Even Stella White, the stunning half-demon hybrid walking a step behind them, instantly felt that something was profoundly wrong with her brother and father. I watched her vivid purple eyes dart around the opulent ballroom, following their murderous gazes until she finally spotted Chloe and me standing by the ice sculpture. For a brief, unguarded microsecond, a flicker of genuine worry crossed her exquisite features. But she was clearly well-trained in the lethal, unforgiving politics of high society; just as quickly as it appeared, she schooled her expression back into a mask of cold, untouchable disregard.
It seemed Luke absolutely couldn't stomach the sight of us standing this close together. He didn't hesitate. He started marching directly toward our secluded corner, cutting a warpath across the grand floor. His father and sister followed closely in his wake.
The effect they had on the room was staggering. The elite crowd of ancient vampires, monstrous representatives, and powerful mages practically tripped over themselves to part for this imposing family. The sea of silk gowns and tailored suits split wide open, creating a clear, highly dramatic runway straight to us. Seeing the grim, inevitable situation unfolding, every single alarm bell in my newly upgraded brain started screaming. Confrontation wasn't just inevitable; it was imminent.
In just a few long strides, they were already standing directly in front of us. I could practically feel the burning weight of hundreds of gazes from the other guests looking our way, anticipating a spectacular bloodbath. But it seemed everyone in the room knew infinitely better than to actively involve themselves in the White family's domestic drama. The guests collectively put up a flawless, synchronized facade of polite ignorance, aggressively pretending to look the other way while straining their superhuman ears to listen in.
Luke's body was literally vibrating. The air around him shimmered with wild, unstable energy fluctuations, and his fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were completely white. He was having a phenomenally hard time controlling his boiling fury.
His father, Atticus White, on the other hand, was an entirely different breed of terrifying. He was preternaturally calm. His posture was relaxed, his hands casually clasped behind his back, but his dark eyes were locked onto me with an intensity that felt like a physical weight pressing down on my chest. While the men were having a silent standoff, Stella was subtly exchanging a deeply meaningful, almost communicative gaze with Chloe.
It seems those two actually get along pretty well, I thought, carefully observing the hidden micro-expressions passing between the two women.
"Hello, Chloe," Atticus said, breaking the heavy silence. His voice was smooth, cultured, and carried effortlessly over the ambient noise. "How are you doing on this wonderful evening?"
"I am doing fine. Thank you, Uncle Atticus," Chloe answered flawlessly, her pristine, cold facade snapping into place like impenetrable armor. She didn't sound intimidated in the slightest.
Luke, who apparently possessed absolutely zero manners and had completely run out of patience, stepped forward aggressively.
"Chloe! What the hell are you doing with this vermin?!" he demanded, his voice trembling with enraged disbelief. "I thought I had already gotten rid of him!"
The wild magical energy fluctuating off his body began to visibly distort the air, threatening to blow the ice sculpture beside us into a million frozen pieces.
But Atticus simply raised an elegant eyebrow at his son's outburst. He didn't scold him. Instead, he just calmly raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
Snap.
The effect was instantaneous and absolutely mind-bending. It felt as if a heavy, invisible glass dome had just slammed down over the five of us. All the ambient noise of the bustling ballroom—the clinking of crystal glasses, the classical music, the hushed whispers—vanished entirely. The space around us warped slightly, the edges of the room blurring out of focus. We were completely isolated from the rest of the party. It didn't even feel like we were occupying the same physical dimension anymore.
What the... I swallowed hard, staring at the invisible barrier. He just effortlessly folded space. An ancient and terrifyingly powerful mage, indeed.
"This way, we won't disturb the rest of the guests," Atticus explained calmly, lowering his hand.
You mean this way, nobody will interrupt us when you decide to vaporize me, I translated in my head, genuinely in awe and terrified of his casual, god-like prowess.
"Chloe, answer me!!" Luke snarled, taking another step closer, entirely ignoring his father's display of spatial manipulation.
Chloe just looked at him. Her eyes were as cold and dead as the vacuum of space. She didn't flinch, she didn't step back. She answered him with a tone that implied she was explaining basic mathematics to a particularly slow toddler.
"He is my boyfriend, Samsara," she stated flatly, pulling me just a fraction of an inch closer to her side. "I believe you met him earlier this week and were incredibly rude."
I had to actively bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from bursting into hysterical laughter. Rude? He literally ripped my head completely off my neck! This girl is the undisputed queen of understatements!
Luke was struck utterly speechless. His jaw worked silently for a few seconds before his face turned completely, dangerously livid. His ruby eyes flared, glowing more and more powerfully in the dim, isolated space until they looked like twin pools of fresh blood.
Atticus ignored his son's meltdown. He just narrowed his dark eyes, looking back and forth between Chloe and me, analyzing our body language. Then, he shifted his full, terrifying focus entirely onto me. Being stared down by the supreme head of the Magic Council felt exactly like standing naked in front of a starving, apex predator.
