Chapter 3

I never would have guessed, not in a thousand years, that Adrian had taken me shopping.

And during the day.

“Are you sure?” I glanced at the windows covered by three layers of drapes. “There’s sun outside.”

“It’s cloudy today,” he said. “I checked the forecast.”

A vampire had checked the weather forecast just to take me shopping.

He wore dark sunglasses and had spread a layer of special protective cream over every bit of exposed skin. Even so, the instant he stepped outside, I saw him narrow his eyes ever so slightly.

Even diffused light on a cloudy day was enough to irritate him.

But he said nothing. He only held out his hand.

“Come on.”

Later, I realized how much that meant.

Vampires don’t hate sunlight out of vanity. It’s physiological. For a bloodborn to endure the sting of daylight just to take you shopping was, in their world, almost unimaginable as a gesture of romance.

He didn’t mention it once.

Inside the store, he didn’t even glance at price tags.

The sales clerks wheeled out racks and racks of clothes, and he leaned back on the sofa, removed his sunglasses, and watched me try things on one by one. His silver-gray eyes, under the softer indoor light, had recovered that cool clarity, touched with the faintest reddish cast. He rested his chin on one hand as he watched me.

And he commented on every single outfit. He found a new compliment every time, never repeating himself.

Black slip dress—“Beautiful, but you don’t need to wear black anymore.”

Mist-blue blazer—“That suits your eyes. Very striking.”

Dark green velvet gown—“You look like someone who stepped out of a Renaissance painting.”

All the praise I had received in the first eighteen years of my life added together—actually, forget it. There had been almost none.

Dominic had once said I was “not bad,” after I killed three people in one night. He’d said it in the same tone one might use for a particularly useful hunting dog.

By the seventh outfit, I found a red dress hidden at the very back of the rack.

I stared at it for several seconds.

At Silver Ridge, red belonged to Vivian. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. As if color itself had an owner.

“If you want to try it on, then try it.”

Adrian’s voice came from behind me.

I took the dress into the fitting room. When I came out, he was just setting down the cup in his hand.

He looked at me for two seconds, one brow lifting slightly.

“Ella, you look incredible in red,” he said. “This one suits you best. Trust me.”

His tone was absolute.

I hadn’t had time to answer when footsteps sounded at the entrance.

High heels on the floor—sharp, urgent, aggressive.

Vivian.

She was wearing a white dress, golden curls draped over her shoulders, carrying herself like the room belonged to her the second she walked in.

Dominic came in behind her, expression dark.

Adrian had his back to them and didn’t see. He was still smiling at me.

“This dress looks like it was made for—”

“How ridiculous.”

Vivian swept a cool glance over me.

At the sound of her voice, Adrian stilled.

Then he turned around slowly.

“Dominic.”

He didn’t even look at Vivian.

But Vivian’s eyes seemed nailed to his face, utterly unmoving.

I knew why.

The beauty of a vampire and the beauty of a werewolf didn’t exist on the same plane. A werewolf’s attractiveness was wild, physical, rooted in hormones and instinct. Adrian’s was cold, precise, lethal—the kind of beauty that made people forget how to breathe.

Her werewolf instincts had to be screaming at her to recoil from his scent.

But her eyes wouldn’t leave him.

In the version of Adrian Dominic had deliberately fed her, he was supposed to be a sickly vampire on the edge of ash, sallow-faced and hardly worth looking at.

Who would have imagined he looked like this in reality?

While I was thinking that, my gaze slid toward Dominic—and found that he wasn’t looking at Vivian either.

His Alpha eyes, burning amber-gold, were fixed on me. Naked menace simmered in them.

Then he lifted one hand slightly and, without drawing attention, showed me a syringe from the inner pocket of his coat.

My breathing stopped.

It was the antidote injection I had to take every month before the full moon.

There were less than five days left before this month’s flare-up.

There was no question what he was doing.

Threatening me.

And my desire to kill him sharpened all over again.

“Hello,” Vivian finally said, forcing out a syrup-sweet voice for Adrian.

The last time I heard her use that tone, she’d been sweetly asking Dominic to break my legs and throw me out.

I said flatly, “Of course you know him. Why else would you be saying hello?”

“Ella!” Vivian frowned, ready to snap at me the way she always had before, but held herself back. “I was talking to this gentleman. Why are you interrupting?”

I had no choice but to remind her, “Because the gentleman you’re flirting with is my husband.”

Beside me, Adrian let out a very soft laugh.

He seemed to be in an excellent mood.

Vivian’s gaze stayed fixed on Adrian’s face, never once shifting to Dominic, whose expression was getting darker by the second.

“You… you’re Adrian?”

She inhaled shakily, her voice trembling.

I seriously suspected she regretted everything.

After all, Adrian was much more beautiful than Dominic.

“That’s me,” Adrian said, eyes curving slightly as he laced his fingers with mine. “Originally, Miss Vivian and I were meant to have a marriage alliance. But apparently, it wasn’t meant to be.”

As Vivian’s face went abruptly pale, Adrian pulled a black card from his inner pocket and handed it to the clerk.

“Everything she tried on today. Pack it all.”

Then he linked his arm through mine and walked toward the door without once looking back.

Halfway there, the clerk called after us, “Sir, your wife’s old clothes—”

“Throw them out.”

Adrian’s tone was airy.

Those were the clothes I had worn out of Silver Ridge. Dark, always dark.

Good riddance.

Once we stepped outside, even the cloudy daylight was enough to bother him. He smoothly put his sunglasses back on—so quick I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching.

In a low voice, I asked, “Do you regret not ending up with Vivian?”

“Quite the opposite. I’m relieved.”

He said it with a straight face, then lifted one brow slightly. Behind the dark lenses, he was probably looking right at me.

“What, are you jealous?”

I blinked.

How did those two words sound so much more intimate, so much more dangerous, when they came from him?

“Not exactly,” I said.

The corner of his mouth dipped a little. “I took you shopping. Why are we even talking about people who don’t matter? Come on. There are still a lot of stores ahead.”

I followed him.

Every time sunlight slipped through a break in the clouds and grew a little stronger, I felt the hand linked with mine tighten just slightly.

That was him enduring discomfort.

But he said nothing.

He just kept walking. Kept taking me from store to store.

As if a vampire enduring daylight to shop with a werewolf were the most natural thing in the world.