Page 120 of Shifting Hearts

TWELVE

JASON

I couldn’t believe how long she’d meant when she said her cup had shattered. It stretched on like years.

Eventually Cassandra gave up barging in herself; others took over the duty of keeping Morgan fed. She was finished, hollowed out in a way Annie and I never were, no matter what we’d done. Maybe her human life had been too gentle. Maybe her darkness had been that much worse.

New faces drifted through the chambers, strangers who lingered to watch the ruin. Time slid past in a blur; I knew years were stacking up, but not how many.

Once a newcomer actually taunted her, slapped her across the face. Morgan did nothing. I watched, searching for the woman I’d loved during those lockdown nights, but all that answered back in my head was ash and fire.

It was a kind of sorrow that rotted from the inside, the awful truth that we couldn’t fix one another, not this time.

A soft knock, and Steven stepped inside. I didn’t move from the sill, habit kept me there, an observer on the edge of everything.

“Blaze, what are you doing to yourself?” he asked, though his eyes went first to her.

“Steven.” Natasha’s voice scraped from disuse. “Don’t. I can’t take another lecture.”

He sighed. “So the rumors are true. You don’t want to exist anymore.”

Silence hung between them until she asked, small and hollow, “Why did I want to become a vampire?”

Steven hesitated. The room held its breath. I cut the silence because it felt like drowning.

“He doesn’t know,” I said.

“I don’t know, Blaze.” His answer landed like a stone.

“Don’t call me that. My name is Natasha,” she snapped, brittle as glass. I let out a soft huff.

“You’re disappearing,” Steven said. “You need to feed. Regularly.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Natasha, you can’t change the past. We all have dark things. We fought them.” He sounded tired, like an old soldier repeating the same orders.

“Does your dark include burning people alive?” Her words were venom. “Did you enjoy the silence after the werewolves’ howls faded?”

“You know the answer,” he said, impatience pricking his voice. “My past was ugly. I battled through it. You have to fight.”

“I don’t want to fight!” she snapped, and the admission shredded the room. “That’s the problem. I want to die. I don’t want this.”

Steven’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t unearth who you were for you, or why you wanted this so badly. But you did want it once. I don’t think you meant to become…this. Find that reason. If you end it, you’ll regret it in the last beat. Fight for that ghost of a reason.”

“It’s too late. You made sure of it.” I couldn’t keep the anger in; it tore out of me.

She laughed, tired, bitter, sharp. “I don’t know if anything’s left in me, Steven. Please, make Cass see what she’s done. Put me out of my misery.”

“Natasha,” he whispered, “don’t ask me to do that.”

Silence settled again. She flopped back on the bed like a spent thing, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Please go. You’re no use to me.” Her voice was flat.

He left. The door clicked. The room shrank back to the two of us, her and the hollow that no pleading could reach. Nothing was getting through. Nothing.

One day, without warning, I was jolted forward.

Natasha stepped out of her room for the first time in what felt like forever. She lingered in the hallway, motionless, like she was caught in some invisible current. After an eternity, she turned back and returned to her room.

“What was that?” I muttered to myself.

A few days later, it happened again. And then again. Soon, leaving her room became a ritual, slow, deliberate, haunted. She ignored the stares, the whispered questions, even Cassandra’s sharp inquiries.

Was she trying?

I exhaled, more to myself than anyone. She always loved the library, and I couldn’t blame her. Any room that wasn’t the prison of her four walls was a relief. That room, the one she’d been locked in all this time, had become unbearable.

The library stretched endlessly, a cathedral of knowledge, filled with tomes from every corner of the world, spanning centuries. I longed to know the year. To mark the passage of time. Morgan was long dead, but every surface was silent. No newspapers, no calendars, no whispers of the world outside.

We were there again when one of the newer vampires arrived. Claire, I think her name was, though I barely cared. She informed Natasha that guests had arrived, that Cassandra required her presence. Morgan nodded, and Claire departed.

And then I froze.

Leigh and Alex stood there, alive. The sight anchored me. Finally, I knew the year. Finally, there was a thread of hope that this long nightmare might end, that we could reclaim our lives.

Seeing Alex and Leigh stirred a tangle of relief and regret. I cursed myself for not being there sooner, for letting so much time slip away. Familiar faces from a past life, and I knew, deep down, what was coming.

Morgan moved on, leaving the reunion unabsorbed by me. Against my will, I followed.

She came to an abrupt stop behind a pillar, her posture rigid, her panic rising. I traced my gaze past her to Alex and Leigh and then it hit me.

What she said when she saw them. That spark of recognition, that flicker of intrigue. Something inside her was awakening. The parts of her that still remembered.

