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  She started to get up, but paused when she caught Hunter’s shape beside them. He was standing between them, but a short distance away, looking at his feet.

  In the silence, Nora realized she could make out the whispered voices. Strange, as she hadn’t been able to before. She listened carefully to the conversation she probably wasn’t meant to hear.

  “…just go, then!” Alexander said angrily. “If that’s how you feel, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “Go?” Madison laughed. “That was my plan all along. I just didn’t realize it would be without you.”

  “You’ve made your choice, then,” he said gravely. “Him over me.” Nora’s heart dropped. Him over me? He couldn’t mean… Hunter, could he? She tried to swallow past the lump of fear.

  “Or perhaps he has chosen me over the newborn,” she said triumphantly. “She is naïve and inexperienced, while I know what I am about. I’m not one to get in the way, like her.”

  “Hah!” Alexander barked a crude laugh. “You have no idea what is good for you. And without me there…think! Over the years, how many times would you have fallen into a pit you could not climb out of were it not for me?”

  “Perhaps without you,” she answered roughly, “I would not have fallen at all.”

  He grunted in reply. “This is truly what you want, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is a foolish choice, but if you have made the decision… I will not interfere.” Some of the anger seemed to have dissipated, leaving him sounding sad…and resigned.

  “Nor would I expect you to. But I will give you once chance to reconsider. Come with us, and leave the girl.”

  “Leave the girl?” The anger returned. “She is alone and being chased by an army of our kind, and you suggest for me to just leave her?”

  “Alone?” Again, Madison laughed. “She has that bear. A despicable habit, taking in strays like that.” She shrugged indifferently. “But that is who you choose to attach yourself to, were you to stay.”

  He shook his head. “I will not leave her.”

  “You’ve made your choice, then,” she spat. “Come, Hunter, let us go.” Wait. Hunter? Madison turned toward Hunter. He couldn’t be…leaving with her?

  “Wait!” Nora yelled out. Instantly, all three heads whipped to her.

  “She’s up,” Madison sneered derisively. “Fine. It’s good for her to see this.”

  “You should not treat her so,” Alexander warned.

  Hunter started toward her. He walked closer and squatted down beside her. “What did you hear?”

  “I don’t know,” Nora said, her voice quivering. She had to be mistaken, right? He couldn’t just be…leaving her? “I heard noises, and I woke up, and I heard an argument—” she cut off mid-sentence as her voice cracked. She couldn’t understand what was going on. “Tell me I heard wrong,” she pleaded. “Tell me you’re not really leaving me!”

  He regarded her through unreadable eyes. For a long moment, he just stared right at her. Nora felt all the emotions she had gone through with him at once; fear and uncertainty, remorse and sadness, delight and despair.

  What was he hiding from her? What was he thinking behind those dark eyes?

  He sighed, and she braced herself.

  “It is time for me to leave, Nora.”

  Nora felt like she’d been stabbed in the stomach. Her whole world crashed down around her, and her chest tightened. After everything they’d been through, after standing on the brink of death more than once, after finding happiness in each other’s arms…he was just leaving? Just like that?

  A million questions beat at her, all begging to be answered, but she settled on just one: “Why?”

  “Because it is the right time.” He spoke the words so calmly. Had she really meant so little to him? She couldn’t accept that.

  Nora shook her head angrily. “No!” she said. “You can’t just…leave me! What about everything we’ve been through? What about us?”

  “Us?” Hunter looked her up and down again, and his expression did not change. “I’m sorry if you got the wrong impression, Nora. But there is no ‘us’. There never was and never will be.”

  “What?” Nora couldn’t believe her ears. “What about everything we’ve been through? Everything you’ve shown me?”

  “I did not promise you anything, Nora, and I don’t owe you anything.” His voice was stern. “And I’m afraid your imagination got the better of you.”

  He got up and turned around. That one brief conversation left Nora feeling completely annihilated. Like everything she had ever believed in had turned out to be built on a base of sand. Her eyes were wet, and she didn’t care.

  “Wait!”

  He stopped and turned slowly.

  “I…” Nora swallowed. She was painfully aware of Madison’s eyes on her. “I want you to stay… Please!”

  To her complete shock, Hunter barked a laugh. “You want me to stay?” he repeated mockingly. “You don’t know what you want, Nora.” Then his words became sharp. Cutting. “The only reason you think you want me to stay is because I transformed you.” Devastating. “It’s the only reason you think you feel something for me at all.” Each word cut deeper than the last, wounded her until she was completely maimed. “It is all in your imagination, Nora. You have made up a grand fairytale to fit your new life. I have fulfilled my obligation to you. I have saved your life, as I promised in the caves, and now it is time for us to part.”

  Nora stared in complete shock, unable to utter a single word in protest.

  “I have broken many parts of the Vassiz creed. Staying with you after the transformation was the biggest one so far. You have become smitten by imagined feelings to the point of being unable to think straight.” He looked just slightly above her head, now, not meeting her eye. “Forget whatever feelings you harbor for me, Nora, for I hold none for you.”

