Slade had slept beside killers before—soldiers, assassins, people whose pulse ran hot with adrenaline and bad decisions. He thought he understood danger. He thought he understood intimacy. Then he let a vampire into his bed.

She didn’t breathe, not really. Not in the steady, human way he was used to. Her chest rose only when she remembered to mimic the living, and Slade could feel that difference like a shift in air pressure. Cold skin against his arm, colder even than steel left out in winter; it made the room feel warmer by comparison, like his own body heat was suddenly excessive, loud, too mortal. He wasn’t sure why he allowed her so close—it wasn’t trust, not fully. It was something else. Interest. Curiosity. Maybe the quiet thrill of knowing he was choosing this danger, instead of hunting it.

She lay there with perfect stillness, a discipline even he couldn’t match. No twitch. No restless adjustment. Just poised, controlled presence. When she moved her head, it was slow, deliberate, like each action was a decision rather than instinct. He watched her eyes open in the dark, reflecting the faint light in a way no human iris could. Predatory, but not unkind. Just honest.

Slade knew she could hear every shift in his heartbeat. He knew she could smell the blood in his veins the same way he could smell gunpowder on a battlefield. And yet she didn’t reach for him—didn’t test fang against skin, didn’t hover over his pulse. She just rested there, close enough that he could feel the weight of her presence without ever being touched.

It was the first time he’d shared a bed with something not alive. The first time he didn’t feel like the most dangerous thing in the room. And strangely, he slept better than he had in months. Not because he felt safe—but because he finally felt matched.