Leandre Chapter 20 Healing Hands and Hidden Monsters 257 #2
I've learned what I feel like to them—when I'm hungry, when I'm not. The stronger vampires, the ones who embrace what they are, feel like black holes. Pull you in, suck you under. The weaker ones are chaos—static, jittery, easy to spot.
Me? I've spent centuries learning to be neither.
When I'm well-fed, steady, I feel like nothing.
Low energy. Unremarkable. Just another healer with cold hands and a gift for stitching people back together.
Most assume I'm a low-level reptilian shifter.
It explains the occasional flash of fangs, the speed, the way I don't quite breathe right. They never ask more.
That's the point.
When I feel the thread between me and Raven’s thoughts pull taut, I wrench myself from my own musings. This isn't the soft, unraveling edge of sleep I was expecting. It's sharpening instead, focusing into a low, humming ache that is far from pain.
My breath hitches. Any thought of walking out the door vanishes completely.
Through our tenuous connection, sensations bleed into me. Her thoughts are projecting through the penthouse like a megaphone now. I pick up flashes: the soft brush of worn cotton— Anik’s shirt— against sensitive skin. The deep possessive comfort of the scent woven into the fabric.
And beneath it, a gathering heat, a focused intention that sends a jolt straight through my own nervous system.
No. Not this.
Pull back. Cut it. Now. I scream at myself.
I meant to check in. To make sure she was healing properly. At most, I thought maybe I’d have to fix something she didn’t even realize was broken in a body she isn’t familiar with yet.
Not this. Not her—
But I don't move. I don’t cut myself off from her. I can't.
It's not just a story she's telling herself before drifting off to sleep. It's a storm of want that includes all of us. Forrest, steady as stone. Anik—all teeth and growl and keeping her safe. Emerson, sharp and focused, hers completely. Kieran, bright and wild and so damn alive.
And… me. Safety and comfort. We're all there, tangled up in her wanting, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever stolen.
A sound escapes me as my body answers hers without permission, without shame, and I can't stop it. I should. I know I should. This is stolen. I earned none of it.
Doesn't matter. The ache doesn't care.
The sensation crests—a wave of pure, physical release that echoes through our connection.
For one devastating second, I am not just a witness; I am feeling it with her.
As my mind connected with hers and my venom still courses through her body I can’t help as my own body shudders through a stolen climax.
Then, silence. A slow, gentle descent into sated stillness as sleep finally, mercifully, claims her.
I cut the connection. The silence slams back in, too loud, too empty. I'm just standing in the entryway like an idiot, staring at nothing.
Just a monster standing there with pants wet through from shameful voyeurism.
I stumble to my room, tear them off, scrub myself clean like I can wash away what I just did. Like I can outrun the rot.
I can't put off the clinic any longer. Mendez needs to get home to his family. It's the only thought that gives me the momentum to move, to flee the scene of my crime.
She trusted me. She drank the tea I left for her without a second thought, and I used it to spy on the most vulnerable part of her soul.
Gods, what have I done?
If she finds out—
The thought cuts. Deep. She's all raw truth, with no lies and no masks. When she sees what I really am she'll look at me like I'm filth. Like I'm exactly what I've always been.
And I'll deserve it.
The warmth of her is gone now. Just cold left. Hollow. I tried to prove I was worth something by fixing her. Instead I made sure that when she learns the truth, I'll be nothing to her.
I can't stay here. Can't breathe in these walls. I hit the street running, faster than any car, and let the wind try to scrape me clean. Don't care how far it is. I just need to move and get myself out of my head and into my body where these accusations can’t follow me.
It takes very little time to reach the clinic. I pause a few blocks away, in the mouth of an alley, to right my scrubs and run a hand over my hair. It’s still in its usual braid, the leather cord and beads perfectly in place, a stark contrast to the chaos inside me.
The clinic lights hum. Their glare aggressive. It's better than the firestorm still ringing in my head. The guilt sits in my throat—thick, metallic, like blood gone bad.
Mendez sees me and gives a tired nod. I relieve him quickly and immediately bury myself in the duties before me.
I grab a chart, call out a name, and guide a young human woman to an exam room. She clutches a wailing toddler with an ear infection, his small body radiating fever. Good. This is a problem I can fix.
“The amoxicillin should clear it up within forty-eight hours,” I say, my voice the calm, steady tool I’ve forged over centuries. I press the bottle into her hand. “A warm compress will help with the pain tonight.”
