Deception

The first thing I noticed was how loud the mill had become.

The river rushed somewhere beyond the dark granite walls, water breaking over stone far below the edge of the gorge. Wind moved through the pines outside, brushing heavy branches against one another, and somewhere beneath the floorboards something small scratched through the old wood. I could hear all of it clearly enough that for several seconds I simply lay there with my eyes closed, trying to understand why the world suddenly sounded as though someone had turned the volume all the way up.

Then I realized I wasn’t breathing.

My eyes opened.

Dean was kneeling beside the velvet settee with one hand wrapped around mine, exactly where he must have been for hours. His clothes were still torn from the mountain, blackened by smoke and stiff with dried blood, and there were dark streaks across his hands and face that he hadn’t bothered to wash away. The wounds I’d seen across his chest were already mostly gone, leaving only faint lines beneath the ripped fabric.

He stared at me without moving.

“Audrey?”

His voice was so quiet that the fear inside it startled me more than anything else.

I looked at him, then down at our joined hands. His skin felt cold beneath my fingers, but for the first time since I’d met him, mine felt exactly the same.

“I think I’m awake,” I whispered.

Something changed in Dean’s face. The careful stillness disappeared and he pulled me against him so suddenly that I barely had time to react, his arms locking around me while one hand pressed against the back of my head. He held me there without saying anything, and I could feel how tightly his fingers were gripping the fabric at my shoulder.

Then the memories came back.

Julian dragging me through the snow. His hand crushing my throat while Dean fought to reach me. The sharp pain when his fangs tore into my skin, then the terrible weakness afterward as the world became colder and quieter around me.

My heart slowing.

Stopping.

I pushed gently against Dean’s chest until he let me pull away.

“I died.”

Dean looked at me for a long moment before answering.

“Yes.”

My hand moved to my throat. I ran my fingers over the place Julian had bitten me, expecting to find torn flesh beneath them, but the skin was completely smooth. There wasn’t even a scar.

“Julian?”

“Dead.”

“Marcus?”

“Dead.”

The way Dean said it made me decide not to ask anything else yet. His dark eyes were completely flat now, and there was enough dried blood covering him to tell me whatever had happened after I lost consciousness hadn’t been clean.

“How long was I gone?”

“About three hours.”

I frowned. “Three hours?”

“You were dead for most of them.”

The words landed differently when he said them like that.

I pressed my palm against the center of my chest and waited.

Nothing.

I shifted my hand slightly, then pressed two fingers against the inside of my wrist even though I already knew what I was going to find.

There was no pulse.

“So it worked,” I murmured.

Dean’s fingers tightened around mine again. “Yes.”

“You said it almost never works.”

“It doesn’t.”

“One in a hundred.”

“Something close to that.”

I looked down at myself. Someone had changed my clothes, replacing the blood-soaked ones from the mountain with one of Dean’s black shirts that hung almost to my thighs. My skin looked paler beneath the weak morning light, though I couldn’t tell if that was real or because I was suddenly looking for every difference.

“And you just sat here waiting?”

Dean glanced toward the heavy curtains covering the windows.

Pale light had begun to appear around their edges.

A cold feeling settled in my stomach.

“What were you going to do if I didn’t wake up?”

His eyes returned to mine.

“I wasn’t leaving without you.”

I followed his gaze back toward the windows.

“You were going to stay until the sun came up.”

“If the venom didn’t take.”

“Dean.”

“I had no reason to go anywhere.”

He didn’t say it dramatically. There was no sadness in his voice, no attempt to make the decision sound romantic. He had simply decided that if I stayed dead, he would sit beside me until the sunlight reached him.

I looked away because I didn’t know what to do with that.

That was when I noticed the stillness again.

Dean wasn’t breathing. He never had, and long before I’d known what he was, it had been one of the things about him that made my skin crawl when I noticed it. He could sit completely motionless for hours, his chest never rising unless he spoke.

Mine wasn’t moving either.

I stared down at myself.

“I don’t breathe anymore.”

“No.”

“That is incredibly fucking weird.”

A faint smile finally touched the corner of his mouth. “You’ll stop noticing.”

“I noticed it on you constantly.”

“You noticed everything about me constantly.”

I looked up at him. “Don’t get smug. I just died.”

“I’ll save it for later.”

I pushed myself upright and tried to stand.

The room seemed to disappear.

One moment I was beside the settee and the next my shoulder struck one of the thick timber support posts several feet away. The impact sent a sharp crack through the room, and I grabbed the wood automatically before staring back toward Dean.

He was already standing.

“What the fuck?”

“You moved too quickly.”

“I stood up.”

“You tried to stand up.”

“I crossed half the room.”

Dean walked toward me, his expression almost annoyingly calm. “You’re stronger now. Faster too. Your body doesn’t know how to compensate for it yet.”

I looked at the beam beside me. A thin split ran through the old wood where my shoulder had hit it, but there wasn’t even a bruise forming beneath my shirt.

“You could have mentioned that before I nearly launched myself through the wall.”

“I told you to move slowly.”

