I’d taken it all for granted.
I’d shoved them off of me some nights, saying they don’t need to tell me every single night.
My lip wobbles before I can trap it between my teeth. Heat pricks at my eyes, warning of the oncoming waterworks. I turn away from them, giving them my back pressed against the glass.
I swallow the welling emotions down, letting my head rest against the barrier.
“They’ll find me,” I say. Whether it’s for myself or for them is unclear. “They will.”
The silence that follows presses against the back of my neck, heavy, suffocating.
And then Callum speaks. “Why would a vampire care about college?”
He knows why it matters to me. Why is he asking this?
The question echoes in my skull, as if he’s daring me to admit that everything I said that night was a lie, that I’m nothing but the monster they see surrounded by blood bags.
For a long moment I can’t formulate a response. I focus on the rush of air dragging through my lungs, shallow, uneven.
“Everything I told you that night was true,” I manage to say around a growing lump in my throat. “All of it. I wanted to find myself away from the world I knew. I wanted more than the path laid out for me there.”
Silence follows and somehow it pisses me off further. As if it’s the last thing he expected to hear. Buttheyare the ones who played me.
My lips pinch together at the thought.
“What was it for you then? A game?” My voice sharpens as I turn back to him, holding his stare even though it stings to do it. “The minute you climbed into that car, were you already planning this? To hand me over? To smile and play along before you ran straight back to your uncle?”
No answer.
My fists curl at my sides, nails biting into my palms as my anger swells higher. “Why didn’t you just do it yourselves then? Too weak to do it without help?” The words twist into a sneering taunt, but they taste like ash in my mouth.
Because the truth cracks me open.
That night…the smirks, the banter, and the heat in Callum’s gaze. Elias’s steady weight beside me. It had all felt real. Realenough to cling to. Real enough to spark something I thought I’d never feel for humans.
But now, with their silence pressing down on me, all I can see is a facade and it makes me feel so incredibly stupid.
My chest heaves once with a breath as my throat tightens. I hate this. I hate the way I let them impact me like this.
My voice drops lower as I ask, “Was it all just a show?”
“We didn’t know what you were.”
The admission makes my inhale stick in my throat. Before I can answer, Elias speaks, his tone like steel that smothers Callum’s softness. “Our uncle is the only one who saw you for what you are. You played us, Briar. Not the other way around.”
My mouth opens, fury ready to tear from my throat, but another voice cuts through before I can.
“Ahh,” a male voice purrs, rich with delight, “I see our guest has healed enough to return to a conscious state. Finally.”
The hairs rise on my arms before I even see him. Then he’s there, sliding between the brothers, laying a hand on each of their shoulders like he owns them too.
“I expect this development won’t change our agreement, boys.” His voice is smooth, but the aggressive undertone is clear.
Both Callum and Elias nod. “It won’t.”
My stomach lurches and a fresh wave of disgust pools. I knew this man was dangerous the first time I laid eyes on him. I knew. But seeing him here, standing with his hands on their shoulders like a puppeteer with his strings, drives hatred through me so sharp I taste blood.
It shouldn’t bother me, but it does.
