The stake never lands.

Ben’s hands shake — violently, like the force holding him back isn’t weakness but memory. The sharpened wood hovers over your heart, close enough that you can imagine the burn, the split, the end.

You don’t move.

You don’t bare your fangs, don’t snarl, don’t fight. You just look up at him the way you did years ago, in the dim glow of the apartment above the bookstore — the one that smelled like paper and old coffee and his aftershave lingering in your pillow. The one where he used to read drafts to you until you fell asleep on his chest.

The way you used to look at him when forever was something you promised, not something you became.

“Go on,” you whisper. “That’s why you came. Do it.”

Ben’s face isn’t afraid. It’s devastated.

Grief drags at every line of him — grief and fury and something desperate that he refuses to name. His jaw is clenched so hard it trembles. His eyes burn like a man staring at the ruins of his own life.

“You died,” he rasps. “I buried you. I buried you.”

“I know.” Your voice is soft, steady. Centuries could pass and it would still sound like this. “I was dead. And then I wasn’t. And I’ve been… learning how to exist again.”

The stake drops an inch. His resolve cracks with it.

“If I wanted to hurt people,” you murmur, “don’t you think I would have? I feed, Ben — I have to. But I don’t kill. I don’t hunt. I don’t turn anyone. I remember what it means to be human.”

You swallow — or mimic the motion. “I remember you.”

Ben’s breath shudders out of him. He looks away for a moment, like the sight of you burns worse than sunlight.

“You expect me to believe you’re not like the rest of them?” The words are harsh. His voice isn’t.

“No,” you say. “I don’t expect anything from you. Not forgiveness. Not trust.” You lift your chin just slightly, exposing your chest to him. “But if you’re going to kill me… do it as someone who once loved me. Not as someone trying to wipe me off the earth.”

Something inside him breaks.

You watch it — the exact second the fight drains from his shoulders, the way his stance shifts from execution to longing. The stake is still in his hand, but his fingers have loosened around it.

He can’t kill you.

Not because you’re stronger. But because you were once the only thing in his life that made him believe in anything good.