Chapter Text
The slicing, white-hot pain that cut through his chest, right after the balcony door snapped shut behind him—
Now, that pain made Zero think twice about his life choices.
“I’m sorry,” Takamiya Kaito said, hazel eyes bubbling with tears. His hands held the sword sticking out of Zero’s chest. “I’m so sorry.”
Zero’s first thought, ridiculously, was He actually came. Zero had sent Kaito an invitation to the ball at the last second. He’d wanted to reach out to his friend, just one more time.
Seiren, mistress of the guest list, had given Zero judgmental eyes. She’d borne witness to Kaito’s furious tantrum at the Moon Dorms. But she’d humored Zero. She’d sent the invitation.
She must have informed Kaname of the addition, Zero thought. But Zero and Kaname hadn’t spoken about it. As the ball drew nearer and no word came, Zero had assumed that Kaito was too betrayed to attend. And there had been so much else to worry about. Kaito was just one problem, and a personal one at that. Angry as he was with Zero, Zero hadn’t considered him an actual threat.
He’d thought that Kaito cared enough about Zero not to hurt him.
How human of me, Zero chastised himself, blinking through the shock. Hunters weren’t human, not really. Not in the ways that mattered.
Zero thought of Kaito’s beloved brother. Turned by a Pureblood, slain by Kaito’s hand. The greatest act of love Kaito, a hunter, could give him after he fell Level E. After he became a vampire. A monster.
Like Zero, now a Pureblood. Purebloods were even worse than an E, to some. To Zero, not too long ago.
In hindsight, Zero should be hurt that Kaito had taken this long to try and kill him.
But Zero wasn’t Kaito’s brother. And he was not ready to die yet.
Pushing the pain back, Zero forced his brain to focus. Kaito’s left hand was clamped on Zero’s shoulder. His right was curled around the grip of the sword. The blade was lodged in the left side of Zero’s chest. Too far over to strike his heart but hurting like a bitch all the same.
Ironically, Kaito’s grip helped keep Zero standing. Zero did the rest of the work, locking his knees and breathing shallow. Kaito hadn’t withdrawn the sword. If Zero fell, he’d slice himself against the blade no matter which way he collapsed.
While Zero did this analysis, Kaito kept babbling apologies. They were wet with sobs and confused. Zero could barely follow his words.
“Why?” Zero asked. He choked the word out around the pain. “Because I’m… a…?” Vampire, monster, Pureblood?
Zero knew the answer, of course. But he was scrabbling to buy time. Where the hell was security? Kaname? Shouldn’t he be crashing onto the balcony, summoned by Zero’s pain as it flooded the bond?
But, as it turned out, maybe Zero didn’t know everything.
“No!” Kaito cried. He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t barely breathe. Certainly, he didn’t move to strike again. His eyes were wide and sodden, emphatic. “No, no, no, no.”
Zero frowned, totally confused now and not just from the rapid blood loss. “Then…why?”
Kaito cringed. “She’s in my head. She’s been there for months. I had to—she told me to put a sword through your chest, so I had to.”
She? Fuck. Zero hated conspiracies.
He coughed. Breathing hurt. Kaito must have nicked a lung, if not run it right through. But Zero needed to focus. “Who?”
“Shirabuki,” Kaito hissed. His face twisted weirdly, as if the name burned his mouth. “She—she forced her blood in me. She’s inside my head.”
Shirabuki. Zero scoured his mind, coming up with a Pureblood family. The family was almost dead, though, just a daughter left behind.
Sara, he thought. He remembered a Shirabuki Sara from the guest dossiers. Long blonde hair, quiet, reclusive.
Not so quiet, maybe. Not so reclusive. Not if Kaito was being truthful, and not just insane.
“She’s here,” Kaito insisted, uncaring of what Zero might be thinking. “She’s here, and she’s coming for you, and for him.”
Forcing his numb fingers to move, Zero wrapped his hands around Kaito’s clenched grasp on the sword grip. There, now he had at least a little control of the sword.
“She’s going to kill you, kill Kuran, kill you all,” Kaito was muttering, wild-eyed. “She’ll kill everything.”
Zero turned his head left and right. Hunter sigils were scrawled on the manor’s stone walls. Kaito must have been out here for an hour, at least, weaving subtle hunter seals to swallow sound and the scent of blood. Even psychically, Zero felt numb and dumb. The bond sat like a hunk of led in his brain, smothered with hunter magic. Useless.
“You need to let me go,” Zero said, panting around the sword. “Kaito, do you hear me? If Kaname finds me like this, he’ll kill you.”
Kaito laughed. It was a horrible sound. High and reedy, totally unlike himself. With bloodshot eyes, he stared into Zero’s face and grinned. “It would be a kindness.”
Zero felt sick in a way that had nothing to do with his injury. Whatever was going on, Kaito believed he had to do this. And that this Shirabuki woman was responsible for it.
