A few moments later, I caught it. The quick patter of something alive. A hare, maybe. Small, fast, but enough to take the edge off.
I moved slowly, the way my sire had taught me long ago. The hare paused near a fallen branch, nose twitching. I hated this part.
I’d never liked taking life, even before I was turned. The animal would go still in my hands, its heartbeat fluttering like a trapped bird. Then silence.
But that was the trade. I fed to stay sane. I fed to stop myself from turning into the thing that killed me.
“Quick,” I whispered.
When I struck, it was clean. A brief struggle, a soft thud. Then the copper rush of blood filled my mouth.
I swallowed once, twice, forcing myself to stop before instinct could take over. I’d learned the hard way that drinking too deep, even from animals, blurred the line between what I wanted and what I feared.
The hare’s body went limp. I lowered it gently to the grass, murmured a quiet apology, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
It wasn’t satisfying. It never was. Animal blood was a compromise. Thin, metallic, barely enough to keep the hunger quiet. But it kept me from losing control.
I straightened. The trees creaked around me. The wind carried the faint scent of wet wood and smoke from the house. And something else.
I froze. The hairs on my neck rose before I even looked. I knew that feeling. The weight of a gaze. Someone watching. My eyes lifted instinctively toward the house.
There, framed by the broken window on the second floor, was Kit.
He wasn’t moving, not at first. Just standing there, one hand braced against the sill, the faint orange light behind him outlining his silhouette.
His injured shoulder was still bandaged, but he’d pulled his jacket on again, like armor. Even from this distance, I could see the way his expression shifted. Shock first. Then something harder, sharper.
Our eyes met. For a moment, the world went silent.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. The blood on my lips felt like a brand. My hands still trembled faintly from the hunt, the ghost of the hare’s heartbeat echoing in my palms.
He saw everything. The body at my feet. The way I’d bent over it. The red smeared across my mouth. Kit didn’t shout. Didn’t reach for a weapon. He just stared, and somehow, that was worse.
“Kit,” I said, though I knew he couldn’t hear me from this far. My voice cracked anyway.
He didn’t respond. Didn’t turn away. Shame settled cold and heavy in my gut.
This was it, the turning point. The part where the fragile, impossible thing between us cracked wide open. I’d been fooling myself thinking Kit could ever see me as anything but what I was.
A monster. The thought made my stomach twist. I’d spent months convincing myself I wasn’t.
That I could live quietly, feed cleanly, hurt no one. But in that moment, with his eyes on me and the dead animal cooling at my feet, I saw what he saw.
A creature bent over a body. Blood smeared across his face. A thing pretending at humanity. I wanted to wipe it away, to hide it somehow. But what would that change?
The damage was done. The worst part wasn’t even the disgust I expected to see in him. It was the look underneath it. Something like disappointment.
That cut deeper than anything else.
I took a step back, breaking the connection between us. My hands felt useless, clumsy. The forest seemed suddenly too quiet, the smell of blood too thick.
I turned away and wiped my mouth again, this time with the inside of my sleeve. The taste lingered, bitter and wrong. By the time I looked back up, Kit was gone from the window.
I didn’t know what that meant.
For a moment, I stood there, caught between the urge to flee and the pull of something heavier. The need to explain, even if he’d never believe me.
But running wouldn’t fix it, and if I left now, he’d assume the worst. That I’d fed on someone else and that I couldn’t be trusted. So I went back slowly.
