Elena's POV

When I woke up, it wasn't fully light yet. A thin sliver of cold white light came through the gap in the curtains. The room was unnaturally quiet.

I was slumped against the couch, still in last night's gown, exhausted to the point that I could barely move. My head felt thick and dull, and my temples were throbbing — only then did it sink in that I'd gone days without proper sleep, working to put Vicky's engagement banquet together.

James stirred on the bed, and I was wide awake in an instant.

The moment James opened his eyes, his gaze was cold as a blade — instinctively wary, on guard. His eyes swept the room before landing on me, and only then did his expression falter, though the wariness didn't fully leave him.

His eyes searched mine — checking something, maybe, or trying to sidestep whatever had happened the night before.

I slowly straightened up. My voice was a little hoarse. "You're awake."

He didn't answer. He just stared at me for a few seconds, then looked away and pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose.

Watching him like this, I nearly wanted to laugh.

But the laugh caught in my throat and wouldn't come out.

"You drank too much last night," I said, keeping my voice as level as I could. "I was a little worried, so I stayed to look after you."

He couldn't get the words out. He only made a soft sound of acknowledgment.

The air went still for a moment.

His eyes flicked up to my lower lip, where he'd bitten me. Something hesitant passed over his face.

"Your mouth — should I have a doctor come look at it?"

The scene from yesterday flashed through my mind — the way he'd held me, the way he'd sucked on my lip — and a flush of heat ran through me.

But looking at him, after all these years together, still as polite and distant as a stranger, the heat in my chest cooled again.

"It's fine."

I smiled and shook my head at him, lowering my eyes to hide the disappointment in them.

It felt awkward staying there. I wanted to leave, to give him his space, but he stopped me before I could go.

"Stay and have breakfast before you go."

His words made me freeze.

I had already stood up, ready to leave, and now I couldn't move.

That little hope I had just buried back down was rising again.

I knew it. He hadn't just been talking last night. He really did want to try to love me.

"All right," I said, nodding.

I followed him into the dining room with quiet steps.

The servants had already laid out breakfast. The silverware was set neatly, and the air carried the faint smell of coffee.

I had barely sat down when I saw who was across from me.

Vicky was already there.

She was sitting next to James's older brother, idly turning the engagement ring on her finger, the picture of grace and ease.

"Elena? I didn't expect to see you here."

Her blood-red eyes flicked between me and James in a heartbeat.

Her gaze on me carried a note of hostility and disdain, but the moment she leaned back into her fiancé, that elegant, gentle look was right back in place.

"I was very pleased with last night's banquet. I haven't even thanked you yet."

My fingertips tightened. I could feel James stealing glances at Vicky, wearing a polite smile.

That little flicker of hope I shouldn't have had was gone again, just like that.

James acted as if he hadn't noticed a thing. He pulled out the chair next to mine and sat down.

He sat closer than he ever had — his shoulder pressed against mine.

I could feel the cold radiating off his skin.

And just like that, my suspicion was confirmed. I understood why James had insisted I stay for breakfast.

Across the table sat the freshly engaged couple, in love.

Vicky and Joey were murmuring to each other, exchanging the occasional happy smile.

On our side, James was looking at her and Joey, and his eyes were full of something that wouldn't stay down.

I kept my head down and ate, doing my best to look calm.

The hand resting on my skirt clenched into a fist. Tears were already gathering in my eyes.

James spoke up suddenly. "You've worked hard these past few days. Eat more."

He pushed the plate in front of me a little closer to me as he said it.

Before I could even react, he had reached up and wiped a smudge of sauce from the corner of my lip.

The gesture was natural. Intimate.

I went stiff for a beat and couldn't help glancing across the table.

Vicky hadn't noticed any of it.

She sat next to her fiancé, completely unbothered. Not a trace of jealousy neither a hint of resentment.

I slowly looked away with my chest felt tight.

"Thank you."

I knew. James had been watching for Vicky's reaction the whole time.

He was only treating me like this to make Vicky jealous.

After all these years at his side, I could read his mood without even trying.

James's hand paused for a second. Then he pulled it back.

He didn't say anything, but the air between us got colder.

The next moment, he pulled the ring off his little finger.

Before I knew what was happening, he had taken hold of my hand.

"We haven't had our engagement banquet yet, but take this for now."

His tone was flat. The timing was abrupt and obvious — anyone could see why he was doing it. But he knew, of all people, that I couldn't refuse him.

I instinctively tried to pull my hand back. He held it in place.

The ring was clearly the wrong size. He forced it on anyway.

The metal edge bit into my skin, and a sharp ache shot through my fingertip.

He stroked the back of my hand lightly, as if he couldn't quite grasp how easily a human body could feel pain.

