The sun had finally clawed its way over the skyline, throwing pale light through the broken windows of the warehouse. Dust drifted in lazy swirls, catching gold in the air. Max sat cross-legged on the floor, fiddling with the hem of her jacket while Lucian leaned back against the wall, head tipped up, eyes closed.
The quiet between them wasn’t awkward anymore—just heavy. Familiar.
Too familiar.
Max chewed on her lip, thoughts gnawing at her from every angle. Everything she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours had detonated her world: vampires were real, Claire wasn’t dead, and the person sitting across from her was both everything she’d lost and something entirely new.
She kept glancing at him—the line of his throat, the hard planes of his chest where the torn shirt clung, the faint shimmer of veins still laced with silver. He looked… different. Powerful. But the echo of Claire still lingered somewhere under the roughness, and that was what made her heart ache.
Lucian cracked one eye open. “You’re staring again.”
She flushed. “I wasn’t.”
He smirked. “You were.”
Her throat tightened, and before she could stop herself, the question slipped out. “Are you… all man?”
His other eye opened. “Come again?”
Color flooded her cheeks. “I mean—when you changed—did it change everything female?”
For a second, he just blinked at her. Then a low chuckle rolled out of him, rough and amused. He tilted his head, watching her with that crooked, infuriating grin that was equal parts charm and danger.
“Ain’t you the curious type,” he drawled. “You really wanna know if I’m packing the full upgrade?”
“God, that’s not—” She groaned, pressing a hand to her face. “That’s not what I meant.”
He laughed outright this time, the sound dark and lazy, echoing in the cavernous space. “Relax, sweetheart. I’m all man—at least where it counts.”
Max peeked at him through her fingers, mortified and—if she was being honest—just a little intrigued. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning wider. “But you asked.”
“I was being serious,” she muttered, looking away. “It’s just… I keep trying to understand what they did to you. If it changed who you are, or just what you look like.”
Lucian’s smirk faded a little. He looked down at his hands, flexing them slowly. “They didn’t make me a man,” he said after a moment. “They just made it easier to stop being her. Claire was already fading before the blood ever hit.”
Max frowned. “But you said—”
He cut her off gently. “I’m not her, Max. But I’m not not her either. It’s complicated.”
Her voice softened. “You think she’s still in there?”
Lucian’s eyes lifted to meet hers. “She’s the part of me that still gives a damn. The part that didn’t burn out.” A faint grin tugged at his mouth again. “Also the part that blushes when you ask about anatomy.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling now, warmth threading through the exhaustion. “You’re such an ass.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, “but I’m your ass, apparently.”
That earned him a laugh, small but real, and for the first time in years the sound didn’t hurt.
Lucian watched her with something he couldn’t quite name—part hunger, part ache, part nostalgia for something neither of them could ever fully have again.
Maybe Claire had been right.
Maybe he could be both.
The light through the high windows had shifted to gold by the time Lucian moved again.
He’d gone quiet, eyes shadowed, thinking about things he never said out loud. Max was still beside him, waiting—not pushing, just there. That had always been her way.
Finally he sighed and reached for the torn edge of his shirt.
“If you really wanna understand what they did,” he muttered, “then you should see it.”
He stripped the shirt away and let it fall.
The air caught in Max’s throat.
His chest was a map of what he’d survived—thick white lines and smaller silver ones, the faded outlines of surgery and scars that spoke louder than words. Two long marks curved beneath each side of his chest, pale but deliberate. Beneath them, new muscle had formed over old pain, giving him a frame that looked carved from something unbreakable.
For a heartbeat Max couldn’t speak. He looked… impossibly human and inhuman all at once—strong, built, whole. Yet those scars told the truth of how much had been taken to make him that way.
Her hand hovered before she even realized it. “Can I—?”
Lucian nodded once.
Her fingers brushed the rough skin lightly, tracing the line of one scar. He didn’t flinch, but his breath hitched, eyes fixed on her hand.
“They healed clean,” she whispered.
“They had to.” His voice was quiet, steady. “I was already in the middle of it when the Collector’s people found me. The body was changing, the hormones, everything. They just… sped up the process. Did their own version of finishing the job.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “Guess you could call it efficiency.”
Max shook her head slowly. “No. This isn’t what they made. This is what you survived.”
Lucian looked away, jaw working. “You say that like survival’s a choice.”
“It was for you,” she said. “You kept fighting, even when you shouldn’t have had to.”
Something in his expression softened—just a flicker, a ghost of who he used to be. “You really shouldn’t look at me like that, Max.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes me remember that there was a time when these scars meant something different.”
She held his gaze. “Maybe they still can.”
For a moment neither of them moved, the rain-streaked light slipping over the scars, over the spaces where Claire used to live and where Lucian now breathed.
Then he muttered, half-smile, half-ache, “You always did have a bad habit of seeing more than you should.”
“And you always had a bad habit of hiding what hurts.”
His laugh was low, rough around the edges. “Touché, sweetheart.”
YOU ARE READING
Code Red
VampireThey call me Detective Michaels. The city's boogeyman with a badge. Every bastard dealing flesh or poison knows my name, and they damn well should - because when I come knocking, I don't leave survivors. But here's the thing nobody knows - I'm not h...
