When the blade bites deeper, his body trembles. It’s barely perceptible, but I see it.
Something is breaking him, and Elias sees it too.
I catch the sideways flick of his warning gaze, quick and sharp to his brother.
The concern etched in Callum’s gaze is brief, but undeniable. His jaw tightens as finally his gaze drags to the scene of the monster bleeding on the table. It’s the first time I’ve seen him not focus on a wall behind me.
It shouldn’t matter. I should stop caring. They’ve already proven their loyalty doesn’t lie with me.
The hiss comes again, and I slip back into the dark.
When I wake, it’s my cell once more, but this time I’m not alone and there’s no hiss of mist through the vents. I lift a hand to wipe at the bleary fatigue pulling my eyelids down.
Callum crouches in front of me, arms loaded with blood bags, so many that a few slip free and skid to my body. His boots scuff against the tile as he shifts closer, lowering the stack into a pileby my side. Elias hovers by the open doorway, back rigid against the frame, his voice a sharp hiss.
“What the hell are you doing?” His arms are crossed.
“She needs more,” Callum snaps back, his voice rough. His hands shake as he thrusts a bag toward my mouth as I blink up at him.
“You don’t know that,” Elias shoots back. “We’ve been giving her plenty to offset the night shift not giving her any.”
“She’s starving!” The words explode out of Callum, bouncing off the white walls, and my eyes widen at the emotion behind them. “Or can’t you hear it? The way she breathes like every gulp of air is her last? She’s barely holding on after having to heal every single day for weeks now, Elias!”
Weeks.
His voice echoes, harsh and raw with emotion he probably shouldn’t hold for his captive. In the silence that follows, I feel his hand brush my face. A strand of ragged hair is tucked behind my ear with a touch so gentle it feels foreign in this place. I haven’t felt that since the one time Dante cleaned my wounds, which feels like years ago at this rate.
Callum’s eyes crinkle at the edges as his lips tug down.
“I’m sorry.”
The whispered words roll through me, my mind instantly rejecting the hope that attempts to attach itself to them.
I can’t let myself feel that. Not now. Not after he’s let this happen to me for weeks.
He pushes the tube of the blood bag into my mouth gently and then instinct takes over despite the exhaustion weighing me down like it has the full backing of gravity itself behind it.
The copper tang hits me before my wounded pride can resist eating in front of him. My fangs drop fully, hunger roaring through me like a fire igniting in each nerve ending. I seize the first bag, tear into it, and drink. The blood hits my tonguehot and rich and I can’t stop. Bag after bag, tearing, draining, growling into the sterile air.
“This is madness,” Elias growls, pushing off the frame and striding toward us. “You’re hand-feeding her like some fucking pet.”
“Shut up!” Callum surges to his feet, his boot clipping one of the emptied bags, sending it spinning across the floor. “I’m not letting her starve to death because you’re too busy playing loyal little soldier.”
Tears slip free as I drink, shame scorching through me as I see them watching me. My hands tremble as I clutch at the plastic, my sobs choking through gulps. I can hear myself. The snarls as if I truly am an animal, and I hate them. I hate the way I look. I hate that it makes the word “monster” look true.
The brothers’ voices blur into the frenzy as I feed.
Elias bristles, stepping into his brother’s space, the air between them crackling. “You think this makes you different? You think you’re not a soldier too that stands by and watches what our uncle does to her every day?”
“You don’t even look like it’s bothering you!” Callum snaps, shoving his brother back a step. His chest heaves, every line of him trembling. “All the time we’ve spent here has shown me who the real monsters are in this place!”
The words hang heavily in the air as the walls descend with Elias’s thumb pressing into a panel, blocking my view of them.
I curl tighter around the pile of bags, sobs shaking my chest even as I drink. My tears fall into the red I clutch, mixing until I can’t tell where the monster ends and the girl begins.
The bags dwindle one by one until all that’s left is plastic slick with teeth marks and my hands shaking around the last drops I can squeeze from them. For the first time since I woke in this nightmare, the gnawing emptiness in my belly is gone.The hunger that has chewed through me for days finally recedes, leaving me full, heavy, and hollow all at once.
My arms tremble as I shove the pile of empty bags away and push to sit against the wall. My body aches everywhere but I can feel it working already, knitting, sealing, and setting. Healing has always been violent in its own way, pulling as much from my mental energy as my physical. Tonight it feels worse, like my bones are mending around despair.
