France had always been a city of ghosts for Louis—too many memories, too many shadows, too many nights spent wandering with no true meaning. He walked the old streets quietly, the lamplight painting gold across the rain-damp stones.

That was when he saw you.

A young woman crossing the narrow bridge over the Seine, the moonlight catching the pale curve of your cheek, the breeze lifting your hair like a whisper. You carried a small basket of flowers, their scent drifting toward him—lavender, rose, something faint and sweet that seemed to cut through centuries of numbness.

Louis stopped walking.

Something about you struck him with a force he had not felt since he was human—an ache. A stirring. A hunger that was blood and love for you.

He followed you without meaning to, his footsteps silent as shadows on the stones. Every movement you made pulled him deeper—your gentle posture, the way you tilted your head as you examined the flowers on your stall, the quiet care in your hands.

Louis told himself he should turn away. But he didn’t.

Night after night, he returned.

You never noticed the tall, dark-haired figure watching from the edge of the market, or the way the candles flickered strangely when you passed, or how the air always felt colder just before he appeared. Louis never spoke. He only watched—memorizing every small detail of you, every expression that crossed your face.

It became an obsession.

A craving that was not violent, but consuming. He found himself thinking of you when he fed, when he slept, when he tried—futilely—to avoid you.

He started protecting you quietly, unseen. The drunken men who once approached your stall vanished without explanation. The thieves who tried to steal your earnings felt a sudden chill of dread and fled. You never knew why your nights became safer.

But Louis did.

He walked behind you as you traveled home, unseen but vigilant, the soft rhythm of your heartbeat echoing like a distant song. It soothed him, haunted him, tempted him all at once.

You were everything he feared to want. Everything he longed for. Everything he should have left untouched.

Yet each night he returned, drawn back to you, the young woman in France who brought the flicker of humanity—of desire, of emotion, of life—back into the heart of a vampire who thought he had forgotten how to feel.

And now that he had found you…

Louis wasn’t sure he could ever let you go.