Chapter 139 My Blood

Chapter 139 My Blood
My Blood

Liam’s POV

The moment Vivian saw me standing in the doorway, her eyes widened. She immediately took a step back, looking like someone who had just been caught in a lie. Her gaze darted to Rosalie, silently begging her to explain why I was standing there staring at both of them as if the world had suddenly turned upside down.

Rosalie didn’t hesitate.

“I know about Vivian’s betrayal,” she said. “She was the one giving me information about you and Dylan all this time. I paid her for it.”

Her words hit me like a punch to the chest.

A wave of anger rushed through me before I could stop it. My hands curled into fists at my sides as I looked from Rosalie to Vivian.

“Vivian hurt us,” I said, unable to hide the harshness in my voice. “She betrayed our trust. You knew everything she’d done, and you still brought her here?”

Rosalie met my glare without looking away.

“I’m not defending what she did,” she replied quietly. “What Vivian did was wrong. But right now, we need her. That’s the truth, Liam.”

I let out a slow breath, trying to calm myself, but it wasn’t working. Every time I looked at Vivian, all I could remember was the pain she’d caused us. My jaw tightened, and I looked away before my anger got the better of me.

Rosalie continued speaking.

“I even offered to turn her into a vampire,” she said. “I told her she could have real power, strength that would help us in the fight ahead.”

She paused before adding, “She refused.”

That finally made me look back at Vivian.

“I didn’t want it,” Vivian said softly, her eyes fixed on the floor. “Not if there was even the slightest chance I’d have to stand against you one day.”

She swallowed hard before continuing.

“I know my feelings for Dylan made me do terrible things before. I couldn’t risk becoming stronger if there was any chance those feelings would control me again.”

For a moment, the room fell silent.

Then Vivian looked at me, her eyes filled with regret.

“I know what I did is unforgivable,” she whispered. “I’m not asking you to pretend it never happened. I don’t expect your forgiveness. I just… I just want one chance to prove that I’m not the same person anymore.”

I stared at her, but no words came.

There was nothing I could say that would erase the past, and nothing she could say that would make me trust her again. In the end, I simply turned away, letting my silence answer for me.

It felt as if everybody I and Dylan knew wrote our stories before we even started living it. How would Dylan feel knowing that her friend knew about me from the beginning but was pretending and playing along all this while.

The air grew heavy, and Rosalie seemed to realize the conversation wasn’t going anywhere.

She clapped her hands together, forcing a small smile.

“Come on,” she said. “Enough standing around. Let me show you the house.”

I followed her, mostly because staying in that room with Vivian for another second felt impossible.

The house was much larger than I’d expected. Long hallways stretched in different directions, and every few steps another door appeared. It felt less like a home and more like a place built to shelter an entire community.

Rosalie walked ahead of us, speaking with quiet pride as she pointed everything out.

“This is our training room,” she said, opening one of the doors.

A little farther down the hall, she pointed to another section.

“We store our supplies here.”

She kept walking, leading us deeper into the house.

“And these rooms are where everyone stays when they need to rest.”

As she talked, I looked around in silence, taking everything in. The place was well organized, almost peaceful. It was clear she’d spent years building it into a safe haven for the people under her care.

Even so, I couldn’t focus on any of it.

No matter how hard I tried, my thoughts kept drifting back to Vivian and everything she’d done. The betrayal still sat heavily in my chest, and I wasn’t sure if that feeling would ever truly go away.

Rosalie stopped in front of a large wooden door and rested her hand on the handle.

Without saying a word, she pushed it open.

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

The room beyond was enormous. It stretched farther than I could see, lit only by soft lights that left the corners buried in shadow. Long rows of bodies lay side by side on raised wood, perfectly still, as though they had all fallen asleep at the same moment.

For one terrifying second, I thought they were dead.

There was something in the air around them, something I couldn’t explain. I could sense life inside every one of them. It was faint, almost like a heartbeat buried deep beneath the silence, but it was there. They weren’t dead.

They just weren’t awake.

They looked like they were waiting for someone to call them back.

