Updated Dec 14, 2025 • ~8 min read
CASS
I left at dawn.
Didn’t wait for the promised meeting. Didn’t say goodbye. Just teleported back to pack lands the moment I woke up, desperate to put distance between myself and the vampire prince who made my traitorous heart beat faster.
The bond protested immediately. A sharp pain in my chest that stole my breath. Like someone had wrapped a fist around my heart and squeezed.
“Fuck,” I gasped, stumbling into my mother’s house.
She was in the kitchen, brewing morning tea. Took one look at me and set down her cup with careful precision.
“The bond snapped,” she said. Not a question.
“How did you—”
“I felt it. All the elders did. Witch-vampire bonds carry power. They register on the magical plane like an earthquake.” She pulled out a chair. “Sit before you fall.”
I collapsed into it. The pain was getting worse—a constant ache that radiated from my chest through every limb.
“This shouldn’t be possible,” I said through gritted teeth. “Witch-vampire bonds don’t exist anymore.”
“They do now.” My mother sat across from me, ancient knowledge in her eyes. “The question is why. Bonds like this only form when there’s something—” She paused. “Something unusual about one or both parties. Hidden bloodlines. Secret magic. Something that makes the impossible possible.”
“I’m not hiding anything. I’m just a witch.”
“Are you?” The way she said it made me look up sharply.
“Mother, what are you not telling me?”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then: “Your father wasn’t just a witch. He had fae blood. Distant, diluted, but there. I never told you because it didn’t matter—you were raised witch, you practice witch magic. But perhaps—”
“Perhaps what? That’s why I’m bonded to a vampire who killed my brother?” Hysteria crept into my voice. “That’s the cosmic joke? I have some fae ancestor so fate decided to punish me?”
“It’s not punishment. Bonds are meant to create balance. To bridge divides.”
“Kael’s dead!” I slammed my hand on the table. Fire sparked across the wood. “There’s no balance in that. There’s no bridge. There’s just me, tied to his killer, forced to feel this—this—”
The words died. Because the bond was showing me something. Images flooding my mind unbidden.
Alaric. Alone in his room. Head in his hands. Grief and guilt rolling off him in waves that matched my own.
I shoved the vision away. Didn’t want to see his pain. Didn’t want to feel sympathy for the monster.
Except he wasn’t a monster. That was the problem. He was a man carrying impossible weight, and the bond kept showing me every crack in his carefully maintained facade.
“The bond will pull you back,” my mother said quietly. “Physical distance causes pain. Mental distance is… complicated. You’ll start sharing dreams. Emotions. Eventually thoughts.”
“How do I stop it?”
“You can’t. Not without rejecting it, and rejection means death for you both.”
“Maybe that would be better.”
“Cassia—”
“He killed Kael!” I stood, pacing. “How am I supposed to just accept that we’re mates? How am I supposed to look at him and not see my brother dying?”
“I don’t know.” Rare honesty from her. “But running won’t help. The bond will drag you back. Already is, from the look of it.”
She was right. Every step away from vampire territory increased the ache. Like a rope around my ribs, pulling tighter with distance.
“I can’t go back there.”
“Then he’ll come here. Bonds work both ways. He’s probably in agony too.”
Good, I thought viciously. Let him suffer.
But the bond betrayed me with a flash of his pain—sharp enough to make me gasp. And underneath it, worry. For me. For the mate he barely knew but was connected to by forces neither of us controlled.
Sage appeared at the door. “Heard you were back. How’d it—” She saw my face. “What happened?”
“The bond snapped.”
“With who?”
I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t make it real by speaking it aloud.
“Prince Alaric Ravencrest,” my mother supplied. “Kael’s executioner.”
The silence was deafening.
Then Sage: “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to stake him through his fucking heart and—”
“You can’t.” I sank back into the chair. “The bond. If he dies, I die.”
“Then we’ll find a way to break it. Ancient spells. Forbidden magic. Something.”
“There’s nothing.” My mother’s voice was gentle. Pitying. “Mate bonds can’t be severed. Only rejected, and that’s fatal.”