He squeezed his hands around Kaito’s. Blood, Zero’s blood, was leaking over their tangled fingers. It was a sick parody of every other time they’d locked bloodied hands together: pulling each other out of fucked up missions, off the training room floor, away from danger.
“Let me help,” Zero said. “Let me help, Kaito. Someone is hurting you. Let me help stop her.”
“You can’t,” Kaito cried. The tears clinging to his lashes finally spilled over. “She’s going to kill you, Zero.”
Zero wanted to laugh. Hysterically. He had a sword sticking out of his chest. What was Shirabuki going to do that Kaito hadn’t, exactly? Twist the blade in deeper?
Zero stilled. He looked down at the blade. Kaito hadn’t moved it at all. Actually, Kaito was actively holding it still. And the blade—it wasn’t Kaito’s. There was no tell-tale agony of a weapon designed to hurt vampires biting into vampire flesh. This blade was as human as a kitchen knife. And yeah, Kaito had clipped his lung. But he’d missed Zero’s heart by a mile.
Zero, young as a Pureblood though he was, would heal from this wound in a day. Hours, maybe, with enough blood.
“She told you to put a blade through my chest,” Zero said, staring at Kaito’s white face. “So, you had to do it. But you didn’t come here to kill me.”
Kaito closed his eyes, sending tears coursing down his cheeks. “No. I don’t want to kill you, Zero, never. She picked me because I was close to you, so I tried—I tried to get away from you, to make it harder.”
“But I couldn’t let you go,” Zero said, weeks of behavior suddenly recontextualized. “Fuck.”
Kaito looked away, shame-faced. “I’m sorry, Zero. I should have tried harder.”
Zero shook his head. “If she’s that deep in your head, you’ve done as much as you could.” The pain became more bearable the longer Zero felt it. He could think through it, now. Using some of that clarity, he tugged sharply on the bond between his soul and Kaname’s—and still got nothing.
Zero’s tugged harder; no dice. An unnatural barrier stood between Zero and his mate, like someone had wrapped a psychic hand around the middle point of their connection and choked it. Zero couldn’t send a message along, nor could he receive anything from Kaname.
It was like he was alone in his head for the first time in weeks, and he fucking loathed it.
“You’re trying to call Kuran,” Kaito surmised, staring at Zero’s face. “Fucking desperate for him.” He laughed, ugly and short. “It’s why she wanted the Princess so bad, you know,” Kaito said, disturbed. “She figured out that the Princess belonged to her. So, she sent me to help her. To draw her deeper into Sara’s hand.”
“The Princess?” Zero asked. He blinked. He only knew one Vampire Princess. “Yuuki?”
Kaito nodded miserably.
Fuck. An aching dread mixed in his gut with Zero’s sickness over his deadened bond. It sounded like this Shirabuki Sara’s mate was Yuuki. Kaname’s beloved little sister, complicated as the feelings were; his descendent, the lone surviving child of his parents Jurri and Haruka, the girl he’d devotedly protected for years.
To kill Yuuki’s mate would damn Yuuki to insanity. And Kaname would always hesitate to hurt Yuuki, Zero knew. Shirabuki could easily use Yuuki to hurt Kaname. To kill him, even. Was that her goal?
Shirabuki had sent Kaito to kill Zero—had attacked Zero already, in Tokyo? Shirabuki could have had her hooks in Kaito that long, using him to manipulate the Association and to lure Yuuki closer. And Yuuki—had she been involved in Zero’s murder attempt?
Gods. He knew she hated him, but to hate him that much—
Not human, Zero reminded himself. He was dealing with hunters and vampires. Murder could be a love language, between them. If Yuki was involved, he and Kaname should probably take it as a gesture of her affection.
Zero shook the thoughts away. He could worry about Yuuki later. He needed to get to Kaname. Right now, that meant he needed to remove the goddamn sword from his chest.
“Kaito…” Zero said, keeping his voice as calm as he could manage, given the hunter seals and psychic deafening and the fucking sword held in his chest by his mind-controlled best friend. “Kaito, I need you to take the sword out of my chest.”
Kaito immediately went ridged. “I don’t—I don’t think I can. She didn’t say I could.”
“She didn’t say you couldn’t, either,” Zero coaxed, using all the tiny amount of patience he’d been born with. “What do you think she meant, huh? To stab me and then hang around holding a sword in my ashes?”
He didn’t point all the ways Kaito had already stretched Shirabuki’s orders. Kaito looked one wrong move away from shattering. Zero had no idea what the repercussions of that would be. Would Shirabuki know? Would she be able to take some kind of horrible revenge on Kaito? Would he survive it?
No. Better to work inside the bitch’s commands. She thought she had total control? Let her.
She obviously hadn’t met Zero before.
Kaito took a shuddering breath, the kind that shook his entire body. It also jerked the blade in Zero’s chest, which was terrible, but Zero gritted his teeth and swallowed the pain. Light was entering Kaito’s eyes now. A light that had brought Kaito back from his brother’s death, had helped drag Zero out of his own grief. It was the kind of light that forced you to live, not just survive.
