Chapter 10 Solitude
POV: Niko
The text from his mother had been sitting in his phone since second period.
He hadn't opened it.
He didn't need to open it to know what it said. They all said the same thing in different arrangements of the same words. She missed him. She wanted to talk. She wanted him to come home for the weekend. She wanted things to be different.
She wanted a lot of things.
Niko dropped his phone face down on the desk and opened his sketchbook.
His roommates were still in their afternoon classes which meant he had about forty minutes of silence before the door burst open and the noise started and he would have to perform the version of himself that his friends expected to show up. The unbothered one. The one who had everything handled and nothing weighing on him and nowhere he would rather be than right here.
He was exhausted by that version lately.
The sketchbook fell open near the middle and he stared at the pages without picking up his pencil.
There were drawings going back months in this book. The rooftop of the east dormitory at two in the morning when he couldn't sleep. The tree line of Black River Falls pressing against the campus fence in the fog. Aurora asleep on the common room couch with her hair spread out around her. Marcel mid laugh at something Enzo said last semester.
He flipped forward toward the recent pages.
Carly's profile from the cafeteria. Just a quick study, the line of her jaw and the way her hair fell. He had done it without thinking and hadn't gone back to look at it until now.
He turned the page.
Another one. From the bleachers during practice. Her standing on the field with her hands on her hips and her chin up. He had been drawing the tree line and somehow ended up here instead.
He turned the page again.
The hallway outside the lecture hall. Her back against the wall and her eyes up at him. He had drawn this one an hour ago sitting in the bathroom of the dormitory trying to get it out of his head and onto paper so it would leave him alone.
It had not left him alone.
Niko closed the sketchbook and pressed both hands flat on top of it.
This was a problem.
He pulled his pencil out anyway and opened to a clean page and started drawing something completely different. A window. Rooftops. Anything.
His pencil moved for about thirty seconds before it drifted back without permission and he was drawing the curve of her shoulder and he threw the pencil across the desk in frustration.
He fisted both hands into his hair and stared at the ceiling.
The Monroeson family did not have simple problems. They had complicated ones, layered ones, the kind that didn't resolve cleanly and left marks that didn't fully heal. Niko knew that better than any of his siblings because he had been the one sitting closest to the fire when everything burned.
His parents were respected in Black River Falls. Publicly beloved. His father ran three successful businesses in the area and his mother chaired every community initiative the vampire faction had going. They showed up to school fundraisers with their checkbooks and their polished smiles and everyone in the room felt safer just for having them there.
Behind the front door of the Monroeson house it was a different story.
Niko hadn't been back in four years. He kept a room at his Aunt Dahlia's place across town and she never once made him feel like he was a burden for using it. She was the only person in his family who actually knew him, the version of him that existed before he learned to keep everything locked behind that particular expression his friends mistook for confidence.
His siblings were complicated. Reba and Deacon were twins, both younger, both still figuring out how to navigate the house he had escaped. He kept his distance not because he didn't care but because caring too much from the inside had already cost him more than he was willing to spend again.
Gasper was the only one he had ever been close to.
Was.
He didn't follow that thought any further.
His phone buzzed again on the desk. He turned it over without meaning to.
His mother again.
He set it face down.
The pencil found its way back into his hand. He stared at the blank page and thought about the way Carly had looked at him in the hallway right before she raised her hand. Not angry exactly. Scared. But not of him. Of something she didn't have a word for yet.
He recognized that feeling. Had been living in it for two weeks.
The door burst open.
"Listen I'm not trying to start a controversy." Enzo announced walking backwards through the doorway with his backpack already half off his shoulder. "But we all know the only person who deserves that throne is Jon Snow. Born for it. Literally his birthright."
Marcel followed him in shaking his head with that slow easy smile. "The man did not want the throne. You can't force destiny on someone who's actively running from it."
"Thank you." Aurora appeared in the doorway last, pointing at Marcel. "She earned it. She fought for it from nothing. He just found out his last name and suddenly everyone's ready to hand him everything."
"Because it's rightfully his!" Enzo threw his bag on his bed.
"So her entire life's work just means nothing because some guy showed up?"
"A guy she loves!"
"And she's supposed to just step aside because of that?"
Marcel put his face in his hand.
Niko sat back in his chair and watched all three of them with genuine amusement for the first time all day. They did this every week. Same argument, different Tuesday. It was the most reliable thing in his life and he would never tell any of them that.
"Come on Monroeson." Enzo pointed at him. "Back me up."
