Chapter 20 20. Chapter
Elijah
The scrapyard Aurora led us to lay on the rotting edge of civilization. It was a graveyard of metal and rust, where the shadows of crushed machines stretched out like long, threatening teeth beneath the gray sky. The air reeked of oil, wet earth, and the metallic tang of decay—a place where hope came to die and criminals came to trade.
I killed the engine behind a towering mountain of broken car frames. Silence returned immediately, but it wasn't empty anymore. It was thick—with the tension of our earlier argument, the memory of the almost-kiss, and the danger saturating this place.
“We’re here,” I said coldly. My gaze swept across the yard, searching for movement, an ambush, a trap. My vampire senses sharpened like blades. “If your friend isn’t here, or if he lured us into something, you won’t have time to explain.”
Aurora didn’t answer. Her hand rested on the door handle but didn’t press it. I saw her gathering strength. Her face was paler than it had been that morning, dark circles shadowed her eyes, barely hidden by her red hair. The bandage on her neck was a stark white slash against her black clothes.
Finally she opened the door. Cold industrial wind rushed in, sweeping out the warm air of the car.
“He’s here,” she said softly, and stepped out.
Or rather, tried to step out.
There was something off in the way she moved—an unnatural slowness. When her foot touched the ground and took her weight, I saw her knee buckle. Her body, which had been fueled by defiance and adrenaline until now, suddenly hit its limit.
“Aurora?” Her name escaped me involuntarily—sharp, questioning, stripped of mockery.
She tried to straighten, but her head snapped back as if pulled by an invisible hand. Her eyes rolled upward. A faint, broken sound slipped from her throat, and her fingers slid off the door.
Then gravity won.
She collapsed toward the muddy, oil-soaked ground.
I didn’t think. I didn’t consider the distance I had sworn to maintain. My instincts—vampiric, unstoppable—moved faster than logic. In a single blur of motion I was beside her. Before her knees could touch the filth, I caught her.
My arms wrapped tightly around her waist and back, hauling her against me. Her body was limp, frighteningly light. Her head fell against my chest, her hands clutching weakly at my coat.
“Falling again, are we?” I muttered, but there was no real venom in it. My heart— the dead organ that always seemed to come alive in her proximity—pounded wildly as her warmth bled through our clothes.
Too close again.
Aurora hung in my arms for several seconds, her forehead resting against my sternum. I felt her rapid, uneven breaths as she fought to stay conscious. Then she lifted her head, trembling. Her green eyes were foggy, dimmed—but the fire inside them still flickered stubbornly.
She tried to push me away. The gesture was pathetically weak, but the intention was clear.
“Let go…” she whispered, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. If I released her, she would crumple.
“If I let you go, you’ll faceplant in this filth and be in no condition to negotiate,” I said, tightening my hold to steady her. “What is it? The poison? Your wound?”
Rory looked up at me. Anger and humiliation battled in her gaze—humiliation at her own weakness. Her lip trembled before twisting into a bitter, mocking smile.
“It’s not the wound, you idiot,” she breathed, her voice sharper than any dagger. “It’s hunger.”
I froze.
“You might’ve stuffed yourself…” Her eyes flicked meaningfully from her bandaged neck to my mouth—an unmistakable reminder of the ‘treatment’ that had turned into a feast. “…but I haven’t eaten anything in over a day. Not a bite. And you drained half my blood on top of it.”
The realization hit me like a physical blow.
Of course.
I was a vampire—her blood, the part I’d taken, had filled me with energy for days, maybe weeks. My body hummed with strength.
But her? She was human. A wounded, poisoned, exhausted human I had dragged through a forest, a motel, and half the country without giving her a single moment to rest or eat.
I had forgotten her most basic biological needs in the chaos of my own crisis.
“You… haven’t eaten,” I repeated, the obvious sounding hollow and heavy in my throat. Something dangerously close to guilt stirred beneath my ribs.
“No,” Rory said, trying again to stand on her own, though her fingers still clenched my coat. “Because a certain Sovereign was too busy with his ego and paranoia to notice whether his ‘critical’ ally was starving to death.”
The brutal truth hit harder than her insults.
Here I stood, full of her strength, while she trembled in my arms from lack of energy.
I was the parasite.
The predator who not only fed—but forgot the prey was fragile.
Still holding her, I met her eyes. The closeness that had been thick with sexual tension in the car now shifted into something darker, more intimate: the compulsion to protect.
“There’s a pack of crackers in the glove compartment,” I said quietly, refusing to let her go. I didn’t dare. “I think the previous owner left them.”
“Crackers,” Rory scoffed weakly, then swayed, her head dropping back onto my shoulder. “A royal banquet from a mighty Sovereign.”
“It’s better than nothing,” I growled, and with one decisive motion, I lifted her fully into my arms. I didn’t wait for her permission. I carried her like a child—or a bride. She was light. Too light. “I’m taking you back to the car. You eat. Then we go to this Marcus.”
“Put me down! I can walk!” she protested, but her head stayed against my chest.
“No, you can’t,” I said firmly. “And I’m not bringing you in there if you collapse on the way. That would show weakness. My weakness.”
I carried her toward the passenger door. In my arms, I felt her heartbeat—slower and weaker than it should’ve been. For the first time since this nightmare began, the hunger roaring inside me went silent, replaced by something cold and precise:
I must keep her alive.
No matter the cost.
Even if it meant feeding a starving Huntress crackers in the middle of a scrapyard.