Chapter 9 9. Chapter

Aurora

For a while, my consciousness existed only as a series of fractured, drifting images: the warmth of Elijah’s body, the sway of his steady footsteps rocking me into a half-sleep, the low rumble of his breath near my ear—angry, restrained, and disconcertingly human. The vampire venom, mixed with exhaustion and pain, dragged me into a heavy, drugged sleep, the very thing a hunter is trained never to allow. It was the worst sin of all: to let go.

When I finally woke fully, the world I opened my eyes to was no longer the forest—no scent of pine, no freezing wind clawing at my skin. Instead, a stale, musty odor and thin carpet fibers greeted me. Soft artificial light replaced moonlight.

Elijah was still carrying me.

Humiliation crashed over me with suffocating intensity.

The perpetual outcast of the Hunter Clan—the nobody, the defect—was lying in the arms of the Vampire Sovereign.

“You’re awake,” Elijah noted, his voice cold and flat, stripped of every emotion. I couldn’t see his face from my angle, but I felt the disdain in every movement he made.

“Put me down,” I ordered—but the command emerged weak, barely above a strained whisper.

“I’m not risking you collapsing again, you idiot,” he snapped back. “I had to carry you all the way to a motel at the edge of the forest. Do me a favor and stay quiet.”

As he stepped out of the forest’s shadow and into the parking lot’s flickering neon glow, I caught sight of the place he’d brought us to—a miserable, half-dead roadside motel whose sign buzzed like a dying insect. So this was the hiding place of a dethroned Sovereign. A fitting humiliation for us both.

Elijah strode through the dingy entrance into a worn, dim reception area. He still held me as though I weighed nothing. Behind the counter sat an old man slumped in front of a static-lit television screen, his face illuminated in pale blue.

Elijah placed my wrist onto the counter—almost gently, but with purpose—and lifted my chin with his other hand so the clerk had a clear view of me: the bleeding red-haired girl in his arms.

I felt something shift in the air. Elijah was gathering his concentration.

The atmosphere thickened instantly—warm, heavy, charged.

“I need a room. Now,” Elijah said, his voice low but layered with a tone that demanded obedience. “Top floor, facing the front. And a full first-aid kit.”

The clerk’s previously tired eyes went glassy. His pupils dilated. His spine straightened. The mental domination hit him like a silent wave.

“Yes, sir,” the clerk replied softly, hollowly, with no emotion behind the words.

The weapon Elijah couldn’t use on me worked flawlessly on the world around us.

He continued, each word a precise command.

“You will give us a key. I’ll pay in cash. Then you will bring us a box of medicine and bandages. When we walk away from this counter, you will forget you ever saw us. Forget the girl. Forget the blood. Forget that I asked for medical supplies.”

The clerk nodded like a marionette without strings. Elijah dropped a thick roll of cash onto the counter. The man accepted it without a blink and shuffled away to retrieve the items, his mind fully ensnared.

Even I could feel the psychic vibration of Elijah's compulsion—like a subtle hum against the skin.

When the clerk returned, Elijah took the key and the first-aid box. Before lifting me again, he turned back toward the man.

“One more thing,” Elijah said. This time his voice held no power—just ordinary tone.

The clerk looked at him with empty eyes.

“Yes, sir?”

“Nothing.” Elijah’s lips curled into a mocking smile as he glanced at me. “Just making sure you learned your lesson properly.”

Then he scooped me back into his arms.

A fresh wave of pain shot up my neck as he moved, but the cold, sharp reality cut through the dizziness immediately: Elijah’s power—though useless on me—was monstrous on everyone else.

“There you have it, Hunter,” he hissed as he walked toward the stairs leading to the upper floor. “Look at the monster you’re stuck with. Remember why you need me alive. Without me, you’d still be rotting in that forest.”

My head fell back against his chest, too heavy to lift. The room key was clenched tightly in his hand. The forced journey didn’t end here—it had only changed shape, confined now within the thin walls of a cheap motel.

The true struggle was just beginning:

The fight to recover,

the fight to resist,

and the suffocating proximity to a vampire who was as dangerous as he was necessary.

And as Elijah carried me up the stairs, the venom still poisoning my blood, I realized:

Survival would be the most bitter battle of all.