Kuran Mansion was large. It was ancient. Thousands of years had crumbled away outside its doors. Wars and revolutions had brushed up against the gates and been turned away. Vampire kings had walked its halls in the night, their queens and children able to sleep safely behind its wards in the day. Each new generation had left a mark on the luxurious manor house or the hundred acres of grounds. The result was a beautiful collage, the imperial Japanese roots melding with the decidedly Western. Sakura tress and rose blossoms bloomed together, their petals beautiful by day or night.

A long, serpentine driveway wove up through the trees from the main road, bleeding into the gates. The gates were tall, menacing iron constructions forged in protective magic. Past the gates was a courtyard with an artisanal fountain—marble angel women, frozen in play amidst the water. Their wings were gilt, and glimmered in the light. Beyond their cheerful guardianship was the main house: dominating white pillars reached into the sky, holding up a roof that heads had to crane to see. A set of marble steps led up to the rich ebony doors. A sun and a moon were carved in gold on the doors, each celestial symbol curving around a mirrored pair of 'K's. They were strange carvings to have on the doors of the manor house. The Kuran coat-of-arms bore none of those symbols. Yet, the doors remained just the same, a story for another time.

Behind the huge, beast-like wings of the manor, hidden from view, was every variety of attraction and time waster. A Japanese rock garden with stones older than some pureblood families was the cornerstone of the eastern gardens, while a rose maze dominated the west. A pool house lounged in the middle, and beyond were stables, maintained though they had lacked horses since those bought under Kuran Juri and Haruka had died. All was locked away behind an intricately woven net of wards that kept the estate inaccessible. Only Kuran blood or a Kuran invitation could allow someone entry.

This place was where Kaname had whisked Yuuki away to after Cross Academy. Their ancestral home. Not the small manor Juri and Haruka had died in, but the home Kaname had chosen long, long ago. Back in days beyond memory, when winter was the only season and vampires were nameless, wandering creatures. This land was the land Kaname had staked for his own. He had lain the foundation himself, woven the wards from intent and his own power alone. When he went to Sleep, his heirs had ruled from the Kuran Mansion. He had ruled from the Mansion, before the endless prowl of time had eroded him too thin. This place was where he had planned to start over fresh with Yuuki, to start fixing some of the things that had become damaged as his plans came to fruition.

He had brought Yuuki here for a fresh start. He had brought her to the place he had founded before he knew that he would live to see the next year. And he had expected a fresh start. Kaname knew he was many things: many bad, bad things. But he had never thought he was a stupid man. Who knew that you could be so, so old and still be so, so stupid.

Kuran Kaname stood in the conservatory of his once and forever home. He hadn't come back here since Juri and Haruka had died. His most recent memories of the place were foggy, seen through childish eyes. But his older memories, they were clearer. The doors had been unadorned when he went to Sleep. The fountain hadn't been there. The Kurans he knew didn't believe in angels. Perhaps it was just an aesthetic choice? But there was a feeling around the figures that made Kaname think otherwise. Some descendent of his had believed that angels played in fountains, and they had believed that angels like that deserved to be at the Kuran Mansion. They must have lived in a happier time.

Kaname should have gone to bed. The sun had crept up on him, purposeful but silent. The west garden was painted in stunning color, thousands of rose breeds eternally blooming in tandem with the aid of magic. The roses were familiar to Kaname, but the magic was not. Did the magic damage the plants? Could they cope with seasons anymore? Perhaps they had forgotten how to beplants. If the magic were gone, maybe they would just blow away into dust. Sometimes, Kaname thought blowing away, dust to dust, would be nice.

He had thought Yuuki was nice, once upon a time. As a child, the second time around, he had worshipped her. She was beautiful and bright, warm like sunshine on his skin. So different from the dark and the Sleep and the insanity that had felt just too close to the surface, some nights. Juri had made him swear to protect her and Kaname hadn't hesitated. When he returned to her at Cross Academy, she hadn't seemed to have changed. When he had fallen in love with her beyond his brotherly prerogative. When he had thought that he had, finally, found his mate.

Kaname snorted. He was a stupid, stupid man.

Closing his eyes, Kaname tried to place where things had faltered. It was a familiar exercise. The answers he came to no longer shocked him. Instead, they made anger flood his veins.

The truth was that things had never really been… right, between Yuuki and himself. Kaname's life was not an agony; Kaname knew agony, intimately. They were old fellows. Yuuki was unerringly pleasant to be around. She was beautiful in the way exceedingly few women, even vampires, were. Beautiful like the rose garden, like sunshine, like warmth and smiles and joy. And Kaname was starting to resent her for it.

