(BLUE’S POV)
FLASHBACK (THE PAST)
******
The walk back to the hideout stretched into an eternity, each step dragging like my boots were carved from the same iron that now shackled my soul.
My vampire body didn’t tire.
No.
The exhaustion was deeper—carved straight into the marrow of whatever was left of me.
Rage clawed at my chest, white-hot and unrelenting, a living flame that refused to die.
Shame coiled in my gut like venomous snakes, twisting tighter with every heartbeat I no longer needed.
And disappointment… gods, the disappointment crushed me, heavy as iron chains forged in the fires of my own shattered dreams, dragging me down until I could barely lift my head.
That pathetic little mission of mine had burned two brutal truths into my bones—truths I would carry until the day some merciful curse finally ended me.
First: I was a monster.
Not the tragic kind.
Not the misunderstood kind.
The real kind.
The same snarling, blood-drenched beast that had torn my family into pieces under the moonlight.
Same hunger.
Same fangs.
Same crimson stains that would never wash from my hands.
Second: Jeremy and Sofia had been right all along.
There was no going back.
No normal life waiting for me around the corner.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Not in many cursed years.
Only this—eternal night wrapped in daylight, forever denied the warmth I once took for granted.
Not until the sweet release of true death finally claimed me.
A bitter laugh tore from my throat, raw and jagged, echoing through the trees like a dying animal’s cry.
How unbelievably, pathetically stupid I had been.
I’d actually believed I could still slip back into my old life.
Marry Margaret.
Build that quiet, sunlit future my parents had dreamed for me.
Raise children who would never know the taste of blood.
That dream now tasted like ash on my tongue—childish, naïve, laughably fragile.
I walked like a man already dead.
Shoulders slumped.
Eyes hollow.
A ghost wearing the skin of the boy I used to be.
By the time the hideout finally clawed its way into view, the sun had climbed high, blazing overhead like a triumphant god.
Golden light poured through the ancient canopy, spilling across the forest floor in yellow rivers of warmth.
It should have been beautiful.
Peaceful.
Instead, it mocked me.
Every glittering leaf, every dancing beam, laughed at the creature I had become.
As I stepped into the clearing, two silhouettes waited by the hidden metal door nestled between the jagged rocks.
Jeremy.
Sofia.
Jeremy paced like an animal in a cage, arms locked tight across his chest, his usual unshakable calm shattered into jagged pieces.
Worry etched deep lines across his brow; his jaw clenched so hard I could hear the grind of bone from twenty paces away.
Sofia lingered a few steps back, eyes darting through the trees like she expected the forest itself to spit out nightmares.
Her hands trembled at her sides.
They looked terrified.
And they had every right to be.
I wasn’t supposed to leave.
Ever.
Jeremy’s orders had been carved in stone: stay inside.
Stay hidden.
Control the hunger.
I had shattered every single one of those rules.
So I braced myself for the storm; the shouting, fury, a lecture sharp enough to draw blood, maybe even chains if they thought I’d gone feral.
But the second they spotted me…
They froze.
Jeremy’s eyes blew wide, the color draining from his face.
Sofia’s lips parted in a silent gasp, her whole body going rigid.
For one endless heartbeat, neither of them moved.
They just stared—like I was some impossible phantom dragged from legend.
Then Jeremy’s voice cracked the silence, low and stunned.
“What in the name of the Goddess…”
His gaze dragged upward to the merciless sun, then slammed back down to me.
“You’re… walking in daylight,” he breathed, each word soaked in disbelief.
“How the hell are you walking in daylight?”
Sofia still hadn’t blinked.
But her eyes weren’t on the sun.
They were locked on me.
“Blue…” Her voice was a fragile whisper, cracking like thin ice.
“Your… your hair.”
I frowned, confusion slicing through the fog in my head.
“What about it?”
She lifted a trembling finger.
“It’s blonde.
Almost white.”
My hand shot up before I could think.
Fingers raked through strands that felt… wrong.
Lighter.
Silken.
“…What?”
Jeremy blinked hard, like he was trying to force reality back into place.
“It was jet black,” Sofia pressed, her voice shaking in disbelief, still fighting to process the impossible.
“Midnight black.”
He edged closer, cautious, like I might vanish or explode.
His sharp dark eyes swept over my face, my clothes, the sunlight kissing my skin without a single wisp of smoke, without a flicker of pain.
“You’re completely untouched…” he muttered, awe and dread warring in his tone.
I looked from one to the other, the pieces slamming together in my skull with brutal clarity.
They weren’t acting.
This wasn’t some test.
They were just as blindsided as I was.
My voice came out quiet, edged with something dangerously close to wonder.
