The night was quiet—the way Kai preferred it.

  Lazarus Island exhaled softly in the dark. Waves murmured against the shore. A night bird called once—distant, solitary. Then silence settled again, thick as a blanket. The wards around the bungalow shimmered faintly, tuned to alert him of trouble, but otherwise undisturbed.

  For now, the island was at peace.

  Kai sat cross-legged in his meditation room, surrounded by a loose circle of flickering candles. His fingers rested in a grounding mudra. His breath moved slow and steady—measured. Controlled.

  And then came the knock.

  Weak. Barely there.

  But it broke the stillness like a ripple through glass.

  Kai was on his feet before his body could protest, bare feet whispering over cool tile as he moved toward the door. The knock hadn’t come again.

  He didn’t need it to.

  He opened the door.

  Dario stood there, leaning against the frame.

  Blood soaked through his coat in dark rivulets. His face was pale beneath the porch light, jaw tight, breathing shallow. One hand braced against the wall, the other clenched uselessly at his side.

  “Dario…” Kai’s voice caught. “You’re bleeding.”

  Dario exhaled, voice low and frayed.

  “I wouldn’t be here if I had another choice.”

  Kai moved fast.

  He caught Dario before gravity could. One arm wrapped around his shoulders, the other braced under his ribs. Dario hissed sharply in pain, the sound involuntary.

  “What happened?”

  “A case. Necromancer. Went bad,” Dario rasped. “I need healing. Not stitches. Not spells. Bloodwork. Shamanic. You.”

  Kai could already smell the curse—the rancid coil of corrupted magic wrapped around Dario’s wounds like barbed wire.

  Questions could wait.

  Dario gave a strained smile.

  “You told me once… if I ever came back half-dead, you wouldn’t close the door.”

  Kai’s jaw tightened.

  “I also said if you came back, it better be for more than survival.”

  The words hit like broken glass.

  Dario didn’t flinch.

  “I don’t have the luxury of more. Not tonight.”

  Kai stared at him for a moment longer.

  Then—

  “Get in,” he said, shifting his weight to guide him inside.

  “Before you collapse at my damn door.”

  The door shut behind them with a soft click, magic sealing the threshold.

  Kai led Dario into the sitting room and lowered him onto the low couch. Dario tried to wave him off with a grimace and a weak grunt, but Kai silenced him with a look.

  “Save your strength.”

  Kai knelt beside him, pressing two fingers to Dario’s chest. His pulse was erratic. Burning.

  Too hot.

  He eased the coat away. His lips tightened.

  The wound at Dario’s side was crusted with dried blood—sluggish, but not immediately fatal. The shoulder, though...

  That was something else entirely.

  The flesh around it pulsed with oily, dark magic, black veins spidering out from the impact point like bruised vines. The curse writhed beneath the skin—alive, parasitic.

  Not just necrotic.

  Sticky. Clinging. Sentient.

  The kind of curse that didn’t just kill—it wanted to stain. To linger.

  “Who did this?” Kai asked.

  Dario’s eyes were glassy with pain, but the fire still flickered behind them.

  “A loanshark gang,” he gritted out. “The Scarlet Frangipani. One of their people—she hit me with something nasty.”

  Kai’s jaw set.

  “Lie back.”

  Dario didn’t argue.

  That alone told Kai everything he needed to know.

  Kai moved quickly—years of ritual ingrained in every step. He lit the sigil lamp on the side table, its golden glow casting shifting shadows across the walls like spirits pacing in a circle. From a carved cabinet, he pulled a ceramic bowl of consecrated water and a pouch of blessed salt, the pouch stitched with ward-thread and faintly humming.

  Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, he began the invocation—an old chant, low and resonant, meant to anchor both himself and the space. The candles flickered in rhythm with his voice, as if the air itself recognized the language.

  He scattered a ring of salt around the couch. Dipped his fingers into the water.

  Then, with precision, he traced a glowing sigil in the air—hovering just above Dario’s chest.

  The moment the spell activated, Dario’s body jerked.

  The curse reacted violently, writhing beneath his skin, a dark energy pulsing in sharp waves. A hiss filled the room—like steam escaping from ruptured stone, or bones grinding under pressure.

  “Hold on,” Kai murmured, his voice calm but unwavering.

  He placed one hand firmly over Dario’s sternum, the other at the side of his neck. Magic surged between his palms—bright, clean, and searing.

  The spell burned through the corrupted tissue like sunlight slicing through fog.