“So she’s just stuck? With the vampire who murdered her brother?” Sage’s magic crackled. “That’s fucking impossible.”
“Many impossible things are happening lately,” my mother murmured. She looked at me with something like sorrow. “The elders will need to meet. Discuss this. Witch-vampire bonds are forbidden for a reason—the last one started a war.”
“I don’t care about the last one. I care about this one. About being trapped with—” The bond sent another wave of his emotion. Longing. For me. For the connection he couldn’t have. “Make it stop. Please.”
“I can’t, baby. No one can.”
Sage knelt beside my chair. “Then we’ll figure it out. Together. Like we always do.”
But there was doubt in her eyes. Because this wasn’t a problem we could solve with stubbornness or magic or pure force of will.
This was fate. And fate didn’t negotiate.
That night, exhausted from fighting the bond all day, I finally slept.
And dreamed.
Not my dream. His.
I was in Alaric’s head, seeing through his eyes, feeling what he felt.
He was in his room—the one I’d attacked him in. Alone. The bond a constant ache in his chest that mirrored mine. But worse than the physical pain was the guilt.
Memories played on loop: Kael’s trial. The evidence—damning, irrefutable. Documents proving he’d been passing intelligence. The law clear. Execution mandatory.
And then the execution itself.
I tried to wake up. Couldn’t. The bond held me there, forced me to watch.
Dawn breaking over the courtyard. Kael bound to the stake, dressed in white. The traditional final drink—blood laced with sedatives to ease the passing.
Alaric approaching with the ceremonial cup. Meeting Kael’s eyes. Seeing not fear but understanding there.
“I don’t blame you,” dream-Kael said. “You’re doing what you think is right. But know this—you’re going to regret it. When the truth comes out, you’ll wish you’d had mercy.”
“What truth?” dream-Alaric asked.
“That sometimes spies work for noble causes. That sometimes treason is the most loyal thing you can do.”
Then the blood. Kael drinking. And through the link that formed—the way condemned vampires shared their final moments—Alaric felt it: Kael’s genuine belief he was helping, not hurting. His certainty that peace was possible. His regret that he wouldn’t live to see it.
“Execute him,” Queen Seraphine commanded from her throne.
And Alaric, bound by duty and law and the weight of his crown, drove the stake home.
Felt Kael’s heart stop. Felt the life leave his body. Felt the moment a good man died for crimes he’d committed but not in the way they thought.
After, alone, Alaric vomited in his chambers. Shook for hours. Couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d made a terrible mistake.
But the law was clear. The evidence was there. And a prince didn’t get to choose which executions to carry out based on personal feelings.
I woke up screaming.
Sage burst into my room. “What’s wrong?”
“I saw it.” I was crying, shaking, unable to separate my own emotions from his. “Through the bond. I saw Kael die from Alaric’s perspective.”
“Cass—”
“He knew.” The words tumbled out. “Alaric knew something was wrong. Felt it when Kael died. Has been carrying the weight of it for three months. He’s not some heartless monster. He’s—”
“He still killed your brother.”
“I know! But he—” I pressed my hands to my face. “The bond is making me see him. Really see him. And I don’t want to. I want him to be the villain. I want to hate him without complication.”
“So hate him anyway.”
“I’m trying. But the bond keeps showing me his side. His guilt. His regret. His—” I broke off. Because the bond was showing me more: Alaric, awake in his room, feeling my distress through the connection. Wanting to come to me. Wanting to comfort his mate even knowing she’d reject him.
“This is torture,” I whispered.
Sage pulled me into her arms. Held me while I shattered. “We’ll find a way out of this. I promise.”
But we both knew it was a lie.
There was no way out.
Only through.
And going through meant eventually facing Alaric again. Meant talking to him, understanding him, maybe even forgiving him.
The thought made me want to scream.
But the bond was relentless. Patient. It would pull me back to him.
And when it did, I’d have to decide: Hold onto hate, or try to understand the man fate had chosen for me.
The man who’d killed my brother.
The man who was slowly, against both our wills, becoming more than a monster in my eyes.
And that terrified me more than any vampire ever could.
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