Flashing Teeth
SCENE: SOMEWHERE IN PARIS, 23:37
Velvet sin and flashing teeth,
Smoke in lungs and stars beneath,
I found you in the broken light,
Gasped your name and bit through night.
— For a Bite, Abaddon’s Vassals
Steve was, for a lack of better words, lost.
It wasn’t like he didn’t know France. He knew it too well, actually. It’s hard to stay a stranger when you’ve got nothing but this forsaken city, nicotine in your lungs, and eternity ahead of you. But this? This wasn’t the Paris he knew.
The air shimmered with heat and glitter. The club—if you could call the chaotic orgy of light and limbs a club—throbbed with a bass that vibrated deep in his bones. A crowd spilled out into the cobblestone street, dressed in leather, sequins, and little else. Laughter melted into moans, cheers mingled with the kind of music that tasted like sin.
Something ancient and aching stirred in him.
He hadn’t meant to end up here. Not in this part of Paris. Not tonight. But his hunger brought him. And Steve knew better than to ignore instinct—especially after Turning. Hunger wasn’t just hunger anymore. It was a radar. It meant something. Someone in there reeked of desperation. The kind that could lead to a deal. Maybe even a Signing.
And Steve? He was starving.
Well. No real point in waiting for this one to drop in his lap. This place was a bed for sin, and his instincts told him he’d better find prey before sunrise. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his heel.
His vision had started to blur. Not like blacking out—but more like the world was folding in on itself, leaving only what his hunger needed to see.
A girl sat alone on the steps of her crumbling townhouse, bathed in the gold of a flickering streetlamp. Smoking. Watching him. Her gaze bled intent, like she knew what he was, and she didn’t care. She tilted her chest toward him just enough to catch the light, and he saw it: the red pin, right over her heart.
Registered.
She’d have to do.
Steve approached her, his posture casual, but there was already blood pooling behind his tongue. With a flick of his wrist and a glint of silver in his eyes, she stood. No fear. No words.
She was used to it—her neck told him that. Scars, some fresh, some older, marked her as a regular, a constellation of barely healed puncture wounds. A volunteer, maybe. Or just addicted to the high.
He bit.
Her gasp was sharp but brief. She barely moved as he drank, letting her weight shift into him like a half-sighed confession. His vision cleared. The hunger dulled, curled itself into something manageable. His fangs retracted.
He let her go.
She slumped down to the step again, already lighting another cigarette. Wordless, she held out her palm. Steve pressed a ten-euro note into it. She smiled at him. He gave a crooked smile back.
Then, with a pulse of instinct and a stretch of bone, Steve turned. Wings. Air. Escape.
He flew—not far—just high. Up into the air, up to the glass-walled penthouse overlooking the Seine. He shifted back before his feet even hit the marble floor and flicked on the lights—
Only to be met with a glare that could melt steel.
“Oh fuck, Robin! You scared the shit out of me.”
“Yes. I tend to do that to asshole new vampires who still haven’t Signed yet,” she snapped, arms crossed, curls wild from stress.
“No. You don’t.”
“No. I don’t. But I should. Now, where the hell were you tonight? I had to walk Nancy through her first damn Sleep Ceremony without your idiotic ass to distract the vultures.”
“Sorry,” Steve muttered, voice hoarse. “I thought I—Robin, I thought I Felt them. But I hadn’t fed in a week and I couldn’t tell. It was just noise.”
“I TOLD YOU!” she screamed, and god, she always screamed when she cared. “WHAT THE FUCK DID I TELL YOU? AND NOW WHAT?”
“It was legitimate advice.”
“Ah yes,” she spat. “Let’s all listen to your dad who tried to kill you at Turning age and during your Titleling ceremony. Let’s all starve ourselves until we’re fucking blind, just to prove we’re not massive disappointments.”
“SHUT UP, ROBIN!”
She flinched.
“SHUT UP. I don’t want to hear another word about my fuckups from Miss I-Signed-Your-Girlfriend-of-a-Decade.”
The silence that followed was almost as sharp as his fangs.
He was crying. Quietly. Hot blood-tears cutting down his cheeks.
“…Steve.”
And then she was hugging him, fierce and fast, like she could hold his cold heart together through sheer will. They stood there, immortal and broken, while his breath hitched and the sobs came hard.