  Dario arched. Muscles locked. Jaw clenched. He didn’t cry out, but the tremble in his limbs betrayed the cost. Sweat slicked his brow as the curse fought back.

  And then—the scream.

  High-pitched. Unnatural. Not from Dario, but from the curse itself. A keening shriek that echoed across planes. It wasn’t just resisting. It was aware—rooted not only in flesh, but in mind and spirit.

  A tracker. A parasite. A mark.

  Kai narrowed his focus. The spell shifted from purging to isolating, hunting down each embedded strand.

  One tendril had latched onto Dario’s spine.

  Another wound tight around his aura signature.

  Another wrapped itself around—

  There. The core.

  He flared the sigil, pouring pure will into it. The light turned from gold to white-hot, rippling with force.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  The curse bucked and twisted, lashing back through Dario’s nerves. The room pulsed with sick heat. Sweat dripped from Kai’s brow. He was nearing his limit.

  He needed more power.

  He needed Fen Jie.

  Kai hesitated only a second.

  Then—he opened the door.

  He drew upon the Blood Asura.

  The air thickened. Light warped.

  Fen Jie manifested beside him—towering, horned, radiant with wrath. Six arms folded across a chest of burning bronze. Smoke curled from its shoulders, embers falling like ash. Its eyes—twin suns—locked on the curse like a predator sighting prey.

  Without the suppression from Fen Jie, vampiric corruption stirred in Kai’s blood, triggered by the release. His fangs ached. Muscles pulled tight. The instinct to feed, to grow, surged beneath his skin.

  Not now.

  He gritted his teeth and focused, pouring every drop of borrowed power into the healing rite.

  The curse screeched, writhing as white-hot energy seared through it. The circle blazed with light. Black magic recoiled violently, burning as it tore away.

  The scent of scorched salt and blood flooded the room.

  And then, in a blink—Fen Jie was gone.

  Kai exhaled, breath ragged. The corruption stirring in his blood quieted. Fen Jie had done what was needed—no more. Now it needs to go back to suppress the Silas’ curse.

  It was over.

  The darkness peeled from Dario’s shoulder in a final, shuddering wave and dissolved into ash. It scattered across the salt ring and hissed into nothingness.

  Dario sagged back into the couch, his breath raspy, his body limp and spent.

  “It’s out,” Kai said quietly.

  Dario gave a faint nod, still catching his breath.

  “Figured… it’d be you.”

  Kai arched a brow.

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  “Flattery? You must be worse off than I thought.”

  That earned a rasping laugh—weak, but real. Dario turned his head slowly, meeting Kai’s gaze.

  “Thanks,” he murmured. Quiet. Honest.

  Kai’s expression softened, just slightly. He reached for a cloth and gently wiped the sweat from Dario’s brow.

  When he turned back, Dario was already asleep.

  Kai studied him for a long moment—the bruises, the tension still etched into his features, the shadows beneath his eyes. The wound had faded, the curse burned away, but Dario’s color was still too pale. His breathing shallow.

  He looked like someone who hadn’t rested in weeks.

  Kai’s gaze lingered.

  He ached to kiss him.

  He didn’t.

  The first time Kai met Dario was in the grimy streets of London, where the shadows held more than just darkness—they held secrets, predators, and the broken things no one wanted to face. Back then, Kai was still deep under the thumb of the Obsidian Dagger. His name carried weight, whispered with fear through the alleys of Camden and Whitechapel. A killer. A ghost. A blade in the dark.

  But that night, it wasn’t a target he was watching.

  It was a vampire—feral, blood-soaked, snarling—cornered in the dead-end of a forgotten alley.

  And it was already dying.

  Dario stood over it, one hand tangled in the thing’s matted hair, the other buried to the hilt in its throat. Blood poured over his knuckles, splattering onto the pavement in slow, rhythmic drips. The vampire spasmed, but Dario didn’t even flinch. He watched it suffer with a curious calm, an ecstatic stillness. Like he was listening to a symphony no one else could hear.

  Kai had stayed hidden, unseen in the dark, watching.

  There had been something different about Dario—not just the efficiency of the kill, not just the way he moved with calculated grace. It was his aura. Cold. Controlled. Dangerous. He wasn’t some street-sweeping thug with a blade and a grudge. He was something refined. A dhampir tracker with steel in his spine and old magic at his fingertips.

  And he had enjoyed the kill.

  That was what unsettled Kai most.

  The next time they crossed paths, it was in Soho. A far cry from alleys and death.