"Is that so?" Atticus mused softly, a chilling smile slowly stretching across his refined face—a smile that sent icy, jagged shivers cascading straight down my spine. "Boy, which clan are you from?"
"I have no clan," I answered, fighting desperately to keep my voice steady, projecting a fake aura of untouchable composure.
"I see," Atticus hummed, tilting his head. "Then what type of supernatural are you? I've lived a very long time, and yet, I've never seen your specific type before." He peered at me with a gaze so piercing it felt as if he were trying to dissect my very soul.
"I honestly don't know either," I replied evenly, shrugging my shoulders. "I thought I was just a normal human until a few days ago."
It was the absolute truth. I didn't lie, just in case this ancient mage possessed some kind of magical lie-detector ability. It was true, after all; my system-designated race was currently a pair of question marks without any specific name.
Atticus stayed entirely silent, just staring at me creepily, his mind undoubtedly calculating a thousand different ways to dismantle me.
"Hello! Nice to meet you, I am Stella White, a good friend of Chloe's," the blonde half-demon suddenly chimed in, smoothly shattering the oppressive tension. She stepped forward, offering a bright, dazzling smile that completely contrasted with her father's murderous aura.
"Chloe, you absolutely didn't tell me you had a boyfriend! And such a devastatingly handsome one at that," Stella teased, playfully nudging the vampire heiress. But looking closely at Stella's glowing purple eyes, there wasn't a single shred of genuine surprise in them. That immediately confirmed my suspicion: she was completely in on the deception.
"We just met recently," Chloe answered expressionlessly, not missing a beat in the script.
Finally recovering from the sheer, paralyzing speechlessness that Chloe's introduction had put him into, Luke turned his glowing red eyes back to me. The raw, unfiltered hatred radiating from him was palpable.
"You!!" Luke roared, pointing a trembling finger at my face. "Chloe is my fiancée! How dare you try to come between us!!"
I just looked at him, utterly dumbfounded by his staggering levels of delusion. This guy... he has already been rejected countless times. She literally just told him to his face that I am her boyfriend. And yet, this absolute dumbass still acts as if I am the malicious home-wrecker here! He was completely, unsalvageably hopeless.
I honestly don't know how Chloe intends to act if he insists on his psychotic delusion, I thought, my muscles tensing in preparation. His father certainly doesn't seem to be a pushover. In fact, I am incredibly wary of him. Even without lifting a finger, Atticus gives me the distinct, terrifying feeling that he could erase me from existence anytime he pleased.
"I don't know by what twisted sorcery you still exist on this planet," Luke sneered, his voice dropping to a lethal, guttural growl, "but this time, I will personally make sure to send your soul straight to the deepest pits of hell!"
Without another word of warning, Luke lunged. He practically teleported across the short distance, his fist pulling back, crackling with lethal, destructive magical energy aimed directly at my chest.
My newly upgraded reflexes fired instantly. I saw the attack coming and planted my feet, fully intending to dodge backward. But before I could even shift my weight, Chloe's hand clamped down hard on my arm, locking me in place like an anchor.
In the same fluid motion, she stepped gracefully in front of me, raising her free, porcelain palm. She slapped forward, her delicate hand meeting Luke's crackling, magically-reinforced fist head-on.
BOOM.
A localized shockwave rippled through the isolated spatial barrier. To my utter astonishment, Chloe didn't even flinch. She effectively and effortlessly blocked Luke's furious, full-powered attack, the sheer kinetic force of her casual parry forcing the half-vampire to stumble several clumsy steps backward to regain his balance.
I was genuinely stunned. I didn't know she was this insanely strong! I knew I couldn't move from just a light, warning squeeze of her fingers, but I had always just assumed that Luke was physically stronger than her. I thought that was the entire reason she needed my help as a meat-shield in the first place! But seeing her swat away his punch like it was a pesky mosquito, I realized I was dead wrong. She wasn't afraid of Luke at all. She was simply, heavily wary of his father, the supreme mage standing quietly behind him.
Finally stopping his backward momentum, Luke looked at his own trembling hand, and then up at Chloe. He was profoundly shocked, a deeply betrayed, agonized expression twisting his aristocratic features.
"Chloe... how can you defend him?!" Luke demanded, his voice cracking with hurt pride. "He is actively trying to put himself between us!"
"You are highly delusional, Luke," Chloe said calmly, drawing me even closer to her side. I could feel the soft, dangerous curves of her body pressing against my tuxedo, and the alluring, intoxicating scent of ozone and expensive perfume wafting from her hair briefly distracted my brain from the impending threat of death. "I am simply defending my boyfriend from an unprovoked threat. I don't see what is remotely wrong with that."
Luke's expression turned unimaginably ugly. His pride was shattered. Unable to lash out at the woman he was obsessed with, he pointed his trembling finger directly at me, seeking a different angle of attack.
"Are you even a man?!" he sneered, his voice dripping with venomous contempt. "How can you shamelessly hide behind a woman?!"
