Page 24 of Blood Loss (The Obscura Saga #2)
L A THAN
Lathan’s washed with shame from the kiss. Though sweet and something Lathan really needed, Kylo’s parents are witnesses to the affection Lathan shouldn’t be given. Kylo doesn’t know how much they know now, how their views of him as a vampire have changed. As their son’s mate. A member of their pack.
Lathan stays by his side until visiting hours are over. Until the tests have come back, proving Kylo’s stable enough to be transferred away. Lathan barely speaks a word through the hours. He doesn’t show any emotion. But he’s at his side, even with tension from David and Maria.
When it’s time to leave, to go home, Lathan questions the meaning of the word for him. He doesn’t want to go back to the Garcias’. And he definitely can’t stomach going back with them. So he walks, head low, for the hour and a half it takes to get back to the suburban house. It’s late by the time he finds the driveway, and as he glances up at the windows, the lights inside turn off. His heart sinks further into the ocean that is his body, drowning him over and over again, darker than night and deadlier than any living creature .
They saw him, and don’t want to deal with him.
He drags his feet to the small guest house. The floor creaks, and the silence is wrong. It’s wrong because it’s too fucking loud, and the volume makes the inside of his chest itch. But he can’t scratch it, no matter how much he drags his nails over his skin.
He can’t look at the empty bedroom, where his mate should be snuggled up, fast asleep—even if he has been sleeping elsewhere lately. Where he must have been high all summer without Lathan noticing. So he sits on the couch, buries his face in his hands as his muscles tremble, frail.
As he rubs his face, his palms lift his lip, and his teeth graze the skin. He pauses with the soft press of his front teeth into his flesh. More , the lone thought in his mind hums, like it has all day, saying the same thing: More pain. More hurt. More.
He closes his eyes.
Drops his fangs.
Lets the tip pinch his palm.
Then sinks it deep into the heel of his hand. His pupils shrink as the venom releases, burning a trail up his wrist, even with just the solo fang’s injection. He retracts and cradles his hand against him, gritting his teeth. The small hole winks up at him as it swells with blood. Blood that he watches overflow, racing past its wound, toward his fingers. His veins riot with the venom, pulsing and trying to push it out.
He brings his hand to his lips and licks the puncture closed, locking in the agony .
He doesn’t sleep. Even after the pain subsides, and his body is exhausted from it all, he doesn’t sleep. He packs his luggage, pours out the blood bags stored in the mini fridge, and books a plane ticket back to California.
When morning comes, and he can tell someone’s awake in the main house, he rolls his suitcase to the driveway and then goes inside through the back sliding doors. Maria’s in the kitchen, likely trying to keep herself busy. He doesn’t approach, keeps a respectful distance.
“I’m going back to Obscura,” he says, his voice lifeless. “My taxi’s here. I just… Thank you for opening up your home to me.” He can’t look at her directly, and he’s ashamed of that. But he just fucking can’t.
Maria pauses at the sink. It takes a moment before she angles her body toward him and dares to look. “I understand,” she says, gripping the tea towel between her hands. “Take care, Lathan.”
Then she returns to the sink to finish her task.
Like a child—the childhood self that still hurts from his own parents’ neglect—he’d hoped she’d try to stop him. That she’d say more. Tell him it’s okay—he’s still part of this family. But as her back turns, the little boy inside him starts to weep, abandoned once again.
I won’t bother you anymore , he thinks as he leaves. I won’t disgrace you and your family. You won’t have to see me. You won’t have to think of me.
As he walks to the vehicle parked out front, he wonders what those thoughts truly mean. And then he isn’t even bothered when he realizes: he wants to stop existing. It’s a comforting idea, in a way, to imagine being gone. To imagine how everyone he’s affected would heal and live fuller, healthier lives without him.
He nurses that thought all the way to the airport.
◆◆◆
Ridley is an odd town. It has necessities like a hospital, emergency services, groceries, and other shopping and dining needs, and everything is up-to-date and looks nice. But then there are places like the strip club hidden in a back alley, and this shitty motel.
“You a student at Obscura?” the old woman from behind the front desk asks, scratching the base of one of her tilted horns as she checks Lathan into a room.
He glances at the suitcase beside him; people must not travel to Ridley much otherwise. And he’s alone—a dead giveaway.
“Yeah,” he breathes, head down, his chest sore with the distance from his mate. The active pain—that incessant burning, ripping, exploding feeling—has faded, but it’s as though his heart is bruised from the event. From feeling Kylo die.