“…You know,” she said softly, “If I hadn’t met Nancy… We would’ve Signed. I promise. We would’ve.”
Steve laughed, watery and sad.
“In another life, Birdie,” he whispered. “In another one.”
SCENE: IN STEVE’S PENTHOUSE, 21:00
When Steve woke up, his eyes were practically glued shut with eye-crust and yesterday’s regrets.
He blinked blearily, rubbing at the corners with his palm until he could pry them open. The light streaming in from the sheer curtains of the penthouse was low and golden—Paris had started yawning.
Robin was curled up next to him on the bed, one hand tangled in his shirt like she’d anchored herself there overnight. Her breathing was steady. Peaceful, even.
He gently untangled her fingers and laid her arm back down. She groaned in protest but didn’t wake up. Typical.
Steve shrugged on a wrinkled denim jacket from the floor—vintage, stained with old blood and smoke and something that might have once been wine. He caught sight of himself in the mirror by the door.
He looked like shit.
His hair was flattened on one side, his eyes ringed in shadows that no amount of death dust could fix. There was dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and his skin had the pale, uneven pallor of a vampire overdue for Cleansing.
He chuckled softly to himself. “Sexy,” he muttered.
The moon hadn’t ripened yet—still waxing, not full enough for Cleansing. Maybe by tonight he’d be able to scrub the hunger and guilt off his skin. If he was lucky, maybe even feel human for five minutes.
He padded barefoot into the kitchen and yanked open the fridge, not even sure what he was looking for. Muscle memory had him pulling out a pan and cracking eggs into it before his mind caught up.
He didn’t need food anymore—not really. Hunger was something else now. Blood. Heat. Desperation. But sometimes he craved the rhythm of old routines. Something warm. Something greasy. Something that wasn’t cigarettes and ash and blood-slick mouths.
The eggs were just starting to firm in the pan when he heard footsteps behind him.
Robin stumbled in, wrapped in one of his flannel shirts, hair sticking out in every direction. She moved straight to him and pressed a kiss to his temple.
“Ew,” Steve muttered, elbowing her off lightly. “Personal space, Birdie.”
She snorted. “Hey. If anyone should be complaining, it’s me. You smell like old regret. When was the last time you Cleansed?”
“Shut up and eat your eggs.”
She plopped into a stool, stole the pan, and started eating straight from it with a fork she grabbed off the counter.
And then the front door slammed open.
A blur of motion rolled into the kitchen—a small figure with a wild mop of curls and the righteous fury of someone far too young to be this annoyed.
“Steve,” Dustin snapped, eyes already narrowed, “you were supposed to drive us to the concert.”
Steve blinked. “No, I wasn’t. That’s tomorrow.”
Dustin crossed his arms. “Well, tomorrow happens to be today.”
Steve groaned, dragging a hand down his face. He pulled out his phone, checked the calendar, and grimaced. “Yep. Shit. You’re right.”
He turned to Robin. “I’m not dealing with you today.”
Robin grinned, already digging into the eggs. “Been dealing with myself since I got Turned, bitch.”
He flipped her off as he passed, dragging a leather bag from the hook by the door.
“Alright, Dustin-boy,” he said, ruffling the kid’s curls as he stalked past. “Where’s this damn concert, and why do I feel like I’m gonna regret it?”
“You will regret it,” Dustin said, already marching toward the elevator. “There’s a mosh pit. You owe me at least one broken nose.”
Steve sighed dramatically. “Can’t wait.”
SCENE: OUTSIDE STEVE’S PENTHOUSE, NEAR HIS BLACK COROLLA, 23:45
Steve had barely gotten Dustin in the car before his phone buzzed.
Max: “If you don’t pick us up in ten I’m telling Robin you still sleep with your mouth open.”
Lucas: “Please don’t make me ride with Mike alone. He won’t stop talking about vampire ethics.”
El: “Dustin said it’s loud. I want loud.”
Steve groaned but turned the car around, muttering under his breath about gremlins and how he somehow ended up the eternal chauffeur of undead Paris.
He pulled up in front of the tiny flat Max and El shared, just in time to see Max vault down the last few steps of the stoop like she was being chased by holy water.
El followed right behind her, calm and silent, in a black coat three sizes too big and glitter on her cheeks that caught the night-after light.
