Chapter 6 6. Chapter

Aurora

The suffocating silence that settled over us at the edge of the ravine was far worse than Elijah’s earlier shouting. It felt like the forest itself was holding its breath, watching us from the shadows. Elijah’s fingers were still clamped around my wrist, his grip iron-hard, as if the simple act of letting go might send me tumbling into the abyss again. The danger had passed—but the possessive force in his touch lingered, raw and electric.

Even though the fight was over, the panic my near-fall awakened in him hadn’t faded. It flickered wildly in his eyes—dark, primal, impossible to hide. I had never seen Elijah look like that. Not enraged. Not dominant. But shaken. Not by an enemy… but by the thought of losing me.

“Never risk your life again,” he hissed. The words didn’t just sound like a command. They sounded like a threat and a plea bound together, smothered under a layer of icy fury.

Then, suddenly, he released me. My wrist dropped back to my side, and I regained my physical freedom, but the throbbing pulse beneath my skin remained—his mark, burned into me more deeply than the bruise itself.

My relief lasted only a heartbeat.

The forest shifted behind us—almost too soft to catch. A branch bent. Leaves trembled. And before I could fully turn, the last fanatic vampire—the one I had only wounded earlier—burst from the undergrowth. His shoulder still bled where my dagger had struck him, but the injury did nothing to weaken his resolve. He moved like a starved predator catching its final chance.

Elijah’s attention had dipped for only a moment. It was enough.

The vampire slammed into me with brutal momentum. The world flipped as I hit the earth hard, the breath ripped out of my lungs. His weight crashed onto my chest, heavier and colder than stone. Even as I struggled, I could feel the difference—my human muscles, no matter how trained, could never match undead strength.

He caught my wrists instantly. His fingers clamped down like shackles, pinning me effortlessly. My boots scraped helplessly through the dirt, searching for leverage I didn’t have. He shoved my head into the soft, damp forest floor, the smell of moss and crushed leaves filling my mouth and nose.

“We came for your blood, Hunter,” he hissed. His breath brushed my ear like winter wind. “And we will have it. This is our victory.”

Then it happened—

The one thing I had spent my entire life in the Clan avoiding.

The one unforgivable failure for a hunter.

The nightmare that stalked my every mission.

The vampire bent down, fast and precise, and his burning-hot fangs plunged into my neck.

I had felt pain before—broken bones, torn muscles, blade wounds—but nothing compared to this. This wasn’t just physical. This was fire injected straight into my veins. A pulsing, invasive agony that tore through me with violent, breathtaking intensity. My entire body seized.

My voice broke free in a scream.

“AAAAAAH!”

The sound sliced through the forest, raw and desperate. It wasn’t just pain—it was the horror of helplessness. The humiliation of being overpowered so easily. The terror of knowing that with no elemental power, I had no defense. I was prey, and I could do nothing.

I felt the suction immediately—the unnatural pull that dragged at my vein, as if trying to rip it free. Something hot, intoxicating, and poisonous surged into my bloodstream at the same time, flooding me with dizziness. My limbs weakened. My vision blurred.

This was why the Clan forbade close combat with vampires.

This was the one mistake a hunter couldn’t afford.

Somewhere behind me, Elijah moved. His attention snapped back the instant he heard my scream. Even through the haze of agony I sensed the shift in the air. The fanatic on top of me sensed it too—his body tensed, claws digging into my arms.

One second passed.

I was still pinned, immobilized, the vampire draining my life through his fangs.

Then Elijah’s roar exploded through the forest.

It wasn’t anger.

It wasn’t even fury.

It was something older. Something feral.

A Sovereign stripped to the bone.

“Get OFF!” he bellowed, his voice warped and monstrous.

A blur of motion followed.

Elijah seized the vampire from behind with a force so violent the ground seemed to tremble. The fanatic tried to cling to me, tried to twist away, but feeding left him sluggish. He never stood a chance.

Elijah tore him off me.

The fangs ripped free from my neck with a sharp, wet pain. I gasped, but my body hardly responded; the venom still burned through me like wildfire. The sound the vampire made as Elijah wrenched him upward was half snarl, half scream—cut off instantly as Elijah crushed him.

The fanatic’s body disintegrated in seconds, collapsing into ash that crumbled through Elijah’s fingers.

Then Elijah turned to me.

I lay on the ground, trembling, the throbbing in my neck so intense I could feel my pulse in every inch of my body. My vision wavered, but I saw enough—

The twisted expression on his face.

The tension vibrating through him.

And the streaks of blood on his mouth.

My blood.

When he tore the vampire away, my blood had splattered across his lips. Now, tasting it, touching it—

It awakened something inside him.

Something predatory.

Something forbidden.

Something starving.

His eyes darkened, hunger flickering across them in a way that made the forest feel suddenly too small, too enclosed.

It was my worst nightmare.

Not just the bite.

Not just the pain.

But facing the Sovereign whose lips were stained with my blood… and seeing the wild, unrestrained craving ignite behind his gaze.

My head pounded from the venom, my limbs heavy and numb, but even in my dazed state I understood:

I was now in greater danger than ever—

not from the fanatics,

but from Elijah himself.