  Nora watched, perfectly still, as Hunter walked away, approached Madison, and took her arm. She watched as they walked deliberately into the forest, directly away from her. She watched as they started to run together, blurring in the darkness, and running impossibly fast through the tress.

  And then, when she was certain they were gone, she cried.

  Chapter Eight

  ~Risks~

  Only when she was able to compose herself did Alexander walk toward her. He looked to be troubled himself. As he came closer, the first coherent thoughts rolled through Nora’s mind.

  She could not believe Hunter was gone. Just like that, he was gone. She had believed deeply – no, she knew – that what she felt for him was more than just the side effect of him taking her blood. It had to be. They had gone through so much in such a short time that feeling something for one another was only natural. She felt foolish now for not telling him more clearly, for not communicating with him sooner how she felt. She wished she’d told him how much she appreciated what he had done, how much she appreciated him.

  But he was gone now, and it was too late.

  She looked up as Alexander closed the gap between them. The trails of her tears were still damp. Alexander bent down and very gently wiped them away. Almost like a father would.

  “What do we do now?” she asked him softly.

  “We continue on.” His voice was strong, unlike hers. But his eyes looked hurt. Abruptly, Nora realized that she was not the only one to have lost someone she cared for that night. Madison had left also, and as much as Nora despised her, she had meant something to Alexander. Yet here he was, significantly more composed than she.

  She nodded. “Do you know where they went?”

  “Away,” he said.

  “And…where do we go?”

  Alexander paused for a moment before speaking. “We continue just as we planned before. It is the only thing we can do.”

  Nora nodded again. Alexander was regarding her with concern, but Nora realized she was looking at him the same way. Despite herself, she was worried about how he was dealing with Madison’s
departure. He had known her for a very long time, after all.

  “You told me you knew her before,” she said. “Has anything like this ever happened?”

  Alexander shook his head. “No, never before.”

  “I’m sorry, then.” Nora lowered her gaze.

  Alexander looked taken aback. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”

  “For…causing all this to happen. If not for me, you would still be with Madison.”

  “And were it not for me, dear girl, you would still be journeying together with Hunter,” Alexander said kindly. “But we do not do service to ourselves worrying over such things. Life being as it is…sometimes things happen. The best thing for us to do is to face this with our heads held high.”

  Nora took a deep breath. She knew what he was saying was right, and he had the experience of many years. Still…the hurt was too deep to move on just like that.

  “Do not think I’m saying to forget what happened here,” Alexander continued, as if reading her thoughts, “only that we should not let tonight’s…episode…fester within our minds. We must keep going, and we can look to each other for strength.”

  Nora nodded again. She looked at Gray, who was still sleeping beside her. He was her symbol of strength, and he had not abandoned her.

  With a new resolve, she agreed. “We’ll look to each other,” she repeated.

  “At day break, we continue forward,” Alexander told her. “We will take tonight to recoup and begin with a fresh heart and an easy mind tomorrow.” He got up and walked back to his spot by a nearby tree.

  After only a moment’s pause, Nora got up and walked to him. He regarded her evenly as she came closer.

  “Alexander…?” she began.

  “Yes?”

  “I heard Madison say that you could have left with them.”

  He looked her up and down before replying. “I could have, yes.”

  “But you chose to stay.”

  “Yes.”

  Nora smiled. “Thank you. Were it not for you, I would have been left alone in these woods. I don’t know what I would have done, then.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Alexander said. “I have seen your character, Nora. You would have made the same decision in my position.”

  “Still,” Nora said, “the choice couldn’t have been easy. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

  He smiled. “There are precious few hours left until dawn,” he said. “You’d better go sleep before we journey tomorrow. I don’t know how fast you can move, but I intend to find out.”

  Nora smiled back, somewhat sadly, then walked the few steps to her spot by Gray. She truly was grateful to Alexander for his decision to stay.

  It was funny. She felt abandoned and completely betrayed by Hunter, but in the darkest hour, she found at least one person she could pin her hopes on…one friend.

  Alexander.

  Gray was sleeping soundly when she lay down. She reached out to put an arm over his warm, furry back, and he opened his eyes sleepily. When he saw it was her, he settled back down. Despite herself, Nora had to smile. He would never leave her like Hunter did.

  “And I will never leave you, either,” she whispered to him, before she closed her eyes and drifted into a tortured sleep.

  The nightmares were back, and this time they were much worse. Most of all because Nora could remember every single one, down to its most terrifying detail.

  She was running through the woods with Hunter, with the wind in her hair. The sun was shining brightly, and the birds were singing. She felt Hunter’s hand in hers, and it gave her strength. She laughed, delighted with her place in the world. She looked around at the scenery: the verdant green trees, the beautifully sloped hills.

  But when she looked beside her, it wasn’t Hunter holding her hand, it was Madison. Her heart lurched into her throat when she realized she was not running, but dangling precariously off the edge of a cliff. Madison’s grip was the only thing holding her from a sure death below. Madison smiled ever so sweetly…and let her go.

  Nora fell…and landed back in the caves. The Vassiz were gathering all around her, and she could hear their imminent approach. She was alone, and she couldn’t see a thing in the dark. She ran wildly, trying to get away from the sound, but without seeing where she was going, she slammed harshly into walls and jutting stones. Some of the rocks cut her, and some made her trip and fall, but she ran on, desperate, with the Vassiz getting ever closer. Suddenly a light appeared in front of her. A torch! But it was moving toward her.

