That’s the first thing I notice as Crave guides me through the wreckage of the clubhouse toward a hallway I’ve never seen before. Everything is sharper, more alive, moredangerous.The broken glass on the floor glitters, each shard catching the light with diamond-bright edges. The blood,so much blood, doesn’t just look red anymore. It glows, pulsing with residual life force that makes my mouth water in ways that terrify me.
And the sounds.
Oh God, the sounds.
I can heareverything.
Every heartbeat in the building thrums through my skull, heavy and inescapable. Rogue’s pulse is fast, aggressive, and animalistic. Scorch’s is slower, steadier, heat rolling through each beat. Eden’s flutters like a bird’s wings, rapid and light. Each one distinct, each one calling to something dark that’s unfurled inside me, opening petal by petal, a flower closing in reverse.
“Focus on my voice,” Crave says, his hand steady on my lower back as we walk. Even through his leather vest and my blood-soaked shirt, his touch sends electricity racing up my spine. “Block out everything else. Only listen to me.”
I try.
I really do.
But there is an orchestra in my head, every instrument playing a different song directly into my brain.
“I can’t—” My voice comes out wrong again, layered with harmonics that shouldn’t exist. “There’s too much. Too many—”
“Heartbeats. I know.” He opens a door at the end of the hallway, revealing stairs leading up. “It gets easier. You’ll learn to filter.”
“When?” The word breaks on a sob I didn’t mean to release.
“Eventually.” He glances back at me, and those silver eyes carry centuries of understanding. “I’ve had thousands of years to adjust. You’ve had two minutes. Give yourself time.”
Time.
Right.
Because apparently I have all the time in the world now.
We climb the stairs, and I’m acutely aware of how my body moves differently. It’s lighter, stronger, as though gravity has loosened its grip slightly. When I stumble on a step, Crave catches me before I consciously register falling, and the speed of my own reflexes shocks me.
“What am I?” I whisper.
“Awake.” He pushes open a door at the top of the stairs.“Finally.”
The room beyond is clearly his. I know it instantly, not from any obvious markers, but from the way his scent saturates every surface. Leather, whiskey, and something darker, older, that makes my newly awakened blood sing in recognition.
It’s massive. There is exposed brick walls, floor-to-ceiling windows with blackout curtains drawn tight. A king-size bed with black sheets that look like they’ve never been slept in, sits in the middle of the room. Minimal furniture is scattered with no personal touches except for a single painting on the far wall, a murder of crows descending on a burning village.
The image hits, and my stomach knots tight, while through our bond, Crave’s guilt crashes into me, open and agonizing.
“That’s from before,” he says quietly, following my gaze. “A reminder of what I was. Who I’m trying not to be anymore.”
I want to ask him about it, about the village, about the crows, about the evil I can taste in the painting coating my tongue in filth. But then he closes the door behind us, and we’re alone, and the bond between us intensifies so violently I gasp.
Oh fuck.
I feel him.
Not just his emotions, buthim.
His presence floods through me, forcing its way into every crevice and weakness I didn’t know I had. The hunger that defines his existence wraps around my consciousness, ancient and insatiable. But underneath it, I feel something else. Something he’s been hiding.
Loneliness.
Bone-deep, millennia-old loneliness that makes my chest ache.
