Crimson Covenant

Chapter 1 The kiss that burned

The night was swollen with heat, the kind that clung to the skin like a fever. The moon, red-veined and swollen, hung over the ruined chapel, bleeding its light through shattered stained glass.

She stood at the altar where a hundred vows had been broken, her chest rising and falling with desperate breath, lips trembling—not from fear, but from the hunger that had been gnawing her hollow for weeks.

He came to her from the shadows, not walking, not human, but unfurling like smoke through a crack in the air. Horns caught the moonlight in cruel arcs, and his eyes… molten amber, dripping fire and promise. She should have fled. She should have prayed. Instead she whispered, “I’ve waited.”

His smile was knives hidden in silk. “And now you offer yourself.”

She nodded once, throat tight. The covenant had a price—blood, body, soul. She had known it since the first time his voice slid into her dreams like velvet wrapping a blade. But the ache in her heart, the empty nights, the way mortal love had left her raw and torn—it had all led here. To him. To this.

When he reached her, his hands were cold, talons tracing her jaw as if carving his claim. He leaned down, lips brushing hers in a ghost of a touch. “A kiss,” he murmured, voice curling in her ear like smoke. “It begins with a kiss, and ends with everything.”

She didn’t hesitate. Her lips crashed against his, wild and bloody, teeth scraping, mouth opening to him like a wound. It was no mortal kiss—it burned. Fire seared her veins, claws raked down her spine, and something inside her cracked open. The air shuddered with it, the chapel walls groaning as if the stones themselves felt the covenant seal.

Her knees buckled, but his arms caught her, cruel and tender all at once. He drank from her lips, and when he pulled back, she was gasping, pupils blown wide, body trembling.