Zero wasn’t going to dampen it just because he needed to swallow back more blood.
He moved his hands around Kaito’s. “On the count of three, you pull, I push.”
Shakily, Kaito nodded. “One.”
Zero tightened his grip. “Two.”
‘Three’ was silent. It was always silent, since they were small kids learning how to kick in a door.
Just like then, they moved in perfect tandem. The blade slid out of Zero’s chest in one smooth motion. Hatefully, that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
“Fuck,” Zero cursed, clamping his hands over his weeping chest.
The pressure barely coped with the bleeding, and, of course, did nothing for the exit wound on his back. All his beautiful white clothes were ruined with blood.
Zero spared a moment to be sad for that. Takuma and Ruka had been so proud of how pretty he’d turned out. Beautiful, they’d said, after all their hard work. And when he’d looked at Kaname’s face, his softly dropped jaw and wide, brown eyes, felt the awe and love and want that poured through their bond, Zero had believed his friends.
All that hard work, ruined now. Soaked in blood. Just like always, Zero thought, tired.
In front of him, Kaito was cursing a bluestreak. “Sorry, fuck, shit—I’m so sorry, Zero.”
“It’s fine,” Zero said, though, in fact, it was not. The wound wasn’t going to kill him, but it hurt. And loosing all that blood sucked, too. Sucked worse than the pain.
The blood loss would leave him weak, dulled. The more blood a vampire lost, the easier they were to kill. And Zero wasn’t used to his Pureblood body. He didn’t know how to fight in it yet. He’d only just figured out dancing, for fuck’s sake. He couldn’t imagine what fighting blood-starved was going to be like.
Kaito stared at him. The guilt rolled off him palpably. “You have to let me help.”
Zero laughed. He struggled to shift his weight, testing how his body bore up. He couldn’t feel his fingertips, but he was positive he could still shoot Bloody Rose. He turned, trying to get a sense of what lay beyond the hunter magic and inside the ballroom. But heavy crimson curtains covered the glass balcony doors and the seals hid everything else.
“You can’t help me,” Zero said. “Not if Shirabuki can say one word and make you stab me in the back.”
That, and the last place Zero wanted Kaito was anywhere near Kaname. Both because of the mind control, and because Kaname would kill Kaito the minute he found out who caused Zero to stain up his pretty kimono. Better Kaito be on any other continent than this one when that news broke.
“No, you’re right, I can’t help you against her,” Kaito said. He looked down. “I’m compromised.”
Zero shared in his misery. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was worse than losing control of your mind. Of becoming something that would hurt your friends and family without care. Fear of falling to Level E had driven Zero to the edge of suicide so many times he’d honestly lost count. He’d never loved Yagari more than when he’d pressed his shotgun to the back of Zero’s head and promised not to make him suffer.
Privately, Zero was in awe of Senri. He’d come back from being Rido’s puppet with barely a stutter. Zero hoped that meant there would be hope for Kaito, too.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Zero said bluntly, clinging to that hope, before Kaito could make the argument. “I’ll knock you out and leave you under a glamour.” Hopefully, that would keep Shirabuki from using Kaito again or disposing of him like a broken toy. “We’ll figure out how to fix you.”
Kaito’s shoulders slumped. “You always had a soft heart.”
Zero snorted. “And you always had a soft head.” He raised a hand, already wet with his blood, ready to draw a seal on Kaito’s chest that would keep him in sleep until Zero let him go or the seal was broken.
But Kaito caught his wrist, stopping him from drawing. “Wait. I can help another way.”
Zero drew his hand back, the blood congealing on his fingertips. His chest and back ached with every breath, radiating pain into the rest of his body. The ghost of the pain from his older injury seemed to be stirred by the new one, each pain echoing and compounding until his whole body hurt. Which was to say, Zero really didn’t have any patience for whatever harebrained scheme Kaito had dreamed up. “What do you mean?”
Kaito stared at his chest—the blood still spilling out and growing the stain, blooming like a rose across the white fabric. “I did that,” Kait said, and shrugged off his leather jacket. He wore short-sleeves underneath. He raised one rippling, bare forearm and offered his inexplicably delicate wrist to Zero. “Let me help heal it?”
Zero stared. His fangs pulsed with want, his injured body instinctively craving a powerful hunter’s blood. But this was Kaito. The trauma of a Pureblood’s bite was the cornerstone of their friendship. Even in Zero’s wildest fantasies, where Kaito had accepted the monster lurking sealed in Zero’s bloodline, he’d never expected—never wanted—to take Kaito’s blood.
“I was a shit to you when you told us you were a Pureblood,” Kaito echoing Zero’s thoughts further. “I wanted you away from Shirabuki, and that meant keeping you away from me. But you’re my best friend, Zero, the only brother I have left. And if you have to fight this bitch without me, I can’t let you do it with a hole I made in you.”
