ONE MONTH LATER
When I woke,the light was soft and gold.
It filtered through the half-open curtains, catching dust motes in lazy spirals, painting the room in that hazy color between day and night.
The air smelled faintly of rain and something warm. Coffee, maybe. For a moment, I didn’t move. Just listened.
The faint scrape of a chair, the soft rustle of paper. Kit’s heartbeat, steady as ever, somewhere across the room.
A month had passed since we left the Ashford house. I could safely say that we’d made it. The thought still hit me like a miracle every time I woke to it.
Each night that ended without blood or fear felt like something borrowed from a better life.
As for my sire’s experiments, one of them did manage to track us a few days ago. Kit and I handled it quickly, the fight brief but brutal.
In the present, I sat up slowly, the sheets whispering against my skin. The room was small. It was just a one-bedroom cabin tucked away behind a sleepy lakeside town, but it was ours.
Kit had fixed the broken lamp, cleaned the windows, and filled the shelves with random paperbacks from a thrift store. He’d even found curtains. Blue ones.
I still wasn’t sure how he’d convinced the old lady at the rental shop to let us stay here long-term, but I didn’t ask. Kit had always been good at pretending to be something else when he needed to.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and ran a hand through my hair.
The floor was cool under my feet. Outside, the cicadas were just starting up, their song blending with the distant splash of water from the lake.
“Morning,” Kit said from the kitchen corner, though technically it was evening.
I smiled at the sound of his voice.
“Evening,” I corrected, still half-sleepy.
He turned, holding a mug in one hand. His hair was tousled, his t-shirt soft and wore.
Kit had that look that he always wore when he was pretending he hadn’t been watching over me again.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Since when do you drink coffee at sunset?” I asked, amused.
“Since I started living with a nocturnal bloodsucker,” he said in a teasing voice.
“Touché.”
He handed me the mug as I joined him at the counter. I didn’t really need to eat or drink human food, but I still loved the taste of coffee.
The first sip was lukewarm but perfect. He must’ve made it an hour ago.
“You didn’t sleep,” I said.
“Not much,” he admitted. “Had some paperwork to deal with.”
I frowned. “Paperwork?”
“Just making things official. New names, rental agreement, that sort of thing,” Kit said quickly.
“You mean fake identities.”
He shrugged, lips quirking. “You say fake, I say functional.”
