By the time I stirred again, dawn was breaking through the cracks in the boards.
Simon was still sitting where he’d been all night, watching the door, keeping watch like he had any right to. For the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel entirely alone.
That terrified me more than any vampire ever could.
6
SIMON
When I woke,the light slanting through the cracked boards wasn’t the pale gray of dawn anymore. It was orange-gold, the dying light of dusk.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I listened. The faint pop of cooling wood, the whisper of wind slipping through the holes in the roof. Somewhere outside, a bird called once, then fell silent.
I was still alive.
That realization hit slow and strange. My first instinct after waking was always to check for pain, for hunger, for the burn of sunlight if I’d been careless. But there was none of that.
Just the faint ache in my arm and the scent of blood. Old now, fading under the sharp tang of antiseptic and smoke. There, sitting against the far wall, was Kit.
He wasn’t asleep. He was watching the door. His jaw was still set tight, but he didn’t look quite as ready to kill me anymore. That, more than anything, unsettled me.
He must’ve noticed me staring, because his gaze flicked my way.
“You’re up,” he said. His voice was rough, scraped raw by exhaustion.
I blinked, pushing myself upright.
“You didn’t—” I stopped before I could finish the thought.
Kill me, I almost said. You didn’t kill me. He must’ve heard it anyway. One corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close enough to hurt.
“I figured you’d be dead if I tried,” Kit said dryly. “Didn’t want to clean up a body today.”
I huffed out a laugh, weak but real. “Charming.”
Kit looked away, the line of his throat shifting as he swallowed. “Don’t get used to it.”
I didn’t. Couldn’t. Every instinct I had screamed that this was temporary. That sooner or later, when his wounds healed and the reality of what I was sank in, I’d be the next thing his knife found.
Still, something in my chest eased. Maybe it was the way the light caught in his hair, making it look less harsh, or the fact that he hadn’t tied me up while I slept. That counted as trust, didn’t it? However fragile.
“How’s your shoulder?” I asked quietly.
He glanced down at the bandages, prodded the edge with two fingers, and winced.
“Still attached. So that’s something,” Kit muttered.
I nodded, relief settling low in my stomach. “You need to eat.”
He raised a brow at that. “You offering?”
“I was thinking of picking something up for you,” I said, rising to my feet.
My body protested, I hadn’t fed properly in days, but I ignored it.
“You won’t heal if you don’t eat,” I added.
Kit gave me a long, assessing look, as if trying to decide whether I was mocking him. “And what about you?”