If Zero had anymore time, any less anxiety about what he’d find inside the ballroom, he might have cried. His blood was the greatest gift Kaito could offer. Yes, to fix a wound he’d made, but not by choice. Kaito was as blameworthy for the hole in Zero’s chest as the sword itself was.
But it was Kaito’s choice to fix the damage. His choice to heal Zero, and to sacrifice his fear and anger to do it.
Gingerly, giving Kaito all the time he could afford to spare to withdraw, Zero drew Kaito’s hand forward. Zero’s instinct was to decline anyway, to spare Kaito the painful choice, but he found he couldn’t bear to. What if the blood loss made him a little too slow and Kaname paid the price? Kaname, or Cross, or Yori, or any of the others Zero loved? Kaito wouldn’t offer what he wasn’t capable of giving, and Zero just wasn’t in a place to refuse.
Sensing Zero’s hesitance, Kaito nodded firmly. “Do it, Zero. What’s a little blood between you and me?”
Zero smiled. Kaito’s bravado had mustered him through a hundred scary situations as a child. It was as warm and familiar as a favorite winter sweater.
Letting Kaito’s mock confidence guide him one more time, Zero bit.
The scene on the other side of the balcony doors was, in a word, disorienting.
“What the fuck?” Zero muttered, staring around the room. He’d slipped quietly through the doors, hoping he’d go unnoticed in the fray. He’d wanted a couple seconds to get the lay of the battlefield. But his seconds were now drawing rapidly to a close, and there was no goddamn battlefield in sight.
The orchestra played gaily on. Beautiful vampire couples waltzed across the ballroom. Clusters of wallflowers gathered around drinks and plates of snacks. They were ostensibly watching the dancers, but mostly they were gossiping and laughing.
Zero, having prepared himself for a bloodbath, spent his valuable stolen seconds gaping at the tableau. A mistake. He should have called for Seiren.
But instead of Kaname’s capable guardian, one of the dancers was first to catch sight of Zero. She was grinning, fully enjoying the spin her partner turned her out on. Her eyes met Zero’s through a mask covered in music notes.
Her eyes flew wide, immediately seeing the blood still spilled all down the front of his kimono. Smelling it, now that her brain had made the connection between coppered scent and wound. She froze. Her partner frowned as she refused to be reeled back in from the turn. And then she screamed.
Fuck! Zero scanned around the room, doing his best to look uninjured and nonthreatening. Very difficult to do, given that chest wounds bled like a motherfucker. “I’m alright—” he tried, but the effect was ruined by the little wheeze that slipped through as his weak lung fought to get its act together.
Damn Kaito, anyway. Bastard couldn’t have tried for another inch to the right?
Someone cried out on his left. “Zero!”
Zero turned his head and saw Takuma cutting through the crowd. Unsurprising. Takuma had a sixth sense for social scandal. Zero’s addition to his life had doubtlessly honed that sense to a sword’s edge.
Senri followed Takuma, naturally, and Seiren materialized at Zero’s elbow before either man reached Zero. She put herself bodily between Zero and the horrified guests, tucking Zero’s back against a solid wall. Takuma and Senri fell onto his either side. An easily defensible position, Zero realized.
“I’m okay,” Zero said, before the jumpy vampires could interrogate him. “I’m not hurt.” Much. Kaito’s blood had stopped the wound from bleeding, but it would take more time for the hole to fill.
“Wonderful!” Takuma chirped. His smile was bright but showed too much fang to be friendly. “Let’s get you cleaned up then, hm?”
“Great idea,” Zero said, uncomfortably aware of the growing attention from the guests. Most looked upset, scared—others were simply curious and bad at hiding it. No one looked smug or pleased, or like they had any idea that Zero was supposed to be dead right now. Were Shirabuki’s supporters not among the crowd?
Zero grimaced. Maybe they were just excellent actors.
Takuma, Senri, and Seiren hustled him out of the ballroom in record time. Hanabusa met them in a small blue sitting room, empty of guests, and the doors were sealed. Before Zero could catch his breath, he was being pushed onto a low couch.
“You were alone for twenty minutes,” Seiren hissed, frustrated beyond even her legendary iron control. “On an empty balcony. How did you manage to be bloodied up in twenty minutes on an empty balcony?”
“The balcony was not empty,” Zero said blandly. He batted away at Hanabusa, who was pawing at the layers of Zero’s kimono.
“I’m trying to see where you’re bleeding from, idiot,” Hanabusa snapped. With his mask still on, spreading the broad wings of a monarch butterfly over his face, he looked like an especially pissed off fairy.
Rolling his eyes, Zero shuffled the bloodied fabric away and let Hanabusa at the wound.
“Holy fuck,” Hanabusa said, bending closer to examine it. Zero sat up straighter to accommodate him. “That’s from a sword. You were stabbed with a sword. Again.”
