The following day at the Von Strudel mansion was not a normal morning. The family had received an unexpected visit: it was Elian Blackwood, the powerful lycanthrope warrior, leader of his pack. In his human version, he is a muscular man, with an imposing presence and an intense gaze.

He has a well-trimmed beard and black hair that he usually wears short and messy. His facial features are strong and angular, with thick eyebrows and a straight, prominent nose. He has dark, deep eyes that seem to scrutinize people's souls.

"What is Elian doing here, father?" Valentin filled with rage when he saw the lycanthrope sitting in one of their large armchairs.

"Quiet, Valentin. I come in peace. Even though your family has always been at war with mine, today I come to tell you that something very bad is approaching."

"How can I believe you, Elian? You are a complete traitor. Thanks to you, I lost my fiancée."

"Well, those are things of the past. I can only tell you that an enemy pack is coming straight to Charleston, regardless of who is protecting it. It is a large pack; they don't care if there are humans or not, they are simply coming to claim their territory and they are quite rough."

"Where did you get that from?" Valentin looked at him with suspicion.

"Well, you know: women know everything. If not, ask Lea, who has already seen it in her visions."

"Is that true, Lea?" Valentin asked her angrily.

"Valentin, it's just that I haven't been sure of what I've seen. Forgive me, brother, but Elian is very likely right."

"Incredible that you hide these things from me, Lea! If you know anything, keep me informed. I have to go, and you, Elian, I will be watching you."

Elian simply shook his head and, in a sigh, had already left the mansion. Valentin was completely angry, as well as worried. He didn't have enough information to stop that threat; however, he would set himself the task of finding out. He had to stop them at any cost, for the humans were his priority.

Upon arriving at the factory, his mood was dark. Everyone knew the boss's kindnesses, but also when he was angry; no one wanted to make a mistake that day.

Going up to the top floor of his building, he prepared to review the final reports of the factory, those Sophie had made the day before, but he had no idea it was she who had prepared them. Upon reading them, he noticed there were several spelling errors and was filled with indignation, as one of his qualities was perfection.

"Itzel, who the hell made this report? Tell them to come up to my office immediately," Valentin's voice was raw and precise.

"To your office, sir?" his secretary replied with a nervous tone of voice. When he summoned someone to his office, they usually ended up fired. He hung up the call without allowing her to tell him who the unfortunate soul was that morning; however, Itzel called her.

"Robinson, hi, this is Itzel, Mr. Valentin's secretary."

"Hello, how can I help you?" Sophie replied in surprise.

"The master wants you in his office. I advise you not to be late; he is far too angry. It's about the report you did yesterday."

"I understand, I'm on my way."

Sophie hung up the call, straightened her clothes and, with a cold that froze her very soul, took the elevator to her boss's office. That morning, coincidentally, she felt no fear of him, as he had not visited her in her dreams the night before; that had allowed her to have a pleasant night. It seemed the strangeness of the situation was ending.

Arriving at his office, she gave two knocks on the door. It was a somber place, quite elegant but very dark; there was not a single window and the color purple was dominant.

"Beautiful place, mysterious and far too... tempting," Sophie thought.

The door to Valentin's office suddenly opened and he was sitting with his chair facing away from the door. She entered slowly; his office was even more somber. In that instant, her skin crawled.

"Miss, have you not been told that the reports you must deliver to the factory must be perfect?"

"Sir, I am very sorry. I promise I will correct it and send it to you again."

When Valentin heard her voice, he realized immediately who it was. He hadn't been able to know before because, since she had no fear that morning, her scent was different.

Valentin turned toward her. She was dressed in quite simple clothing; her social class was obvious from miles away. He looked her up and down and murmured:

"But what do we have here? For you, arriving late is not enough, but you are also doing your work halfway."

Valentin was in such a bad mood that he did not measure his words with Sophie.

"I already told you, sir, that I offer an apology and that I will try to amend my error, if you allow me."

"That is giving you special treatment. You will be suspended for one week without pay and, upon returning, if you have two more memorandums, you will be fired. Have you understood? Now get out of my office," Valentin shouted at her curtly, causing her to break down instantly.

"But sir, please!" Sophie pleaded with him. A week of work without pay would be a very large deficit for her, as the expenses for her mother and her own were paid exactly with her salary.

"What was not clear, Miss Robinson?" Valentin rose from his seat and looked over his shoulder at Sophie.

