Page 69 of Blood Moon
And in the gleaming starlight, I believed him, even if against reason. He’d been trying to inform me, and when he couldn’t outright say it, he’d found a way. It was a way of protecting me, but now, I was terrified of all the monsters that did,indeed, want me dead.
And my dream. The vampires. It was a revelation that converted me into fragments of myself. “Julian, you said the legends were real, and if that’s true … the part in the story that mentions vampires … are they also real?”
There was a tightness in his throat. “Yes,” he agreed, and his voice seemed to melt into the evening air.
I pressed my head into my hands as I exhaled deeply, my nostrils flaring. I didn’t want to know any of this anymore. It was too much, and I wanted to give it all back. It was one thing, discovering that Julian was a werewolf, but it was an entirely different thing to learn that vampires existed and that I was being hunted. How much time did I have left? How could I protect myself? How would I escape something as dire as this?
“Mirabella,” Julian whispered, but I couldn’t respond. There were vampires. There were werewolves. There were witches—real witches, powerful ones. What else was there? “Mira,” Julian said again, and he touched my arm.
I sat up, pushed my hair behind my ears. “Are the vampires hunting me, too?” I asked, biting the tip of my thumb. I had to know.
When he removed his hand from my arm, I already knew.
“It’s my blood, isn’t it?” I said, and I rocked back and forth, trying to come up with a plan …a plan.It was so hysterical, I could laugh. I was no match against immortals, even if I wanted to believe that I was.
Julian shook his head. “They’re not attracted to the scent of your blood in the same way the wolves are. That I know for certain.”
“Have you seen them here?” I pleaded.
“Yes, but they’ve been ceased.”
I choked on my next breath, coughing.Ceased?The wolves and the vampires were enemies; the book had stated they were seen in conflict with each other, but vampires had been here, perhaps feet away from me. “Tell me when.”
“The day you fell in the woods, one was tracking you. I took it out before it caused harm.” I felt a tremble in my body that wouldn’t give. That hiker with the strange eyes … A gasp. That beautiful woman outside the football game …
I held a hand to my chest, stiffened with a visceral terror. It was unbelievable the way Death sought after me.
Julian peered behind his shoulder cautiously, and it made me wonder if he heard anything in the trees. The campus had grown empty since we’d sat down. Condensation painted the sidewalks, and thin fog slid past the lampposts and grazed the rooftops. The indication that there could be any other supernatural being on these grounds made me physically ill.
“We should go inside,” he uttered. I didn’t question him. I stood, and he did the same.
“Can we go to your dorm?” I asked, staring into the glowing building that my room resided in, beside that deep, dark forest. I had no intention of going anywhere alone.
Julian’s eyes brightened, and a smirk appeared on his face. A very mischievous one.
I scoffed, nudged him. “It’snotlike that,” I said, rolling my eyes. His smile broke some of the tension, and I released a breath. “My friends are gone, and—”
“And you don’t want to be alone. I get it.”
“You sure you don’t read minds?”
“Bells, don’t stroke my ego like that.”
I grinned, slid past him. “Please,” I said, walking ahead. “You’re sick.”
“Do you even know where you’re going?” Julian called out.
I kept going, though I wasn’t planning to get too far away—only enough to make him hurry.
He caught up to me in a matter of seconds, bringing a chuckle with him. “So then, friends?” he asked, and I could feel the heat of his body striding next to mine. I glanced up to his pristine smile, that perfect jawline, his flowy hair.
“Maybe,” I said.Maybe.
CHAPTER34
It was always easy with her, like breathing air.
Article III, Lost Letters from Aadan the First
