Hunters Guild Headquarters (1)

Izcacus lay sprawled across the velvet sheets of his bed, bare and vulnerable in the dim, moonlit room. His crimson eyes stared at the ornate ceiling, but his mind was miles away. He couldn't shake the image of the beautiful boy, no, his mate, lying helpless in his arms.

"Scott," Izcacus muttered, his voice rough with longing. The name rolled off his tongue like a forbidden melody, soft yet intoxicating. He could still hear it echo in his mind, having learned it when Scott's frantic mother described him at the hospital's front desk. A name so simple, yet it stirred something deep within him, a need he hadn't felt in centuries.

He sighed, his chest rising and falling with an uncharacteristic heaviness. Fate had always been cruel to him, but this... this was a new level of irony. His mate, his destined bond, was the son of hunters. The very lineage that had sought to wipe out his kind for centuries.