Chapter 32 THE SILENCE BEFORE

Chapter 32 THE SILENCE BEFORE
Lily's POV

My street was empty when I turned onto it. The streetlights buzzed faintly overhead, and somewhere a dog was barking at nothing.

I let myself breathe for the first time in hours.

The bond was still off. Not gone, exactly, but thin, like a phone call with bad reception. I could feel Alexander somewhere in the distance, a faint pressure low in my chest, but it kept flickering in and out instead of holding steady the way it always had.

I stopped walking and pressed my palm flat against my sternum, like that might fix it.

“Stop it,” I muttered to no one. “Just work properly.”

It didn’t.

I climbed the steps to my building and let myself in, locking the door behind me out of habit more than fear. The apartment was dark and quiet, the way I’d left it that morning. I dropped my bag by the door and didn’t bother turning on the big light, just the lamp in the corner that made everything look softer than it felt.

I texted Jake first.

Me: Home safe, going to shower and pass out. Thank you for tonight.

His reply came almost instantly.

Jake: Good. Sleep well, Lily.

I smiled faintly at the bandage emoji, set my phone on the counter, and went to fill the kettle, mostly so my hands would have something to do.

That was when the bond lurched.

Not faded, not flickering but lurched, like something had grabbed it from the other end and yanked.

I dropped the kettle into the sink with a clatter and gripped the edge of the counter, waiting for it to pass. It didn’t pass. It got worse, a hot, twisting pull right under my ribs, and underneath it, something that felt unmistakably like fear not mine.

His.

“Alexander,” I whispered.

My phone buzzed against the counter. I lunged for it, half expecting Jake again, but the name on the screen stopped me cold.

Alexander.

I answered before the second ring finished. “Alexander? What’s wrong, I felt”

“Lily.” His voice was wrong. Too fast, too low, words crowding on top of each other. “Don’t go anywhere. Lock your door and are your windows locked?”

“What? Yes, I just got in, I’m fine, what is going on”

“Damien’s missing.”

The kitchen went very quiet around me.

“What do you mean missing?”

“He never made it home after Jake’s. Jake just called me, his parents called the school, nobody’s seen him since he left the mansion.” A pause, and I heard something that might have been him moving fast, a door, footsteps. “Lily, listen to me. Whatever’s happening, the bond going dead earlier wasn’t random. I think something tried to come for you and got redirected, or distracted, or I don’t know yet. I don’t know. I just need you somewhere I can see you.”

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “You think this is connected to me?”

“I think I’m not willing to find out the hard way.” His voice cracked slightly on the last word, just enough that I caught it. “I’m coming over.”

“Alexander, it’s nearly ten, you can’t just”

“I’m already outside.”

I went to the window. He was standing on the sidewalk below my building in the same untucked shirt from hours ago, phone still pressed to his ear, looking straight up at my window like he’d known exactly which one was mine.

Alexander’s POV

She appeared at the glass, silhouetted by the lamp behind her, and something in my chest finally, finally loosened.

I hung up without saying goodbye and went for the door.

She buzzed me in before I even reached the call box, which told me everything about how rattled she actually was underneath that careful, steady voice she’d used on the phone. Lily didn’t let people see her scared. She’d let me see it exactly twice, the night of the accident, and now.

I took the stairs two at a time.

She had the door open before I knocked, arms crossed tight over her chest, eyes wide and searching my face the same way mine had searched hers on that path last night.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “Don’t soften it.”

I stepped inside and let her shut the door behind me. “Jake said Damien left the house around seven, on foot, and said he wanted to walk off the conversation. He does that, always has. Nobody thought anything of it.” I dragged a hand through my hair. “His mother called Jake an hour ago asking if he was staying over. He’s not answering his phone and it’s not even pinging.”

“Vampires don’t just stop pinging,” Lily said quietly. “Not unless”

“Not unless someone doesn’t want him found.” I finished it for her because I could see she didn’t want to.

She wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “And the bond earlier when it went still.”

“I think it was warning me.” I made myself say it slowly, the way I’d been turning it over the whole run here. “I think it wasn’t about danger to you. I think it was about absence. Something nearby went quiet right when Damien would have been walking past wherever he” I stopped. I didn’t actually know. That was the worst part, standing in her kitchen with my hands still shaking slightly and no real answers to give her.

Lily was very still for a moment, staring at the floor. Then she looked up, and there was something steadier in her face than I expected.

“He said something today,” she said slowly. “At Jake’s. About forced bonds and about humans ending up broken because a vampire ‘felt the pull.’ He sounded like he wasn’t talking about history anymore by the end of it.”

I went cold. “You think he knew something.”

“I think,” Lily said, “he was trying to tell us something, and none of us were listening properly.”

We stood there in her dim kitchen, the kettle still sitting cold and untouched in the sink, the bond between us finally settling into something steady and constant again now that I was close enough to feel her breathing.

But somewhere out in the dark, Damien wasn’t answering his phone, and for the first time since I’d felt that hollow pull rip through my chest outside the classroom, I understood it hadn’t been about Lily being in danger at all.

It had been a warning about who was already gone.