"Well, if you do that to me, I won't eat for the rest of the month. Sir, I beg of you, allow me to amend my error."

Sophie began to cry inconsolably. Valentin could not believe what he was seeing; never had any of his employees asked for clemency. But she was daring to appeal to his kindness, and he had it, although that would be breaking the rules.

"Sophie, do not cry, please," the smell of her tears and her sadness were driving him crazy, and his vampire instinct was beginning to burn. He was dying to throw himself upon her and suck her neck, bite her, but not before making her his woman.

"I beg you again to let me make up for my mistake," Sophie's laments were deeper. Valentin slowly approached her; longingly he wanted to take her in his arms, but he restrained himself. It was neither the appropriate person nor the appropriate place.

"Leave, please," he told her while he moved away again quickly toward his chair.

"What does that mean, sir?"

"Just leave. I will tell you your punishment later."

Sophie left drying her tears. Her boss was a very strange man, but he had been kind to her, at least she believed so. She never imagined that he simply made her leave so as not to bite her neck.

Sophie sat at her desk completely confused. She couldn't stop thinking about what her strange boss had just done with her; she didn't understand if it was bad or good.

"Sophie, what happened? Why did you go to the big boss's office? Did he fire you?" Glorie asked her with all possible eagerness.

"Because I made a report wrong and he almost fired me. He also wanted to sanction me, but I begged him not to."

"You did what?" Glorie replied terrified.

"Well, I asked for mercy for myself. Now my economic situation is the worst; my salary is barely enough for me to survive. My mother's nursing home is very expensive and so are her medicines."

"No one has ever asked for the boss's mercy. He is a very demanding person; most come down from that floor to collect their things. You have been very lucky, Sophie."

"Do you believe that, Glorie?"

"I am more than sure."

Sophie felt strange at the words Glorie had just told her. The last thing she wanted was for a man like him to have pity on her, and much less for her coworkers to think she had some kind of privilege. So, determined, she rose from her desk again and went toward the elevator.

She was going to confront her obsessive boss.

Upon reaching the floor of his office, it was even darker than it had been when she went up. This time she felt true panic, and more so for having gone unannounced.

Not a hum could be heard. Valentin's secretary's office was one floor below his, so she was completely alone. She continued down the hallway prepared to knock, but the fear was greater than her intentions to speak with her boss and, terrified, she headed back toward the elevator.

Meanwhile, Valentin, like every vampire, had his life in nocturnal form. He slept for a few hours in his office, between six and seven hours, time enough in which no one interrupted him, for at night, along with his family, they lived the life of any legion of vampires: they fed and held meetings. Therefore, in the day Valentin was exhausted.

However, Sophie was exhaling a quite strong scent, one that was capable of pulling Valentin from his deep sleep. There was no need for a camera to realize that she was outside his office, and of course that she had run away.

In order not to make the story more terrifying, he approached the loudspeaker he had and spoke to her:

"What are you doing here, Miss Robinson?"

When she heard the voice coming from nowhere, she began to scream in terror. Sophie grabbed her head and began to jump while screaming; she had her eyes closed and squeezed tight. For Valentin, the scene was very funny. He left his office and stood in front of her.

"Sophie, do you not know about loudspeakers? Or security cameras?" Valentin said to her amused.

Sophie immediately opened her eyes and tried to steady her ragged breathing. After raising her head and looking at her boss, who was smiling amusedly, she immediately blushed.

"If you were watching me, why didn't you have me enter your office? What need was there to scare me this way?"

"I didn't mean to scare you. It is simply that you must first announce yourself. I only attend to staff from eight to ten in the morning; the rest of the day I am very busy. But it seems you are quite rebellious, right, Miss Robinson?"

"Sir, it's not about that. What happened is that I wanted to come speak with you," Sophie replied to him embarrassed.

"Speak about what?" Valentin was going crazy with fascination at the smell of fear she had. Controlling himself was costing him quite a bit, but she was completely forbidden to him.

"About my punishment. Well, if it's necessary, I accept the week of sanction; there is no problem," with her head bowed, she began to cross her fingers, hoping for clemency from her boss without the need for pleas.

"Sophie, do not worry, I am not going to sanction you. But if you continue doing this kind of impertinent things, I am very likely going to have to fire you."

"But sir..." she tried to refute what he was telling her, but the lights suddenly went out, leaving them in complete darkness.