  Kai had slipped away from his brothers for the night, looking for a distraction. He’d ended up in a gay club lit with strobes and soaked in sweat and perfume. The bass was thunder in his chest. He wasn’t expecting anything meaningful. Just a night. A body. A break.

  Then he saw Dario.

  Up on the second-floor terrace, cigarette in hand, shirt sheer with sweat, khaki pants hugging his hips like they’d been tailored for seduction. His dark eyes caught Kai’s through the crowd, sharp and unreadable.

  He smirked.

  That smirk hit Kai like a spell. One heartbeat, and the rest of the club vanished.

  They didn’t speak much that night. They didn’t need to.

  Their bodies collided in the dark, pressed against the wall behind the velvet curtain of the VIP room. Dario’s mouth was hot and demanding, hands exploring with a reckless hunger. The kiss was like war—ravenous, claiming. Every part of Kai lit up under it.

  That night ignited something volatile.

  And for six months, they burned.

  Dario was smoke and shadow. They fought, fucked, bled together. Kai, always the disciplined one, found himself unraveling in Dario’s presence—drawn into the wildness, the abandon, the unspoken truths between them. Dario saw him. Not the mask. Not the blade. Him.

  There were quiet nights too. Nights when they lay tangled under cheap sheets in some rented flat, Dario tracing the lines of Kai’s back like they were maps, his breath warm against Kai’s neck.

  But passion that bright doesn’t last.

  It scorches.

  And when the fire got too close to everything Kai couldn’t afford to lose, he did the only thing he knew how to do.

  He vanished.

  No note. No goodbye. No trace.

  Just silence.

  He had told himself it was necessary. That he was protecting them both.

  But now, months later, Dario was here.

  Bleeding on Kai’s couch.

  And Kai didn’t know what to do with the ache curling behind his ribs.

  He sat in the chair beside the bed, elbows on his knees, watching Dario’s chest rise and fall. The pulse at his neck had steadied. The color had returned—faint, but there. The worst had passed.

  It had been a long stretch of silence, broken only by the rhythmic breath of the island and the soft rustle of candlelight. Kai had nodded off in the chair, head tilted back, arms folded—half-guard, half-exhaustion.

  When he stirred, Dario was already watching him, one eye cracked open, his mouth twitching into something between a smirk and a wince.

  Kai sighed through his nose and rose without a word. He stepped into the back room and returned moments later with a clean towel and a flask of dark herbal tonic. Dario’s hand trembled as he accepted them. Their fingers brushed.

  Too brief. Too much.

  “You’re staying here for a while,” Kai said.

  Dario raised a brow, voice dry.

  “Didn’t think I rated your bed. And I’ve got an ongoing case.”

  “You don’t,” Kai replied evenly. “And you’re still suffering from a necrotic curse. You’ll rest where I can watch you. Can you walk?”

  Dario didn’t argue.

  That silence said enough.

  Kai helped him out of the jacket, careful with his arm. Dario hissed softly but didn’t pull away. His movements were slow now, drained and pliant, the sharp edges dulled by pain.

  Kai guided him down the hall to the spare room—a room rarely touched, meant for emergencies. His own quarters were above, layered in silence and wards. This one… this one had no personal claim.

  Tonight, it would serve.

  Dario sat heavily on the edge of the bed, boots still on. His gaze swept the room—minimal, warm, the air laced with cedarwood and sea salt. A single ward candle glowed faintly in the corner, casting a soft amber light.

  “Smells like you,” Dario muttered.

  Kai didn’t respond.

  He knelt once more, fingertips brushing Dario’s wrist. The pulse was steadier now. Still fragile, but holding.

  “You’ll sleep,” Kai said softly. “I’ll reinforce the wards.”

  He turned to go.

  “Kai.”

  The word stopped him.

  Dario’s voice was quieter now.

  “Can you stay?”

  Kai stood still for a moment, his back to the room.

  Then, without a word, he dragged the old chair from the corner and set it beside the bed.

  Dario let out a slow, frayed breath and leaned back into the pillows. His eyes fluttered closed.

  The silence that followed was thick, gentle, and aching.

  Kai sat beside him, unmoving, watching the slow rise and fall of Dario’s chest.

  His own heartbeat felt louder than it should.

  Still, he couldn’t look away.

  The angles of Dario’s face were sharper now. Time had sculpted him into something leaner, more guarded. But the soul beneath—it was still him. Still maddening. Still magnetic. Still dangerous in ways Kai never quite found defenses for.

  Kai leaned back in the chair, arms folded across his chest.

  Outside, the ocean whispered against the shore. The island slept.