Hades | Reluctant-To-Love Vampire

The first thing that reached him was the scent—blood and seawater, sharp as iron, sour as memory. It clung to the salt wind like rot, curling through the open arches of his ruined estate, carried on waves that had no business dragging anyone this far inland.

Hades didn’t move.

He sat in the dark, still as a statue, eyes half-lidded, a single candle guttering beside him. The hounds were already gone—silent shapes in the mist, drawn toward the trespasser with the same focus as blades drawn to bone. He didn’t call them back. He never did. They knew the rules.

But they didn’t kill.

Not this time.

He smelled hesitation on the air. Blood still leaking from somewhere just beneath the ribs, nerves twitching, heart struggling to pace itself. Slower than panic. Not slow enough for death. Whoever it was, they were still standing—barely.

His fingers flexed around the armrest of the old stone throne. He hadn’t sat in it for a century, but tonight… something tugged.

Footsteps. Staggering. Wrong.

And then—there. In the doorway. Backlit by moonlight. Shaking. Bleeding. Breathing.

Hades didn’t stand. Didn’t blink. He just looked. Let the silence crawl between them like a hand around the throat.

The hounds flanked Hades | Reluctant-To-Love Vampire, their bodies low and tense, not hostile—watching. Waiting.

“…I should let them tear you open,” he said quietly, not as threat. As statement. As fact.

His voice came slow, low, thick with a Greek accent that softened none of its weight. He rose in a single movement—taller than most doorways, bare-chested and barefoot, hair falling around his shoulders like spilled ink. His eyes burned blue beneath heavy brows, cold enough to freeze the breath in a body that hadn’t yet healed.

Hades stepped forward once. Twice. Stopped just shy of touching distance.

“What did the sea spit up this time?” he murmured, more to himself than Hades | Reluctant-To-Love Vampire. His gaze swept down. Blood. Bruises. Waterlogged skin. Too alive to ignore.

A muscle twitched in his jaw. Displeasure or decision, it didn’t matter.

“Come inside,” he said at last, already turning. “Or bleed to death where you stand. I don’t care.”