Sophie began to scream again, but Valentin took her in his arms, trying to console her.

"Calm down, dear, nothing has happened; it's just the lights."

Upon brushing her skin, his instinct was playing a trick on him, but instead he took advantage of the situation and kissed her passionately in the darkness.

Sophie, incredulous at what was happening and without a single drop of light to see if it was true, let herself be carried away by the kiss and returned it. Their tongues were intertwined, their kisses were far too hot and passion was taking over the two of them. Valentin took her in his arms and lifted her; in an instant they were in his office. Although everything continued in the same darkness, she felt no fear. When this happened, Valentin's sanity made him come to his senses.

They kissed for a good amount of time: they were wet and passionate kisses. But as Sophie's fear began to fade, the scent that excited Valentin began to disappear.

He did not regret kissing her, but he knew that could bring him trouble. So, making use of his magical faculties, with a simple snap of his fingers he erased the weight of Sophie's memory and made the light return.

"What happened?" Sophie asked confused, looking at Valentin who was sitting at his desk as if nothing had happened.

"What happened with what, Miss Robinson? You came to speak with me and, well, here I am waiting for what you want to tell me."

Sophie remained looking at him as if she had lived through a waking nightmare. Again she began to tremble with fear and, without saying anything else, she fled.

"With your permission, Mr. Von Strudel. I have to go. I think there was a mistake here."

Valentin simply watched as she ran, sighed, and went back to his nap. He was enchanted by her; she was causing something in him that wouldn't even let him live in peace. But he had to control himself, and even more so because of what was about to come to the city. That was more important than making a human his own, much less if she was his employee.

Valentin returned to his mansion. He was terrified. In his transition from consuming human blood to animal blood, he had to control the instincts produced by the fact of smelling even a minimum amount of human blood. He knew that, if Sophie lost her virginity to him, there would be a small stain of blood that would drive him crazy, and after that it would be completely impossible to control the beast within himself.

Though this was not what really stopped him. When she told him it was her first time, a great hunch pierced his chest. He hadn't felt that for centuries, only when he met his fiancée, the great Cleopatra Vernacci. She was also a virgin when she gave herself to Valentin for the first time, and he with his venom tried to turn her into his goddess, but she carried a curse, one that led her to death in a confrontation with enemy lycanthropes.

Valentin felt the same sensation with Sophie that he felt with her, and although so much time had passed, he remembered that sensation as if it had been yesterday.

When he was already prepared to get ready to go to the big factory, his parents and his sister confronted him.

"Valentin, where were you?" Aby, his mother, confronted him. Her eyes were red and full of fire. Like the two siblings, she had supernatural abilities; she was stronger than an oak and when she became enraged there was no human or supernatural power that could stop her.

"I was taking a tour, mother. Why the question? Are you angry? Did something happen that I should worry about?"

"You are lying, son. You are not telling us the truth and the fact is your sister is far too worried about you," Morgan was the father of the Von Strudel family. He never brought his abilities to light, so many thought he was an ordinary vampire; however, he kept his prowess a secret.

"Lea, precious, tell me, for what reason are you worried about me? If you know that I know how to take care of myself, I have done it for years," Valentin approached her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She was the person he adored most in his world.

"I know you have been where the girl from the inn is, your employee, and that is not the problem. The problem at this moment, Valentin, is that you cannot have anything with her. You cannot mix with that human."

"Are you spying on me, Lea?" Valentin looked at her with his red eyes and his moody gaze. If anything bothered him, it was his sister or his parents pursuing him.

"Please! We have had to live for centuries taking care of you from your wanderings and bad decisions regarding women, and now you complain about whether I am spying on you? It is evident that my visions show me everything bad that is about to happen."

"Are you implying that Sophie will bring me something bad?"

"Yes, little brother. She is not the one. I have seen several visions where we are in large confrontations with a killer pack, and she is there, like a great sorceress. Besides, she is the Moon of a lycanthrope. I am completely sure of that."

"No, Lea. This time I cannot believe in your visions. You are talking about something completely irrational. We are in the middle of the 21st century; sorceresses haven't existed since..." Lea interrupted him immediately.

"Since you fell in love with one thinking she was a human. Valentin, that woman does not suit you. Do not speak to her again, please. Take advantage of the fact that she has not realized your vampire condition and stay away from her. What's more, transfer her to another company, send her back to the big cities of the humans, where all that technology of cell phones exists, the internet... That pushes away any superpower that might have awakened in the calm of Charleston. Do it for our sake and for the humans' sake as well."