“You really believed it too.”
Jeremy’s head snapped toward me.
“Believed what?”
“That sunlight burns vampires alive.”
“Of course it does,” he snapped, frown deepening like I’d spoken blasphemy.
I spread my arms, bathed in the golden fire that should have been my execution.
“Yet here I stand.”
Silence swallowed the clearing.
Sunlight danced between us, warm and ordinary and utterly wrong.
Sofia drifted closer, hesitant, and gently caught a lock of my new blonde hair between her fingers.
Her brows furrowed in fierce concentration.
“This change… the color… it has to mean something,” she whispered, almost to herself.
Jeremy shook his head slowly, the weight of his many years on earth suddenly heavy in his eyes.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.
Not once.”
“Neither have I,” Sofia admitted, her voice small and haunted.
For the first time since the night I was turned, the two kind people standing before me looked genuinely spooked—eyes wide, shoulders tense, like the rules of their entire world had just cracked open beneath their feet.
Jeremy dragged a hand down his face, exhaling like the weight of the sky was on his shoulders.
“Alright.
Vampire riddles can wait.”
His gaze hardened, locking onto mine with the force of a knife.
“But first…”
His voice dropped, cold and lethal.
“We’re going to talk about what you did.”
There it was.
The storm I’d been waiting for.
He crossed his arms tighter.
“Do you have any idea how reckless—how insanely dangerous—it was to leave this place alone?”
The words cracked like a whip.
“You’re a newborn, Blue.
Your hunger is a live wire.
One slip and you could’ve been torn apart… or worse.”
His eyes narrowed to slits.
“You could’ve torn someone apart.”
My blood ran cold.
My gaze crashed to the forest floor.
Jeremy saw it instantly—the flinch, the guilt bleeding out of me like an open wound.
His anger fractured.
Suspicion flooded in.
Then horror, slow and terrible, carved itself across his face.
“…Blue,” he said, voice low and careful, like he was approaching a wounded animal.
“Where exactly did you go?”
The words stuck in my throat.
He stepped closer, boots silent on the earth.
“What did you do?”
I swallowed hard, the taste of copper still lingering on my tongue from hours earlier.
“I… I went to find someone.”
“Who?”
My voice cracked.
“Margaret.”
Sofia’s soft gasp suddenly filled the air.
“The girl from the arranged marriage?” she asked, eyes wide with dawning dread.
I nodded, the movement heavy.
Jeremy’s expression darkened to something thunderous.
“And when you got there… what happened?”
Silence stretched, thick enough to choke on.
His voice turned deadly quiet.
“…Blue.”
My hands began to shake.
I couldn’t stop them.
“I bit someone.”
The confession ripped out of me, raw and broken.
Sofia pressed a hand to her mouth, horror flashing across her gentle features.
“Oh no…”
Jeremy closed his eyes for a long second.
When they opened again, the disappointment there sliced deeper than any rage ever could.
“Where does Margaret live?”
My fingers fumbled into my coat pocket and pulled out the crumpled paper—the address I’d stolen from my father’s drawer like a thief in the night.
They trembled as I handed it over.
Jeremy took it without a word, scanned it once, then passed it to Sofia.
“Take care of the problem.”
She nodded once—sharp, decisive, no hesitation, no questions.
Then she turned and vanished into the trees in a blur of unnatural speed, gone before the leaves even settled.
I stared after her, chest hollow.
Jeremy’s voice came low behind me, heavy with grim certainty.
“If the boy you bit carries the venom…”
My stomach plummeted like a stone into an abyss.
“…he’ll turn.”
The words landed in my heart like a death sentence.
“And if he does,” Jeremy continued, voice edged with ice, “he’ll lose control.
Attack.
Spread it.
Create more of you.”
My mind blanked.
I hadn’t thought that far.
I’d been drowning in my own guilt, blind to the monster I might have unleashed on the world.
My hands shook harder.
“I… I didn’t mean to—” My voice shattered completely.
“I never wanted this.”
Jeremy’s hand landed on my shoulder—firm, steady, the only anchor left in the storm raging inside me.
“Listen to me.” His tone softened, just enough to keep me from fracturing apart.
“Sofia will handle it.”
I looked up at him, desperate.
“How?
She’s… she’s gentle.
Small.
How can she possibly—”
He gave me a tired, ancient look that spoke of battles I couldn’t even imagine.
“You’ll understand one day.”
Then he sighed, the sound carrying the weight of every regret he’d ever carried.
“But right now… you need to trust us.”
My head dropped.
The truth burned worse than sunlight ever could.
If I had trusted them from the start…
None of this would have happened.
And the monster I’d become might still have had a chance to stay buried.