CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Ailsa
TWO WEEKS, FOUR more bedsits later and we had arrived at yet another new location.
At this point, I’d stopped asking where we were or where we were going.
It wasn’t like it mattered, none were home.
Davien insisted that we had to keep moving.
The goal was to stay one step ahead at all times, and that meant we couldn’t relax.
Ever. We lived out of bags, always looking over our shoulders.
At first, it had worn me down. I wasn’t used to being around someone like this twenty-four-seven, and all the added extras on top had left me exhausted.
The constant moving. The training of abilities I didn’t know I had.
Not being able to see anyone I cared about.
The way my own body had changed and didn’t feel like my own sometimes.
The fact that I’d killed—and not really cared about it.
The not knowing anything about myself or this new world. And him.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted in me.
I’d come to accept this as my new reality.
At least enough to no longer drown in it.
I sat back on the bed, pressing my palms into the thin mattress as I tested it. It dipped slightly beneath my weight—lumpy in places, springs not quite right—but it wasn’t the worst we’d had. It would do.
Still, what I wouldn’t give for a decent night’s sleep in a nice bed by myself, without his huge frame taking up seventy percent of the bed.
“Urgh,” I groaned as he rounded the corner, two bags of stale blood in his hand. “Don’t you get sick of those?"
He paused.
Actually paused mid-step. “You're right.”
I blinked.
“Wait… what?” I sprung to my feet. Was he serious?
“Come on,” he said simply. “Let’s go hunt.”
Before I could even manage a response, he was gone. The door swung shut behind him before I could form a proper response.
I scrambled after him, catching up to him in the stairwell a second later. “I thought hunting wasn’t allowed?” I called, my voice echoing slightly as I hurried down after him.
“It isn’t,” he said, glancing back at me with a smirk that immediately set off alarm bells. I slowed slightly, narrowing my eyes at him. A week ago, I would have thought this was some sort of test. Or a trap. Something to catch me out and punish me for.
He saw my hesitation and laughed.
Actually, out-loud laughed at my reaction. “What are they gonna do?” he said between it, the sound lighter than I’d ever heard it. “Come after us?”
That only made him laugh harder.
I couldn’t help but stare at him.
Because this was new.
His moods were always up and down. But he’d never been… whatever this was.
But then, a ridiculous, bubbling urge I hadn't felt in what seemed like forever surged within me. My lips pressed together in a futile attempt to hold it in.
I failed and a laugh slipped out anyway because I mean, he had a point. They were already after us, how much worse could it realistically get?
The absurdity of it hit all at once, and suddenly we were both laughing in the grim, dingy stairwell like it wasn’t completely unhinged.
Like this wasn’t what our lives had become.
And it felt weirdly liberating. I hadn’t laughed like that in… I didn’t even know how long. Maybe longer than I wanted to admit. Long before I was a vampire.
And what was more unsettling was the fact he was the reason for it. That he could pull something like that out of me.
“Besides, we need our strength.” He rumbled as we made our way into the empty street with only the flickering glow of a broken streetlamp above us.
“Careful now, it almost sounds like you care for my wellbeing," I teased between breaths of laughter.
“When did I ever give the impression that I didn’t,” he said with a bizarre genuineness that had me questioning everything I’d ever thought.
“You’ve quite literally been an ass to me this entire time.”
“True,” he chuckled, “I won’t argue that, but, I think you’ll find I’ve also looked after your wellbeing.”
The words gave pause for thought. Was he right?
He had looked after me, in his own way I supposed.
Had I developed Stockholm syndrome?
I must have. Why else would I suddenly begin to like the company of my captor.
I wasn’t sure I could even call him that anymore though. I could have run if I had really wanted to. But I hadn’t, and I wouldn't. He knew it and I knew it. I guess somewhere in the past two weeks I’d realised I needed him, whether I wanted to or not. And brute he may at times be, a liar he wasn’t.
Maybe that’s just what happens when you spend day and night with someone for weeks on end. Or maybe that’s just the vampire in me.
We kept to the shadows, slipping between them like we belonged there, and I began to ponder just how many times in my life I must have been close to a vampire without even realising it. I thought that the world had been dangerous enough without any supernatural elements.
I wondered how one even hunted in these busy streets. Wouldn’t we be seen? Wouldn’t they scream?
“Stop overthinking,” he murmured beside me, not even looking at me as he paused in the mouth of an alley.
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he cut in, now looking at me. “You get that crease between your brows when you are.”
I scowled, smoothing it out instinctively and his mouth twitched, just slightly.
Then his focus shifted, gaze flicking to the street beyond us. “Watch.”
A man staggered past us, alone, keys fumbling in his hand, attention fixed anywhere but where he was going.
Davien stepped out just enough to be seen.
“Oi,” he called, voice calm, totally unthreatening.
The man turned and that was it, all it took. Davien looked at him and commanded him quietly.
The man obeyed without hesitation, no confusion, just compliance.
I couldn’t look away, my stomach twisting.
“That’s compulsion,” Davien said under his breath, guiding the man a few steps closer into the deeper shadows. “Don’t overdo it. Just keep it simple.”
“This feels… wrong.” I muttered.
“It is,” he said bluntly.
He stepped back slightly, nodding toward the man.
“Your turn.”
My chest tightened. Now that I was here, I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know this man but he seemed nice, normal.
“I don’t—”
“You do,” he said. “You’re hungry. I know you are.”
I swallowed. He was right.
“Just… don’t kill him,” he added, quieter now.
I stepped forward slowly, the man’s eyes finding mine instantly, already pliant. This was different from when I’d fed before—that had been… they had been… different.