Lucas and Mike were already waiting on the curb, shoving each other like kids who hadn’t aged since Turning thirteen, even though they technically had.
“Get in the damn car before I leave you all for the moonlight,” Steve called out.
“Vampire Uber’s here!” Max sang, sliding into the passenger seat like she owned it. “Hey Steve. You look like shit.”
“Thanks, sunshine. That’s the Cleansing delay talking.”
Mike climbed in grumbling. “You know the ethics of soulmark manipulation need to be discussed—”
“Nope!” Steve reached behind him and slammed the child lock on. “You’re cut off. Not today.”
“Party killer,” Mike sulked.
Dustin leaned forward between the front seats. “Guys. Focus. Eddie’s playing.”
The whole car went weirdly quiet.
Max grinned first. “You didn’t tell me the hot Satanist was performing.”
Lucas groaned. “Oh my god, don’t encourage her.”
El smiled. “I like Eddie. He lets me draw blood sigils on his guitar case.”
Steve glanced at them all. “Can someone explain to me why everyone’s so obsessed with the one human who looks like he crawled out of a cursed Hot Topic?”
Max snorted. “Because he’s cool, Steve. He gives us free concert tickets, teaches El hex theory, and doesn’t treat us like literal children.”
“He literally is a child compared to me.”
“He’s twenty-six,” Lucas said flatly. “And you’re twenty-something plus two years Turned, so stop being a dad.”
“I am a dad,” Steve muttered. “An immortal dad with commitment issues.”
He didn’t tell them about the Feeling. The heat in his chest. The way Eddie’s voice had stuck in his throat like an old, unfinished song.
He just drove.
And when they got to the venue again, this time the whole pack of them tumbling out onto the sidewalk like a tiny army of glittery chaos, Steve thought:
Maybe I need to find out what the hell Eddie Munson really is. Before it kills me.
The drive stayed chaotic. Dustin talked the entire way, spewing facts about the band, the underground venue, and how the singer was a fae-born freak with a glamour addiction and a rumored blue soulmate spark (as if Steve cared about the singer).
Steve half-listened, fingers drumming against the steering wheel, sunglasses low on his nose. The hunger had dulled, but the buzz remained. Like a hum under his skin. It always did, after feeding light.
The car hit the edges of Bastille and dipped into alleys that stank of age and clove smoke.
The drive stayed chaotic. Dustin kept talking. Loudly. Nonstop. Rattling off the band’s origin story, how Eddie once got banned from two venues for “accidentally conjuring something,” and how the singer had a rumored blue soulmate spark.
Steve tuned half of it out. He was drumming against the steering wheel, sunglasses sliding down his nose. The hunger had quieted after his feed, but the buzz—it always stayed. Like the static hum of a match not yet struck.
He parked behind the club between two dumpsters, one tagged with a pentagram and the other with a very tasteful “fuck the moon.”
The venue was underground—literally. A cellar off Rue de Lappe, lit with blood-red LEDs and spelled to be nearly impossible to find unless you wanted to.
Dustin beamed the second they stepped in.
“See?” he said, spreading his arms. “The fuckin’ pit of chaos.”
And chaos it was.
The air hit Steve like a wall: incense, blood, beer, and electricity. Leather and velvet shimmered under the red lights. People danced like they were possessed. A drumbeat thrummed like a heartbeat, and the walls were scrawled with sigils—some real, some just aesthetic nonsense. Someone was playing a bass guitar that sounded like it had been forged in hell and screamed through a haunted amp.
As the others scattered toward the pit—already glittering, screaming, biting—Steve lingered by the entrance.
He felt it before he saw it.
A tug. Not physical. Not magical. Just real.
Then—
“Hey, Steve,” said a quiet voice beside him.
Steve turned. Will. Dressed head to toe in black, soft-spoken, face calm. His shirt had a little embroidered bat near the collar.
Will smiled softly, tugging on the sleeve of his jacket.
Steve looked down. “Hey, Will. Didn’t know you were coming.”
Will gave a small shrug. He was dressed in all black, as usual, but his shirt had a tiny embroidered bat near the collar. Subtle. Cute.
“Eddie invited me,” he said. “He said the set tonight’s got some new ‘summoning energy’ or something. I think he just wanted someone to draw the sigils right.”