“It’s becoming a habit,” Zero acknowledge irritably. “But the sword was not the vampire-killing kind of sword, this time.”
“Oh, joy,” Hanabusa snarked, beginning to rummage through a medical bag dropped at his side. “Give the man a gold star. Only a normal-killing sword, this time.”
“Who had. The sword. Zero.” Takuma said, each tiny phrase its own tightly controlled sentence. Zero had the feeling that, had Takuma said all the words as one sentence, it would have been at a much louder volume than he was currently using.
“Ah,” Zero said intelligently, cringing as Hanabusa hit him with the disinfectant. “That’s complicated.”
“In the sense that there is a body on the balcony that I need to collect, or in the sense that your assailant got away?” Seiren asked.
Zero rubbed at the headache building between his eyes. “Bit of both. Hey, does the name Shirabuki Sara ring any bells?”
Takuma blinked at him. “Yes.”
“She liked to make eyes at Takuma during social functions,” Senri said, as though this were a cardinal sin. Which, to Takuma’s mate, it probably was.
“I think she’s been trying to kill me,” Zero said. “And she’s after Kaname. And, allegedly, she’s Yuuki’s mate. And there’s a mind control element involved, too.”
Dead silence. Zero was unbothered. So deep in the on-going psychosis of his life, disbelief really didn’t touch Zero anymore.
He took a couple deep breaths. Tried to calm his racing heart. Reached for Kaname in the bond again and still, fuck, couldn’t touch him. The bond must be stifled on Kaname’s end.
Fuck. Kaname could be dying and Zero would have no idea.
“Where is he, anyway? Kaname?” Zero asked, trying not to let his rising anxiety show in his voice. “I can’t feel him, but I thought he’d smell my blood by now.”
Takuma was pale as milk. With purposeful calm, he untied the mask from his face and set it aside. “Ten minutes before you came back into the ballroom, Shirabuki Sara requested a private conversation with Kaname-sama. As a fellow Pureblood heir, he was obliged to indulge her.”
Zero stared. “Of course, he was,” he said. He focused on the pinprick-rhythm of Hanabusa’s neat stitches.
Let the anger build with each tug and weave.
Let something bloodthirsty rise up with it.
Later—much later, years later—Zero would think it all happened too fast.
One minute, Hanabusa tied off his stitches. The next, Zero was stalking down a quiet hall of Kuran Manor. Takuma, Senri, and Seiren flanked him, Hanabusa sent off to go genially shuffle any wayward guests into the ballroom, out of harm’s way.
Takuma took the lead, the only one who had been to Kaname’s private office. Officially, it was the manor’s observatory.
The observatory would have a beautiful view of the forest, Zero thought as he walked. It was on that side of the manor. Kaname, the ancient Kuran Ancestor, guardian of those ancient trees, would appreciate that view. It would comfort him, as he stood in a home he built but that must feel so different, now thousands of years after he last saw it.
Zero hated the thought that Shirabuki was standing in that room. She didn’t deserve to be let inside, her sweet face hiding her malicious intentions. Her pale, white hands clean of the blood she’d spilled. Of the blood she wanted to spill.
Zero scowled. Fuck her. If she wanted to kill Kaname, she should have done a better job of killing Zero.
The observatory was tucked behind tall, black doors. Zero had never seen them before. He tried not to think of them as ominous.
Takuma paused, raising his hand to knock. Zero, however, was fast on his heels and not in the mood for politeness. The doors opened with a crack.
Again, Zero expected blood. Again, he was bemused by quiet.
He found Kaname first. It wasn’t hard. The room, though spacious, contained little furniture. An expansive desk dominated one end, with a pair of simple leather armchairs set before it. Windows curled around the room, blending into the ceiling, giving the impression that nothing stood between the inside and the trees. It was, in a word, beautiful, and it took no imagination to understand why it was the room Kaname had claimed for his private business.
Kaname sat in one of the armchairs, mask gone, but face mask-like all the same. He looked on Zero, Zero’s bloodied clothes, and his wide-eyed courtiers with perfect calm. He gave no indication anything was out of the ordinary.
The bond was silent, suffocated. Hunter magic was rife in the air—a ward had to be in the room. Zero had no psychic hint of what Kaname was feeling.
He didn’t need the bond, though. He didn’t need Kaname to do or say anything. Zero was a hunter of monsters, and a monster himself. He recognized predatory stillness, the careful waiting for violence.
Zero matched it, easily. His shoulders dropped, anxiety becoming something purposeful. Lethal.
“Taking my mate into a private meeting at my debutante ball is untoward, Shirabuki-san,” Zero said. Takuma had drilled him on the dos and don’ts of this night, aware that some asshole might try to trick Zero into embarrassing himself. But he probably hadn’t anticipated a murder attempt. Though, vampires being how they were, maybe Takuma had.
