21. Dante
DANTE
C onsciousness drags me back slowly, like my mind is swimming through tar.
Every heartbeat hammers behind my eyes, each pulse threatening to split my skull apart.
The ache radiates through bone and marrow, as if I’ve been ground down to pieces.
Damp earth presses against my spine, seeping through cotton, the wet, cold fabric clinging to my skin.
Where the hell am I?
I blink the moonlight into focus and turn my head too fast. Pain lances through my head, the sky wobbling as if I’m looking at it from underwater.
I focus on deep breaths and letting my eyes adjust to the view at my side.
Shapes settle and I recognize Callum sprawled next to me, with Briar kneeling beside him, her wrist pressed to his mouth.
The sight should revolt me, but my brain can’t even wrap around what I’m seeing.
Where are we and what happened?
All I can do is stare as I wait for the fragments to come back to me.
Elias sits a little to the left of her–too close to not be purposeful, but not close enough to touch.
His shoulders square the way mine do when I brace for impact as his eyes fixate on the side of her face.
When Briar shifts slightly, soothing Callum with her free hand at his shoulder as he whimpers, Elias’s breath catches so softly I’d miss it if the night weren’t this quiet.
There’s something new strung between them…
a tension I don’t quite have a name for.
Maybe it’s just a concussion whispering made-up scenarios into my mind
I swallow against the metallic tang in my mouth and shut my eyes for a beat as the world wobbles. When I open them again, I’m instantly fixated on the stubborn set of her jaw and soft crinkle at the edge of her eyes.
Elias clears his throat and I realize neither of them have noticed I’m conscious as I take in this weird, new dynamic. His tone is oddly conversational as he offers up, “I’m…surprised to see you so in control with all this blood around.”
Briar doesn’t look at him at first. She keeps her wrist steady and lets Callum’s throat bob with a swallow twice before turning her head.
The look she gives Elias could strip paint with the bitterness reflecting in her eyes.
It’s clearly a look of are you fucking dumb without wasting the breath to say it aloud, even to my dazed mind.
When she speaks, her tone is cooler than the night air. “Contrary to your family’s belief, I’m not an animal.”
A soft exhale slips from me at the sharp defense in her tone.
While I don’t blame her one bit for it, we’ve all been raised to despise the supernatural world–vampires especially–and I’d be a liar if I said it’s not engrained in us.
Clearly there’s something about Briar that has us all doubting these preconceived notions, but old habits and ways of thinking die hard.
The wind stirs the grass around us, the blades whispering against each other gently in a cacophony amongst the creaking branches swaying in the nearby trees. I watch Callum swallow again, mouth melded to her wrist, like her blood is a delicacy he can’t get enough of.
The thought makes my stomach churn as I glance back toward Elias. His mouth opens like he wishes he could claw the words back, shoulders stiffening as soon as she glances away from him.
“That’s not what I meant. I–” He stops speaking, jaw flexing.
Briar doesn’t let him fumble through it, quickly firing back, “That is what you meant.” She shifts her wrist back to glance at something before pressing it firmly against Callum’s mouth once more.
“But it’s fine. If I let other people’s opinions about me bother me, I’d never have survived the academy. ”
The words snag my focus, realizing she’s sharing some small tidbit about her personal life back home.
My skull feels split, my stomach churning with every breath, but I can’t tear my gaze from the two of them. Despite the bickering, the energy between them is different. Not the sharp disdain I’ve come to expect.
The thought rattles through my mind until it spills out. My throat is raw, like sandpaper scrapes against it as I rasp, “You two squabble like a married couple.”
Elias jerks toward me, dark blue eyes wide like I’ve caught him in the act of something shameful. Briar’s gaze drifts to me, the stubborn line of her jaw faltering for the briefest beat with her attention off of him, before she blinks rapidly and drops her eyes to Callum.
The sight of them flustered and caught off guard disorients me in a whole different way from the pain radiating through me.
Before either can answer me, Callum lurches upright with a groan. The movement jolts Briar as his hand clamps around her wrist, dragging it hard against his mouth.