A chill ran down my spine.

“What is this?” I asked quietly, barely recognizing my own voice.

Rosalie didn’t seem disturbed by the sight at all.

“They are humans but vampires,” she answered. 

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Years ago we started seeing people like this on the streets.” She said. “It became a thing of concern for me and some others that are still living. It turned out that someone was secretly using humans for an experiment. They turn them to vampires using chemicals and some of them doesn’t withstand the pressure leaving them half dead, half alive.”

Her words did nothing to settle the uneasiness growing inside me.

I slowly looked across the room again. There were so many of them. Dozens… maybe more. Lying there without moving, waiting to be awakened.

It didn’t feel right.

My stomach tightened as an image of Ethan suddenly flashed through my mind. I remembered the way he collected people, how he experimented on them like they were nothing more than tools. To him, lives were pieces on a chessboard, moved around whenever it suited him.

I hated him for that.

The thought slipped into my mind before I could stop it.

Was Rosalie collecting those bodies really making her different?

I turned to look at her, searching her face for something that would prove I was wrong. Some sign that there was more to this than I understood.

Instead, she kept walking as if nothing about the room was unusual. She continued explaining the house in the same calm voice, talking about the hall as casually as someone showing off a storage room.

The uneasy feeling in my chest only grew heavier.

I followed her, but my mind stayed behind in that room.

Those sleeping vampires refused to leave my thoughts.

Still, I forced myself to remember everything I’d seen since meeting Rosalie.

She hadn’t tortured anyone. She hadn’t killed innocent people for pleasure. She hadn’t turned lives into a game the way Ethan always had. Whatever she was doing here, it didn’t seem to come from cruelty or a hunger for power.

At least, that’s what I wanted to believe.

That single thought was the only reason I didn’t turn around, walk out of the house, and never come back.

We continued and the house seemed endless, with one corridor leading into another. I barely noticed any of it anymore because my mind was still trying to make sense of what I’d seen.

Then Rosalie’s phone rang.

She pulled it from her pocket and looked at the screen. The calm expression she’d been wearing disappeared almost instantly. Her face became serious, and her eyes sharpened with focus.

Without saying a word, she raised a hand, silently asking us to wait.

Then she stepped away from us and answered the call.

The moment she was out of earshot, the hallway fell completely silent.

That left me alone with Vivian.

The silence between us dragged on, thick and uncomfortable.

I could feel Vivian looking at me, waiting for me to say something, but I kept my eyes fixed on the wall ahead. I wasn’t ready to face her, and I wasn’t about to make this easier for either of us by pretending everything was fine.

After a while, I looked at her anyway.

The guilt on her face was impossible to miss.

For a moment, I thought it was signs of another act. I’d seen Vivian fake tears before. I’d watched her put on just the right expression to make people lower their guard. She had always known how to play on emotions when it suited her.

This wasn’t like that.

She looked exhausted, as though she’d been carrying the weight of her mistakes for a long time. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and the sadness on her face wasn’t forced. It was the kind that settled into a person and refused to leave.

I believed she regretted what she’d done.

But regret didn’t erase betrayal.

No matter how guilty she looked, I knew what had always driven her. I understood it now better than I ever had.

She wasn’t trying to win my forgiveness.

She wasn’t even trying to convince me she’d changed.

I let out a slow breath and opened my mouth, thinking maybe I should say something. Not because she’d earned it, but because the silence between us had become unbearable.

Before I could speak, footsteps echoed down the hallway.

Rosalie returned, slipping her phone back into her pocket. The calm expression she’d worn earlier was gone. Her face was tense, and there was an urgency in her eyes that immediately caught my attention.

She stopped in front of us and didn’t waste a second.

“We need your blood, Liam,” she said.

I frowned. “My blood?”

She nodded.

“We have to understand how to fight Ethan and the army he’s building. Right now, this is the only way we have of finding answers.”

Her words caught me off guard.

For a few seconds, I simply stared at her, trying to figure out what kind of thing could possibly require my blood, and whether I was about to regret agreeing to stay in this house.