My Vampire Brother Faked Dying—Mine Was Real Chapter 08

Selene’s POV

They dragged Evelina out of the Veyron Estate kicking and screaming. No one ever found out where she was taken.

All anyone knew was that the Veyron family had lost both its daughters, one after another. But only one of them got a funeral.

In a small town in southern Louisiana, tucked between live oaks and Spanish moss, I was sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, watching it all unfold on the news.

The footage showed the Veyron Estate buried in white roses.

Alaric was on his knees in front of the tombstone, clutching an empty coffin like he’d rather die than let go.

The anchor’s voice dropped low.

“Selene, the true-blood heir of the Veyron family, has been confirmed dead at the age of twenty-three.”

I watched for a while, head tilted. Then I pointed at the photo on the tombstone.

“Cassian, who’s that? She looks just like me.”

The man in the kitchen leaned around the doorframe without missing a beat.

“She doesn’t look like you. Our Selene is prettier.”

I grinned until my eyes crinkled shut, switched off the TV, and ran into the kitchen to help him wash the fruit.

I know Cassian Miller isn’t my real brother. But he’s the only person in this world who makes me feel safe.

I had died once. Cassian was the one who brought me back.

The price was everything I’d been before. I woke up on the operating table,

looked down at my own hands — scarred and thin as wire — and didn’t recognize a single thing in the world.

I figured that was probably a mercy. Whatever life I’d come from, it hadn’t been kind.

“Congratulations on your new life. Want a piece of candy?”

A warm hand held out a bright little fruit candy. Cassian was standing over me, and something about his smile made my eyes burn for no reason I could name.

He told me he’d had a sister once. Blood Rot, the same as mine. She’d died on his table.

Saving me, he said, was his way of saving himself. A second chance for both of us.

After that, we were family. I followed him when he transferred to this little town, and the life we built together was quiet, warm, and full.

The only thing I didn’t see coming was the man from the TV showing up six months later.

He stood in the clinic doorway, so gaunt he barely looked real. His black suit hung off him like it belonged to someone else, wrinkled beyond saving. His silver hair was a mess. The second he saw me, he started crying and laughing at the same time.

“Selene. I found you.”

He said he was my brother. That I was the most important person in his life. That he’d been wrong about everything, and he wanted to take me home.

I frowned. Something about him felt wrong — too desperate, too practiced. So I called him on it.

“If you’re really my brother, where were you when I almost died on that table?”

“Look at me — covered in scars, skin and bones. Did you do this to me? I’ve been here six months. If you’re really my family, why are you just showing up now?”

“If you’re really my brother and you let this happen to me, then honestly? You should’ve been the one who died.”

He swayed on his feet. He didn’t have a single word to fight back with. I decided he was the worst liar I’d ever met.

I slapped him across the face and told him to stay away from me. He didn’t. He followed me for an entire year, silent and constant, like a shadow I couldn’t shake.

Then one day, he was gone. Cassian told me he’d died.

Bloodline depletion. He was the Lord of the Veyron family — immortal, wealthy beyond measure — and he’d sealed his own power. He worked back-to-back double shifts like a mortal with nothing.

No blood wine. No serum. No sleep. He lived on stale bread in a basement that flooded when it rained.

As if he was punishing himself. Or maybe reliving something someone else had endured. He collapsed on a delivery run, carrying food to a stranger’s doorstep.

When the sun came up, his body crumbled to ash in the sunlight.

Cassian told me this gently, watching my face. I felt something — small and nameless — settle in my chest. Not grief, exactly. Just a quiet sadness for someone I never knew.

A few weeks later, a lawyer showed up at the clinic. Alaric had left everything to me.

The estate, the family holdings, the coven shares, and a Firstblood pendant blessed by the first vampire.

I didn’t want any of it. The only thing I kept was the Firstblood pendant — its silver surface cold and heavy — and I hung it on the wind chime outside the clinic door.

Everything else went to the Blood Rot foundation. I didn’t know the man. He wasn’t anything to me.