She looks Lathan up and down, her short, spiked tail flicking almost curiously as she pinches a keycard off the back wall. “Did you know anyone in that attack? Such a horrible thing to happen…but I wonder how those celestials knew to do that. With th e frequency, I mean.” Then she lifts her hands in surrender, chuckling, key pressed to her palm with her thumb. “I swear it’s not common cambion knowledge.”
Lathan feels the cool embrace of his anger, his pain, his suffering flood his limbs, but he’s too exhausted from it all to say anything. To jump this counter and grip her throat so tightly her face goes purple and lifeless.
He just holds out his hand for the access card.
She clicks her tongue, amusement falling from her face of scales and wrinkled skin, and slaps it into his hand. “Hopefully your room is ready for you soon.”
Monday , he thinks, scraping his luggage back out to the row of unoccupied rooms, I’ll go to campus and see if they’ll give me the apartment early. He and Kylo weren’t supposed to take possession until the week after, but it might be ready, and Lathan’s here now.
And Kylo isn’t.
The motel room is unremarkable. He sits at the butt of the solo bed, the mattress stiff and creaky, and sighs into the silence. It’s loud. Like when his eardrums first blew, back in the stadium, and everything shut out. Dizzying. Overwhelming.
He lied on Kylo’s birthday. His ear was still hurting, pitching in lower tolerances throughout the weeks, the months after the attack. But Kylo didn’t need to know that, and Lathan’s grateful he made that decision—he had way too much to worry about already.
Back in the car, he did end up giving Lathan his brother’s number. And Lucas said his right ear shouldn’t have still been hurting. So Lathan went to a clinic, and the doctor prescribed him two weeks of antibiotics for an infection. He spent the week quietly angry; the medics at the football game didn’t warn him about the potential for infection. He didn’t know.
And now, months after the treatment, his hearing in that ear is still a whisper. And being in this motel room by himself, with nothing but the rattle of the radiator every now and then, instead of the sweet laughter of his mate— will I ever hear that sound again? —reminds him to make another appointment. With a specialist.
A pang of guilt slaps him with the thought. Ellie. He hasn’t heard much from her or her girlfriend in months, and he’s been afraid to reach out. Afraid to hear what actually happened to her in the hospital. Afraid it’s his fault—that he could have done more for her. Afraid of her being afraid of his mate because of the attack.
Afraid of losing more people.
‘Without them, what are you?’
◆◆◆
Seventh floor, room twenty, on the right from the elevator.
Despite confirming through email the date he’d take possession of the campus apartment, move-ins are happening all week, and because he has no furniture and doesn’t need to reserve the elevator, the rules are bent for him, and he’s given the keys.
There’s a girl in the elevator with him. She has a powder purple duffel bag with white trim awkwardly slung over her shoulder, narrowly avoiding the perk feathered wing sprouted from her shoulder blade. Hugged against her chest, Lathan notices a framed photo of her and a gentleman kissing.
She keeps looking at him, as if trying to hint at him to start conversation on their short ride. He doesn’t, but her excitement bubbles over.
“I’m moving in with my boyfriend,” she blurts, her round cheeks pinched with her overcompensating smile. “First time living with someone other than my parents.”
Lathan peeks at the photograph she’s fawning over.
“Malik,” she says, and tilts it for him to see. “Are you moving in with your partner, too?”
The elevator stops, the drooping sway of its halt bowing down into his gut alongside his heart.
“No.”
Seventh floor, room twenty.
He leaves the girl a little stunned, and she hugs her boyfriend’s picture closer as he exits and curves right. His steps are sluggish, heels quiet against the linoleum hall as he counts up with each door he passes by.
He doesn’t open his door right away. Stands in front of it for a while, loitering in the corridor, tuning out the handful of footsteps echoing up from people moving in down the other end of the floor.
Inside is terrifying. White walls, polished countertop, vacuumed-lined carpet. A fridge and a stove, a toilet, sink, and shower, and then nothing else.
Empty. Empty. Empty.
Just like the cavern where his heart should be. Where Kylo should be.
They should be laughing already. Lathan following Kylo’s excited, hurried steps as he points at walls where art should be hung, draws rectangles in the air to envision furniture, and holds his phone up to the wall with paint swatches—because he wants to paint, even though they aren’t allowed to.
And Lathan can’t do any of it without him.
Which means this echoey crater of a living space isn’t his home. The Garcias’ isn’t his home. Vancouver isn’t his home.
He opens the balcony door and breathes in the late August wind, the heat on his face, the sun pebbling shadows around every body back on campus in six months.
He peers down, down to the cement below. And when he starts calculating whether a jump from this height would kill him, he goes back inside.