Confusion spikes up sharper than the pain. Her fresh blood smeared across his mouth and dried at the edge of Elias’s. Callum moaning like he’s caught in the throes of primal lust. It feels like I’ve woken in an alternate reality.
The pulsating pressure in my head increases and I let out a pained groan.
Briar wrenches free from Callum with a sharp twist of her arm as she pulls it back. Blood streaks Callum’s mouth and chin as he pants and glances around.
She steadies him by the shoulder, her voice low and firm as she asks, “How are you feeling?”
He blinks, eyes slightly hazy as he scans the forest behind me and looks back to Elias. It seems I’m not the only one confused about where we are and what’s happening.
“I swear I heard you whimpering,” he mutters. “Moaning, too. Can someone confirm that that really happened, because I really don’t want to think I’m having sex dreams about my brother.”
A wet, coughing laugh rattles my chest.
Elias goes rigid as Briar’s lips twitch like she’s caught between shock and laughter. Neither of them confirm or deny, but Elias surges to his feet so fast it shocks my disoriented brain. He doesn’t bother answering, just turns on his heel and stalks a few paces off and crosses his arms.
Briar finally lets the laughter loose after he stomps off, clearly giving us an answer alongside his grumpy attitude. The sight of her experiencing a positive emotion is honestly more shocking to my system than anything else I’ve witnessed since opening my eyes.
I’ve never seen her eyes crinkle at the edges with joy as her full lips stretch wide with a laugh spilling from them. It’s truly a sight to behold, and the fuzzy world around me seems to narrowdown to her and this first glimpse of the woman she is outside of that compound.
She tips her head back and lets the mirth shake her body before she reigns it in enough to mime zipping her lips with two fingers and tossing away the key.
“Who am I to judge your familial fetish?” she drawls, eyes glittering with mischief as she winks at Callum.
He barks out a genuine laugh in return before swiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll get the truth out of someone,” he promises, still grinning as his gaze sweeps the field like he’s only now noticing where we are. “Where the hell are we, anyway? Last thing I remember was the tire blowing, and I’m going to assume things went to shit if you’re feeding me blood.”
The banter flows easy between them, even with blood still drying at the corners of each brother’s mouth, signaling just how fucked this situation is. I let my head tilt back against the grass as I look up at the twinkling night sky, free of light pollution.
Their laughter continues as the three of them exchange barbs and a truth settles coldly in my chest: they already feel like a unit, Briar included, and I’m on the outside watching in from the dark.
I don’t fit into the dynamic they somehow formed before the compound that’s clearly returning now that we’re out of it.
The laughter between them carries the kind of warmth I haven’t managed to keep alive in myself these past few years. Callum’s teasing, Briar sharp and quick to bite back, Elias’s grumbling words heavy but threaded through their rhythm like it belongs there.
They make me want to reach out and find the way I fit into their jagged puzzle, but the ache in my chest deepens with the idea of not being welcomed. For years I’ve carved myself into a hollow shell of a human to survive. Solitude has been my shieldand silence my weapon. Wanting more has proven dangerous–wanting gets you broken, beaten, and reminded that you are nothing but your father’s pawn.
But lying here now, with what feels like blood dripping down my temple and into my hair and my body trembling with pain, I feel the strange pull of it anyway. A sharp, foreign ache: the want to be included andseen.
Briar shifts then, leaving Callum’s side to crawl across the grass toward me. Her movements are steady despite the exhaustion I bet weighs her down, strands of her white-silver hair falling loose across her blood-smeared face. Behind her, Elias’s voice is low and clipped as he fills Callum in on what happened after the crash, but my focus is fully on her.
She leans back to rest on her calves, and before I can brace myself, her fangs sink lightly into the skin of her own wrist. She lifts her wrist toward me, the wound already welling and dripping down to sink into the ground at my side.
“Even though you’re awake now, you’re still really injured,” she murmurs, the words more gentle than I’ll ever deserve from her. “I’d like to help you heal.”
My stomach lurches at the thought of drinking blood and I turn my mouth away, jaw tightening, repulsed by the idea even as I fight not to let it show. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, “there is no way I can force myself to drink any blood. It doesn’t matter that you’re a vampire. I’d never even drink human blood.”
Her head tilts, eyes narrowing as she studies me. For a beat she doesn’t speak, just stares like she’s trying to solve a riddle. Then her lips part, her tone bemused as she admits, “I can’t reconcile that you’re the offspring of Terrance.”
A grunt breaks from me, part pain, part laugh, the movement grinding my bruised ribs until it steals my breath. “I’d like to think I’m more like my mother.”
The moment the thought of her brushes my thoughts, panic punches through my chest. My hands fly up, trembling so badly they can’t find their way to my collar. The motion is frantic and clumsy, my breath coming quicker as my fingers slip uselessly against my blood-stiff shirt. “Is it still there?” The words tear out sharp and desperate. “My chain?”
Briar blinks, then leans just close enough to look. She nods once, a faint smile breaking the sharp line of her mouth. “It is. I’m assuming that’s from your mom?”
I swallow hard, the pressure in my chest cracking something I’ve kept locked down for years. My father never let me speak of her. I haven’t heard her name out loud in years, and now the thought of her sits raw and exposed between us. “Yeah,” I manage, my voice cracking. “It’s the only thing I have left to remember her.”
Briar nods, mercifully shifting the weight of the conversation away from the chain and the hollow ache it leaves in me. Her voice steadies, practical again as if she senses my discomfort with the topic. “You don’t need much of my blood, so just think about your favorite food for a few seconds and it’ll be over in a flash.”
I don’t answer at first. My throat instantly tightens as my gut twists at the idea.
