𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓑𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 - 𝓓𝓪𝓶𝓸𝓷 𝓢𝓪𝓵𝓿𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻𝓮

Katie Gilbert has always lived in her sister's shadow - Elena, the golden child, the girl fate supposedly can't stop obsessing over.
Katie? She's the "normal" one. The human. The safe one.
The one nobody ever expects to matter.

At least... that's what she believed.

Until the night she felt eyes on her - cold, ancient, intense - long before she realized whose they were. Damon Salvatore isn't supposed to look at her like that. He isn't supposed to soften around her, follow her through hallways, appear beside her like she summoned him with a thought. He isn't supposed to care.

Everyone warns her: Damon ruins things. Damon destroys things. Damon doesn't love.

But Katie sees something no one else ever bothered to look for - the bruised tenderness under the fangs, the devotion he doesn't even try to hide around her, the kind of hunger that has nothing to do with blood.

And maybe Damon Salvatore isn't the monster they think he is.

Maybe he's just never wanted anything...
until he wanted her.

Fast, dangerous, obsessive - Katie's world tilts the moment she realizes Damon isn't letting her walk away. Not now. Not ever.

And honestly?
She's tired of being the forgotten Gilbert girl.

It's time someone picked her for once.