Either way, Zero owed him. A batch of sweet tarts, maybe? Apples were coming into season soon, and Takuma loved caramel. Of course, before Zero could go back to his baking, they’d all have to survive this next bullshit first.
Zero took his place behind Kaname’s chair, just to the left. The position was his due, as Kaname’s mate, and let him stare down his nose at Shirabuki. She was seated opposite Kaname in the second chair, escorted by a short woman in a black mask and veil. Zero could taste the magic coating the figure, hiding her scent and aura.
She might have been a mystery to everyone else in the room, but not to Zero.
“Take the mask off, Yuuki,” Zero said, with a tiredness and pain he couldn’t quite smother. “You shouldn’t need to play these games with family.”
A ripple of surprise passed through the room. No one else had guessed, then. Not shocking. Zero wouldn’t have guessed either, if not for Kaito.
Hesitantly, the woman in black raised a hand to her mask. Then, she paused and looked at Shirabuki. The blonde nodded her golden head. The woman drew off her disguise.
The missing Kuran Yuuki was revealed, in the flesh. She shuffled nervously, eyes fixed on Shirabuki. Her body leaned toward her like she was tethered to Shirabuki by an invisible cord.
Irritation flashed in Zero’s gut. The part of him that saw Yuuki and still thought sister was furious. Yuuki stood at Shirabuki’s shoulder, seeking to please her. This psychotic bitch who’d mind-controlled Zero’s best friend, attempted Zero’s murder twice, and might want Kaname dead.
But if Yuuki was Shirabuki’s mate, pleasing Shirabuki was as much in Yuuki’s nature as pleasing Kaname was in Zero’s. He couldn’t expect Yuuki to fight what Zero himself had not.
And maybe Yuuki deserved to try and kill Zero, at least once. He had broken up her last relationship. And stolen her fiancé. Gods, she must think he was some kind of homewrecker. Though, really, it should be Kaname she was trying to kill over that.
Zero looked Yuuki over. Killing Kaname might be her goal tonight. But she didn’t seem like it.
Her chocolate hair was braided back and up, in a crown around her head. It kept the waist-long mass of it easy to hide under the veil, Zero guessed, but it also left nothing to hide her eyes. They were huge and wet, set in a chalky white face over a pursed pink mouth. She didn’t look angry, Zero thought. She looked scared.
“You have a clever mate, Kaname-san,” Shirabuki said pleasantly of Zero. “Beautiful, too. He does you credit.”
Her eyes roved over Zero’s body as she said the words. Her attention hung on his face, his hair, the blood-spill staining his chest and waist and all down his legs. But while she watched Zero with disturbing focus, she spoke to Kaname. She spoke to Kaname like she was talking about an especially lovely pet of his.
Thoroughly creeped out by Shirabuki, Zero tried again to reach Yuuki. “What was your plan for tonight?” He gestured to his bloodstains. “The murder attempt didn’t work. Again.”
Yuuki flinched. “I’m sorry,” she croaked. Her hands were clasped behind her back. “I thought you were trying to hurt Kaname. You always wanted to, when we were kids, and last year—”
“That’s enough,” Shirabuki snapped meanly. Like a hand had been clapped over her mouth, Yuuki fell silent. Shirabuki softened her tone. “My Princess always has the best intentions, doesn’t she? She’ll make a lovely queen.”
“And legitimize your rule as Vampire King, you must imagine,” Kaname said, finally roused to speaking. Though, honestly, Zero had given more appreciation to his pre-calculus classes than Kaname seemed willing to grant to this meeting. And Zero had slept through most of pre-calculus.
Glancing at Kaname from the corner of his eye, Zero saw that he appeared very much like he’d rather be asleep than having this conversation. He was relaxed and laconic, his eyes nearly half-mast. He spread his knees wide and lounged in his armchair, as lazy as a panther at noontime.
He was everything Zero loathed about vampires: arrogant, idle, and spoiled, careless with power and uninterested in consequence. Had Zero stood in this room six weeks ago, Zero would have let Shirabuki try her hand at dusting the repulsive Kuran Prince. Hell, Zero might have helped her.
This insidious creature, Zero knew, was Kaname. It was a part of him just as real as the cozy bedmate who brushed a comb through Zero’s hair, or the lover who stalked him hungrily through the woods. But, it was also only just that. One side of Kaname. Real and truthful, but not the whole man. It was a sword to be wielded. A shield to hide all he held dear behind.
It was working, too, Zero thought. Shirabuki hated this display of Kaname’s as much as Zero ever had. Even a beauty as delicate and sweet as Shirabuki’s could not hide it. Her doll-like body was tight and tense in her chair, her jewel-bright eyes cutting rather than sparkling.
Hatred was distracting, Zero knew intimately. Hatred could destroy you.
“There is nothing to imagine,” Shirabuki chimed tightly. The ring of funeral bells. “You sister is mine, a part of my own soul. And even if you care nothing for her—”
Yuuki flinch like she’d been struck.
