Chapter 35 WHAT DAMIEN KNOWS

Chapter 35 WHAT DAMIEN KNOWS
Alexander’s POV

I didn’t relax my stance, even with Damien standing right there in front of us. Something about the way he held himself, like a man bracing for a blow that hadn’t landed yet, kept every instinct in me on edge.

“Inside,” I said. “Now not out here.”

Damien didn’t argue, which told me almost as much as his torn sleeve did. He let Lily take his arm and lead the way back toward her building, and I walked behind them both, watching the street, the alley mouths, the dark gaps between parked cars, anywhere something could be waiting.

Nothing moved but that didn’t make me feel better.

Lily’s POV

I got Damien onto the couch, the same fold-out Alexander had barely slept on, and he sat there with his elbows on his knees and his head down for a long moment before he spoke again.

“Water,” Alexander said, already heading for the kitchen, and I realized it was as much an excuse to keep moving as it was an actual offer.

I crouched in front of Damien instead. “Hey. Look at me.”

He did, finally, and up close I could see the damage wasn’t just the torn sleeve. There was a bruise blooming high on his cheekbone, and his pupils were blown wide in a way that didn’t look natural even for a vampire running on adrenaline.

“What happened?” I asked quietly. “Who did this?”

“I don’t know who,” he said. “I know what.”

Alexander came back with the water and set it down without comment, crossing his arms instead of sitting, which was its own kind of tell.

Damien drank half the glass before he spoke again. “I left Jake’s early because I needed air, that part was true. I wasn’t lying about that.” His voice was rough, like he’d been shouting recently and hadn’t recovered. “I got about half a mile out and something came out of the treeline. Fast, faster than anything I’ve felt before, and I’ve sparred with council enforcers.”

“Vampire?” Alexander asked.

“I don’t think so.” Damien’s jaw tightened. “It didn’t smell like anything. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. Everything has a scent signature, even rogue vampires, even humans. This had nothing. Like it wasn’t fully there.”

The room went quiet. I felt the bond shift uneasily against my ribs, like even it didn’t know what to make of that.

“It grabbed me before I could shift or run,” Damien continued. “Dragged me off the road. I thought that was it, honestly. But it didn’t attack. It just held me there. Like it was waiting for something.”

“Waiting for what?” Alexander’s voice had gone very flat, the way it did when he was working hard to keep it from doing something else.

Damien looked up, and for the first time since he’d stepped out of that alley, his eyes went straight to me.

“It kept saying a name,” he said. “Over and over, like it was checking something off, not mine.”

My stomach turned to ice before he even said it.

“Lily.”

Alexander’s POV

The glass in my hand cracked. I didn’t even register gripping it that hard until I felt the edge bite into my palm.

“It said her name,” I repeated, too quiet, too controlled, the kind of quiet that meant I was about three seconds from losing the careful hold I had on myself. “While it had you.”

“Over and over.” Damien’s hands had started shaking slightly around his own glass. “I think it grabbed me because I was near her last night. At Jake’s. I think it followed the wrong scent trail off his property and got me instead of her, and once it realized its mistake, it didn’t know what to do with me, so it just… held on. Like it was deciding.”

“Deciding what.” Lily’s voice had gone very small.

Damien met her eyes, and whatever careful, dry, deflecting version of himself usually lived behind his expression was gone now, stripped down to something raw and frightened that didn’t suit him at all.

“Whether to keep me as a message,” he said, “or let me go as one.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. The bond sat tight and aching in my chest, no longer hollow the way it had been the day before, but coiled now, alert, like it understood exactly what kind of danger this was even if none of us did yet.

“It let you go,” I said finally. “Why.”

Damien’s gaze didn’t leave Lily’s face.

“Because right before it did,” he said, “it told me to tell her something. Word for word.” He swallowed hard. “It said: tell her the bond isn’t the only thing that knows where she is.”