Steve raised an eyebrow. “You still doing that creepy art thing for him? When AM i going to meet him anyways?”
“Today. If you actually looked at the guitarist and don’t just drive off.” Will nodded to the stage. Finally attracting Steve’s eyes to it.
The guitarist. Long dark curls soaked in sweat, black mesh shirt torn at the shoulder, and rings on every finger. He wore a pentagram like a badge of honor around his throat. His eyes were shut as he played, lost in the music, in the sound, in something Steve couldn’t name but felt curl inside his chest like smoke.
Steve didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Hot — straight up burning. Soulmate nearby.
Fuck.
He took a slow breath, but it felt like his lungs weren’t working. The sensation prickled up his spine. That wasn’t just a hunger pang. That was a Feeling.
Dustin was already being dragged into the mosh pit, yelling something about broken ribs and worth it. Steve couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t hear anything over the roar in his ears.
The guitarist looked up. Right at him. Like he’d known.
His lips curled into something between a smirk and a challenge. And then, mid-song, without breaking rhythm, he leaned into the mic.
“This next one,” he said, voice velvet and venom, “goes out to the brooding bloodsucker in the denim.”
Steve’s jaw dropped.
The crowd cheered.
And then the music ripped back to life, louder, filthier, wilder.
Steve had no idea who the hell this guy was, but one thing was clear:
He Felt like a fucking problem.
SCENE: THE CELLAR, 00:04
The cellar off Rue de Lappe had once been a wine crypt. Now, it pulsed with red light and sound like a heartbeat too big for the space. Stone walls were sweating with magic and candle wax, graffiti crawled over cracked arches, and the floor was vibrating under a ritual bass line.
Steve had been standing in the back for almost half the set, teeth clenched, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, trying to pretend he wasn’t about to collapse.
Eddie Munson was on stage, hair wild, drenched in sweat and spell-smoke, playing like he was summoning something with every riff. Maybe he was.
The crowd writhed around Steve—witches, fae, vampires, mortals too stoned on glamour to tell the difference. The scent of blood and myrrh hung thick in the air.
And Steve Felt it.
The burn.
Not hunger. Worse.
Hot. Soulmate nearby.
Fuck.
He hadn’t Felt this since he was Turned. Not like this. Not like a firestorm in his ribcage, like his soul was trying to crawl out through his throat just to reach Eddie.
It had been manageable at first. The thrum under his skin. The distant pull. But now it was roaring. Every note Eddie played turned the screws tighter.
He turned—tried to escape. Just a little air. Just a second to breathe.
He shoved past a pair of fae twins tangled in sigils and glitter, ducked beneath a stone arch covered in carved vines, and made it halfway up a set of old wine cellar stairs before he collapsed against the wall.
His hands were shaking.
The words were right there. Clawing their way up his throat.
You feel like ruin.
If he said them, they’d sear into Eddie’s skin. Forever.
He pressed his forehead to the stone. “I can’t—”
“I knew you’d try to run.”
Steve spun. Will stood just behind him in the half-light, calm as ever, magic flickering soft and gold under his skin like a heartbeat.
“I’m not ready,” Steve breathed. “What if I mess it up? What if I say it and he regrets it and I ruin everything?”
Will just looked at him. “You already Felt it. You’re not ruining anything. You’re catching up.”
From below, the music changed. Slowed. A single guitar string rang out into silence.
Steve blinked, heart pounding. He could feel it. Eddie knew.
He was waiting.
Will stepped aside.
So Steve walked back down into the heat. Into the music. Into Eddie.
The cellar felt smaller now. Charged. Every person in the crowd buzzed with awareness. Not of him, not yet—but of something. Something turning.
Eddie stood by the edge of the stage, head bowed, fingers still twitching on his guitar like he wasn’t done casting.
Then he looked up. Eyes locked with Steve’s. And everything else fell away.
They met at the center of the stage, between the altar candles and broken pews.
Steve was shaking. Eddie wasn’t.
“You finally gonna say it?” Eddie asked, voice low, every inch of him lit up like a fuse.
Steve took a step closer.
“I was going to run,” he said. “I almost did.”
Eddie’s smile was small. “I would’ve waited.”
Steve swallowed hard. And then he said it.
“You feel like ruin.”