  She stopped, trying to comprehend what was happening.

  Somebody was running with the torch.

  As the light got closer, she saw Hunter’s face. “Hunter!” she cried out, happy to see him. But he had eyes only for her neck, staring at it hungrily. “…Hunter?” she asked unsteadily, but he didn’t respond. Throwing the torch down, he launched himself at her and sunk his teeth into her neck. She screamed in pain and pure terror as he viciously ripped out her throat, sucking in the warm, sweet blood. Blackness encroached, tunneling her vision until…

  She was back at school, sitting in class with all the other students, with all her friends. She was happy to be here, in the safety afforded by her home town. Although she had an uncomfortable inkling in the back of her mind that something was slightly off, she couldn’t place her finger on it. She shrugged it off and listened to the teacher in front of her lecture on about something indistinctive. Happily, she looked around her. The sun was shining through the windows, and it was bright outside.

  Too bright. With a start, she realized she had trouble adjusting her eyes. The light was getting brighter, and she could see less and less. She started to panic, sweeping her eyes from one side of the room to the other, trying to catch something, anything, but all she could see was pure white.

  She was blind. Breathing hard, she heard the scraping of chairs and desks around her. What was happening? She heard people starting to move and wanted desperately to see where. She tried to push her chair back to get up, but hit something hard. She turned back, momentarily forgetting she couldn’t see. A sinister laugh greeted her. “You’re not going anywhere, darling,” a raspy voice whispered in her ear.

  A hundred different hands grabbed hold of her limbs. She struggled against them, but they stayed attached with an iron grip. She felt herself being picked up, and carried away, while laughter spread throughout the room. She flailed her body, unable to see what was happening. She was panicking, fighting desperately, but it was no use.

  Abruptly she was thrown down, into something that felt…confined. Her hands reached out, but found only a hard, metal surface. She started to push herself up, but something slammed hard against her head. She fell back down. Desperately, she reached around her, but her hands only found that same confined metal surface. She could feel the edges of the planes.

  Her blood ran cold with terror, as she realized she was in a box. Above, behind, under, and all around was that same terrible metal. She could feel all six sides of the container cramping against her, pushing into her. They pulsed as if alive.

  A scream tore from her throat, ripping her forcefully from the nightmares.

  She woke with a start, breathing heavily and wide-eyed. When she realized she could make out her surroundings, relief flooded over her. Instinctually, she spread her arms to test the boundaries of that box…and realized there was none.

  It had just been a dream.

  A shiver ran down her spine. She knew she’d been having nightmares. They started soon after she and Hunter had gotten out of the caves. These were the first that she could remember.

  Instead of feeling sadness or anger over that thought, she felt…a hunger. And she knew it for what it was. Forcefully, she thrust it down, willing herself to be strong enough not to succumb to it. Alexander believed in her. With all the uncertainty about what was going to happen next, giving in to the urge to feed would be the worst thing she could do.

  Alexander appeared
in front of her, startling her momentarily. She didn’t like being so jumpy, but those nightmares had her on edge.

  “Morning,” he said. “I trust you got a decent night’s sleep?”

  “Yes,” Nora lied. “I’m already feeling better than yesterday.”

  “Good. We’ll travel hard today, then.”

  “Do you know how long it will take us to reach the archive?”

  Alexander was silent for a minute, contemplating her. “Truth be told, we’re not that far. If you could run as fast as you will one day, we’d be there by nightfall. As it is, I think we can get there within two days.”

  “Two days.” Nora pushed herself up, determined to show that they could beat that time. If it was a way she could prove her strength to him after he saw her cry, well…so be it. “I’m ready.”

  To her surprise, Alexander chuckled and smiled at her fondly. “You remind me of a young girl I once knew, ages ago,” he said. “When I was still human. My niece. She had a similar type of steely determination.”

  “Determination?” She was never complimented on that before.

  “In the face of everything that’s happened to you, you’ve risen above it with a steady resolve. And you don’t have the advantage of many years of life to draw on, yet. It’s impressive.”

  “Thank you,” Nora said shyly. “Should we get going, then? You can lead the way.”

  Again, Alexander chuckled. “Ever-anxious, are we? I know you might feel like you can go for a very long time, at first, but we have to be careful to mediate our travel speed.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We have to make sure we don’t rouse your hunger,” he explained. “You haven’t fed yet, and we don’t want to have that instinct take over.”

  Oh, right. Hunter had said something similar when he’d hidden her from the hunters. “Why would it do that?” She had forced it down herself, only minutes earlier, and had proven herself by not taking the life of the hunter. “I’ve withstood it before.”

  “Yes,” Alexander said, “but the difference now is that we’ll be making use of the skills afforded to you by your new body. And they require you to embrace the part of you that’s fully Vassiz. If you do that for too long, or too suddenly, the inhuman part of you…it might take over. And you won’t be able to control it any more than you can control where the sun rises in the morning or sets at night.”