At first, life had been sweet. With the Senate no longer present, Kaname could do as he pleased. Kaname didn't feel badly about that at all. His descendants had created the Senate, and after watching their idiocy for the last eighteen years, Kaname had decided that his descendants had been tragically mistaken. Corrupt, disruptive, and quarrelsome, the Senate was a useless crutch for minor nobles and ambitious commoners to assert some sort of power. Kaname had been disgusted by them. Killing them had been the highlight of his week.

Even better than destroying the Senate, however, was that Kaname had won Yuuki. Kaname had always thought of her as his girl, but he had feared Kiryuu's influence, that Kaname had lost her to time—just like so many other things that he hadn't anticipated Waking to find missing. But that hadn't happened. Yuuki had chosen him. Kiryuu could no longer touch her. She was all Kaname's for the rest of time and nothing could have made him happier. Or, at least, that was how life had been for the first few weeks. And then, it had all unravelled.

Kaname frowned. Was that true? No, maybe that time had only just seemed sweeter. In truth, ever since he'd left Cross Academy things had seemed to lose their pleasure for Kaname. Yuuki's smile no longer seemed as awe-inspiring, and her innocent attitude had begun to grate heavily on his nerves. How was it that she couldn't see the reality of a situation? Was she really that naive, that clueless? Yuuki could never see the weight of the situation at hand. She always thought that the problem would just… turn out right, in the end. Like life could never do her wrong.

Life could do lots of wrong, to the virtuous and the good and the bad and monstrous. But Yuuki couldn't see that. Despite the blood spilt in and around Cross Academy, Yuuki still had the eyes of a child. They were eyes that could never show the emotion that Kaname craved. A kind of passion that could help him, heal him, show him that life could be bearable. Enjoyable, even. Or that could just as easily break him into a thousand bloody pieces. Yuuki's eyes, though beautiful and bright, could never show Kaname the power that he needed to be present to let his guard down. He couldn't place what remained of his faith in her. He could never trust that she could endure. She was always delicate, in Kaname's mind. And Kaname could never love her like he should because of that.

It was horrible for the both of them, Kaname knew. Their relationship, his and Yuuki's, was hurting so many more people than just themselves and it was all Kaname's fault. He knew who he was meant. Kaname had tasted their blood, even—though not in a way he particularly liked to remember. Kaname never liked to remember how much he'd hurt him. Not that the nightmares let him forget.

They always started the same; a black canvas for a slowly forming shape. The shape became clearer and more obviously human. He was tall and lithe, toned beneath his porcelain skin. His face was beautiful, cheekbones like knives and cherry blossom lips. His hair fell in silver waves to the nape, with messy, unkempt bangs to his brow. Silver glinted at the top of his ear and a black design on his neck peaked through his hair when he moved. His fingers were long and slim and made for music, though callused at the knuckle from pulling at a gun trigger without gloves. And then, last but the part that always hit Kaname the hardest, his eyes would come into focus.

They were like purple fire, flickering and deadly. Hard like diamonds and rough like unrefined amethyst. They glittered coldly: caution and confusion and disgust and disdain gathering in their depths when they sighted Kaname. His mouth, full like Cupid's bow, would pull into a hard line. His hands, before hanging carelessly at his sides, would curl around a gun, the one he was never without. He would stare at Kaname silently for a moment, before mouthing silently words that Kaname never wanted to hear.

This is your fault.

Seconds later there was a gunshot and Kiryuu Zero's body would crumbled in on itself. The gun would fall from his pale hand and the world would spin. Kaname would wake up with Zero's name on his lips and tears in his eyes. He would not sleep again for the next two or three days before exhaustion caught up with him. The guilt haunted him.

It was his fault. His fault for hurting Zero, for using him, for pushing him to the edge. His careless cruelty was the reason his angel would die. The thought paralyzed him.

When Kaname had gone to Sleep, there had been no angels at the Mansion. Now, he was terrified that he had ruined the one fate had sent for him. The thought was almost enough to break Kaname right then and there in the conservatory. The knowledge that he would have felt it if Zero had actually pulled the trigger was the only thing keeping Kaname from falling to pieces.

His ignorance was astonishing. Certainly, all his plots had featured Yuuki as the prize, but the cornerstone had always been Zero. How would he react? What would he do? How would he be influenced? The fixation, so common to mated pairs, was there—crucially missing, however, was care for the consequences. Distance and the dreams, time and consequence, had corrected him.

