Chapter 1 The Crimson Bond

I woke up again at exactly 1 a.m.

For the seventh night in a row.

In my dreams, a pair of cold, spectral hands caressed my body-slowly, deliberately-gliding over bare skin, brushing past my neck and shoulders, lingering over my chest, and sliding lower, toward my stomach.

Chilling breath whispered against my ear, sensual yet terrifying. When those hands reached the most private parts of me, a paralyzing numbness swept through my limbs.

I couldn't move. No matter how hard I tried to scream or resist, I remained trapped-fully aware, wholly helpless-as fear bled into something darker, more primal.

The touches were not kind. They teased and tormented, switching between featherlight brushes and firm, claiming pressure. When I whimpered, something cool and damp slipped between my lips-velvet soft, coaxing, insistent.

And then... a voice.

Deep, ancient, and devastatingly calm.

"Don't be afraid. It will be over soon."

Pain tore through me-not sharp, but slow, like skin being stripped from bone.

I felt myself unravel with every inch of that intrusion, my body used like a ritual vessel, marked by blood and submission. The agony blurred my mind, and just before unconsciousness swallowed me whole, I heard a sigh beside my ear.

A sigh filled with... grief? Regret?

That was the beginning. Of what, I didn't yet understand. Only that it wouldn't end anytime soon.

******

My name is Clara. Clara Duskgrave.

Heir to a cursed bloodline-descendants of those who once offered their daughters to the Crimson Court in exchange for survival.

They say I carry a key in my blood.

Not a key to power.

A key to obedience.

And now, the one I was promised to... has come to collect.

I am his bride.

But more than anything-

I am a sacrifice.

From that night on, the dreams came often, dragging me into a world of blood and shadow, where pain lingered long after I woke.

My father called it the Crimson Bond-a blood pact sealed between a virgin and an immortal of the night. In their words, it was an ancient vampire rite, older than the Roman gods, forbidden by most clans but still whispered in dark corners of the world.

My family wasn't what most would have called normal.

We lived at the edge of society-just far enough to avoid questions, just close enough to remain useful.

Over the generations, the Duskgraves had dealt in things that most people feared:

Pathologists, morticians, relic hunters, and spiritual "consultants."

My father, being the eldest son, had inherited the family's not-so-small antique business-a front, really, for sourcing and reselling "objects of unease."

Artifacts soaked in sorrow. Jewelry that whispered. Mirrors that never reflected quite right.

Duskgrave. Grave by name, grave by nature.

Sometimes, I wondered if my great-grandfather really had crawled out of a crypt one night and decided to start a family.

That would have explained a lot.

Especially why I had turned out to be the one cursed the most.

The year I was born, something shifted.

Death swept through our family like a cold wind in a sealed crypt.

Not everyone died-but the ones who mattered most did. The strong. The promising. The ones who still carried the family's blood duties in their bones.

My great-grandfather never explained it fully. He only said that the Duskgrave name had drawn too much attention. That we had broken an old balance-one forged in blood and sealed long before any of us were born.

The night of my birth, the sky cracked open. Thunder roared. A flash flood destroyed the only bridge connecting our village to the city.

My mother gave birth at home, surrounded by candlelight, soaked in stormlight.

I cried. The moment I did, my great-grandfather found something on the family altar.

A ring.

Deep red. Smooth and warm like living flesh. It glowed faintly, pulsing-like it remembered something.

No one knew where it came from.

My great-grandfather just stared at it, then sighed and whispered, "It has returned."

I was sixteen when they brought me to the cellar beneath the old Duskgrave estate.

Not a cellar, really.

It was a crypt-once belonging to a forgotten noble family, hollowed out centuries ago and sealed in stone and silence.

In the center of that chamber stood a sarcophagus, carved from obsidian and lined with crimson velvet.

That was my bridal bed.

The ritual took place on a blood moon.

The wine was laced with ash.

The vows were unspoken.

They called it a joining.

I called it a curse.

But afterward, the house grew quiet. The shadows that had lingered over my family began to lift. Death no longer knocked on our doors.

And so, my role as the offering-the living key-was confirmed.

I survived the ceremony. Barely.

But survival came at a cost. I was never the same.

My family looked at me like I had brought something back with me. Something cold. Something that stared back through my eyes.

The ring still hung from my neck-the same one that had appeared the night I was born.

They said it was a gift from the one who claimed me that night.

No one expected me to live through the binding.

A bloodbound bride was meant to die and return as something else.

But I lived.

I bled. I screamed. I changed.

But I never died.

After the binding, my father brought me back from the ancestral manor to live with him and my brother in the city.

On the surface, life was quiet-almost normal.

But every night, I woke up drenched in sweat and silence, choking on dreams that felt too vivid to be dreams.

My brother, a med student with a logical mind, kept asking questions I couldn't answer.

"What happened that night, Clara?"

He thought he was being clinical. But even he couldn't say the words.

Because how do you explain being claimed by something no longer human?

The nightmares worsened.

They didn't just visit-they lingered. I'd jolt awake with tears on my cheeks and the taste of iron on my tongue.

And yet, the next night, it would all begin again.

The cold.

The hands.

The voice.

The touch no longer felt dreamlike. It was too real. Too practiced.

I knew those fingers-how they mapped every inch of me with the same unsettling reverence a collector might have for a fragile artifact.

His hands roamed slowly-possessively-along my ribs, my waist, my hips.

I froze. Not in fear, but in dread.

That night two years ago had carved something into my body.

I could feel its echo in every breath, every shiver.

"Clara," he whispered, his voice like velvet dragged over ice.

"My wife."

He wasn't hurried. He didn't need to be.

Every movement was calculated-cold, controlled, consuming.

I tensed as his hands slid lower, brushing places that still remembered the first time he'd taken me-bruised me-changed me.

His body pressed against mine, his touch glacial and invasive.

There was no warmth.

There never had been.

Just that voice again, dark and steady against the shell of my ear.

"You still fear me?"