“Stay still,” I said, voice soft but steadier than I expected.
He did, and I only hesitated for a fraction of a second before I leaned in. After that instinct took over. My fangs descended and sank into his neck.
Warmth flooded my senses, rich and overwhelming, and my body responded before my mind could catch up.
The man swayed slightly and I pulled back, my breath a little uneven as I forced myself to stop.
I swiped my thumb across my lips, wiping off any spilled blood as Davien stepped in beside me, his presence weirdly warm.
“You have more control than I would have thought,” he said, with what could only be described as a hint of pride in his voice, mixed with surprise.
“Don’t tell me I’ve impressed you,” I said, raising a brow.
He reached out, thumb pressing lightly against my lower lip, catching a stray drop of blood I’d missed. The contact was brief but lingered in places I didn’t want to admit.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he smirked. He pressed his thumb to his tongue, then to the marks on the man’s neck. “The trick is to heal all evidence. Our saliva will do that.”
The man blinked, disoriented.
Interesting. “So does that mean we could heal humans in other ways too, say with our blood?”
“Yes,” he said, eyeing me with that look again. “Although blood comes with its own set of problems. If their body rejects the blood and they die anyway, they could end up turning if they’re strong enough, or, they could form a link with you. It’s best avoided to be honest.”
“Go home, and forget the last ten minutes,” Davien told the man, and just like that he turned away like none of it had happened.
“A link?” I frowned.
He nodded once. “Something you don’t want unless you really mean it.”
We fell into step after that, moving through the city with no real urgency.
It was as odd as it was nice.
“Okay,” I said after a minute. “So compulsion—how far does it go? Like could I tell someone to jump off a bridge?”
“You could,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you should.”
Hm I pondered over that. “Could I compel you?”
“No,” He huffed a quiet laugh. “Not yet, anyway.”
That piqued my interest. “Yet?” I confirmed. “That implies someday.”
“It does,” he said. “And when that day comes. I promise I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”
There was a weird edge to his voice and I wasn’t entirely sure if I was reading too much into his response. Did he mean for it to come across so… flirty?
I doubted it. Still, I made sure to tell him, “I’ll remember that.”
He smirked at that, then we just continued to walk, now in comfortable silence, like we were just as ordinary as everyone else around us. As if we were just two friends on a walk together.
“Where are you from?” I asked. The question had been niggling at me for weeks.
He didn’t answer immediately and my eyes slid to him, expecting deflection. But instead he looked back at me earnestly.
“Not here,” he said. “Not originally.”
I waited for further explanation, but none came.
“Well, that really narrows it down.”
His mouth twitched, “You ask a lot of questions you know.”
“Only because you rarely answer.”
He let out a chuckle. “Fair.”
But still, he didn’t divulge more information, and I was certain he was keeping important things from me. But what was I supposed to do? I had no way of making him tell me things. I just had to—albeit, reluctantly—trust that he had good reason to be so guarded.
We’d drifted into a park without really meaning to, the kind tucked away in the nicer part of the city—trimmed hedged, aged trees, wrought iron railings, gravel paths that crunched too loudly beneath careless feet. It was quiet in a peaceful way.
I’d actually started to let my guard down and relax a little when Davien suddenly moved.
One second I was walking beside him, the next his hand was at my arm, his body closing in, and my back hit cold bark.
A breath caught in my throat.
His frame caged me in, solid and immovable, one hand braced beside my head while the other came up, finger pressed lightly against my lips.
“Shh.”
The word hardly existed, more breath than sound, his mouth close enough to my ear that I felt it more than heard it.
“Vampires,” he murmured so low, I almost missed the word.
My stomach dropped.
His eyes flicked past me, calculating.
I followed his line of sight to find two men, walking down the path. Ordinary looking at first glance, but once I studied them I noticed they were too fluid in their movements, too aware of their surroundings, too odd.
Oh shit.
Were they here for us? Had they found us?
How?
I swallowed hard as I tried not to think of what would happen if they discovered us.
This whole hunt had been a terrible idea.
After how careful we’d been, this was how we’d get caught.
My fingers curled slightly at my sides, resisting the urge to grab onto Davien, to urge him to run with me.
He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just held me there, hidden in the shadow of the tree we were pressed against.
I tried not to make a noise and ignored how his muscular frame felt against mine.
My heart beat like wildfire at his proximity.
This wasn’t like when we trained. This was more intimate and it reminded me of that night I’d forced him to drink from me.
The way his hand rested on my waist now wasn’t far off to how his fingers had dug into my skin with a possessive force back then.
It had been too long since I’d orgasmed.
It wasn't like I’d had any chance. Davien was always close by and even when he was in the next room, he had that damn vampire hearing.
Not that I’d really been in the mood, between all the death threats and running for my life.
Still, in this moment, my lack of recent pleasure made itself known.
Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome after all?
Yes, I preferred that explanation to the alternative.
His breathing slowed somewhat, seeming deeper, as his eyes slowly moved from where he had watched the rise and fall of my chest to what could only be my lips.
It made me wonder if he was thinking the same thing.
Surely not. He despised me. Okay, maybe tolerated was a better word, but still.
I was fairly certain that he was as fed up with my presence as I was of his… at least, usually.
Then he was gone as quickly as he had appeared, leaving nothing but the cold December air in his place. The men had walked on past, none the wiser to our presence.
“We should get back,” he said, and for the first time I found myself agreeing with him.
“Yes.” Yes indeed, before I said something stupid I’d regret. Or worse, do something I might not regret.