Somehow, Kaname's wires had been crossed. His instincts, his only recourse for so many years, had guided him awry. Had this been a final plot of Rido's, a last punishment for Kaname's disobedience? That creature had tried to shackle him, sacrificing his own nephew to Wake Kaname in the first place. Kaname had believed he had already combatted Rido's insane evil, but perhaps not. How else had Kaname so mistreated his angel? Zero had been broken and haphazardly thrown back together countless times for the convenience of others, and yet had never bowed at their feet like the slave they wanted him to be. But Kaname—Kaname had almost broken him beyond repair. His own mate.

The honorable thing to do would be to leave Zero alone. Kaname was poisonous, venom-fanged, a monster who should have be left alone to his slumber. A serpent in the garden. Kaname was many bad, bad things, and that was exactly the problem. Try as he might, his self-control was never good enough. That was why he had Slept, instead of died.

That was why he would have Zero now, at any cost.


Roses bloomed in deep reds and pinks from the ornate marble flower box perched outside Yuuki's window. Annoyingly, the ardent blossoms were so full and thick that they interrupted her line of sight. Her attempts to peer through the diamond-leaded glass into the conservatory were useless. She could only just barely see through the main window. There, her fiancé's blurry shadow paced, worrying and not telling her a thing about why.

Letting out a deep, troubled sigh, Yuuki finally dragged her anxious attention away from the window, defeated. The early morning lights were playing havoc with her newly vampiric eyes and giving her a headache. Besides, she thought, irritated, it wasn't like she was going to find anything out, anyway. Kaname almost never talked when he went to the conservatory. When he did, it was in whispers pitched too low for even her sensitive vampire hearing to pick up. It drove her nearly as mad as the depressed look on his face.

Yuuki sighed again and started picking at the intricately tied ribbons at the neck of her nightgown, mind and heart at an utter loss of what to do. It seemed that the mansion had turned Kaname quiet and mournful. He rarely ever smiled and he always seemed pained when he spoke, as though he were trying to heal some great wound that no one, not even she, could see.

In her opinion, he had nothing to mourn over. Still, Yuuki had tried her hardest to help him. She had made herself available to him in every way. She tried to always be near him, at his elbow, in case he wanted to talk. She always smiled at him when he walked in the room, trying to show how pleased she was just to be near him. She tried to sooth him with her touches, always reaching to hold his hand, to brush her lips chastely against his. She wore only the clothes that he had bought for her, devoted herself to her pureblood lessons, read the same books he did—or tried to, at least.

None of her gestures had any effect. Kaname was, as ever, out of her reach. Watching him through her window as he stared blankly at the sun, such a loneliness in his eyes as she had never seen before... she couldn't help but wonder if this wound was not meant for her to heal. Frustrated, she drew the drapes closed.

Yuuki felt tears build in her eyes as she slid down the window. She pulled her knees up to her chest when she hit the soft, rich carpet. Her beautiful silk nightgown ruffled around her as she rested her head on her knees. She was surrounded by beauty, but misery haunted her. When they had first arrived at the mansion, Yuuki had been so happy. Although Kaname had not said it, he had seemed to love her immensely. He had always replied to her touches with gentle kisses, held her hand and run his fingers through her hair.

Now, it seemed like a dark cloud covered the entire estate. Kaname wasn't cold, but he never sought her out. If not for meals, she could go days without seeing him. He was a ghost Yuuki didn't know how to resurrect.

Tired of her thoughts, Yuuki padded over to her bed. Pulling down the blush sheets, she prepared for a troubled, solitary day. Burying her face in the pillows, Yuuki swallowed a frustrated sob. Here was yet another reminder of her inadequacy. She and Kaname had just a few months left until their wedding, but passing butterflies had more interest in her body than he did.

She had first thought him gentlemanly, but she heard the servants' whispers. Vampires were passionate creatures. They wore human faces and adhered to human conventions, but they were not human. Mated vampires couldn't keep their fangs off each other, let alone their so much less personal bodies. Kaname wasn't being a gentleman—he just didn't want her. This time, the sob snuck out.

He had wanted her, once upon a time. Yuuki had felt it. Somehow, this echoing manor had stolen that fire. But Yuuki would fix that. She might not be able to make the manor a proper home for them, but there was no denying their passion at the Academy. That was why she had been so agreeable when the Hunter Association had asked her and Kaname to return. She knew that if she and Kaname went back to the place where they had first fallen in love, they would be able to find what had first brought them together.

Yuuki smirked. She heard Zero's voice drifting through her sleepy head. Vampires did always have an ulterior motive.