A/N: Heeey! As promised, one of the AU's I mentioned from the Standing Up chapter. Actually, I have different versions of this one but I wanted to do this version first.

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's. That goes to the respective owner. I only own my OC(s).

Vampire and Werewolf AU- Not A Perfect Life, But It's Ours

(Yusei's POV)

There have been a lot of things I never expected during the years. One of them being is me, a werewolf (or lycan to some people), falling for a vampire—especially not the prince of the vampires.

Let me start from the beginning. I was captured by the king of vampires due to my heritage of being the werewolf high alpha's son. During my time there, I got to see what the king did to the werewolf prisoners: bring them to an arena where they are forced to fight or die for the amusement of the vampire guards. Sometimes they were pit up against each other. Most of the time, however, they were used to test out new weapons in the war against werewolves or had other creatures brought in (I overheard the guards saying once about a chimera being brought in).

When it got to be my turn, though, the vampire king decided to see how well I fared against some of his strongest guards and weapons. Before they could finish me off, they were struck down. The figure turned out to be the king's son, the prince. Apparently, he had had enough of his father's actions and rebelled in possibly the worst way: turning your back on your own clan. Even with the order to strike him down, the guards could just barely handle him, let alone the both of us.

Thankfully, a siege by a nearby werewolf pack allowed us to flee from the castle and get to my pack's whereabouts. Most of the pack were wary of him when he joined to help fight, and I have to admit I had doubts as well. Turning against your own kind was hardly ever heard of. Normally, it's banishment that's more common. What reason would anyone voluntarily leave their clan if it wasn't a ploy?

Over time, though, it became evident that the prince—Ren—was honest about leaving his clan when he joined the pack. He was able to teach the others how to effectively combat against vampires who have trained for decades to be able to take out werewolves easily. He also helped with planning strategies for head-to-head confrontations. In return, he was able to learn more about our customs and began to be more like a werewolf than a vampire.

Many in the pack started trusting him more. It was a bit comforting to have someone who knew the vampire king's tactics fighting on our side. But there was a bit of a nagging feeling at the back of my mind. I wasn't afraid of him suddenly turning on us in the long run. Rather, it had to do with one crucial aspect of being a vampire.

Unlike a lot of the stories humans hear about, vampires can eat normal food. The only difference is they have to take blood not as a means of a main food source. More of it's to help with their healing abilities. Vampires can survive quite a lot of hits, but only if they regularly have blood. In all the time since he's joined, I have yet to see Ren take a drop of blood. While some would say he must be drinking it in secret to not disturb us werewolves, he'd still have the smell of blood on him.

"Have you been drinking blood?" I asked him one day. We were training alone since most of the pack were out either scouting or hunting.

He blinked, looking at me confused. "Pardon?"

"I asked if you've been drinking blood."

"Yeah, of course. I just do it outside the compound. You know, so you guys won't be grossed out."

"Then why haven't you been healing properly after battles?" I've seen him with bandages on him for longer than should be expected for a vampire.

"Oh...that. Well, it's just that my body can't process animal blood as easily like normal vampires. Kind of the downside of being a royal vampire."

"I've never heard of that."

"Well, it's not exactly a thing the royal line wants to brag about. The king thought outside forces could exploit that and try to get rid of any nearby human settlements or raid the stocks of bottled blood."

"And you're comfortable with telling me, the werewolf prince, about all of that?"

"Hey, if worse comes to worse, we can use that against the vampire king if he won't surrender in this war. It's pointless to continue this war if it's more of a means of intimidating the werewolves into submission. I'm tired of it. The werewolves should be free as any other clan."

At the time, I believed what he said and dropped the matter. I didn't think to ask my father if that was true or not. I should have, though, especially before that last big battle with the vampire king joining in the fight himself.

Much like when we first met, Ren blocked the blow meant for me by the vampire king. Only not with his sword. Even with his slashed chest, he still took a chance to attack the king, his father, with the artificial claws he made from metal months earlier. What happened next felt surreal. Ren was standing one moment over where the king had collapsed before joining him on the ground, blood continuing to flow from the slash on his chest.

Thankfully, the vampires retreated after seeing their leader fall. It gave us time to rush Ren back to the compound and to the healer's den. Everyone there was shocked to find him still bleeding when we brought him in. If he was taking blood like he supposedly said he was, then it would have slowed the bleeding by then, whether it was human blood or animal blood.

It hit me once they said that. It wasn't the type of blood Ren was taking. He wasn't taking any at all. In fact, from how it was put, Ren hadn't been drinking blood even before he joined the werewolf clan. He showed the symptoms of a vampire starved of blood, namely (and most importantly) the slow healing.

In that situation, human blood won't be able to cut it with an open wound as serious as Ren's. For that, a vampire would need blood from a supernatural creature. And the only ones around at the moment were werewolves. That in itself wasn't the problem. It was Ren's attitude to the whole ordeal.

"Ren, you have to-"

"No."

"Your injury's too serious. If you don't-"

"I've pulled through worse."

