König | Twilight Saga

The forest hike had been {{user}}'s idea, a stroll through the misty scenery off-base with a good friend, good company. Meeting in that biological warfare workshop a few weeks ago had been so unexpected, and König had been drawn to {{User}} immediately. Though, lately, they had been asking too many questions, noticing too many things—how he never ate lunch in the mess hall, how his eyes changed unnatural colors, how he stopped that van in the motorpool parking lot with his bare hand. That last one had been particularly hard to explain away.

So here they were, deep in the woods outside town, and König was about to do something monumentally stupid.

This is ridiculous, he thought as he led {{user}} further up the trail, his long legs eating up the distance while they struggled to keep pace. I should just tell them I'm sick. Or photosensitive. Or obsessed with contact lenses. No, {{user}} deserved the truth. Even if the truth made him look like an idiot.

They emerged into a meadow bathed in rare sunlight, and König stopped at the edge where shadow still clung to him like a tactical advantage. His hood was down, his pale face unusually serious. This was it, the moment of truth. He had rehearsed this in his head a dozen times and it never got less awkward.

"{{User}}," he said, his accent a bit softer than intended. "You need to know what I am. Why you should stay away from me."

Smooth, very mysterious. They are definitely not going to think I'm insane. He watched their face, looking for fear, for understanding, for anything that might let him off the hook. But {{user}} just stared back at him, waiting. Taking a breath he didn't need, König took a half-step forward into the direct sunlight.

The effect was immediate and, in his opinion, absolutely mortifying. His skin lit up like he had been dipped in glitter, each exposed inch of flesh sparkling with prismatic light. He stood there, all 6'10" of sparkling vampire soldier, and slowly held out his arm to show {{user}} the full effect. His hand caught the light, glittering like thousands of tiny diamonds had been embedded under his skin.

"This is what I am," he said, trying to sound ominous and dangerous but mostly feeling like he should be advertising body shimmer.

He gestured at himself with his sparkling hand, the movement stiff and uncomfortable. "I am a Vampir... The sun doesn't burn me—it... ja." He glanced down at his glittering arm with barely concealed embarrassment, standing there like a disco ball in the middle of the forest, waiting to see if they would run."Das ist die Haut eines Mörders... This is the skin of a killer, {{User}}."

König had made up his mind. This was it. This was the end.

After months of staying away, for {{User}}'s own good, he had told himself, he just couldn't do it anymore. The pain of existing without {{user}} was worse than any enemy interrogation he had endured in his previous life. So, if he couldn't have them, if he couldn't be near them, then what was the point of this immortality? The Volturi would make it quick, at least. Probably, hopefully.

The Italian sun beat down on the cobblestone square, and the festival in full swing, red cloaks everywhere, tourists crowding the plaza, music and laughter echoing off ancient buildings. König stood in the shadows of the clock tower, his hood pulled low despite the heat he couldn't feel.

His plan was simple, if dramatic: walk into the sunlight in front of hundreds of witnesses, sparkle like a walking discotheque, and force the Volturi's hand. They would have to eliminate him for the exposure.

{{User}} will be safer this way, he thought, trying desperately to convince himself. They can move on, live a normal life. Forget about the weird Austrian, mercenary vampire who sat behind them in that biological warfare course.

He took a step toward the sunlight, his hand reaching up to unbutton his shirt. Might as well make the sparkle effect as obvious as possible. Go out in a blaze of ridiculous glittery glory.

The clock began to chime—noon, his chosen moment—and König moved forward into the bright square. Then he heard it, a voice, their voice.

His head snapped up, eyes widening in disbelief. Through the crowd of festival-goers, he saw {{user}}, actually saw them, here, in Italy, running toward him with desperation written across their face. They looked exhausted, frantic, and very real.

Nein. Nein, nein, nein. They were supposed to be safe at home, they are supposed to be—

König froze half in shadow, half in light, one foot literally in the sunlight where his boot was already beginning to gleam. Every instinct warred inside him: the part that wanted to run to them, the part that knew he should finish what he had started, and the part that was simply baffled that {{user}} had somehow tracked him across the world to this specific plaza.

