Chapter 13
Thirteen
Ari
The first thing I heard was the sound of the city breathing.
After last night, it was a strange thing to notice first—the distant hum of traffic.
The muffled echo of voices drifting in from the street.
The low thrum of something mechanical vibrating through the walls.
All afternoon sounds. Normal sounds. The kind that belonged to a world that kept moving whether or not you were alive to see it.
I blinked my eyes open a few times, trying to adjust to the light spilling through the small gap in the curtains, slanting across the floor in a pale, dusty band that told me it was later in the day than it should have been.
Much later. My body felt heavy as the familiar echo of pleasure rushed through me at the memory of last night.
We had fucked until the sun came up, lying in bed together to watch as the sky turned pastel.
I was still in his bed, wrapped in the sheets tangled around me, and my hands were tucked comfortably underneath my chin.
My throat ached slightly with a dull, lingering soreness that made swallowing slow, and a faint tightness in my abdomen thudded like a teasing reminder of the way he had felt moving inside me last night.
And then there was the obvious blood loss. My pounding headache and weak limbs made it impossible to forget.
I knew I should have panicked. Normal people would have, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I turned my head slowly, surprised to see him standing by the window.
He was looking through the small crack at an angle that didn’t disturb the sunlight as it shone into the room, and the glow of light caught in his cherry red hair, outlining him in gold and shadow.
For a brief, disorienting moment, he looked almost human.
Like a man waiting out the day for his lover to wake up.
But something in his posture was wrong. Now that I knew what to look for, I could see it without even trying. He’s not relaxed, or predatory. He’s just... still. Too still, like a statue carved mid-thought but abandoned before the sculptor had finished smoothing out the edges.
“You’re awake,” he said, without turning around.
“What time is it?” My voice felt rough, so I swallowed again.
“Nearly three.”
A small frown made its way to my face. "In the afternoon?”
“Yes.”
I pushed myself up onto my elbows, the blanket falling down to expose my bare skin. The room was swaying slightly from the movement of my head, but it eventually settled down again as a small groan escaped my lips.
“Why’d you let me sleep?” My voice was quieter than I’d meant for it to be, but I took comfort in knowing he still heard me.
There was silence for a split second, but he turned around to face me. Dark circles were pooled beneath his eyes, but it wasn’t from exhaustion—not in the way humans meant it. It was more strained or tight, like he'd been holding himself in place for too long without blinking.
“I didn't let you do anything,” he said plainly. “You basically collapsed from exhaustion.”
“Mm,” I hummed, considering his words as I smirked at the memory of orgasming so hard, and so many times, that I must have finally slipped into unconsciousness in his arms. “But you didn't kill me. That’s good.”
The words landed between us for a moment as he glared at me, staring like he was considering ending me then and there.
“Not yet,” he said through clenched teeth, his jaw tightening once after he was finished speaking, but I recognized the slight hint of teasing in his tone.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, but the room tilted again, harder this time, and I gripped the mattress until the world steadied.
When I looked back up, he was closer than he was a second ago, watching me like I was fragile enough to shatter into a million pieces, but I wasn’t.
I was fine. Just tired from not getting enough sleep.
“How long have you been standing there?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Long enough.”
But there’s that word, enough. One that I've noticed he uses whenever he doesn't want to tell me anything.
“How long is long?”
Something flickered in his eyes—annoyance, maybe, or resignation. He turned away, facing the window where people were just shadows as they walked by. As if the answer would be written somewhere out there in the passing crowd.
"I stopped counting in my third century,” he said plainly. “I assume that's what you’re really asking me.”
My breath caught before I could stop it, and I gasped. “You’ve been alive for three hundred years!?”
A humorless huff left him as he shook his head. “No.”
“Longer? Four hundred?”
“Like I said. Long enough,” he repeated, sharper this time.
“Long enough that people have started to blur together and time itself seems made up. All of the faces and the names are impossible to remember, and all I know is that I feed every nineteen days to stay alive.” He glanced out the window once before turning to look back at me again.
“It’s been over eight hundred years, and that’s why memory is my biggest liability. ”
The words sent a chill through me, and I gripped the bedsheets. “That’s why… that’s why you have to kill everyone?”
“No,” he corrected, shaking his head. “I don't kill everyone. I choose one person at a time who seems to be the most annoying one I can find in the room. Or…” he paused, looking down for a moment like he was embarrassed.
“Or I do the world a small favor by removing predators from the equation. Especially ones that choose to stalk pretty girls.”
A memory flickered in my mind, and my stomach tightened. “The man… The night I first met you, they found a body the next day. You killed him?”
He nodded once, and raised his shoulders nonchalantly like we weren’t talking about murder. “He was trying to follow you home. I didn’t like that. I generally have free reign to choose who I want to kill, but the only people I have no choice for are the ones who remember.”
My stomach tightened again at the reminder, but I leaned forward anyway. “Remember what?”
“Me.”
The walls of the room suddenly closed in as the pieces clicked into place.
I remembered the way he moved through crowds without leaving a mark.
The way no one ever seemed to look twice.
The way he disappeared between moments like a ghost in the night.
He was an expert in not making a scene, just another person moving through the noise that didn’t draw attention to himself.
“You don't leave any witnesses? Never?” I whispered, my heart shattering into pieces.
“No.”
“But what about the people in your orchestra? Surely you’re not killing all of them before you move to the next city.”
“No. I keep to myself and they don’t bother me. None of them know enough to be dangerous. The only people who are a threat are the ones who take enough interest in me to be able to give identifying information to relevant parties.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to process everything. “I see.”
