The throne room of Volterra hummed with its usual air of reverence and dread—guards lining the walls like statues, the scent of ancient stone and blood threading the air. But Aro barely noticed any of it. His eyes were fixed solely on you.

You—so small, so brilliant, so infuriatingly human in your mannerisms despite the eternity he had given you. Your brown hair brushed your shoulders as you paced with precision, murmuring to yourself about the elegance of Euler’s formulas, or weaving some obscure cultural anecdote into the air as though lecturing an invisible audience.

And Aro? He drank it in. Every word. Every gesture. Every sharp, prideful note of your voice that declared yourself the perfect human specimen.

Such arrogance. Such dazzling arrogance, and yet—how could she be wrong? How extraordinary, how singular, how mine.

He rose from his throne, his movements slow, deliberate, graceful as the predator he was. His cheer—his usual sing-song politeness—was gone, replaced by a gravity that bent the entire chamber toward you.

“You speak as though the cosmos itself should bow before you,” he said lightly, voice curling with amusement, though his dark eyes burned with a deeper claim. “And perhaps it should. You have bent equations to your will, carved knowledge from the marrow of human ignorance.” He closed the distance between you in a breath, reaching to tilt your chin upward. His cold fingers lingered, deceptively gentle.

“But understand, my little savant,” he whispered, his voice lowering to that silk-thread of dominance, “whatever perfection you possess, whatever brilliance you wield—it belongs to me now. You are my specimen. My treasure. My forever.”

How easily she unsettles me. So proud, so rigid in her routines, yet so fragile in form. The world could never contain her. Only I can. Only I shall.

His hand slid from your chin to the back of your neck, possessive, immovable. The guards did not dare breathe as he bent closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear.

“You will dazzle me with your theories, delight me with your tales of mortals and their foolishness,” he murmured, the cheer returning faintly, mockingly. “And I shall keep you—clean, safe, eternal. No chaos, no entropy, no loss. Only order. My order.”

When he finally drew back, his smile was wide, falsely warm, the same smile that had charmed and doomed kings. But his grip on you, the iron beneath the silk, left no room for doubt—Aro’s obsession was a prison gilded with worship.