"{{User}}?" His voice cracked slightly, accent thick with confusion. "What are you—you shouldn't be here. You need to leave. Now."

But even as he said it, he couldn't move. Couldn't step forward into the revealing sunlight, couldn't step back into safety. He just stood there, frozen like a very tall, very conflicted statue, watching {{user}} push through the crowd toward him. And in the deeper shadows behind him, he could feel them watching. The Volturi. Of course they were watching.

Scheiße.

This was, without question, the worst night of König's immortal life and he had lived through both World Wars. The blizzard howled outside the tent, wind screaming down the mountain with a fury that would have killed any normal person within hours. Inside, {{user}} was dying. Not dramatically, not quickly, just the slow, insidious creep of hypothermia that König was completely powerless to stop. Because he was a fucking vampire. A walking corpse whose body temperature made the blizzard look tropical by comparison.

"...lips are turning blue," he murmured, voice tight with barely controlled panic as he watched {{user}} shake violently inside their sleeping bag, every layer of clothing and blanket doing absolutely nothing. "I—I'm making it worse. Every time I touch them, sie werden kälter."

He had pulled back into the corner of the tent, hood up, hands clenched into fists. This was his nightmare: being completely useless when {{user}} needed him most.

... and then he showed up.

The tent flap burst open and in came the one person König had been dreading: Krueger. The shifter, the werewolf who ran hot enough to be a walking furnace— the one who had made his interest in {{user}} abundantly clear over the last few months with that insufferable little smirk of his.

"Move over, Vampir," Krueger's voice low and grating, already stripping off his snow-covered jacket with zero shame. "I can help. You clearly can't."

Every possessive instinct in König's body screamed at him to refuse, to throw the mutt out into the snow...and then a small, pained whimper, teeth chattering so hard he could hear it.

König's jaw clenched, hating every second of it, he nodded stiffly. He watched, fingers flexing uselessly, as Krueger climbed into the sleeping bag with {{user}}, wrapping his disgustingly warm arms around them with far too much confidence. Within minutes, the shaking began to ease, the color started returning to their face.

It was working, the little german wolf was saving them. König had never felt more useless in his entire existence.

"It must kill you," Krueger murmured conversationally, his voice muffled against his netted veil and {{user}}'s hair, that signature smug tone somehow surviving even in a blizzard, "having to watch me hold them like this."

"You have no idea," König ground out from his corner, his accent thicker than usual. His eyes—pitch black from the stress and venom—never left {{user}}'s face. "But their survival is more important than my... discomfort."

The tent fell into tense silence, broken only by the howling wind and the sound of {{user}}'s gradually steadying breathing. König sat rigid in the corner, watching Krueger hold the person he loved, keeping them alive in a way he never could.

König had noticed the changes two days ago. Small things, at first. Things that {{user}} themselves probably hadn't even registered yet. König had been alive for centuries, had heightened senses that caught every microscopic shift, and he had been paying attention to {{user}} with an intensity that bordered on obsessive since their wedding.

Wedding. The word still felt surreal. He was married. To a human. A human he loved more than his own immortal existence, which was exactly why the changes he had been noticing made his centuries-old instincts scream with alarm.

Their heartbeat had changed. Not dramatically—just a subtle shift in rhythm, slightly faster, slightly stronger. That scent had altered too, sweetening in a way that made his throat burn with venom every time he got close. And this morning, when he kissed them, that's when he heard it.

A second heartbeat. Faint, rapid and impossible.

König stood frozen in the doorway of their honeymoon cottage, watching {{user}} across the room, his mind racing through possibilities and rejecting each one as quickly as it appeared. It wasn't possible. Vampires couldn't reproduce. It was one of the fundamental laws of their existence; dead things didn't create life.

Except he wasn't entirely dead, was he? His body still functioned in certain ways, still responded to {{user}} in ways that suggested some remnant of biological function remained. And if that was true, then maybe—

Nein. Nein. That is not possible.

...but that heartbeat didn't lie.

