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He smells like night air and crushed cedar, like something older than time and impossibly familiar. Earthy and dark and sweet – like warm wine mixed with honey. Theo’s fingers are splayed across the small of my back, holding me to him like I might disappear if he loosens his grip. I don’t want him to. I don’t want space. I want to live in this closeness, this aching, liquid feeling blooming inside me. This is everything I’ve craved and more.

Something shifted when he fed off of me. When I let him in. Not just the pain-turned-pleasure. Or the rush of bliss that came with it. It feels like something deeper.

He’s looking at me like he knows it too. Like this wasn’t just a simple exchange of blood, one person helping another. It was a claiming. A binding of some sort. The thought terrifies me, but it also … excites me?

When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine, panting, and his lips touch my temple, sending a shiver crawling down my back. His eyes are on me – wide, searching – and I know he feels it too. This must be what he meant, but I didn’t quite understand the severity of it. I study every detail of his face. The light dusting of freckles. Eyes like black velvet. Lips that look so soft and inviting, I wouldn’t mind feeling them against my own.

I mentally shake myself. What is happening right now?

‘Thank you,’ he whispers, drawing me from my thoughts, eyes searching mine as he watches my reaction carefully.

I don’t say anything. I’m too scared to think about what we just did. What I allowed him to do.

9

THEO

The Captive

I reach for Tara’s hand.

Walking forward, I lightly tug her after me. I pause, listening for movement. Tara’s footsteps stay close behind me, light and careful. The tunnels twist in on themselves, like they were designed to confuse prey, or trap them. I don’t know what way to go, but I know I can’t leave this place if there’s a chance that there are others down here.

Turning a corner, we find another cage. Tara gasps softly. It’s tucked in a crooked alcove, half swallowed by rubble. The iron bars are cracked, but the door’s still shut. Inside, a figure slumps forward, unmoving. Another vampire.

I crouch down, gripping the bars. My throat tightens. He’s thin, his skin is a patchwork of sores and dried blood. His eyes are sealed shut beneath cracked lids. He is still. A little too still.

Tara moves closer, her voice hushed. ‘Do you know him?’

I study what’s left of the man. No markings. No scent I recognise.

‘No,’ I say.

She wraps her arms around herself, shaken and traumatised, but much healthier than before. There’s a brightness to her eyes. Her skin is glowing, her hair glossy even in this dim lighting. She looks incredible. My blood is probably overwhelming her. It’s a lot to handle.

‘We can’t help him, can we?’ she asks quietly, and I’m a little surprised at her change of heart, since she thought that all vampires were cold-blooded monsters not too long ago.

‘I’m not sure.’

After a few moments of slamming into the bolted door, it eventually gives way, almost causing me to fall into the cage, but my reflexes are cat-like after taking her blood. My God, her blood.

I’ve fed countless times. On the willing, the unwilling, the desperate. For fun, for pleasure, for survival, but no one has ever tasted like her. The moment her blood hit my tongue, it was like the world tilted on its axis.

Heat, pure and golden, flooded through me. Not just warmth, but an all-consuming fire. It moved through my body, finding every scar as if trying to stitch me back together.

She’s not just different. She’s something else entirely.

Mentally shaking myself, I force my mind back to the present. Now is not the time to unpack whatever’s going on with Tara and me right now.

Dropping low, I reach for the vampire, but he doesn’t move. I prise his eyelids open here to check if he’s alive. I exhale.

‘Gone,’ I say after a moment, getting to my feet.

We step back out and keep walking. The corridor narrows, leading upward, toward damp air and faint light. Tara keeps pace with me, energy ebbing and flowing through her. I can feel it pulsing with life in her veins. We reach the hatch and I push it open, and the cold night air rushes in. We climb out into the trees. The woods are still and quiet. Unnaturally so. It’s unnerving.

Lucy steps out from the shadows, looking truly like one of the monsters that Tara initially thought vampires to be. Tara stiffens beside me. I step forward. Lucy’s eyes flick over me, then land on Tara. She waited for us. A sinking feeling fills my chest.

‘She’s not going anywhere,’ Lucy hisses, upper lip curling.