Chapter 7 7. Chapter

Aurora

The first sensation that tore through the paralyzing numbness was the burning, pulsing agony in my neck. At first it was only a throb—deep and sharp—but within seconds it flared into a scorching, spreading torture that made my entire body convulse. The vampire’s bite hadn’t simply punctured my skin; it had injected molten fire into my veins. The venom didn’t just hurt—it consumed. It twisted inside me, a living inferno forcing its way through every artery, every capillary, lighting my bloodstream ablaze.

I had never in my life experienced anything remotely like it.

It felt as though my veins were splitting open, as though my blood had rebelled and was now tearing at me from within. Every pulse of my heart sent a shockwave of burning pain through my skull, down my spine, deep into my limbs. My head spun violently. The world around me dissolved into smudged shadows and pale streaks of light. Shapes lost their meaning, and the forest tilted around me, unstable and hostile.

I tried to inhale. My lungs refused to cooperate. They spasmed, tight and unresponsive, as if the venom had seized control of them as well. Even though I knew the fanatic lay dead—reduced to ash by Elijah’s wrath—my mind could latch onto only one desperate truth:

I was exposed.

Completely defenseless.

Utterly at the mercy of the venom suffocating my body from the inside out.

The absence of elemental power—my lifelong curse—had never felt so fatal, so devastatingly real. There was nothing inside me to counter this pain. No magic. No shield. No spark. Only the failing strength of my human body.

As my consciousness struggled to resurface, through the grey haze Elijah’s outline began to sharpen. He stood before me like a nightmare carved into flesh—his clothing smeared with vampire ash, his jaw and cheek streaked with my fresh blood. And in his eyes…

A hunger burned.

Wild.

Unrestrained.

Dangerously alive.

A predator’s hunger.

My instincts screamed louder than the pain. Every cell in my body recoiled.

“No…” I breathed, the word barely audible. A ghost of a protest.

I pushed backward across the forest floor, at first sluggishly, then with frantic speed as panic overtook my trembling limbs. Pine roots scraped my spine. Stones bit into my palms. My hair stuck to my neck, damp with sweat and blood. None of it mattered. All I could think about was distance—distance between me and the Sovereign who had saved me, and who now vibrated with a hunger that made my blood turn cold.

His face was twisted with fury, but beneath it—beneath the cracks—was something even more dangerous: instinct. Primal and hungry. Awakened by the scent and taste of my blood in the air.

Elijah took a step toward me.

I scrambled back, raising my shaking hands in front of me like a cornered animal incapable of thinking, only reacting.

“Stay there! Don’t you move!” he roared. His voice scraped against the cold night air, rough and ragged with a mix of anger and something far more volatile—desire sharpened by blood.

“Don’t come closer…” My voice wavered, cracking under its own weakness. Shame burned in me, but it was swallowed immediately by terror.

Then, in one impossibly fast motion, Elijah moved.

Before I could blink, he had closed the distance. His hands seized my head—fingers firm around my skull—and his thumbs pressed directly into the puncture wounds at my neck. The sudden pressure made me gasp, then choke, as sharp pain shot down my spine.

“Don’t move, you idiot!” he snarled, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of control and fury. “I’m trying to help you! If I let you bleed out, you’ll die long before the venom finishes you!”

His cold fingers dug into my skin, anchoring me in place. My dizziness worsened, the world swaying dangerously. Then Elijah’s hand snapped across my cheek—hard enough to jolt my head, but not enough to injure. Just enough to force my mind out of the venom haze.

My eyes locked onto his.

“Look at me!” he commanded, his voice echoing inside my skull. “Hold on! I am not letting you die. This is not the moment for martyrdom.”

The command, the harsh slap, the relentless pressure on my wound—all of it crashed together and ripped me violently out of my spiraling panic. Reality sharpened again. I was hurting, trembling, and utterly overwhelmed—but I was alive. And Elijah was holding me together through brute force alone.

His thumb remained pressed firmly against the bite, the pressure steady and punishing, keeping the blood from flowing. His eyes scanned the wound, sharp and assessing. That same feral hunger flickered again—hot, ravenous—but he fought it back. I saw the struggle in the tightening of his jaw, in the way his breath hitched before he forced control over himself.

“Get up,” he ordered, quieter now but no less merciless. “We have to move. Unless you prefer to bleed out right here—in the middle of your own people’s betrayal?”

His words cut, but they grounded me.

With trembling legs, and leaning heavily on his arm, I slowly pushed myself upright. The forest swayed around me. Ash crumbled beneath my boots, whispering against the soil. My head throbbed with venom’s dull, drugging fog. My neck pulsed with heat and pain.

I was alive.

Barely.

But alive.

And for the moment—

My survival no longer belonged to me.

It belonged to him.