She's grateful. I can hear its warmth, its realness, but it doesn't touch the cold in my chest. This is what I'm for. Small mends. Clean fixes. Not what I did tonight, something I had no rights to.
I used my gift to spy. To steal. My sire used his to hurt, to take, to break. I've spent a thousand years terrified of becoming him. And tonight I took a step closer to his shadow. The truth of it burns with every beat my heart doesn't make.
Another hour. Call a name. Fix a thing. Lose myself in problems I can solve.
Eight past midnight, the trauma alarm screams. I'm moving before it finishes. Scrub my hands raw in the bay—the water steals the feel of her, just for a moment. Just long enough to breathe.
A gurney rattles in, flanked by two harried paramedics. "Young male, found in an alley at the edge of the Shallows. Badly beaten. Possible internal bleeding."
The kid on the gurney can't be more than seventeen. Gaunt. Dirty. His face is a mess of blood and swelling, one eye already sealed shut. His breathing is shallow, catching on something wet. Ribs, probably. Maybe a collapsed lung.
I reach for his mind without thinking—not to pry, just to feel. To see if he's still in there.
What I find causes my stomach to go leaden.
He's a low-level psychic. Nothing flashy. Probably could read a room's emotions, maybe catch a surface thought if he concentrated. The kind of gift that's barely a gift. But, based on his mental ramblings, someone found out. Someone decided that made him a threat. Or a target. Or both.
The bruises on his ribs aren't from a random mugging. These were deliberate. Someone wanted to hurt him. Maybe teach him a lesson. Maybe just because they could.
I pull back, jaw tight.
This is why I hide.
"This is a magical injury," I tell the paramedics, keeping my voice even. The bruising has a pattern to it—not fists. Something with an edge. "I'll take it from here."
They hesitate but something in my face must convince them. They nod and leave.
I get to work. IV for fluids. His vitals are slipping—heart rate dropping, blood pressure cratering. There's bleeding inside that I can't see, can't reach with my hands.
But I can reach it with my venom.
I pull a vial from the locked cabinet. It’s labeled as an experimental substance. No one asks questions. No one wants to upset the balance.
This is what it's for. Healing. Mending. Not spying. Not violating. Not the shame that's been crawling under my skin all night because I couldn't keep well enough alone.
I spike the IV bag. Just a few drops. Enough to feel him. Enough to find the bleed and seal it from the inside.
His heart stutters, then steadies.
There.
I stabilize the ribs next, my hands moving on autopilot, but my mind keeps circling back to the same thought: he's a kid. A kid with a gift too small to protect him and too noticeable to ignore.
The guilt I've been carrying all night doesn't lift. But something else settles in its place. A familiar weight. Rage, maybe. Or the cold certainty that I was right to hide. Right to let people think I'm nothing. Because the moment they know what you are, they decide what you're for.
I check his vitals. His pulse is weak but growing more steady by the second.
"Stay with me," I mutter, more to myself than to him. "You made it this far. Don't stop now."
I get lost in the familiar comfort of helping another. This is my sanctuary. Here, there is no room for the monster in my thoughts—only the thready pulse beneath my fingertips and the primal fight to keep a stranger’s heart beating.
The night keeps going. Quiet, then chaos. Usually I like the unpredictability,but tonight it just feels heavy.
The guilt doesn't lift. Not really. It just gets muffled when the emergencies come. When there's nothing in my head but the body in front of me, the bleed to stop, the pulse to find.
And when the quiet comes back, so does everything else.
Half past three. I call a name. Watch them come in.
She's human. Small. Curled around her wrist like she can make herself disappear. He's behind her, a low-level shifter, hand on her shoulder like a weight. Not protection. Possession.
“She’s always been sickly. Clumsy, you know?” he says, his voice a grating blend of feigned concern and naked annoyance. “Fell on the ice outside our building. You know how weak women can be.”
The words are like a key, turning a lock in a door I tried to seal centuries ago. Sickly. Weak. The same words the village elders used about my little sister, Astrid, before I left to find a cure. Before I failed her.
I do not look at him, though. My entire focus is on—I glance at the intake papers—Elara.
On the way, she flinches when I gently take her arm.
I can tell it’s not from the pain of the break but from the expectation of more pain.
The angle of the fracture is all wrong. This isn’t from a simple fall; this is a defensive injury.