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‘She’s not your business,’ I say. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘She’s yours, is she?’ She smiles, looking sarcastic and evil at the same time.

Tara flinches. I can feel the fear rolling off her in waves. Lucy smells it too. It spurs her on.

I square my shoulders. ‘You don’t want to do this.’

‘Oh, but I do,’ Lucy purrs. ‘I’m angry, Theo. None of them deserve to live. Let me have her, she’s nothing to you.’

I position myself between them fully now. My lip curls back, baring my fangs. Tara’s blood burns through me like lightning. Every nerve inside my body is alive. Every instinct sharpened. She’s in my bloodstream, in my bones, under my skin. I can feel her in a way I never have before. Not just the echo of her heartbeat or the warmth of her body pressed close. It’s deeper. Something niggles in the back of my head, like a part of me recognises what’s happening.

Awareness ripples through me. Now that I’ve tasted her, something ancient stirs inside me. She’s mine to protect. Mine to keep safe. The thought of anyone touching her, hurting her, even looking at her the wrong way …

‘Lucy, I don’t like repeating myself,’ I say, not able to think about the possibility of somehow bonding with this girl right now. The only thing I can focus on is keeping her safe.

Lucy’s face hardens and her fangs flash, making her look even more terrifying. At first, I swore I remembered her, but time is slipping, and so are the memories attached to us. I can tell we know each other, but how, and from when, is becoming distant to me. ‘You’ve gone soft, Theo.’

Tara grabs my arm, trembling, and the protectiveness in me overrides everything else. Lucy eyes the movement, the corner of her mouth lifting. She laughs, low and cold. ‘She’s a human, Theo. Have you forgotten what we are?’

‘Back off. I won’t say it again.’

Lucy’s eyes flash with irritation and impatience. She runs her tongue across her teeth, collecting some of the dry blood that is still sitting there from earlier. Her foot inches forward and I snarl in warning at her, a deep rumbling emitting from my chest. Lucy circles us, slowly and tauntingly. I can see what’s happened here. Her hunting instincts have taken over and she simply can’t let it go. With what happened earlier, she’s unable to walk away from Tara while her heart is still beating. The glassy, evil look in her eyes is enough to tell me there’s no reasoning with her.

‘It doesn’t need to be like this, Lucy,’ I say. ‘Don’t make me do this.’

She barks out a laugh, looking amused at my comment. ‘Despite everything between us, you are willing to fight me to spare a human life?’

‘I don’t want to, but you’re leaving me no choice.’

‘No choice?’ she echoes, incredulous, still pacing around us, looking like a panther ready to strike any moment. ‘This is not the Theo I remember. You’d snap this human’s neck without a second thought and we’d revel in the high of her blood.’

Tara flinches behind me. Lucy’s words hit close to home and for the first time in what feels like years, I feel ashamed of myself and my past actions, despite how blurry the memories are becoming.

Lucy moves. My hand shoots out, shoving Tara out of the way. Lucy pins me down, her fangs flashing in the moonlight above us. Her skin is ice cold as her fingers latch around my neck, crushing my throat. I wriggle furiously, attempting to get out from under her.

Thunk. A knife slices into her neck and she rears back with a shriek. Tara stands not far from us. She has a good aim.

I leap to my feet and reach for Tara, pulling her after me, but Lucy is on her feet and sprinting toward us in a blur. Without thinking, I twist on my heel and snap her neck in one fluid movement. Her eyes widen in disbelief as she locks her gaze with mine. She falls to the ground and I stare down at her, shock coursing through me. Distorted memories of us together flood me, but then they’re gone again, quicker than I can process.

It was like my body decided before my mind caught up. Pure instinct. I’ve never moved that fast. Never hit that hard. The second her fangs were bared toward Tara, I was no longer able to just walk away.

You touch her, you die.

As I stand over Lucy, the weight of everything that’s just happened crashes into me all at once.

‘What have I done …’ I whisper, voice raw and broken as I stare down at her lifeless body. I collapse to my knees. I close her eyes with a shaking hand. A hand that’s covered in her blood.

There’s a hollow tearing inside my chest, a grief so deep it feels older than this moment, older than me. I don’t remember her. No shared laughter, no spoken promises, no clear image of who she was to me. And yet my body knows. My soul knows. Something sacred has been severed, something that once mattered enough to shape me, and now it’s gone by my own hand.

My breath stutters, a sound halfway between a sob and a snarl. I press my palm to my chest as if I can hold myself together, as if I can keep whatever is left of me from shattering completely. The monster everyone fears stares back at me from this moment, and I believe it for the first time. Not because I killed her, but because some part of me understands that I would do it again if the bond demanded it.

I bow my head over Lucy’s body, my shoulders shaking, my grief bleeding into rage, into self-loathing, into an unbearable sorrow I don’t have the words for. I may not remember loving her, but I will remember this pain. I know, with devastating certainty, that it will follow me long after the blood dries.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I murmur. ‘I didn’t plan to …’ It all happened so fast. One second Lucy was approaching her, fangs drawn, and the next … my body moved before I even thought.

I feel Tara’s presence behind me, quiet and watching.

I didn’t hold back. I didn’t care that she was one of my kind. Because Tara was in danger, and I couldn’t think of anything else.