Chapter 11 Wes
Wes
Everyone's pretending to process what just happened, but the silence in the kitchen is suffocating.
Jace fidgets with his coffee mug.
Rhett's jaw looks like it might crack from the tension.
Gray hasn't moved from his spot by the window, but his knuckles are white where they grip the sill.
And me?
I'm fixating on one thing.
Why didn’t Thane say what I am?
He went around the room like he was reading from some cosmic registry.
Gray—Shifter.
Rhett—Fire Warden.
Jace—Airbound.
Theo—Seer.
Each of them got a title. A classification. Something to hold onto.
Then he looked at me and said... Wes.
Just my name. Nothing else. Like I’m an unfinished sentence no one wants to write down.
Did he not know?
Did he know and choose not to say it in front of the others?
Does Stellan know?
The questions spiral faster than I can catch them, and I feel that familiar emptiness clawing at my chest again. The hunger that food doesn’t touch, that sleep doesn’t ease.
“So...”
Jace breaks the silence, voice strained with forced humor. “Anyone else feel like we just got sorted into magical Hogwarts houses and one of us didn’t make the list?”
The joke falls flat. No one even smiles.
I push back from the table, chair scraping too loud across the floor. “Need a minute,” I mutter, already turning toward the hallway.
No one stops me.
But I feel someone watching me go—probably Theo, always watching with eyes that see too much.
The hallway is cooler. Quieter.
I slip beneath the staircase, shoulders pressed to the wall like the wood might hold me together.
My breath comes fast and shallow. I close my eyes and try not to feel anything.
The hunger is worse now. More insistent. Like it’s been waiting for me to be alone so it can stop pretending to be polite.
I press a hand to my throat, where the glow started. Rub it like I can make it disappear.
But it’s still there. Warmth under my skin that doesn’t belong.
What if it’s worse than they think?
What if I’m not like them at all?
What if it’s not a gift?
The thoughts come sharp, each one slicing a little deeper.
Maybe that’s why Thane didn’t name it. Maybe there isn’t a pretty title for whatever I’m becoming.
Footsteps echo down the hall. Light. Deliberate.
I tense.
“It has a way of getting under your skin, doesn’t it?”
Stellan’s voice cuts clean through the dark.
He leans against the doorframe like he’s been waiting for this moment.
All that elegance, effortless and dangerous.
I don’t answer.
Can’t.
Because he’s right, and we both know it.
He doesn’t push.
Just watches me with those razor eyes, taking in my posture, my breathing, the way I’m braced like the walls are the only thing keeping me upright.
“You’ve been starving for days,” he says simply. “It’s not food you need. And it won’t stop.”
The words hit like a punch to the ribs.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Don’t I?”
His head tilts. He studies me like a riddle he’s already solved.
“Incubus-class Feeder. Same as me.”
The air leaves my lungs in a rush.
“That’s not—”
“Possible? Real?”
He huffs a breath. Might be a laugh.
“Tell me, Wes—when was the last time you felt full? Actually full?”
I say nothing. Because I haven’t.
Not since the crown. Maybe not ever.
“We don’t take,” Stellan says. “Not the in way you think. We feel. We amplify. We get drunk on emotion if we’re not careful.”
“I don’t want this.”
The words tear out of me. Raw.
“I don’t want to feed off people.”
“You already are.”
He says it without cruelty. Without softness. Just fact.
“You’re just doing it wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“You’re fighting it. Starving yourself into being human.”
He steps closer. The air shifts.
“I’ve seen our kind shatter from the inside trying to pretend they’re normal.”
Something in his voice makes me look up.
“You think I liked it?” he says, quieter now. “Waking up starving in a world that didn’t believe in what I was? Needing something everyone else was afraid to name?”
I don’t answer.
Because he’s not wrong.
“You’re lucky,” he murmurs. “You’ve got her. You’ve got them. The Ether won’t let you rot in denial. But it will hurt you if you keep trying to resist it.”
He steps even closer—not threatening. Not seductive. Just... present.
Close enough that I feel it.
The weight of him. The stillness. The hum of shared hunger.
My pulse spikes.
The hunger... eases. Not gone. But acknowledged. Like it exhaled.
Stellan smiles faintly.
Not cruel. Not kind. Just knowing.
“You’ll feel it more around her. Around them.”
His eyes flick toward the hallway.
“Especially him.”
I freeze. “What do you mean?”
But he’s already moving. Already retreating, that smirk back on his lips.
“You’ll figure it out. Or you’ll break trying.”
He pauses in the doorway, gives me one last glance.
“Either way... I’m here.”
Then he’s gone.
Gone, and I’m left in the quiet with only my breath and the ache that still gnaws at my ribs.
I slide down the wall, head in my hands.
The hunger hasn’t faded.
The fear hasn’t left.
But for the first time since this started, I know I’m not the only one carrying this.
It’s not food I need.
But gods help me—
I don’t know what else to want.