Updated Dec 29, 2025 • ~10 min read
POV: NOVA
I couldn’t sleep.
Two weeks after receiving my mother’s sword, I still found myself waking in the middle of the night, reaching for it where I kept it beside the bed. Touching the hilt like a talisman against nightmares.
Tonight was no different. I woke gasping from dreams of fire and blood, Dorian’s steady breathing from the chaise the only sound besides my racing heart.
He was sleeping. Finally. He’d been working late into the night for weeks—council meetings, border disputes, the endless politics of keeping vampire society from imploding.
I should go back to sleep. Should let him rest.
Instead, I found myself drawn to his study.
The door was unlocked—unusual. Dorian was meticulous about security. But tonight, in his exhaustion, he must have forgotten.
I slipped inside.
Moonlight filtered through tall windows, illuminating shelves of books, maps covering the walls, a massive desk covered in papers. This was where he worked. Where he made decisions that affected thousands of vampires.
Where he’d planned the massacre that destroyed my pack.
The thought made me pause. Should I be here? Invading his privacy felt wrong, even after everything.
But I’d promised myself truth. No more hiding from painful realities.
I moved to the desk. Reports on border skirmishes. Trade negotiations. Supply requests. All the mundane work of governing.
Then I saw it: a drawer slightly ajar. And inside, the edge of what looked like a journal.
My hands were opening the drawer before I’d consciously decided.
Inside were three leather-bound journals, dates written on the spines. The most recent ended twenty years ago.
Twenty years ago. The year of the massacre.
I shouldn’t read them. This was private, personal. Dorian’s thoughts weren’t meant for me.
But my hands were already opening the first journal, flipping to entries from twenty years ago.
And I couldn’t stop.
Day 47 of King Vladmir’s campaign. He’s demanding results. Says the wolf packs are becoming too bold, too organized. Wants me to make an example.
I’ve argued for negotiation. For treaties. He won’t hear it. Says I’m going soft. That centuries of peace have made me weak.
I’m not weak. I’m tired. Tired of endless war. Tired of following orders I don’t believe in.
But I’m still his general. And generals follow orders.
I flipped forward, my heart pounding.
Day 89. The king has identified his target: the Redwolf pack. Says they’re the strongest, most influential. Eliminate them and the others will fall in line.
I’ve spent three days trying to find another way. Offered alternatives—territorial concessions, tribute, even hostages. The king refuses.
He wants blood. And he wants me to spill it.
Further still.
Day 103. The king gave his ultimatum today. Eliminate the Redwolf pack completely, or he’ll send forces to exterminate every wolf pack in our territory. Thousands dead instead of hundreds.
He means it. I can feel the truth through our blood bond. He’ll do it out of spite if I refuse.
So I have a choice: Be the monster who kills hundreds, or the coward who lets thousands die.
There’s no good answer. Just lesser evils.
I choose the lesser evil.
May whatever gods exist forgive me.
My hands were shaking. I flipped to the next entry.
Day 107. We march on Redwolf territory at dawn. I’ve given my commanders strict orders: make it quick. No torture. No prolonged suffering. If we must be monsters, at least we can be merciful ones.
I don’t expect this will make it easier. But it’s all I can offer.
The next entry was dated the day after the massacre.
I killed a woman today. She had a child.
I can still hear the child crying.
The woman was fierce. Strong. Protective of the cellar door where her daughter hid. She could have run. Could have saved herself. She chose to shield her child instead.
She begged me to spare the girl. Made me promise her daughter would live.
I promised. Then I killed her.
What kind of monster makes promises to the dying and keeps killing anyway?
The kind the king needs, apparently.
Two hundred wolves dead. A pack erased. All because I chose hundreds over thousands.
I tell myself it was necessary. That I saved lives by ending others.
I don’t believe it.
The child’s crying still echoes in my mind. I wonder if she escaped. If my small mercy of leaving her alive was enough.
I wonder if she’ll grow up hating me.
She should.
I hate myself.
Tears were streaming down my face. I flipped forward, reading entry after entry.
Day 125. Nightmares every night. I see their faces. Hear their screams. Watch the village burn over and over.
Viktor says it will get easier. That all generals learn to carry the dead.
I don’t want it to get easier. Don’t want to become someone who can slaughter families without it destroying me.
But I’m already that person. I proved it.
Day 200. I’ve started tracking wolf survivor movements. There are perhaps thirty still alive, scattered and hiding. Including a group of twenty-three led by—I think—the woman’s daughter.
She survived. The child from the cellar. She’s alive.
I kept my promise, at least partially.
It doesn’t make it better.
But it makes it slightly less monstrous.
The entries continued—twenty years of guilt, self-recrimination, nightmares. Detailed accounts of sending anonymous resources to wolf survivors. Money. Food. Information about safe territories.
Helping the very people he’d orphaned.
Day 2,847. The council proposed a peace treaty. Requires a political marriage between vampire and wolf leadership.
When they said the Redwolf pack, I knew.