He didn't speak, but his silence was answer enough. “You have to understand. I can't let you go,” he said at last, his voice stripped of anything resembling emotion. “I cannot leave a human alive that remembers me. Especially after we…” his voice trailed off, and I swore I saw a faint flush in his cheeks. “It’s the only rule I have that’s ever kept me alive.”
There it is. That’s why this is the line he doesn't cross. I sit with the thought for a moment, letting it settle into my bones, lingering with everything that happened last night. Everything it meant.
Everything I'd needed.
“Then turn me. I’ll be forced to keep your secret.”
His head snapped up from the floor to look directly in my eyes. “Absolutely not.” The refusal was immediate, instinctive.
“Then kill me,” I continued, my voice even, “but don't pretend there's a third option. I don’t want to wait eighteen more days to die, and there’s nothing you can do to make me forget you. I won’t.”
At my words, he took a step towards me, then fell to his knees, grabbing my legs hard as the flicker of anger filled his eyes. “You don't understand what you're asking me to do to you.”
“I understand exactly what I’m asking you to do,” I snapped back, meeting his gaze without flinching.
“I have no intention of ever doing anything to hurt you. I gave up my life to find you. I’ll never betray you.
I promise.” My voice trembled slightly, but I didn’t stop.
“I don’t want to run, I won't tell your secret, and I can’t live the rest of my life without you.
Turn me or kill me, but my life ends here with you. Please. Choose.”
For the first time since I’d met him, uncertainty shone in his eyes, but I didn’t think he was afraid or hesitant.
It almost seemed like he was... cornered.
Like I’d caught him in a trap he hadn’t been expecting.
He curled his hands on top of my knees, pressing his fists into the tops of my legs hard enough to bruise, but I didn't move.
I just watched as he struggled to regain the control he'd lost, until it was as palpable as a pressure change in a room.
He looked at me like I was something dangerous—not because I might expose him, but because I'd made myself impossible to discard.
“You think this ends cleanly, then,” he said quietly. “One way or another?”
“Of course, but I think it ends no matter what,” I replied honestly, staring at him until he nodded in agreement.
His gaze dropped to my throat, where I could feel the tightness of the two scabs that had formed in the middle of the night. “You won't like what you become. I’m a monster.”
“I already hate what I am.”
Something in his expression fractured then—not into tenderness exactly, or regret, but into something raw and furious and undeniably real.
“That,” he said, his voice low and sharp, “is exactly the problem.”
“It’s not.”
He just stared at me, his eyes drinking in every inch of my messy hair and naked body, until his gaze landed again on my throat. Right at the place where his rules and passion had collided into a messy conundrum he was struggling to solve.
“I want to be with you,” I said quietly, leaning forward to brush his cherry-red hair out of his eyes. But instead of pulling away, he closed his eyes as I ran my hands through his hair, leaning into my palm as I pushed the loose strands to the side and ran my thumb along his scar.
“You don't understand what you're asking me to become if I do this,” he said softly, not moving.
“That’s the thing, V,” I whispered, leaning forward until my lips gently pressed against his. “I think I do.”
When he pulled away, it wasn’t fast, but deliberate. It wasn’t rejection. It was a decision.
“I have killed people for far less than remembering me. Before I learned how to control myself in the shadows, I erased entire families to preserve the secret of what I am.” He slid his hands up from my knees to my waist, pulling me off the bed and into his lap until I was straddling him.
“But now,” he continued, his voice low and ruined as he pressed a thumb beneath my jaw, “you’re asking me to keep you? ”
“No. I’m asking you to want me, too.”
But instead of softness, he looked down at his hands with nothing but hatred. They shook as he turned them over, and I recognized the feeling. I was old friends with self-hatred.
He believed he was a monster.
“You will hate me for this,” he breathed, his mouth turned down into a frown.
“I could never hate you,” I whispered back, pulling his hands into mine as tears collected in the corners of my eyes. “I will never hate you, because I love you.”
The confession slipped off my tongue like golden sunlight, wrapping the space between us in warm silk, but my heart still thudded with the familiar prickle of not being wanted.
I could feel it rearing its ugly head, blooming amongst the weeds from the way he pulled away from me. The way he looked at me.
My breath was shaky as a single tear ran down my cheek, and his eyes darkened.
But instead of pushing me away, he wrapped his arms around me, pressing his face into my hair as he took a slow, deep breath in. His breath out was even shakier, and when he looked at me again, I saw tears in his eyes.
He said nothing as he bit his wrist, offering me the deep crimson that flowed freely from his delicate skin, and I opened my mouth without a second of hesitation. The taste of his blood was like sugar, and I drank fervently, wondering if this was what I tasted like to him.
I groaned once as the feel of his warm blood trickled down my chin and into my stomach, the throb of my headache fading away almost instantly.
When he pulled his wrist away, I opened my eyes just in time to see him leaning in to press a soft kiss to my lips, lingering like it was the very last time.
The world narrowed to the sound of my heartbeat as the truth settled into place, but I didn't pull away.
I had nothing to scream or beg for. I was getting everything I wanted.
He broke our kiss after a moment, resting his forehead on mine before nodding to himself.
He sat back with tears in his eyes and gently ran his thumb over my cheek, acting as if he had just realized I was something fragile and beloved that needed to be cherished forever. After a long moment, he nodded again, firmly gripping my chin and the back of my head.
“I think I love you, too.” He whispered.
I didn’t even have time to think about what he had said or what was coming for me before his face hardened and his eyes flashed black. I felt the sickening twist and crunch of my neck, and understood, with terrifying clarity, that there was no going back now.
This was it. It was finally over.
Memories flooded my mind as darkness clouded the corners of my vision. The very last thing I saw was the outline of his red hair, the wavy flyaways glowing in the sunlight shining around his head like a halo, and then it all blurred away.