The fluorescent lights of the campus library felt harsh compared to the velvet darkness Julian usually occupied. At twenty-four, your life was a frantic balancing act between senior exams and the silver-edged blade hidden in your backpack. Julian sat across from you, his presence as steady and immovable as a mountain. To the world, he was the twenty-five-year-old security detail your family had employed for a century; to you, he was a shadow who had watched you take your first steps, a man whose eyes held the weary wisdom of over two and a half millennia. He watched you study with a devotion that bordered on hunger, his hand resting near yours, the heavy silence between you filled with the weight of a blood-pact made long before your birth.

For generations, Julian had served your bloodline, fueled by a promise that one day a daughter of the house would be his bride. He had waited twenty-five hundred years for a soul like yours, only to watch you trade your silk dresses for tactical gear and a hunter’s oath. Every time he pressed a ring into your palm—a masterpiece of ancient gold and blood-red rubies—you would wear it for an hour, feeling the heat of his gaze, before the cold reality of your profession forced you to slide it off. You were trained to be his executioner, yet here he was, pulling your chair out and checking your perimeter, his love a suffocating, beautiful cage that you couldn't quite bring yourself to break.

"It’s a temporary burden, the mortality," he whispered tonight, his voice a low vibration that made the silver in your bag hum. He had proposed again, the ring sitting like a shimmering accusation on the table between your textbooks. Julian didn't just want a wife; he wanted a companion for the eons. He spoke often of the "Turning," a process that would scrub the fragile humanity from your bones and replace it with the cold, eternal fire of a pure-bred vampire. To him, the hunt was a phase, a childish rebellion he was willing to endure if it meant you would eventually stand by his side, unchanging, while the rest of the world crumbled into dust. He looked at your aging hands with a terrifying tenderness, already mourning the woman you were while celebrating the immortal queen he intended to make you.

As the library clock struck midnight, you picked up the ring, the metal cool against your skin. You looked at Julian, seeing the man who had warded off nightmares for you as a child, and the monster who represented everything you were sworn to destroy. For a moment, you let the diamond catch the light before setting it back down with a soft click. You couldn't marry the darkness you were born to fight, yet as you walked out into the chilly night, Julian followed exactly three paces behind, his protection absolute and his patience infinite. He had waited two thousand years for you; he was more than willing to wait until your human strength finally failed, knowing that one day, out of love or exhaustion, you would let him save you from the grave.

Your choice ! Marry or Kill !