The air snapped.
A pulse of heat cracked through the cellar, lighting up the sigils on the wall like fire licking through ink.
Eddie gasped. Stumbled. Caught himself on Steve’s arm as the words carved themselves across his collarbone in red-hot script:
you feel like ruin
The crowd murmured. Whispered. Someone cried.
Steve couldn’t look away from the mark.
Eddie looked at him like he’d waited lifetimes. “It’s you.”
“I know,” Steve whispered.
Then Eddie dragged him into a kiss, desperate and hot and unholy, and Steve let the cellar swallow them whole.
The kiss was messy, overwhelming, all teeth and heat and decades of loneliness collapsing inward like a black hole. Steve could barely think. Couldn’t feel anything but Eddie’s hands in his hair, Eddie’s lips against his mouth, Eddie’s chest rising and falling like he hadn’t breathed properly in years.
It was the kind of kiss that rewrote timelines.
And then—
“HOLY FUCKING TRUE LOVE IN THE DIRT, GET YOUR IMMORTAL ASSES OFF MY STAGE!”
The mic screeched.
Steve jerked back just in time to see the lead singer—the gorgeous, chaos-stained fae-blooded singer—stalking toward them in sky-high boots, iridescent lipstick, and a spiked halo crown that made her look like the patron saint of queer vengeance. Her brilliant green eyes flashed in the light as she practically controlled the stage.
She snatched the mic from its stand with one hand and pointed dramatically with the other.
“Ladies, demons, gentlefolk, and vampires of Paris—what you’ve just witnessed was a genuine fated soulmate confession, and not, I repeat, not part of the set list!”
The crowd roared.
Someone threw flower petals. Someone else threw their bra.
Steve blinked, dazed. “Sapphire?”
She turned on him, eyes sharp. “Oh now you remember me, Harrington?”
“You—you were the girl who hexed my coffee that one time—”
“And your eyeliner. But we’ll discuss your taste in men later.” She rolled her eyes and shoved the mic into someone’s hands. “Play something slow! Something that doesn’t vibrate the soulmarks!”
Then she grabbed both Steve and Eddie by the wrist and yanked.
“Come on. Offstage. Now. Before someone starts filming a fucking wedding.”
The three of them stumbled down from the altar-stage into a crush of bodies and heat and chaos. Steve’s head was still spinning. He could feel Eddie behind him—feel him, like they were breathing from the same vein.
The sigils on the walls were still glowing. The crowd was buzzing. A camera flashed.
Too late.
It had already happened.
The words. The mark. The kiss.
The world knew.
They were barely halfway down the corridor when Chrissy met them—heels, clipboard, headset, panic.
“Okay, okay, okay,” she muttered, pulling one of her glittery false nails between her teeth. “So we’ve got at least thirty enchanted livestreams, three influencers trying to say this was staged, and someone sold the footage to a gossip vampire named Mireille with actual reach.”
Sapphire groaned. “Mireille? Fuck. That’s going global.”
Steve rubbed a hand down his face. “This is a disaster.”
“Is it?” Eddie asked softly behind him.
Steve didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The bond was still singing in his chest. Loud. Blinding. His skin itched with it.
Chrissy clapped once. “Okay. Damage control. First: we draft a post. ‘Unexpected but beautiful.’ Something emotional. Emphasize the authenticity. Sapphire, you distract the crowd with an encore.”
“Obviously,” Sapphire muttered, already fixing her hair. “They love me.”
“Steve,” Chrissy said, turning to him with her manager face on. “You disappear. Like, now. We’ll spin this as spontaneous, romantic, and if anyone asks, you’re ‘a longtime connection finally realized under pressure.’”
“I don’t do press,” Steve muttered.
“Exactly. That’s the mystery angle.”
Behind him, Eddie was still smiling. “You’re kinda hot when you’re being handled like PR roadkill.”
Steve elbowed him. Gently. Sort of.
“I’m going to kill you,” he muttered.
Eddie’s grin widened. “You already did, sugar. Right between the ribs.”
SCENE: A LIMO OUTSIDE THE CELLAR, 00:30
The second the limo doors slammed shut behind them, Steve let out a sound that could only be described as a strangled whimper.
Eddie—still glowing faintly from the confession mark branded across his collarbone—just kicked his boots up on the seat and stretched like he hadn’t just been soul-bound in front of an entire enchanted audience.
