I meet his gaze.“Tessa.”
“What about her?”
“Something’s marked her.I can smell it on her.Feel it when I’m near her.”The admission costs me, revealing how much attention I pay to her, how closely I monitor her presence.“Whatever’s out there, it’s chosen her.Touched her.Maybe even claimed her.”
The silence that follows is heavy.
“Fuck,” Blade says finally.
Prophet stands and paces.“If something ancient is fixating on a specific person, it’s not random.There’s a connection.A reason.”He stops, turns to face me.“You need to find out what it is.And you need to keep her safe while you do it.”
“I’ve been keeping her safe for two years,” I say, my voice harder than I intend.
“Have you?”Prophet’s eyes are knowing, too knowing.“Or have you just been watching her from the shadows, convincing yourself that’s enough?”
The words hit like a punch to the gut because he’s right.I’ve been hovering at the edges of Tessa’s life, close enough to feel like I’m protecting her, far enough away I can pretend I’m in control.
But control is an illusion.Has been since the moment I first saw her.
“I’ll handle it,” I say, standing.
Blade nods.“Keep me posted.If this thing is as dangerous as you think, we need to know what we’re dealing with.”
I leave church and head back out into the cold.The snow is falling harder now, thick flakes catch in my hair and melt against my skin.I should start researching, should reach out to the other vampires in the area to see if they’ve heard anything.
But instead, I head back toward town.Toward Betty’s Café.
Toward her.
Because the truth is, I’ve already broken the most important rule.I’ve let Tessa become the center of my world, the axis around which everything else rotates.And if something’s coming for her, something old and hungry and terrible, then it’s going to have to go through me first.
Even if that means revealing every dark, monstrous part of myself I’ve kept hidden.
Even if it means she finally sees exactly what I am and runs screaming into the night.
The café is closed when I arrive, the lights off, the sign flipped to “Closed.”But I can hear her inside, humming to herself as she wipes down tables and stacks chairs.I could go in.Could talk to her, warn her.
But I don’t.
Instead, I melt into the shadows and wait.Because it’s what I do.It’s what I’ve always done.
I watch.I wait.I keep the monsters at bay.
And I tell myself that it’s enough, even though I know, deep in the darkest part of my dead heart, it will never be enough.
Not when it comes to her.
Not when something else has already marked her as its own.
