Page 49 of Vampire Bite

I shivered slightly, and he tightened his arm around me, his touch grounding despite the weight of his words.

“But it’s more than that,” he added after a pause. “It changes the way you see the world. Time becomes… fluid. Days, years… they start to blur. The things that used to matter don’t anymore. And the things you never noticed, like how the stars look brighter when you’re not running out of time to see them, those become the only things you hold on to.”

His voice was steady, but I could hear the undercurrent of sorrow, of longing for something lost. “And then there’s the loneliness,” he said, his tone softening. “No matter how many people you’re surrounded by, no matter how much you care about them, there’s always this… distance. Like a part of you is frozen in place while the world keeps spinning.”

I reached up, my fingers brushing his jaw. “You don’t seem lonely now,” I whispered.

His gaze dropped to mine, his expression unreadable for a moment. “I’m not,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of something unspoken. “Not when I’m with you.”

My chest tightened, a flood of emotions threatening to overwhelm me. “Lucas…” I started, but he leaned down, pressing his lips to my forehead in a gesture so tender it stole whatever words I was about to say.

“I’ve lived a long time, Annika,” he said quietly. “Long enough to know that moments like this… they don’t come often. So, I hold onto them. I hold onto you, for as long as you are here.”

His honesty broke something in me, and I pressed closer to him, burying my face in his chest. For a while, we just lay there in silence, his hand stroking my back, his steady heartbeat the only sound I needed to hear.

Lucas' arms were warm and solid around me, his breath brushing softly against my hair as we lay there on the couch. Theflickering candlelight painted golden shadows across the room, and everything about the moment felt… safe. Peaceful. Almost perfect. Almost.

But my mind wouldn’t quiet.

I stared at the faint lines on the ceiling, my body cradled against his, and felt the tug-of-war happening inside me. The life I had before seemed so distant, like it belonged to someone else entirely. My mother’s face haunted me. I could see her tired smile, the way she’d laugh despite the pain, her voice telling me to be careful. She was the reason I had taken this case, the reason I had put myself in harm’s way to make sure we could afford her treatments.

But what if I couldn’t go back? What if she was gone, and I hadn’t been there when she needed me most? My throat tightened, and I pressed my lips together to keep from breaking. The thought of her dying alone, wondering why her only daughter was not back, by her side, was unbearable.

Yet, staying here felt like an option I hadn’t considered until now. The thought of leaving Lucas… it clawed at me, an ache I didn’t know how to soothe. How could I just walk away from him after everything we’d been through? After all the times he’d risked his life to protect me, comforted me when I felt like I was breaking, and made me laugh when the world around us felt like it was falling apart?

I glanced up at him. His face was calm, his eyes closed, the faintest trace of contentment on his features. I’d never seen him like this before… unguarded, vulnerable. He trusted me, I realized. In a world that had given him every reason not to, he had chosen to trust me and I trusted him.

How could I leave that behind?

But how could I stay?

I closed my eyes, trying to push the questions away, but they only grew louder. This fight was bigger than me, and thetruth was, I didn’t even know where I fit in anymore. The old Annika, the one who had a plan, a purpose, a career to go back to, felt like a stranger. Almost as if she were just a friend with whom I’d lost touch. And now, I had no idea if I wanted to rekindle that friendship.

In this tangled mess of thoughts and emotions, all I knew was that, here, in Lucas’s arms, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be.

But was that enough?

Lucas stirred slightly, his fingers brushing my arm. Sometimes, it felt as if he were able to read my mind, asking the questions I had been trying to shove into the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind.

“Are you awake?” he murmured, his voice low and warm.

“Yeah,” I said softly, afraid to speak too much, to betray the storm of thoughts swirling inside me.

He pressed a kiss to my hair. “You’re thinking again.”

A weak laugh escaped me. “Guilty as charged.”

I couldn’t believe it, but he knew me so well. Sometimes I thought that he knew me better than I knew myself, if such a thing were possible.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

There it was. The question that I dreaded. Yet now, that he had asked it, it didn’t feel so frightening.

I hesitated. Part of me wanted to spill everything, to tell him how torn I felt, how much it hurt to think about leaving, how terrified I was that I might never find my place again. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother and how much she needed me, while I was here, fighting and making love. How strikingly different those two things were, yet for me, intertwined, one unable to exist without the other.

Then again, there was another part of me that didn’t want to ruin this moment. It was fragile, fleeting, and I wanted to stay in it just a little longer.

“Not yet,” I whispered.

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