“It doesn’t matter,” Shirabuki said. “This game is mine.”
She looked at Kaname like she expected him to have something to say to her. Chin tilted up, shoulders back and proud. She waited.
As the silence settled and then began to stretch, Zero realized that the air wasn’t just tense. It was heavy, too. Weighty. Zero’s gut tightened, his lips parting with a vampire’s instinct to snarl and bite. By his side, his right hand stiffened as he fought of the urge to pull Bloody Rose from her hiding place in his kimono.
Shirabuki was using her powers, Zero realized. The weight was her aura, twisting and condensing as she rallied whatever psychic gift her pure vampire blood granted her.
Fuck. Zero hadn’t known that she had powers. It wasn’t a guarantee with vampires, even Purebloods. To his knowledge, Hio Shizuka’s powers had only been her ability to plot.
Zero scanned the room, then the people in it, looking for ice like Hanabusa or fire like Akatsuki, or Zero’s own rose vines. But nothing materialized. The room was calm and perfectly still.
Zero flicked his eyes at Kaname. The Ancestor lounged still, superficially unbothered by anything at all.
After another long, terrible minute, Kaname smirked. “Troubled, Shirabuki-san?”
Zero hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman for longer than it took to check on Kaname, and so he had a perfect view of Shirabuki’s living, seething hatred as it splashed across her beautiful face. “What are you doing?” she spit, furious.
“You are not the only one with powers,” Kaname said. He tapped his temple meaningfully. “Did you think silencing my bond would not put me on guard?”
Shirabuki sneered. “I thought killing your mate would be worth it.”
Zero heard Takuma gasp. It was the subtlest sound; a bare, quick snatch of air. He only caught it because there was no other sound in the room.
The world hung around them, over an abyss, suspended on a strand of spider silk. And as Kaname began to laugh, Zero felt that black darkness swallow the world whole.
His laugh was low and melodic. Deceptively gentle. Beautiful, in the way of venomous things.
Kaname snatched Shirabuki’s throat between one chuckle and the next. It was instant. One moment he sat idle and amused, and the next he was wrath manifest. No living eye, mortal or vampire, could have seen the change.
The sleeve of his kimono slipped down his arm as he drew Shirabuki out of her seat. His forearm flexed. Zero was transfixed by the careful placement of his fingers, curled delicately over her windpipe. He could kill her in an instant, Zero knew, his fist crushing her neck while his free hand carved her heart from her breast.
Yuuki was crying. Loud. Her whole body shook with sobs. Her black gown—it consumed her. Like grief was eating her whole.
Kaname snarled. Yuuki screamed.
It happened so, so fast, Zero would think later. A sliver of a second, less time than it took to think. Just an instant. Instinct. Born of hunting and bloodlust.
When he thought about this night later, trying to reason out why he did what he did, it was Shirabuki’s face that would stick in his craw. She didn’t look scared, Zero would think.
Shirabuki's throat was in the crushing grip of the ultimate predator. Kaname was a weapon beyond counteraction. And Shirabuki, she hadn’t just struck at Kaname. She had threatened Zero, the mate the Ancestor had craved for millennia. A horrible error. Shirabuki was only fallout, now, Zero realized. Kaname would have someone sweep up her ashes later. Spare a moment of grief for Yuuki, driven to madness by the loss of Shirabuki, her mate.
Shirabuki’s whole life hung in that emotionless grip. Years of effort, and Yuuki's future. All squandered. And yet not a twist of fear existed in her.
Why wasn’t she scared?
Kaito’s face—no, his wrist, neatly bitten by Zero’s Pureblood fangs, a gesture of brotherhood—flashed in Zero’s periphery.
Yuuki’s was crying so hard. She was terrified. Yuuki loved her brother, Zero had never doubted that. She would do anything to protect Kaname. But she wasn’t watching Shirabuki. No, her eyes, sunshine brown swollen with tears, looked right past her dangling mate. They looked, begging, at—
“She’s in my head—"
Zero.
Vines burst from Zero’s veins. It hurt—it always fucking hurt—but they sprung forth, immediate and vicious. They sprawled from his grasp around Bloody Rose, where his hand had so naturally curled. His whole arm crawled with thorns, burrowing out of his skin, slicing his kimono to ribbons. He fell, keening, as the vines dragged him to his keens.
“Shoot Kuran Kaname!” Shirabuki howled. The wrath of a goddess, ringing out just a second after the first rose bloomed.
The command pushed through Zero’s brainstem like a lightning strike. Synapses fired, his muscles seized and struck. Zero couldn’t resist her; had been tainted with her poison blood, delivered to his system by Kaito’s offered wrist.
Kaito had never been meant to kill Zero—only open a door Zero was too stupid to see was a trap.
No wonder Shirabuki wasn’t scared. Her greatest threat to Kaname stood at his shoulder, loved and trusted by him. Armed, only a command away. She’d made sure of it.