“That was not remotely enough information.”

Something scratched inside the wall behind me.

My head turned immediately.

I heard the tiny movement again, followed by another sound underneath it. A quick, steady rhythm, so clear that for several seconds I couldn’t understand what I was listening to.

“What is that?”

Dean followed my gaze. “A mouse.”

“No. The other sound.”

His expression changed slightly.

I listened again.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.

“You can hear its heartbeat,” Dean said quietly.

I looked at him. “Through the wall?”

“Yes.”

The mouse moved again and the rhythm became faster.

A deep ache twisted through my stomach.

I gripped the edge of the nearby table, my fingers digging into the old wood as the sensation spread through my chest and limbs. It didn’t feel like ordinary hunger. It felt hollow and sharp at the same time, like every part of my body had suddenly realized it was missing something.

Dean watched me carefully.

“It’s starting.”

“What is?”

“The hunger.”

I swallowed. “This feels nothing like hunger.”

“It isn’t the kind you’re used to.”

Another cramp rolled through me, and an aching pressure spread along my gums. I touched my mouth and felt the sharp point of a fang beneath my fingertip.

The mouse’s heartbeat suddenly seemed louder.

I looked toward the wall again.

The thought came before I could stop it.

I could break through those boards.

Dean stepped into my line of sight.

“Audrey.”

I forced myself to look at him.

He studied my face for another second before holding out his hand.

“Come downstairs.”

I followed him through the long corridor toward the kitchen, moving carefully this time. Every step felt too easy, my body responding before I had fully decided what I wanted it to do.

Dean opened the stainless-steel refrigerator.

Three heavy glass bottles sat on the middle shelf, filled with dark, settled blood.

The smell reached me immediately.

I stopped behind him.

Dean glanced over his shoulder. “You can smell it.”

“That obvious?”

“Very.”

He took the first bottle out and handed it to me.

I pulled the stopper free and stared down at the blood for only a second before the hunger made hesitation pointless. The first mouthful was cold and metallic, thick enough that I should have hated it, but instead the burning in my throat eased almost instantly.

I drank the rest without stopping.

When the bottle was empty, I lowered it and waited.

The relief lasted maybe ten seconds.

Then the hollow ache began to return.

“More,” I said.

Dean didn’t look surprised.

He simply reached into the refrigerator and handed me the second bottle.

I stared at him before taking it. “You knew that wasn’t going to be enough.”

“Yes.”

“How much am I going to need?”

“A lot.”

“That isn’t an amount.”

Dean leaned back against the counter while I pulled the stopper from the second bottle. There was something far too calm about him considering I had just emptied almost a litre of blood.

“Your body isn’t finished changing,” he said. “Waking up was only the beginning. Everything developing now takes blood.”

I drank again, slower this time only because I was forcing myself to. “How long does this last?”

“The worst of it? A few weeks. Sometimes longer.”

I lowered the bottle. “Weeks?”

“Newborns require far more blood than established vampires.”

“And you were planning to mention this when?”

“When you woke up.”

“I’ve been awake for twenty minutes.”

“You spent most of those twenty minutes discovering you don’t breathe and nearly putting yourself through a support beam. I was prioritizing.”

I hated that he had a point.

I finished the second bottle and handed it back. The relief came again, but Dean was already reaching for the third before I asked.

“You really knew exactly what was going to happen.”

Dean’s eyes met mine.

“I was newborn at one point too.”

Something about the answer felt incomplete, but another wave of hunger made it difficult to care. I took the last bottle and drank until it was empty.

The sharpest edge finally faded, leaving a constant ache underneath it.

Dean took the bottle from me and set it beside the others.

“That’s all we have here.”

I stared at the refrigerator.

“That’s it?”

“For now.”

“So what happens when I’m hungry again?”

Dean’s expression didn’t change.

“I get you more.”

I looked at him.

“From where?”

Dean turned toward the door.

“Stay here.”

I followed him into the main hall. “That wasn’t my question.”

“No.”

“Dean.”

He stopped beside the massive oak doors and looked back at me.

“You cannot leave the mill.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“I mean it, Audrey. Not for any reason.”

The seriousness in his voice killed the argument before I could start it.

“Where are you going?”

“To get what you need.”

“Blood.”

“Yes.”

“From where?”

Dean was silent for a moment.

Then he leaned down and pressed a brief kiss against my forehead.

“I’ll be back before dark.”

Before I could stop him, he opened the door and disappeared into the woods.

The next several hours passed slowly.

By nightfall, the hunger had returned almost completely. I spent most of the afternoon wandering through the empty mill and trying not to listen to the animals outside, though every heartbeat I caught through the walls made the ache in my throat worse.

I was standing near the long dining table when I heard Dean returning.

His movements were almost silent across the frozen ground, but I recognized them now.

Then I heard another set of footsteps.

Slower.

Uneven.

A branch snapped somewhere beyond the yard, followed by a man’s frightened voice.

I walked toward the doors.

Then his heartbeat reached me.

Fast, heavy and terrified.

My fangs slid down before I could stop them.