At that point, I got so fed up that my canines lengthened and—from what Akiza and the other healers told me—my eyes went to the alpha silver. "For gods' sakes, are you that willing to die that you'd refuse the one thing that could save you?! Because you're not doing the werewolf clan any favors with this stubbornness!"

"Look, I have my reasons for not taking blood and I'm not about to break just because I'm injured. I'll be fine. I didn't lose any vital organs from that slash. It didn't pierce the bone or muscles."

Of course, unlike what he said, he didn't get better. He slowly got worse over time. I was mad at him, so I didn't visit. I only kept getting reports as my father went to work out a peace agreement with the vampires after the battle. Apparently, the wound kept reopening if he so much as moved his torso. His healing abilities were completely shot, and with how weak he was getting he had little options left.

Even though I was upset with him, I didn't want to leave him to die. He saved my life twice. It'd be wrong of me to let him die when I can easily save him.

I sent out the healers from the room to make it a bit easier for him to accept drinking blood. He was more or less confined to the bed and looking worse than when he got the injury. His skin was paler than normal (even for vampires) and he had dark circles around his eyes. Even with the clan's knowledge of medicine, there was no way the healers could handle a blood starved vampire, especially an injured one.

After enough coaxing, I got Ren to drink some of my blood to get his strength back. I kept making sure he did drink for the next two weeks to make sure he could recover fully. Soon enough, his wound had fully healed and he was getting back on his feet again. Since then, I make sure he has taken blood to make sure an incident like that never happens again.

Several months after, we began getting closer. Now that there was no more war to worry about, we spent more time relaxing and getting to know each other than sparring or coming up with battle strategies. Ren seemed much more laid back now with everything settled. It was like I was seeing a different side to him, and it only made the feelings grow.

I was a bit hesitant at telling him, though. He never spoke of being together with anyone romantically, so there was always the possibility that he only saw this as just being together with a friend. I didn't want to risk making things awkward between us, so I kept silent. But sometimes fate has a funny way of changing things.

One evening, Ren asked for a sparring match with only hand-to-hand combat. "You're joking, right?" I said.

"Nope, I'm totally serious," he replied.

"Did you happen to forget that a chunk of my training involved hand-to-hand combat? And how many times that you got bruised up during the same training?"

"Oh, how you wound me. I've at least gotten better from those early days to where I can be a good match against some of the werewolves here."

I chuckled. "All right, I'll humor you."

Our match went for quite a bit longer than what I was originally expecting. While vampires weren't nearly as strong as werewolves, they make up for their lack of strength with their speed and weaponry. Ren kept a close eye on my movements, knowing exactly when to strike or evade. He was right, mostly anyway.

In the end, it still ended up with him on the floor and me being on top. Though, the fight he put up left me more winded than I have ever been in a sparring match. "See? Told you."

"Pff, I got close to beating ya and you know it."

"Sure, sure."

It was after the little banter that I noticed the position we were in. Considering that one opponent has to subdue the other in a way to force them to give up the fight, I was keeping Ren pinned to the ground with my hand on his shoulders and straddling his waist. Over a year ago, it wouldn't have bothered me. I would have gotten off of him and helped him up. Now with these feelings coming in, I froze up.

I wasn't entirely sure what Ren's thought process was, but while my mind was reeling at the position, he had leaned up and kissed me. That caught me off guard and sent the wrong signal to him when I didn't respond. He slipped out from under me, disappearing before I could call him back.

For the next couple of weeks, he avoided me. He must have thought my lack of reaction was rejection; why else would he have kept his distance? It wasn't that, though, but he didn't give me any opportunity to tell him. Finally, I got fed up with it and managed to convince him to meet me in front of my room to talk. I decided now was the time to tell him the truth.

"Ren, listen, I-"

"I know what you're going to say and at least let me say that I'm sorry for putting you in that awkward situation."

"That isn't-"

"I didn't know exactly how to say anything 'cause I'm not too good with my words, so I thought I'd show you through actions. I...I understand if you don't feel the same. Thought I should at least show how I felt in case something comes up to separate-"

I stopped him from continuing his little explanation by pulling him toward me and kissing him. He was stunned at first but kissed back. I pulled away to whisper to him. "I think that's enough talking for right now."

Since then, we've been together as a couple. A lot of the clan was shocked to say the least that I would choose a vampire to be with. A werewolf prince and a vampire prince together. Well, it may not be a perfect life for us as lovers, but it is ours.

A/N: I...think I just made a whole fanfic in oneshot (of course, there are MANY details left out like the reason behind Ren's refusal for blood or what happened when he jumped in the arena to help Yusei). Well, let me know how this first AU went (it certainly won't be the last). Also, I do have other stories with Ren (though they're crossovers...and one being a oneshot tragedy).

I swear, I tried stopping somewhere with this, but I just kept writing. This is exactly what happened with the prologue to the How to Train Your Dragon/Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's story Dragons' Souls; I just would not stop writing and it ended up being over ten pages on the document.