The sound that rips from him makes my stomach twist. It’s a low, guttural moan as he drinks greedily. Another broken sound spills out, and for a dazed second, I can’t tell if I’m watching healing for the sake of survival, or something else entirely.
“What the fuck?” I rasp.
Confusion spikes up sharper than the pain. Her fresh blood smeared across his mouth and dried at the edge of Elias’s. Callum moaning like he’s caught in the throes of primal lust. It feels like I’ve woken in an alternate reality.
The pulsating pressure in my head increases and I let out a pained groan.
Briar wrenches free from Callum with a sharp twist of her arm as she pulls it back. Blood streaks Callum’s mouth and chin as he pants and glances around.
She steadies him by the shoulder, her voice low and firm as she asks, “How are you feeling?”
He blinks, eyes slightly hazy as he scans the forest behind me and looks back to Elias. It seems I’m not the only one confused about where we are and what’s happening.
“I swear I heard you whimpering,” he mutters. “Moaning, too. Can someone confirm that that really happened, because I really don’t want to think I’m having sex dreams about my brother.”
A wet, coughing laugh rattles my chest.
Elias goes rigid as Briar’s lips twitch like she’s caught between shock and laughter. Neither of them confirm or deny, but Elias surges to his feet so fast it shocks my disoriented brain. He doesn’t bother answering, just turns on his heel and stalks a few paces off and crosses his arms.
Briar finally lets the laughter loose after he stomps off, clearly giving us an answer alongside his grumpy attitude. The sight of her experiencing a positive emotion is honestly more shocking to my system than anything else I’ve witnessed since opening my eyes.
I’ve never seen her eyes crinkle at the edges with joy as her full lips stretch wide with a laugh spilling from them. It’s truly a sight to behold, and the fuzzy world around me seems to narrow down to her and this first glimpse of the woman she is outside of that compound.
She tips her head back and lets the mirth shake her body before she reigns it in enough to mime zipping her lips with two fingers and tossing away the key.
“Who am I to judge your familial fetish?” she drawls, eyes glittering with mischief as she winks at Callum.
He barks out a genuine laugh in return before swiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’ll get the truth out of someone,” he promises, still grinning as his gaze sweeps the field like he’s only now noticing where we are.
“Where the hell are we, anyway? Last thing I remember was the tire blowing, and I’m going to assume things went to shit if you’re feeding me blood. ”
The banter flows easy between them, even with blood still drying at the corners of each brother’s mouth, signaling just how fucked this situation is. I let my head tilt back against the grass as I look up at the twinkling night sky, free of light pollution.
Their laughter continues as the three of them exchange barbs and a truth settles coldly in my chest: they already feel like a unit, Briar included, and I’m on the outside watching in from the dark.
I don’t fit into the dynamic they somehow formed before the compound that’s clearly returning now that we’re out of it.
The laughter between them carries the kind of warmth I haven’t managed to keep alive in myself these past few years. Callum’s teasing, Briar sharp and quick to bite back, Elias’s grumbling words heavy but threaded through their rhythm like it belongs there.
They make me want to reach out and find the way I fit into their jagged puzzle, but the ache in my chest deepens with the idea of not being welcomed.
For years I’ve carved myself into a hollow shell of a human to survive.
Solitude has been my shield and silence my weapon.
Wanting more has proven dangerous–wanting gets you broken, beaten, and reminded that you are nothing but your father’s pawn.
But lying here now, with what feels like blood dripping down my temple and into my hair and my body trembling with pain, I feel the strange pull of it anyway. A sharp, foreign ache: the want to be included and seen .
Briar shifts then, leaving Callum’s side to crawl across the grass toward me.
Her movements are steady despite the exhaustion I bet weighs her down, strands of her white-silver hair falling loose across her blood-smeared face.
Behind her, Elias’s voice is low and clipped as he fills Callum in on what happened after the crash, but my focus is fully on her.
She leans back to rest on her calves, and before I can brace myself, her fangs sink lightly into the skin of her own wrist. She lifts her wrist toward me, the wound already welling and dripping down to sink into the ground at my side.
“Even though you’re awake now, you’re still really injured,” she murmurs, the words more gentle than I’ll ever deserve from her. “I’d like to help you heal.”