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21

NEVER FORGET

AURA

That night, I was more restless than usual. I kept thinking of Sylvan’s hands on me, his tongue pressing into a spot that felt far more intimate than it should’ve. The pleasure it’d sparked was intense, and I couldn’t understand it.

How much do you know about your lycan biology? he’d asked me.

I knew basics, I supposed, but I’d never taken the time to learn about reproduction. Vampires didn’t conceive very easily, but that wasn’t the case for lycans, it seemed. It was enough that I made sure to always take my antifertility potions.

That’s all I cared to know.

Until I woke up in the middle of the night, sweat-soaked and sticky between my legs. A soak in my tub only led to me slipping my hand between my legs again to release the tightly wound tension, and somehow it still wasn’t enough. Frustrated and annoyed, I slipped out of the house and went for a jog around my property.

The night air was cool on my flushed skin, but the aches and pains reminded me I needed to take another dose of my draft. I’d taken one before bed, so it was strange that I already needed another.

On the way to my bedroom, Irving rushed past me so quickly my hair blew back from my face. “Irving?” I called.

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face me. There were several paces between us, but he didn’t move any closer.

“What is going on with you?” I asked him.

He rubbed the heel of his palm against his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. When I was close enough to him, he opened his eyes and swayed on his feet. I grasped his arm. “Irving?”

“Yes, sorry,” he said.

I glanced in the direction he’d dashed from, as if it could give me a hint of where he’d been or what he was doing. The only thing in that direction was my room. “Were you in my room?” I asked him.

He shook his head vigorously, but there was no fear in his scent or change in his heart rate. If anything, he was confused. “I’m sorry, Aura. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I’m always tired, and something seems off with my memory. I keep fearing that one day I’d forget who I was before I was Turned.”

My heart ached for him. “Sit down,” I said, nodding toward the chaise below.

We headed down the stairs, and I stepped over to the buffet table against the wall, grabbing a corked bottle of blood nectar. I poured two goblets and sat on the chaise beside Irving. He started to gulp it down so quickly that my hand shot out to steady him. Everything throbbed in my arm, pain traveling up to my shoulder. “Take it easy, there,” I reminded him. “It’s not a fun feeling to have blood literally rushing to your head.”

He gave me a sheepish smile and sipped slower. Gradually, he looked a little less ghastly and more like the Irving I knew. He glanced around the room. “I miss having more people around here,” he said.

I nodded in agreement and set my own goblet down. I wasn’t that hungry, though my stomach churned with a strange emptiness. As much as Irving’s company helped, I missed the times I’d often sat on that chaise with my cousin’s little hand turning the pages of a book while she perched in my lap like a spoiled puppy.

I used to brush her hair, and most nights she requested a number of strokes with increasing absurdity. It was often in jest, of course. Much like me, she wasn't one to sit still for too long. I would make it to twenty out of her requested one hundred strokes through her silvery hair before she grew bored. She would turn to me with her scarlet eyes wide and peer right into mine.

“Aura,” she'd said on more than one occasion. “Your eyes are so beautiful. I wish I had those sparkles in mine.”

No, you don't. I always wanted to say. Instead, I'd remind her, “Yours are the purest red. Perfect to become Primal Born royalty. As is your hair.” So different from my mashup of black and white. “Don't you want those eighty more strokes?”

She made a face of disgust and shook her head. “I'd much rather go for a walk in the moonlight.”

So, we'd walk, the moon taunting me, reminding me of my impurity. I always felt stronger in the moonlight. Until my first shift and the moment I started dosing myself with wolfsbane, then lycan repel. It was in small doses at first. Then slowly I increased my intake, suffering through the pain and sickness brought on by the poison at first. I thought it would've been the worst illness I would ever experience, until that lycan attacked me. Until the two bites that derailed my immortality.

I didn't know how much longer I had before the disease became more than the drafts could ward off. I didn’t know how much longer I could hide the fevers now they've started to make an appearance in the middle of the day.

“Aura,” Irving said. I glanced up at him. “You're so distant lately. Where is your mind wandering to?”

I shrugged. “Things are just so tense,” I said. “And I’d like to know what my mother is doing when she goes away. I’m assuming it’s nothing good.”

“Is Bellatrix even capable of good? She drove everyone away from this place.”

She drove everyone from this place? I stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. “Is that how you remember it?”