James was still looking in Vicky's direction. His mind was somewhere else entirely.

I was used to enduring, used to being good. So I only paled a little, and the smile I always wore barely faded at all.

I could feel the looks coming from across the table — pity, sympathy, both.

I should have been used to being looked down on by then. But in that moment, all I wanted was to run.

Breakfast ended quickly.

When Vicky stood up, James's eyes immediately went to her.

She just took her fiancé's arm and walked away without looking back.

After they were gone, the dining room went quiet.

James sat there, hurled the dinner knife away, and the air around him dropped several degrees.

I patted his shoulder, wanting to say something soft, something comforting. He stood up impatiently and left.

Looking down at my own swollen, reddened finger, I just stood there, frozen for a moment. For the first time, I didn't go after him.

I started to wonder if I was the only one holding on too tight.

It seemed James would never love me.

Elena's POV

Maybe it was because Vicky never gave him the reaction he was looking for that morning at breakfast — from then on James started coming around a lot more often.

At first, I felt a quiet, secret kind of happiness.

He'd send flowers to my apartment before I left for work. Or a short message saying we were attending some banquet together that evening.

Sometimes he would even drop by my studio and sit on the couch, leafing through my design sketches.

One day, he found a sketchbook on my shelf — the one with the wedding I had designed for myself. Swing. Alawn and fountain just out of view. Compared to those lavish vampire banquets, the design looked almost too simple.

I didn't want to put any pressure on him. I watched him carefully, said nothing, and quietly closed the sketchbook.

But James just stood there for a long time, silent.

"This wedding looks beautiful."

He was turned slightly to the side. The studio light cast a shadow down the line of his face.

"Thank you. It's a design I've been refining for years. James, the truth is, I've always — "

The truth is, I've always wanted to make it real with him.

I didn't finish the sentence. He turned his head just then, and we caught each other's eyes and shared a small smile.

I caught something soft in his eyes — and something faint, like anticipation.

But it didn't take long for me to realize something was wrong.

That evening, he was taking me to a dinner party hosted by another vampire family, and he sent over a dress ahead of time.

The dress had a clean cut. The color suited my skin. The waist and the neckline were finished beautifully — almost too refined to be something James had picked out himself.

He brushed his fingers along my cheek and told me I'd look better with my hair down.

I didn't think much of it. I changed into the dress, and when I came down the stairs, my steps felt lighter than usual.

I had James's arm in mine. I had just reached the foot of the staircase when I saw Vicky.

She was sitting not far away, leaning toward the man beside her in conversation, her fingers resting lightly on the rim of a wineglass, her long, wavy hair spilling down her back.

The dress she was wearing was wine-red too.

The cut, the silhouette, even the finish at the neckline — it was nearly identical to mine.

People were watching me. People were watching Vicky.

The looks they gave me were curious, with a faint trace of pity tucked underneath. Some raised their glasses to me with a smile and said Miss Elena was beautiful tonight.

Others lowered their voices as I passed and remarked, with a sigh, that it was a shame — still not quite right.

I knew what they meant.

The real tragedy wasn't the dress, but the undeniable fact that I wasn't Vicky

James heard them. He didn't say a word in my defense.

Only sometimes, when I couldn't quite hide the disappointment on my face, he'd offer me some perfunctory comment about not paying attention to those tedious people.

And I would always smile and say it was nothing.

I could endure it. I would wait for him to let go of Vicky.

By the end of the evening, something inside me had gone numb.

After that, it kept happening.

James started bringing me along to more and more events. Sometimes he would even make small, intimate gestures in front of everyone.

People started to think he was finally taking me seriously.

And sometimes, even I let myself believe it.

But every time that illusion started to take shape, some new detail would pull me back to reality.

The dresses he picked were always the kinds Vicky liked. The places he took me were places he had already been to with Vicky.

When he looked at me, he was looking at someone else.

Bit by bit, I couldn't keep lying to myself.

He just needed an outlet. Somewhere to breathe through what he had lost.

And I just happened to be there. Always.

Elena's POV

After the engagement banquet, Vicky and Joey set the date for their wedding before long.

There was no way the gossip from those weeks hadn't reached their ears, but Vicky still went out of her way to choose me as her wedding planner.

She seemed to require my presence—her pitiful contrast—just to reassure herself that she would always be the one chosen, effortlessly and without question.

I had a betrothal in hand, but didn't even have a date set for an engagement banquet. Over time, I had become a joke to everyone — quietly, by default.

Because I'd grown up without my parents' attention, I'd always assumed I just wasn't good enough — that was why James didn't love me. So in front of Vicky, I had always shrunk.

I had taken her petty cruelties for years, following the family's instruction never to provoke a vampire.