Niko held both hands up. "Switzerland."
"Coward." Enzo dropped onto his bed. "Absolute coward."
Aurora smiled and dropped onto Niko's lap without warning, both arms looping around his neck. He absorbed the impact and said nothing because fighting her on it today required energy he did not have.
"He just has good taste." She said, settling against him. "And he doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings."
"Or he doesn't want to risk his night going badly." Enzo said with a grin.
"Sod off." Niko and Aurora said it at the exact same time.
Marcel laughed and Enzo looked offended and the room filled with the kind of noise that usually made Niko feel less alone.
Today it wasn't quite reaching.
Aurora shifted on his lap and her fingers found the back of his neck, playing with the curls there the way she always did when she was comfortable. He let it happen. One hand rested on her thigh and the other on the arm of the chair.
Him and Aurora were complicated in the specific way that things got complicated when two people who were good friends made a bad decision at a party last summer and never fully walked it back. She wasn't his girlfriend. He was not entirely sure she still knew that. They had an arrangement and it worked and he wasn't opposed to it but lately he had been less present in it than usual and she had started noticing.
He could feel her noticing right now actually.
"There's a kickback at The Hole tonight." Marcel looked over at him. "You in?"
Niko opened his mouth.
"He's in." Aurora answered for him, tilting her head back to look at him upside down. "Right?"
He looked at the ceiling for a second.
A year ago, yes. A month ago, probably. Tonight the idea of being in that building surrounded by that many people doing the same things they always did felt like wearing a coat that didn't fit anymore and pretending it did.
He didn't know how to explain that to people who hadn't noticed anything had changed.
"I think I'll sit this one out." He said.
Enzo's head came up. "Since when do you turn down free drinks."
"Since now." Niko said it flatly and felt the temperature in the room shift slightly.
He didn't realize until Aurora turned on his lap and looked at him directly that his fangs were showing. Hunger had been building since this morning and the hallway situation with Carly had burned through whatever reserve he had left.
He needed to feed.
"Everything okay?" Aurora asked quietly, dropping her voice below the room.
He pulled back from her fingers. "Fine."
"Niko."
"I said I'm fine." He kept his voice even but the edge in it was enough that all three of them went slightly still.
Marcel cleared his throat. "I mean. Man doesn't want to go to a party. Not exactly a crisis." He said it lightly and Niko caught the subtle redirect and was grateful for it.
Aurora was still looking at him.
He stood up, lifting her off his lap and setting her in the chair in one motion. She grabbed the armrests and looked up at him with narrowed eyes.
"Where are you going?" She asked.
"Out." He grabbed his jacket off the hook by the door.
Nobody argued. They knew better when he was like this.
He told them he'd text if he changed his mind and reached for the door handle.
Aurora flashed in front of it.
She was fast. Almost as fast as him. He stopped and looked down at her and waited.
"You're not fine." She said it quietly. No performance in it. Just her, actually looking at him.
"Aurora."
"I can tell when you're lying. You know I can."
He looked at her for a moment. Her sea green eyes were steady and her arms were crossed and she wasn't moving.
She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful and he knew it and she knew he knew it and none of that was the problem. The problem was that she wanted something from him he had never once offered and was starting to ask for it without using words and he didn't know how much longer he could keep pretending he hadn't noticed.
He sighed and took her by the hand and pulled her out into the hallway, closing the door behind them. He walked her a few steps down to the alcove near the stairwell and turned to face her.
"I'm okay." He said it slower this time. "I just need air. And I need to feed because I haven't since this morning and my head is a mess."
"Your mom again?"
He didn't answer.
Aurora pressed her lips together and nodded once. She reached up and pushed a curl back from his forehead and he let her.
"Come out tonight." She said softly. "Even for an hour. Being alone when you're like this never actually helps."
He looked at her.
She was right and he wasn't going to say that.
"There's supposed to be a fresh blood supply." She added, a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.
He exhaled through his nose and pulled her into his chest briefly. She tucked her face against his neck and left a light kiss there and he stared at the wall over her shoulder.
Somewhere in the building a clock ticked.
Somewhere across campus Carly McPherson was probably stress underlining something in a notebook and pretending she wasn't rattled.
He closed his eyes.
"I'll think about it." He said into Aurora's hair.
She pulled back and looked up at him.
"I'll text you." He said before she could push it.
He leaned down and kissed her cheek.
Then he flashed down the stairwell before she could say another word.