Zero screamed. His arm struck forward to shoot, but his body broke against Bloody Rose’s vines. They held his body down, still. Once only leaves, the vines were hard like diamonds now. His pure blood had perfected them. They sprawled relentlessly. Glittering. Unbreakable.
His Pureblood aura glittered white. Kaname had taught him only this morning to manifest it. Zero had stared at the diamonds of power, fascinated by their beauty. Barely wondering what they meant for his powers. He hadn’t needed to, swathed in the darkness of Kaname’s own protective, pervasive power. Zero had felt like he had all the time in the world to learn.
He knew now. Knew these vines were shatter-proof. Knew they pulled power, not from Zero’s own blood any longer, but from the life of the thing they swallowed. Nothing would stop the vines once he set them lose. Nothing could slow their starving hunger. Pity, then, that the only way to save Kaname from a shattered skull was setting his powers on himself.
More screaming. Shirabuki. She was screaming at Zero to shoot. Her aura was screaming. Every inch of her entire considerable being was put into the order. All that power charged through Zero, demanding compliance. But Zero’s body simply couldn’t function. He’d crippled himself at just the right moment.
Sacrifice. It had always been Zero’s best move. He threw all his power behind that intent, to shield and protect, and the screaming cut off with a horrid crunch.
Another shriek. Glass screamed—exploded, all around. It fell with a sparkling crash. Splinters of pain lit up Zero’s skin.
Face screwed, body bound to the floor, Zero couldn’t see anything. His mouth and nose were filled with blood-smell—his own, overwhelmingly. A chaos of confusing noise filled his ears. Pain filled every nerve he possessed. His psychic senses were deadened. Still, he felt it when Kaname knelt at his side.
“Let go, Zero,” Kaname said. “It’s over.”
“Can’t,” Zero cringed, gasping the words. “She fucking got me. She’s in my head, I can’t stop her, I can’t. I can’t—”
His chest crushed in. His heartbeat thundered. He couldn’t fucking breathe. She was in his head, she was in control, he couldn’t stop her. He shot—he almost killed—
It was like falling E again. Red haze, no thought. Just killkillkillkill—
Zero wanted to die.
Arms locked around his shoulders, over his chest. A chin tucked over his head. Kaname wasn’t taller than him—an inch, if that—but he curled around Zero’s body in a way that made him feel small. Protected. His aura settled over Zero like a blanket. His scent overpowered the smell of spilled blood.
Zero stuttered. His breathing, his heart. He tried to get in air, failed, tried again.
Power pulsed in the air. Hunter magic. Zero flinched, seizing in Kaname’s arms, readying to attack, but, no. The power pulsed, then broke. Zero had a second to be confused, but then—
The hunter ward in the room had been broken. The bond flared to life. It raced through his mind like fire, golden with strength. Concernloveworry charged through his brain, his soul, so warm that Zero was immediately drunk on it. He slumped into Kaname’s arms like a ham-strung marionette, almost insensate.
The pain blurred, grew more distant. Zero felt his consciousness sag.
“Shirabuki?” Zero asked, pulling against the warm darkness. It was Kaname’s darkness, Zero thought, his mate’s warmth. Calling to him, lulling him.
But Zero was a hunter. No threat could be ignored. No weakness tolerated.
“Neutralized, my love,” Kaname purred, soft and bloodthirsty. He pressed an adoring kiss to Zero’s crown. “Look.”
Zero gasped. His eyes jerked open. At once, the burning technicolor world jumped into his vision.
Blood, he saw first. Ghastly sprays of red blood soaked into the floor, or else lay in pools. Zero sat in one pool, leaking from his chest and crushed arm. Another grew at Shirabuki’s feet.
Crystal vines slithered around her crumpled body. Her blue eyes were shuttered. But, she breathed. Each breath bubbled blood out of the ruined gap where her mouth had been. A vine had struck her, wrapped around her face and crushed.
In a puddle of black fabric, Yuuki lay collapsed beside her.
Relief and nausea crashed through his body. Zero heaved. His pain skyrocketed. Gods, had he hurt Yuuki, too?
Kaname pulled in all around him, holding him close and careful. His aura rose to heights Zero had never felt before, smothering all else. It was like existing in a vacuum. Like being cosseted in the heart of a blackhole. Zero slumped into him, all tension taken away.
“That’s right, my love,” Kaname soothed, one broad hand sweeping over Zero’s hair. The other carefully found Zero’s vine-strangled arm. He lay his fingers delicately over Zero’s fingers, curled around Bloody Rose, just avoiding the thorns. “No threat remains.”
No threat but me, Zero thought numbly. He stared at their hands, lain together over the gun. No threat but us.
He tucked his face into Kaname’s chest. Closed his eyes. Let that thought comfort him, quiet him, as Kaname took the gun from his hand, allowing the vines to wither and rot.
Allowing Zero, finally, to rest.