But now — thinking of the way James had looked at me, the gifts he had sent — I suddenly didn't want to bow that low anymore.

When we were planning the wedding, I stopped going along with everything she wanted. I stopped apologizing first whenever something went wrong. It clearly didn't sit well with her.

"Your designs are mediocre." "I hate this bouquet." "This ugly dress — wear it yourself."

She kept changing her mind on purpose, often demanding revised proposals from me in the middle of the night.

The discarded drafts piled up in stacks on my desk, but I held my ground.

When James came by my studio, I didn't have time to put the papers away.

He glanced over them, and didn't seem to care much. He told me to go rest for a while — that sleep would do me good.

I took his advice. When I woke up, it was already dark outside.

A message had come in. Vicky said she'd found a better design for the wedding. From here on, she just needed me to oversee the on-site rehearsal.

A flicker of confusion went through me — I didn't know how she'd found a satisfying wedding planner so quickly. But my body was still tired, and I didn't think too hard about it.

Three days later, when I showed up at her wedding rehearsal, I understood.

The swing, lawn and fountain. An outdoor wedding.

The layout. The angle of the lights. The flowers. Everything matched the wedding in my private sketchbook, exactly.

Not a single detail off.

I stood in the entrance and didn't go in right away.

Someone was adjusting the lights. Someone was running a sound check. The director's voice repeated the cue, again and again.

"Groom, take a step forward."

I followed the voice with my eyes.

The man on the stage was James.

The stage lights cast a shadow along the elegant line of his nose. He looked like a model who had stepped out of an oil painting — pale, flawless, smiling and murmuring to Vicky beside him.

He was standing in the groom's place. He took the bouquet, walked the line I had designed, paused, adjusted his angle.

The motion was natural. As if the place had always been his to begin with.

I stood there. I didn't move.

People walked past me, talking in lowered voices, laughing softly.

"Joey went up north on business — flight got delayed, couldn't make it back for the rehearsal."

"Well, his little brother's certainly realizing the dream now."

The voices were quiet. Just clear enough that I could hear them.

I stood below the stage in the red dress James had given me.

Every part of it was a joke.

The dress was meant for Vicky in the first place.

This wedding — the wedding of my dreams that I had designed myself — he was going to hand to Vicky too.

Every bit of love, every ounce of attention, James had given to Vicky.

And I deserved to wear someone else's leftover clothes — to hand over even the things I cherished most, with both hands, to someone else.

I let out a small, bitter laugh. The tears slid down my face, but I just kept staring at James on the stage.

The look on him — happy, careful, almost reverent — drove a fresh blade into a heart that was already in pieces.

In one unguarded moment, James saw me there in the audience.

He froze for a beat. Then he looked away and tightened his grip on Vicky's hand.

"Elena's here too? Didn't Vicky say she didn't like her designs?"

"How embarrassing. The Valerie family has been pushing for the engagement banquet for ages. A pity James has time to play groom for his brother but no time to actually marry his own fiancée."

A few of Vicky's relatives were murmuring behind me.

Listening to those familiar, biting voices, I suddenly realized I couldn't stand any more of it.

By the time the rehearsal ended, the sky had gone fully dark.

The crowd thinned out. When James came down from the stage, he saw me.

He noticed how red my eyes were — how clearly I had been crying. Something pained flickered across his face, and he started toward me without thinking.

I had been planning to finally lay everything out with him. But just then, Vicky came over too.

"Sorry, Elena. Joey couldn't make it in time. I had to borrow James for a bit. You don't mind, right?"

She had James's arm. Her smile was sweet.

"Thank goodness for James — I don't know what I would have done with this wedding otherwise!"

"You'll all be one family soon enough anyway, so I'll just transfer James's fee to you, all right?"

Every sentence cut at the parts of me that were thinnest. She knew perfectly well that James still hadn't moved on our engagement, and she wanted to bring up the idea of us being family right there.

I couldn't even hold a smile anymore. I just looked at James.

He couldn't quite meet my eyes. He opened his mouth to explain. "Vicky, this design is actually Elena's — "

"It's fine. The rehearsal went well. If there's nothing else, I'll be going."

I cut him off and turned to leave.

The moment I turned my back, the tears came, and I couldn't stop them.

The servants and relatives all saw the look on my face. They smiled, mocking, watching the whole thing unfold like entertainment.

It wasn't the first time I'd been laughed at like this in a crowd.

I had known for so long that the one James loved was Vicky.

Whether with my parents or with James, I would never be the first choice.

Why hadn't I been able to let go back then?

The cold wind cut against my cheeks.

The lights along the busy street were flickering on for the night, and the vampires passing by were all eyeing me strangely.

It struck me, suddenly, that I had never really belonged to this world. And I had nowhere to go.