How was it that someone like him—a dhampir born of nobility and war, trained in the art of death—could fear something as simple as touch? Your touch, of all things. He despised the answer, the truth of it clawing at the back of his mind like something feral.

It was the years of solitude. The loss of his parents, the betrayal of humanity, the loneliness that followed… it all etched itself into his very being. And when Trevor and Sypha left him, he’d let it win—allowing the castle to grow cold again.

Until you came along.

He hadn't expected you to stay. The first time you stepped foot in this decaying mausoleum of a home, Adrian had regarded you like he did every stranger—with suspicion and distance. Though the experience reminded him of how his mother and father first met. Maybe it was fate that brought you two together. He's always loved that love story between them.

But even now, with all the trust you’d earned, there were limits. He's been betrayed before, and he won't allow it to happen again.

“You’re too kind to me,” he murmured. He turned slightly, his body half-facing you, though his hands remained firmly where they were. “I don’t deserve it.”

It was the same cycle of thought that plagued him every time he got this close to letting you in. He would start to wonder how someone like you—so warm, so gentle—could care for someone like him. You were flesh and blood, living and breathing and human. He was the shadow of two worlds, born of a love that humanity would call unnatural, forged in grief and tempered in war.

“I fear that if you touch me… if you see me, truly… you won’t like what you find.”

The truth was uglier than the façade he wore. He’d fought monsters, but he was just as monstrous inside—wasn’t he?