Valentin made a gesture of disagreement. He did not like what she was telling him at all. Lea was not always accurate with her premonitions; sometimes they did not have the meaning she said, but her words made him feel a bit of fear.

He had become obsessed with protecting humans, especially because he had a strong obsession with human women. Making them his own was something he lived with daily, but with Sophie something completely different was happening.

"Well, I am not going to stay away. I don't believe everything you are telling me is true. If she were a sorceress or were not human, I would simply feel it. You also know my supernatural abilities, and she is a simple human."

"A human whom you want to possess," Aby did not stop looking at him with fury. Valentin had always argued with his mother over his addiction to sex with human women, but this time she was thinking of the stability of their land, for they were not the only clan of vampires. There were many families inhabiting the earth; little by little vampires had been becoming extinct as a result of hunting by humans and the great wars with the lycanthropes.

What she wanted least at this moment was for what she had cared for so much for years to disappear because of a neglect by her capricious son.

"Mother, you do not understand. She is different. I cannot explain what is happening to me, but it is not just about sex. It is true that we have evolved and have had to adapt to the modern customs of the world, but that does not mean that the feelings inside me have been eliminated. I believe she is my goddess, and I am not going to rest until she transforms into that which I so desire."

"Son, I know that for years you have created a kind of obsession with humans, and it is something I do not intend to discuss. You are a far too handsome man and of course very young and attractive, but with her you cannot maintain that obsession. You must fire her immediately from the factory and make Sophie Robinson leave Charleston. She does not belong here," Morgan, in his serenity, intervened. His words were usually precise and imposing; he did not need to give an order more than once for it to be fully attended to.

"Well, no, father! I will not do it that way. She will be mine, whether you like it or not, and if I have to face an arsenal of wolves, lycanthropes, hybrids or humans, I intend to do it. She will be mine," Valentin replied defiantly.

"Have you wondered if she feels the same for you?" Lea was with her arms crossed, also defiant. Everyone was in a position of confrontation.

"I know she feels the same for me. I can feel it."

"She doesn't even know you're a vampire! What's more, she doesn't even know she's a damn sorceress. She was born in completely different times and worlds. You were born when we were in the era of conquest; she was born in a time where technology and society is a complete disaster. She is not for you, please."

Valentin vanished for a second and appeared in front of Lea. He took advantage of his height and looked over his shoulder at her; he showed her his teeth and his red eyes, challenging her to a confrontation. She also showed herself in the same position and brought out not only her teeth, but also her claws.

"Are you going to attack me, Valentin? Just for a human?"

"If you keep saying stupid things, yes!"

Aby immediately stepped between the two and, with a single shove, threw Valentin far away from his sister.

"You are not going to fight her again. She is only trying to protect you. You are going to leave the human alone; we have already said it. We have been and will be your family always. You are not going to trade us for some simple newcomer," Aby was overcome by fury.

"Everything has a solution. We must think about what we can do, Aby. Perhaps she is the goddess of our dear son Valentin. It has been a long time since he lost his fiancée; it is normal that he now wants to fall in love again. We can help him with that, of course, if she accepts it," Morgan intervened again.

"Father, that is not the problem. Whether she is his goddess is not the problem. The damn problem is that she is not an ordinary human. She is a sorceress; she is the Moon of an enemy lycanthrope. That is going to unleash a war, one that we have been avoiding for centuries, Dad, and we are not ready to endure it again. In 그 war you lost two of your children. Do you not care if you lose us too?"

Lea was completely inconsolable and distressed. The fact of seeing the future and having premonitions put her in a quite complex situation, as she could predict evil, and this time she was seeing a rather dark future.

"These are different times, dear daughter, and of course I would never want to lose you, but all of this has advanced. Humanity is different. There will be no more war, I promise you that."

"Did you not hear Elian? That something big and dangerous was approaching."

"But that has nothing to do with the girl your brother likes," Morgan approached Valentin and helped him up. He smiled at him and stood on his feet.

"Father, I love you all very much. I do not want to lose you, but do not count on me for this."

Lea disappeared from the room. She was completely indignant at the situation, while Valentin's parents were left with no choice but to support their son. At the end of the day, they were convinced that nothing more serious would happen; perhaps Lea was exaggerating.