Okay, now he was really starting to irk me. The little prick had a serious attitude problem. But I wasn't stupid enough to be provoked into a one-on-one deathmatch with him right here in the middle of a ballroom. Even though I wasn't exactly afraid of dying permanently anymore, getting murdered still hurt like a bitch! Plus, I had no earthly idea what these twisted mages would do to my corpse before I resurrected. Burning me to ash? Sealing my soul in a jar? No thank you.
Furthermore, even though I was exponentially more durable and far more powerful than I was just a few days ago, I was facing a half-vampire, half-mage hybrid monster. That meant he didn't possess the typical, squishy, fragile body of a normal mage like my idiot cousin Cole. Engaging him was a losing bet.
So, I decided to lean into the absolute, unfiltered audacity of my role.
I wrapped my arm casually around Chloe's slender waist, looked Luke dead in his glowing red eyes, and offered my most infuriating, arrogant smirk.
"What's wrong with letting my gorgeous woman defend my honor?" I responded shamelessly, my voice dripping with smug satisfaction.
The sheer, unabashed cowardice and utter shamelessness of my retort rendered the entire White family utterly speechless. Luke looked like he was about to suffer a massive, magical aneurysm right there on the carpet.
Infuriated beyond the capacity for rational thought by my terrible attitude, Luke let out a feral roar and tried to lunge at me again. But this time, his father intervened.
Atticus calmly raised a hand and placed a firm, immovable pat on his son's shoulder. The wild, violent energy radiating from Luke instantly fizzled out, suppressed by a far greater, ancient authority.
"Is your father aware of his existence?" Atticus asked, his tone always composed, his dark eyes shifting back to Chloe.
"Not yet," Chloe answered smoothly, maintaining her icy poise. "But I fully intended to introduce him to my father tonight. That is exactly why I brought him with me to the banquet."
Atticus looked at her silently for a long, heavy moment, dissecting her words for any trace of deceit. Finally, he gave a small, slow nod.
"Well then, we have other important guests to see," Atticus said, his tone indicating that the conversation was officially over. "You'll have to excuse us."
"But Father...!" Luke protested, desperately wanting to say something, anything to salvage the situation. But he was instantly silenced by a single, sharp, freezing look from his father. Luke clamped his mouth shut, obediently following the older mage as Atticus dissolved the spatial barrier with another casual snap of his fingers.
Before disappearing into the milling crowd, Luke turned his head over his shoulder, giving me one last, intensely deadly glare that promised untold amounts of future suffering. I just winked at him cheerfully.
As the oppressive, suffocating pressure of Atticus's aura finally faded into the distance, I let out a breath I didn't realize I had been holding.
"You don't need to follow them?" Chloe asked, turning to look at Stella, who had remained standing with us by the ice sculpture.
"Not really," Stella answered, her glowing purple eyes flickering with a profound, sudden sadness as she watched her family walk away. "You know how it is. Most of the time, they act like I don't even exist."
But the melancholy lasted for exactly one second. She immediately broke into a massive, radiant smile and practically launched herself across the short distance, jumping directly into the arms of the deeply shocked Chloe.
"Hahaha! Chloe, I missed you so much! That huge house is so incredibly cold and boring!!" Stella squealed, rubbing her cheek against Chloe's shoulder, acting entirely like a spoiled, affectionate child.
The dangerous, incredibly sexy, and mysterious vibe she had been exuding while standing in the presence of her father and brother had completely, instantly disappeared. The radical shift in her personality left me absolutely stunned. She was like two entirely different people.
"I know, I know. I am sorry, I've just been very busy with a lot of things lately," Chloe said softly. Her usual cold, unfeeling facade melted away entirely. She patted the blonde girl's head with a deeply indulgent, surprisingly warm expression.
I stood there, slightly bewildered. I genuinely didn't know these two were so intimately close. It was like watching an ancient vampire lord console a golden retriever.
"Anyway, let's head to the bar!" Stella declared cheerfully, detaching herself from Chloe and linking arms with her. "I need a drink after dealing with those two killjoys."
We made our way through the crowded ballroom toward a massive, illuminated crystal bar spanning the entire length of the far wall. The bartender, a pale man with impossibly fast hands, took our orders. Stella and I both opted for a simple glass of expensive vintage red wine to settle our nerves. But when the bartender turned to Chloe, he served her a crystal flute filled with a thick, dark, crimson liquid that immediately radiated a heavy, undeniable scent of copper.
I didn't have to be a genius to guess what it was. It was blood.
"They actually serve blood right here at the open bar?" I asked curiously, swirling the wine in my glass.
"What did you think the vampires were going to drink at a party? Apple juice?" Stella responded, highly amused by my ignorance. "They can't get drunk on normal human alcohol, you know. They need the good stuff to feel a buzz."
I chuckled, taking a sip of my wine. After securing our drinks, we navigated away from the noisy bar and found a relatively deserted, high-top table near the balcony doors. Leaning against the polished wood, bathed in the soft glow of the chandeliers, the three of us finally engaged in some idle, surprisingly normal talk, doing our absolute best to ignore the very real, very lethal threats that were currently mingling just a few feet away.