It lands like a goddamn verdict.
“Turned,” I repeat, and something in my voice cracks on the word that I can’t control. “Turned as in, someone chose this for me. Someone made this decision about my body and my life and my entire existence and didn’t bother asking?” My hands tighten against each other in my lap, knuckles going pale. “And the bloodlust. The hunger. That’s… that’s permanent? That’s what I am now, something that needs to—” I stop, because finishing that sentence means looking directly at the memory of the diner, at what I did, at the woman who I killed, and I’m not ready to do that. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to do that. “Is it going to be like this forever? This… screaming inside my throat every time I get near—”
“No.” He says it before I finish, firm and immediate. “The hunger doesn’t disappear, but it becomes manageable… controllable. It’s a need, like any other need, and the difference between a scion who loses control and one who doesn’t is learning how to meet it before it gets loud enough to override thought.” He leans forward slightly in the chair, elbows braced on his knees, his entire attention on me in a way that somehow makes the room feel smaller and larger simultaneously. “What you’re experiencing right now is the worst it ever gets… new turnwith no preparation, an empty system. You’ve been running on chaos, adrenaline and the terrifying novelty of existing in a body that rewired itself without your consent.” He pauses again, and something in his expression shifts. “It gets quieter. I promise you, it gets quieter.”
Something about that specific promise does what the word‘vampire,’the word‘turned,’and the entire accumulated weight of the last several days couldn’t quite manage to do.
It cracks me open.
Not dramatically. Not the way things crack in films, with a sharp sound. It’s more gradual than that, a slow fracture traveling from the center outward, and when it reaches my face it arrives as tears, which is profoundly inconvenient, embarrassing, and entirely beyond my ability to stop. I press my fingers to my eyes as though that’s going to achieve anything useful, and my voice, when it comes, has lost its armor entirely.
“I didn’t ask for this.” The words arrive stripped down to their bones, nothing decorative about them, nothing witty or deflective or wrapped in the self-preservation of humor. “I didn’t get attacked in… an alley thinking this was a reasonable Tuesday outcome. I wasn’t signing up for fangs and… and murder, and a creepy cabin in the woods with a really ridiculously attractive man I don’t know, and the complete annihilation of every plan I had for my life, which, okay, it wasn’t spectacular, fine! But it was mine, and at least I had a freaking pulse!” My breath frays apart, catching in my chest.
“You think I’m ridiculously attractive?” Something shifts in his expression, not quite a smile, but close enough to be dangerous.
The heat that crawls up my neck is deeply inconvenient and entirely involuntary. “That was… I was making a list. It was a comprehensive list of grievances, and you happened to appear on it.”
“On the ridiculously attractive section?”
“On the irrelevant details section.” I point at him. “Don’t make it weird.”
“You brought it up.”
I scoff out of spite. “I brought up a lot of things. We’re moving on.” The almost-smile doesn’t fully leave his face, and that is genuinely not helpful.
“You always dodge questions you don’t like?” he asks.
“Only the ones I plan on answering later…” My head tips to the side. “Or never.”
His brow rises. “That’s an infuriating personality trait.”
“So, I’ve been told.” Something in me loosens despite myself, and is gone again almost immediately. “I don’t want to be a monster. I don’t want to be something people should fear. I don’t want to spend the rest of whatever-this-is hurting strangers who didnothingto deserve it, and I can’t, I cannothave died…” I hesitate, then continue, “… in an alley—”
“Lie.” The word lands soft.
I look up at Rogue, who stands a few feet away, head tilted slightly, eyes locked on mine.
Heat crawls up my neck.
How the hell does he know I am lying about where I was attacked?
“It wasn’t an alley,” he says evenly. “You hesitated.”
I cross my arms, hating that he noticed. Hating that he always notices. “Does it matter?”
His silence stretches.
I force myself to hold his gaze. Because I don’t know why admitting to Rogue that I was getting it on with Jake, or Jason, or whatever his stupid name was before the attack, makes me feel like I am betraying Rogue.
What the fuck is that about?
“The location doesn’t change the outcome. I was out, I met someone, I made a bad call. Congratulations. That’s the whole tragic backstory.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“It was dark,” I continue, my pulse pounding in my ears. “I was being reckless. That’s the headline. Not whether it was brick walls or a scenic overlook or whatever detail you’re trying to dissect.” I swallow against the burn in my throat. “I didn’t expect to die. I didn’t expect to wake up with blood in my mouth and my life shredded beyond recognition. I expected a mistake. Not…this.”I wave my hands around my pulseless and breathless body. My voice fractures, but I push through. “Where it happened doesn’t matter. The fact it happened does.”
Silence settles between us again, heavy and loaded.
