Chapter 12: Lucifiel's POV

He walked out on me.

Well that was a first.

I sat on the couch and listened to his footsteps go down the stairs.

Then silence.

I stayed where I was for a long moment.

In all the years I had spent hunting, manipulating, and maneuvering people into positions that served my purpose, nobody had walked out on me quite like that.

I smiled to myself.

The kid was something else entirely.

I had done my research on Levi Cross long before I ever stood across a room watching him carry a tray at a fundraiser. I knew his history better than he probably knew it himself. Twenty two years old male. No family to speak of. Moved through seven different foster homes before he aged out of the system entirely.

Most people assumed troubled children moved through the system because they were problematic. In Levi's case that was technically accurate. He engaged in fights, arguments,and pushed back against authority with the kind of consistency that exhausted the people responsible for him.

But what those records also showed, buried underneath the incident reports and the transfer requests, was something that didn't fit the picture.

Straight A's. Every single year. Without trying particularly hard from what I could tell.

That contradiction had interested me from the beginning. A boy who seemed determined to make his own life difficult, and yet his mind worked with a precision that most people spent months or years trying to develop. He retained information effortlessly. He read situations quickly. He noticed things others missed.

Hunter instinct. Dormant, unrecognized, but present.

Or at least that was what I had told myself. After following him around like a stalker which I'm not. And that was also the part that had begun to create a small, irritating uncertainty in the back of my mind.

Hunters had a specific ability. It was bred into their bloodline the same way a vampire's hunger was bred into ours. They could sense the supernatural. Not always as clear as it should be, but it was there. An awareness. A discomfort around our kind that most of them had learned to interpret as instinct.

Levi didn't behave like someone with that awareness. Apart from his annoying sharp tongue, pretty face, and brilliance nothing else really stood out.

He noticed me, yes. But not the way hunters noticed vampires. Just in the way humans see humans. There was no recognition in it. No ancient alarm going off beneath the surface.

That bothered me.

Because he was either extraordinarily good at suppressing it. Or the ability hadn't fully awakened yet. Or...

And this was the possibility I kept returning to and kept dismissing.

He wasn't what I thought he was. But the dreams said otherwise.

I had been dreaming about him for years before I found him. Not vague impressions, not the kind of formless images that meant nothing. Although it started with a faceless boy then it turned to a boy with the same face as Levi, aging slowly across years of dreaming until it matched the face I saw at that fundraiser.

And I know how it's going to go. It was headed away to the same ending. My teeth in his throat. His blood on my tongue. The feeling of something ancient completing itself.

I stood up and moved to the window.

Below, the street was quiet. He was long gone. Probably already composing arguments for the office conversation he had promised himself he was going to demand.

I liked that about him though. And there was something genuinely funny about it, which was an unfamiliar experience.

I stood up and left the play room for my office.

Then I heard footsteps in the hallway. Two sets.

"You look like you're having a blast." Kael said.

"You no longer have respect for your king, barging in like that."

"Sorry. My lord" his tone was sarcastic and he added a slight bow to it.

"Your friendship is still fresh as ever." Rahul said.

"So what happened with your lad?" Kael asked.

" He was here today but he left early."

"You let him walk out," Kael said.

"I'm aware."

"That wasn't the plan you had ."

"A little adjustments will be needed in the plan"

Rahul came in behind him and settled near the door with his arms crossed. He was quieter than Kael by nature, which meant when he spoke it usually mattered. I waited.

I told them all what happened with Levi. They were the only beings I cared about since the village incident. They've been good friends right from the start.

"You moved too fast," Kael was the first to react. "The throat grab was unnecessary. You spooked him."

"He wasn't spooked. He was angry. There's a difference."

"The result was the same. He left."

"He'll come back."

Kael looked at me steadily. "You keep saying that. What if he doesn't "

"Because it's true."

"Lucie." He sat down across from me. "I need you to hear me on this. We've been following this thread for a long time. If this boy is truly the last of that bloodline then we cannot afford to handle him carelessly. One wrong move and he disappears. People like him, people who have survived the way he has, they know how to vanish when they feel threatened."

"He doesn't feel threatened. He feels disrespected. Those are not the same thing either."

Kael opened his mouth, then closed it.

Rahul spoke up. "I want to test the blood."

I turned to look at him.

"Before we go any further," he said calmly, "I want confirmation. We've operated on the assumption that he's the one for weeks now. But assumption isn't certain. If we could get even a small sample."

"No."

"Lucifiel..."

"No." I turned back to the window. "Not yet."

"Why not?" Kael asked.

I didn't answer immediately.

The honest answer was complicated. The honest answer was that getting close enough to take a blood sample without Levi's knowledge would require a level of deception that would end the arrangement entirely if he ever found out. And I needed the arrangement intact.

But underneath that practical reason was something less practical and something I wasn't ready to examine yet.

"Because if I take his blood before he trusts me, and he is what I think he is, the prophecy conditions won't be met," I said instead. "The texts are specific. It can't be taken by force. It has to be given."

Kael frowned. "Given."

"Willingly," I confirmed. "That was always the condition. You both know this."

Rahul was quiet for a moment. "So the entire plan depends on him trusting you enough to be willing."

"Yes."

"And tonight's approach was meant to build that trust, how exactly?"

I didn't respond to that.

Kael leaned forward. "There's something else. His ability to sense us. Hunters always have it. But you said it yourself he doesn't seem to..."

"It may be dormant."

"Or it may mean he's not the right bloodline."

"He's the right bloodline." I said it with more certainty than I currently felt. "The dreams alone..."

"Dreams can be misread," Rahul said carefully.

"Not these ones."

The room went quiet for a moment.

Kael exhaled. "What do you want us to do?"

"Keep watching him. Not close enough that he notices. Find out if anyone else had tried talking to him too." I paused.

"Sure. Will do."

They moved toward the door.

"Lucifiel," Kael said, stopping. "Whatever this is becoming with the boy. Just be careful."

"I'm always careful."

"You grabbed him by the throat within twenty minutes of him arriving. End it quickly so we can all move on."

"I told you so you'd be informed not to lecture me."

They both looked at me for a few seconds.

Kael shook his head and left.

Rahul followed without another word.

Out of all the other vamps, Rahul and Karl will remain my best men.

I thought about Levi and the way he had held his ground. The way his pulse had moved under my hand. The way he had placed the collar down carefully instead of throwing it.

He was going to come back. I could feel it. And when he did, I was going to have to be considerably more patient than I had been tonight.

The prophecy required his willingness.

I told myself that as the only reason patience mattered. Not like I have a lot of that. But it's better to believe so.