The child from the cellar is now their leader. The woman’s daughter, all grown up.
I volunteered immediately.
The council was surprised. Asked why I’d marry a wolf.
I didn’t tell them the truth: That I owe her everything. That her mother’s last words haunt me. That maybe—maybe—this is how I keep my promise.
To protect her daughter. To give her the life her mother wanted.
Even if it means binding her to the man who destroyed her family.
Even if she hates me forever.
It’s what I deserve.
And it’s the least I owe her.
I was sobbing now, full-body shaking. The journals fell from my hands, scattering across the floor.
This wasn’t the simple story I’d told myself. Not a monster casually destroying lives for power or pleasure.
This was a man trapped between impossible choices. Who’d chosen the lesser evil and been destroyed by it. Who’d carried guilt for twenty years. Who’d helped the survivors he’d created because he couldn’t undo what he’d done.
It didn’t make it right.
But it made it complicated.
“Nova?”
I looked up to find Dorian in the doorway, wearing sleep clothes, hair disheveled, eyes widening as he saw the journals on the floor.
“You read them,” he said. Not a question.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t explain why I’d invaded his privacy.
He crossed to me slowly, kneeling to gather the journals. His hands were gentle with them, like they were precious.
“You weren’t supposed to see these,” he said quietly.
“I know. I’m sorry. The drawer was open and I—” Fresh tears fell. “You’ve been helping us. For twenty years. Sending resources anonymously.”
“It was the least I could do.”
“You volunteered for this marriage because of a promise to my mother.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been trying to keep her last wish. To protect me.”
He set the journals on the desk, then turned to face me. “I failed her in every way that mattered. The least I could do was try to honor her final request.”
“She made you promise to let me live.”
“She did. And I’ve spent twenty years making sure I kept that promise. Even if it meant watching from a distance. Even if you never knew.”
I looked at this man—this vampire general who’d slaughtered my pack and then spent two decades haunted by it. Who’d helped us survive. Who’d married me not for power or politics, but because he’d promised a dying woman he’d protect her daughter.
It was too much. Too complicated. I didn’t know how to feel.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why let me believe you were just following orders without remorse?”
“Because I was following orders. And remorse doesn’t undo death. Doesn’t bring back your mother or your pack.” He met my eyes. “You deserve to hate me, Nova. These journals don’t change that. They’re just explanations, not excuses.”
“But they change how I see you.”
“Do they?”
I thought about it. “You’re not the monster I imagined. You’re something worse—someone who knows better but does terrible things anyway. Someone who carries guilt but keeps breathing. Someone who destroys lives and then tries to fix them afterward.”
“Is that worse?”
“Yes. Because I can’t just hate you cleanly anymore. I have to see you as a person. Someone trapped and suffering and trying desperately to atone for the unatonable.”
He flinched like I’d struck him. “I’m sorry. For all of it. For killing your mother. For the massacre. For burdening you with my guilt through these journals.”
I stood, wrapping my arms around myself. “Do you know what the hardest part is?”
“Tell me.”
“Reading that you kept your promise. That you’ve been protecting me for twenty years. That my mother’s last wish was for me to live and you’ve honored it.” More tears fell. “Because it means some part of you isn’t a monster. And that makes everything so much harder.”
“I wish I could make it simpler for you.”
“You can’t. This is just… what it is. Complicated and painful and impossible to categorize.”
We stood in his study, surrounded by twenty years of guilt and secrets, two people bound by tragedy trying to find a way forward.
“I’m still angry,” I said finally. “Still hurt. Still grieving. Reading your journals doesn’t erase that.”
“I know.”
“But…” I struggled for words. “I think I understand better now. Why you did it. What it cost you. It doesn’t make it right. But it makes you less monster and more… broken person who made terrible choices.”
“Is that better or worse?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He nodded, accepting. Through the bond, I felt his relief that I knew the truth, his fear that it would make things worse, his desperate hope that maybe—maybe—it would help.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the journals. For the truth. For trying to honor her last wish.”
“You’re welcome. Though I didn’t intend for you to find them quite like this.”
“The drawer was unlocked.”
“I know. I think… I think part of me wanted you to find them. To know the whole truth without me having to say it.”
“Coward,” I said, but without heat.
“Absolutely.”
I gathered the journals, holding them carefully. “Can I keep these? Read them properly?”
“They’re yours. Everything I am, everything I’ve done—it’s all yours to judge.”
As I left his study, arms full of his guilt and secrets, I thought about my mother’s last words. Her final wish that I survive.
She’d extracted that promise from the man killing her.
And he’d kept it. For twenty years. Through nightmares and guilt and desperate attempts at atonement.
It didn’t make him a hero.
But it made him something more complex than the simple villain I’d needed him to be.
And I had no idea what to do with that truth.
Except carry it.
The way he’d been carrying it for two decades.
Both of us trapped by that cellar. That moment. That impossible choice.
Maybe we always would be.
But at least now, we were trapped together.
For better or worse.
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