The silence in James's car feels like suffocation. I sit rigid in the passenger seat, staring at nothing, replaying Alan's words on an endless loop, and each repetition cuts deeper.
James pulls into his driveway, cuts the engine. The sudden quiet makes my ears ring. He reaches for me, but I'm already moving—door open, vampire speed carrying me to his front entrance before he can finish the gesture. James enters behind me, careful. Cautious. Like I'm something that might detonate if handled wrong.
"Theresa—"
"He hates me." The words taste like blood I didn't earn. "My brother hates me because of what I am."
The accusation is unfair and we both know it. But grief doesn't care about fairness. Doesn't care that I begged for this transformation, that I chose it, that every consequence bleeding through my life right now is the direct result of my own decisions.
James steps closer, hands raised like I'm something wild. "You did what you thought you had to—"
"Don't." I flinch from his touch. "Don't absolve me. I killed people, James. Drained them. And I can't take it back."
"Survival isn't always clean."
The platitude makes rage surge. "You don't get to make this okay. I thought becoming this would set me free, but all I did was trap myself in consequences I'll carry forever."
"You're stronger now—"
"Stronger?" I laugh, brittle. "My brother won't speak to me. Emily looks at me like I might hurt her. I can't see sunlight. I drink blood to survive. This isn't freedom—it's just a different cage."
His jaw tightens. "Then what do you want? To be human again? To spend your life being controlled by people who see you as disposable?"
"I want my brother back!" The words crack something in my chest. "I want to undo the murders. I want to not be the reason he can't sleep."
"I can't give you that." His voice hardens. "All I can do is stand beside you while you learn to carry what you've done."
"That's not enough."
"Then what is?" His control fractures. "What would be enough, Theresa? Because I'm trying—I'm doing everything to protect you, to help you navigate this world—"
"Maybe I should destroy myself." The words come out quiet, terrible. "Maybe that would be better."
He moves so fast I barely see it—suddenly in front of me, hands gripping my shoulders hard enough to feel through vampire resilience.
"Don't." His voice drops to something dangerous. "Don't say that."
"Why not?" My eyes burn with tears that won't fall. "Give me one reason."
"Because I need you." Raw. Stripped. "Because watching you walk into sunlight would destroy me more completely than two centuries of loneliness ever did."
The confession should soften me. Instead, it makes everything worse.
"So I'm supposed to keep living in this nightmare because you need me?" The blade lands between us. "That's not love, James. That's control."
His hands tighten, hurt and anger warring in his gray-blue eyes. "You think I want to control you? You terrify me. Every time you're out of my sight, I imagine losing you to sunlight or hunters or your own recklessness."
"You don't understand what it's like to finally be free after a lifetime of suffocation."
"And you don't understand what it's like to watch everyone you love die." His voice goes lethal. "To bury a wife and children. To spend two hundred years alone because getting close means watching them turn to dust."
The words hang like drawn weapons.
My blood-hunger rises with the anger, sharpening everything until the world narrows to pulse and proximity and the space between us that's both too far and not nearly far enough.
"I'm not your dead wife," I say, cruel and intentional. "I'm not some replacement."
His eyes flash inhuman, and suddenly I'm against the wall—moved with vampire speed that cracks the air. His body pins mine, hands braced on either side of my head, fury radiating from him to match my own.
"You think I don't know that?" Voice rough, strained. "Margaret was gentle. Obedient. Everything you're not. And I love you more because you're dangerous and reckless and entirely yourself."
I shove against him with vampire strength, and we grapple—not fighting, but something more desperate. More necessary.
His mouth finds my throat. When his fangs sink in, pain detonates into pleasure so intense my knees buckle. But I'm not submitting—I'm taking. My own fangs extend, and I bite back, sinking them into his neck with force that makes him growl.
We feed from each other with brutal intensity, anger and need and love twisted together until they're indistinguishable. His blood tastes like centuries of loneliness ending. Mine must taste like freedom because he drinks like he's starving.
When we pull apart, mouths stained red, the anger hasn't disappeared. It's transformed into hunger that has nothing to do with blood.
He tears at my clothes with inhuman speed, and I do the same, both too desperate for gentleness. When he enters me against the wall, it's with punishing force that borders on violence, and I meet every thrust with equal intensity.
This isn't making love. It's claiming and being claimed. Fear made physical. The acknowledgment that we could destroy each other and choosing to risk it anyway.
"I love you," he growls against my throat, and it sounds like a threat.
"I love you," I gasp back, and it feels like surrender.
We break apart together, both bloodied and shaking, bodies pressed so close I can't tell where I end and he begins.
Afterward, we slide down the wall to sit on the floor, tangled together, breathing hard despite not needing to.
"I'm scared," I admit finally, the confession costly. "Scared I've made a mistake. Scared I've destroyed everything good. Scared that power just means I'll hurt people more efficiently."
His arms tighten. "I'm scared too. Scared you'll realize you deserve better than a two-hundred-year-old vampire who doesn't know how to love without consuming."
The admission hangs between us—honest, raw, devastating.
I turn until we're face to face, blood drying on both our throats, and meet his eyes without flinching.
"Then teach me," I say quietly, "how to let you."