I shook my head, closed my eyes, and drew a deep, steadying breath. When I opened them again, I met her gaze.

“It’s too late, Morgan. It’s too late.”

I tried to shut myself off from Alex and Leigh, but they drew Morgan closer, unrelenting.

Leigh reminded me so much of Mel that I couldn’t help but remember the one time the two sisters had teased the idea of a threesome.

Back then, I had pined over Morgan, my obsession blinding me to everything else.

That night had left Mel insecure about my attention, and the memory gnawed at me now.

Time dragged, sluggish and cruel, as I watched them introduce animal blood to Morgan.

She accepted it with a strange curiosity, easing herself back into life, and I hated that it took me, my past, my presence, to make her want to try again.

Even so, Alex seemed just as intrigued by her, captivated in ways I wasn’t.

Then came the grand ball. I wandered the edges of the estate until Julian’s voice cut through the night, a second encounter with him now.

Morgan wasn’t a guest; she was security.

The fear she inspired had softened, but she was still vigilant, scanning, listening, absorbing.

I would have given anything to know what she heard.

Alex and Leigh had been rallying covens for the Great War, and Julian had joined their ranks.

He would stand with us. I knew that much.

Morgan lingered on the rooftops the entire night, eyes never leaving the event below.

Many sought her attention, but Cassandra shielded her with excuses until the meeting ended.

I watched Julian leave and cursed myself for never asking whether he had known Blaze.

All the questions I’d wanted answered had gone unasked.

I forced myself to follow Natasha in a daze, trailing her through corridors of memory and time.

We were preparing to migrate from the U.S.

to Russia after four years in America following our stint in Europe.

Leigh and Alex were expected to return soon; Bobby and Isaac were likely still on their way from an Alaskan coven.

A moan drew my gaze upward. Claire. Alex.

The windows wide open. Morgan’s eyes were glued to them.

I didn’t care, couldn’t care. Alex was supposed to secure alliances, not play this.

The favor was returned in turn, prolonging the spectacle, and Morgan watched, eyes alight with desire.

I couldn’t bear it and turned away, back to the wall, ears blocked.

They finally left the bed together, and over the following days, something shifted between them.

The tension dissolved, replaced by a bond Morgan didn’t fully understand.

I tried not to care, I no longer felt what I had once felt for her.

It wasn’t jealousy; it wasn’t even longing. I didn’t know what it was.

Then the day came when they were meant to leave. The timing was off, and Morgan sought him out. In Alex’s room, he took her, claimed her for the first time. Her cries forced my eyes shut and my ears closed, and yet it wasn’t love that ached, it was something darker, more complicated.

Morning came. She tried to slip away, but Alex caught her. His words mirrored Sonia’s: wolves didn’t leave that mark. Confusion and doubt shadowed her face. She didn’t know who to trust anymore.

Her bond with Alex grew stronger as the rift with Cassandra widened.

Their time together became habitual, intimate, constant.

They even spoke of me, and it didn’t matter.

She was with him when he phoned me and my own voice sounded foreign to her.

He reminded her I had been lost, a lock pass severed, yet it had taken her seven years to find me.

By then, it didn’t matter. I was done.

The day they left arrived as she had predicted.

Wolves had killed Alex and Leigh. Morgan was forced to kill Vladimire, and Francine fell to the wolves when they ambushed Blaze.

They locked her in a shed, venom coursing through her veins, while a wolf taunted her, the UV shackles weakening her further.

She was barely conscious, her breaths shallow and uneven.

“I’m sorry, okay?” I finally said, my voice rough.

“I didn’t know you’d follow through with the plan.

I didn’t know you’d become this. If I had, Morgan, I swear it would’ve been different.

But now now it’s too late. One thing I promise you, when I wake, I will track them down.

I will kill them. Both of them, for what they did to you. ”

I spoke for a while, my words hanging in the air, and she stirred slightly.

“Who are you?”

I frowned, startled. Did she hear me? “Excuse me?” I asked.

“Who are you?” Her voice was faint, almost a whisper.

“Can you hear me?” I stepped closer, studying her face.

Even in this state, she radiated power. “Still so powerful,” I murmured, a heavy sigh escaping me.

“I promise you, when we meet again, don’t try to stop me.

Don’t stand in my way.” I shook my head.

“You deserved better than this. I’m sorry you got this. ”

Silence. She didn’t answer.

“Morgan,” I said softly, a note of desperation in my voice. Nothing. “Natasha,” I tried again, pressing closer.

How was any of this possible? Even if she truly was Mother Nature, this shouldn’t be. And yet here we were. And I knew, somehow, she had heard me.