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But it catches—because that’s when it hits me.

The hunger.

It doesn’t creep in. It crashes.

A violent surge, blooming hot in my chest and gut, curling low like a fist closing around my insides. I lean hard into the stone wall behind me, trying to ground myself. My gums throb, the pressure sharp and familiar. My fangs want to drop. My vision sharpens and tunnels at once, focusing on the outline of Roan—alive, warm, too close. My shoulder pulses in time with the hunger, the bandage tugging uncomfortably as my body strains under the ache of too many needs unmet.

The sun won't burn me. But this hunger—it might.

“Hey.” Roan’s voice cuts through the fog. She’s suddenly there, crouched in front of me, her face etched with concern. “You alright?”

“No.” The word tears from my throat before I can stop it. My arm jerks out instinctively, palm outstretched. “Stay back.”

Her body stills, every line of her posture alert, respectful. She doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t press. But her eyes—gods, her eyes—go soft with worry.

I turn my face away, ashamed of how close I’d come to reaching for her.

Don’t look at her. Don’t imagine what it would feel like—warm, pulsing.

Gods help me.

My hands curl into fists against the stone, nails digging half-moons into my palms. It’s not her fault. It’s not. But the scent of her—sweat, leather, life—is too close. Too sharp.

“I know how to hunt,” she says, as if sensing the storm rolling behind my eyes. “Habit. Picked it up after I lost a job—years ago. Ran out of rations halfway through a contract. Learned my lesson real quick.”

The story tumbles into the space between us like a stone skipping across a lake. Distracting. Mercifully so.

I latch onto it, dragging my mind from the ache gnawing at my ribs. “It’s not rabbits I need,” I whisper, before I can stop myself. “I need…”

Roan doesn’t pounce on the pause. She just watches me, quiet, steady. “Go on.”

My mouth feels like cotton. “I need… to tell you something.”

My throat tightens. I can feel the truth pressing against the inside of my ribs, demanding air, even if it gets me killed.

She waits.

“You may have guessed, but…” I glance away, toward the broken stones and the stretch of pale morning sky beyond them. “I’m not human.”

A beat of silence.

Then she shifts. Not much. But I catch it—the tension in her shoulders, the slight curl of her fingers like she’s bracing for something.

“Yeah,” she says at last, voice careful. “I figured.” Her tone isn’t cruel, but there’s steel threaded through it. “Vampire, right?”

The word lands harder than I expect.

But I nod. “Yes.”

Something in me braces for revulsion. For judgment. But all Roan does is exhale slowly, eyes pinned to mine like she’s turning the truth over in her head.

“How bad is it?” she asks.

The question catches me off guard. “How…bad?”

She gestures toward me, vaguely. “Your injury. Your hunger. Whatever it is that makes you… need, you know. Blood?”

I wince. Not at the word, but at the plainness of it. The honesty. It scrapes raw against years of secrecy, of pretending.