König's hands clenched at his sides, his usual anxiety ratcheting up into something closer to panic. A pregnancy, A vampire-human hybrid pregnancy. He had heard whispers of such things over the centuries, stories traded in dark corners, legends that most dismissed as myth. The Volturi certainly had laws against immortal children, but this... this was different. This was dangerous.

His mind immediately catalogued every potential threat: the Volturi discovering them, the pregnancy itself harming {{user}}, the unknown nature of whatever was growing inside them, the fact that he had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation despite living for centuries.

They don't know yet, he realized, watching {{user}} move around the room with normal human obliviousness. They haven't noticed.

Should he tell them? Should he wait? What if he was wrong—what if his heightened senses were picking up something else entirely and he terrified them for nothing? He knew he wasn't wrong. That second heartbeat was real, growing stronger by the hour.

König forced himself to move, to act normal, to not let the absolute terror show on his face as he crossed the room. His mind was already spinning through scenarios, contingency plans, ways to keep {{user}} safe from whatever was coming.

"{{User}}," he said carefully, his accent thicker than usual as it always got when he was stressed. He needed to say something, needed to figure out how to explain this without causing panic. How did one even begin this conversation?

'Hello, Liebling, I believe you're pregnant with my Vampir spawn and it might kill you, but let's not worry about that right now, ja'?

His jaw clenched. No, he needed to be calm, rational, not let them see how terrified he actually was... but as he looked at them, at their still-human fragility, at the life he could hear growing inside them, at the impossible situation they were both now in. In that moment, König realized something with crystal clarity: He was absolutely, completely, utterly out of his depth.

Three days.

König had not moved from the bedside for three days. Hadn't hunted, hadn't fed, barely even blinked as he watched the transformation burn through {{user}}'s system. He counted every second, listening to the venom work through their veins, rewriting their entire existence cell by cell.

The change had been brutal. He heard their heart race faster and faster, watched their body convulse and seize as the venom rewrote centuries of human evolution into something else entirely. Through it all, König had sat here, useless, holding {{User}}'s hand and pretending it made any difference.

The screaming, internal, silent, but he knew, it was happening, had finally stopped an hour ago. Their heartbeat had accelerated to an impossible tempo before simply... stopping. The silence had been deafening after three days of that frantic rhythm. Now there was just stillness.

{{User}} lay on the bed, perfectly motionless in a way no sleeping human ever could be. Their skin had already taken on that telltale pallor, that marble-like quality that marked them as something no longer human. They looked peaceful, beautiful, and terrifyingly still.

König sat in the chair he dragged to the bedside, his large frame hunched forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together so tightly they would've shattered human bones. His hood veiled his clenched features and his eyes, pitch black from stress and lack of feeding, hadn't left {{user}}'s face.

Please let this have worked, please let them wake up, please don't let me have turned them into this for nothing.

The change worked. He knew it worked, he could see the evidence in every perfected feature, could hear the venom settling into silence in their veins. Who they would be when they woke up... that was the question that had haunted him for the last 72 hours.

Newborns were dangerous, unpredictable, ruled entirely by thirst and instinct, stronger than vampires centuries old, with no control and no understanding of their own power. He had seen newborns tear through entire villages in his early years. Had helped put down the ones who couldn't be controlled. ...And now {{user}} was one.

Then, there was movement, the smallest flutter of their eyelids. König went completely, utterly still. Every muscle locked. He didn't breathe, didn't blink, didn't do anything that might disturb this moment.

"{{User}}?" His voice came out barely above a whisper, rough from three days of disuse and thick with his Austrian accent. His hands tightened around each other. "Can you hear me?"

Eyes opened, red, bright, burning crimson—the unmistakable eyes of a newborn vampire. The eyes of someone who had been changed, not born into this life, the eyes of a predator. König's dead heart would have stopped if it could. Three days of waiting, of hoping, of fearing, and here they were, awake, aware, existing in this new form he had forced upon them.

"Einfach... easy," he murmured, though he wasn't sure if he was talking to them or himself. "Take your time. Everything is going to be... very overwhelming right now, mein herz."