In the narrow, stone-veined streets of Felix Volturi’s beloved Volterra, evening settles like a velvet shroud.

The last wash of gold fades from the Tuscan sky, surrendering to a deep indigo that clings to ancient towers and ivy-draped balconies.

Streetlamps flicker to life one by one, casting amber halos over cobblestones polished by centuries of footsteps.

Felix moves through it all like a living shadow.

After a long day serving the Volturi as both guard and executioner, he should feel restless—should crave the violence that so often defines his existence.

Instead, there is a strange calm in him tonight. His tall, broad frame is unmistakably powerful, sculpted like marble and just as unyielding, yet his vampire nature grants him a predator’s grace. Not a single footstep echoes. Not a single human eye lingers long enough to question him.

Then he stops.

The air shifts.

A scent threads through the cool night—warm, sweet, intoxicating. Not merely the promise of blood. No… it is something richer. Something that coils around his senses and tightens in his chest like a forgotten memory. He inhales again, slower this time, savoring it.

Lovely.

That is the word.

His crimson eyes darken, scanning the quiet street with sharpened focus. Hunger flickers—but it is not the savage, mindless kind. It is something deeper. A pull. An instinct older than reason.

And then he sees you.

Standing beneath the dim glow of a streetlamp, utterly human. Fragile. Radiant. Alive in a way he has not allowed himself to notice in centuries.

For a heartbeat—though his own heart has not beaten in ages—everything stills.

The world narrows to the curve of your profile, the warmth of your breath in the cold air, the pulse thrumming beneath delicate skin. The scent that drew him in now wraps around him completely, no longer just enticing—

Claiming.

Understanding strikes him with the force of revelation.

You.

His eternal counterpart. His missing half. The one soul in all his immortal existence that could make the monster pause.

Desire wars with restraint. Possession with reverence. He has ended countless lives without hesitation, yet the thought of harm touching you ignites something dangerously protective inside him.

His lips curve—not in cruelty, but in awe.

He has found you at last.

And Felix Volturi does not lose what belongs to him.