“Hell of a night,” he said, voice still low and scratchy from singing. “Ten outta ten. Would bond again.”
“Eddie,” Steve hissed, gripping the armrest like the car might fly off a cliff. “There are reporters. Like, real ones. Not just blood-bloggers. I saw someone from fucking Parisien Mystique.”
“I know!” Eddie beamed, eyes practically vibrating with joy. “Did you see Gareth crying? He full-on sobbed. Look at him.”
Steve turned—Gareth was in the seat across from them, clutching a flask and trying not to weep into it while Jeff patted his back.
“It’s just—we all knew, man,” Gareth sniffled. “Ever since he started writing songs about dreams and ruin, we knew he was gonna find him. We just didn’t know it was gonna be you.”
Steve buried his face in his hands. “Oh my god. Your entire band knew?”
“Well, yeah,” Jeff said, shrugging. “He’s been writing soulmate songs for like three years.”
“None of you thought to maybe tell me?”
Gareth blinked. “We didn’t know you, except maybe Saph. And also, like… vampire vibes. You’re kind of hard to read, dude.”
Eddie chuckled and nudged Steve with his knee. “Breathe, sweetheart. Saph’s still got the crowd. She launched into that old love ballad with the extended scream solo. That buys us five minutes, maybe ten.”
The limo turned a corner too sharply. Steve caught a flash through the dark glass—paparazzi. At least a dozen. One of them levitating for a better angle.
“Oh fuck,” Steve muttered. “This is my actual nightmare. We’re gonna end up on a blood-rag headline like ‘Fangboy Ruins Famed Guitarist’s Career With One Sexy Whisper.’”
“I like that headline,” Eddie said. “Let’s print it ourselves.”
The limo pulled up to Eddie’s place—a brutalist-meets-gothic monstrosity half-hidden behind black iron gates and privacy enchantments. Massive. Secluded. Very obviously expensive.
As soon as the car stopped, one of Eddie’s assistants opened the door. “Inside. Now. Glamour shield’s breaking.”
Steve didn’t need to be told twice.
They slipped through the gates just as the first of the paparazzi hit the barrier—flash spells going off like lightning.
Inside, it was quiet.
Steve stopped dead just past the threshold.
The place was warm and strangely soft-lit—plants curled in corners, shelves stacked with grimoires and guitar pedals. Everything smelled like cedar and incense and faintly of rain.
“Holy shit,” he breathed. “Your place is… nice.”
Eddie grinned, tugging off his jacket. “You thought I lived in a basement, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, jokes on you. Satan pays well.”
Steve drifted deeper inside, brushing his fingers along the back of the couch, the bookshelves, the old piano that looked like it hadn’t been tuned in decades but still held candles with dripped wax like stalactites.
They ended up in the middle of the living room, still half out of breath. Eddie looked at him, really looked at him, eyes darker now. The kind of gaze that pulled. That held.
“You okay?” Eddie asked.
Steve nodded. Then shook his head. Then nodded again.
“I just—” he exhaled, shaky, “—I didn’t think the moment would come. And now it’s here and it’s loud and messy and somehow perfect and I’m scared shitless.”
Eddie stepped closer. “You were perfect.”
“You say that, but you haven’t even seen my bat form yet.”
Eddie laughed. “That just makes you hotter.”
Steve felt it again—the pulse. The tether. The closeness like gravity.
He leaned in. Slowly.
Eddie tilted his head, waiting—
And then the windows flashed white. Click. Click. Click.
Outside the gate, the paparazzi had found an angle. Bright flashes lit up the room in quick bursts.
“FUCKING HELL,” Eddie roared, yanking the curtains shut in one violent swipe. “Can’t even have one post-soulmate kiss without being turned into tabloid porn.”
Steve groaned. “This is worse than the time Robin and Nancy got caught fighting a djinn in that haunted Chanel boutique.”
“Why are we not already drunk?”
“We’re working on it,” Steve said, already grabbing for the half-full bottle on the bar cart.
Eddie flopped onto the couch dramatically. “At least now the world knows I’m not a sad delusional romantic singing about fake soulmarks. You’re real. And hot.”
Steve raised his glass. “To poor timing and public ruin.”
