You? Talking to me about legacy? You’re the worst interpretation of a son any man could wish for. Not even carrying the Vannucci name anymore — so what good are you? You’re not an heir. You’re not anything.”

Connell went still. The silence hummed like a live wire.

Caelan wasn’t finished.

“And your mother?” he spat, voice sharp enough to cut. “That barren, lying disappointment of a woman never managed more than one child — thank the gods, as one has to say now. Two of your children married trash. And your wimpy son—”

His eyes cut to me like a blade.

“—your wimpy son doesn’t even know how to be a man, let alone find a wife or father heirs. So yes, I stepped up. I saved this family. I restored the Vannucci line. I did what none of you could.”

My stomach dropped. Connell’s face drained of color.

Caelan leaned in, voice low and vicious, almost a whisper — the kind that makes your bones feel cold.

“I erased the stain. I undid the fae infiltration. I gave this family a real heir again. A pure one. A strong one. Something you and your pathetic branch could never provide.”

The punch came fast — a blur of motion and the crack of knuckles against flesh. Caelan blocked it with ease and landed his own, the impact echoing like a gunshot.

Then the fight erupted.

Not a spar. Not a scuffle. A war.

Decades worth of resentment detonated at once. Fists, fangs, claws, the crack of bone against stone. They slammed into pillars hard enough to shake dust from the rafters. A table splintered. A wall cracked. Connell’s snarl echoed — raw, wounded, furious. Caelan’s roar answered — deep, feral, ancient.

Two forces of nature tearing the room — and each other — apart.

And then Cesare appeared.

“Enough.”

He barely raised his voice — but it carried. Smooth, aristocratic, perfectly enunciated English with the faintest Italian undertone, like a Renaissance nobleman stepping out of a portrait. His presence alone froze the air.

Caelan, panting, blood on his lip, turned his gaze on Connell.

“You are my Enforcer,” he said, voice shaking with rage, the rasp still there. “But you are no longer my son.”

The silence afterward was suffocating. Even the torches seemed to dim.

Connell didn’t argue. Didn’t shout. Didn’t break. He just walked away — shoulders squared, jaw set — and somehow that hurt more than anything Caelan had said.

And I stood there, my own voice stuck somewhere in my throat, wondering when my life became… this.

If there was a lesson buried somewhere under all this carnage, I sure as hell couldn’t find it. Caelan was spiraling, Rhiannon was shattered, Dad was slipping down the family hierarchy like a stone in a well, and I was sneaking around at night crying into the shoulder of the woman I wanted but didn’t dare take — even though Cerys was still willing to give me another chance.

The Vannucci were soaring (or imploding — hard to tell), the O’Rhiain were rising again, the O’Cavanaugh were held together with duct tape and denial.

And I was supposed to be the heir to this mess. Supposed to continue a new lineage. Supposed to build something out of ashes.

But how, without a woman? Without a real future? Without a clue? With blood in my veins tainted with fae?