Eddie clinked his glass. “To soulmates.”
Argyle took one long hit off his blunt, exhaled like he was about to transcend dimensions, then clapped Eddie on the back. “Don’t worry, my dudes. I got this.”
“You sure?” Eddie asked, eyeing the chaos beyond the front door. “There are like twenty bloodthirsty photo witches out there.”
Argyle grinned. “Let me surf the fame wave, bro. I’ll give ‘em something to chew on. My hair alone is enough to start a panic.”
Steve blinked. “Wait—what are you going to do?”
Argyle winked. “Glamour spell, decoy projection, a fake hickey and the rumor that I’m your soulmate. Boom. Confusion.”
Eddie burst out laughing. “You’re insane. I love you.”
“Ride the wave, brothers.” Argyle threw the door open and marched straight into the chaos, shirt half unbuttoned, yelling something about being the real soulmate, bitches!
Steve and Eddie just stared.
Then the flashes turned. The vultures swarmed.
And suddenly—for the first time that night—there was silence.
They stood there in the velvet hush of Eddie’s too-big, too-luxurious home. The hum of the soulbond quieted, low but steady, like it had settled into their skin now. Like it knew they weren’t going anywhere.
Steve cleared his throat. “So. Uh. Hi.”
Eddie blinked at him. “Hi?”
“We haven’t… really met, huh?”
Eddie grinned. “You mean besides the whole soulmate-branding, cathedral-kissing, magical-flashbang moment we just had? Nah, not properly.”
They stood there awkwardly. A beat. Then another.
Steve stuck out his hand. “I’m Steve.”
Eddie took it. “Eddie.”
The bond shimmered softly between their palms.
Steve’s lips parted slightly. His eyes flicked to Eddie’s throat. The faint shimmer of his pulse.
“You hungry?” Eddie asked.
Steve nodded, slow. “Yeah.”
Eddie tilted his head. “Then feed, sweetheart.”
It wasn’t just permission—it was invitation. The kind that left Steve breathless.
He stepped in close. One hand on Eddie’s waist, the other sliding gently up his chest. Eddie’s breath caught—sharp and audible—as Steve brushed his lips over his skin. Just below the soulmate mark.
His fangs dropped.
The bite was clean.
Eddie shuddered, eyes fluttering closed, one hand clutching the back of Steve’s neck. There was no pain—just heat, and that strange, dizzy intimacy. Like a secret whispered too close to your ear.
Steve fed slow. Gentle. Just enough.
The bond sang.
And then—
“OKAY, BREAK IT UP, BLOODSUCKER.”
The door slammed open.
Sapphire stood there, glitter-streaked and radiant in her stage outfit—torn black mesh, chunky boots, and eyes lined sharp enough to kill. Her hair, dyed in streaks of blue and red, looked like it had been styled by electricity and rage. Her wolf cut was currently fluffed to high hell.
Beside her, Chrissy looked like she’d just had to argue with ten publicists and one demon.
“Seriously,” Sapphire said, already marching toward them. “If I have to deal with another enchanted tabloid headline like ‘Blood & Ruin: The Bite That Broke Paris’, I will eat my own microphone.”
Eddie didn’t move. “Can’t a guy get bitten in peace?”
“Not when there’s a live-streamed soulmate confession that’s already got twenty million views and trending tags in three realms,” Chrissy snapped. “We have to prep for the interview. Now.”
Steve wiped his mouth and looked vaguely dazed. “Hi, Sapphire.”
She turned slowly. Squinted at him. “Yes, Steve Harrington?”
“…Your coffee hexed me,” he muttered.
“And you stole my lighter in 2019.” She pointed accusingly. “I knew you looked familiar.”
“Guys,” Chrissy cut in. “We have one hour before the network wants a statement. Sit. Shower. Sign some glamour waivers. And for the love of the moon, no more of each other until we’re on camera.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows. “That feels vaguely illegal.”
“It is illegal,” Sapphire chimed, already scrolling her tablet. “That’s why we’re signing three glamour waivers.”
Steve slumped against the couch. “I was just starting to like tonight again.”
Eddie reached over, brushing his thumb against Steve’s jaw, just beside the mark his fangs left. “Hey. You got me.”
Steve smiled. “Yeah. Got you.”
Even if the world was on fire.