Chapter 97 97
AIDAN
“That way,” she says, her trembling hand pointing toward a street crowded with people.
I run, my legs pushing through the human tide, their screams ringing in my ears. She weighs almost nothing, but her blood keeps flowing, soaking the shirt I found earlier. The crowd shoves, bodies slamming into me, and the noise is chaos I can’t comprehend: sobs, shouted orders, engines roaring. I reach the shelter, a low gray concrete building with a wide door surrounded by people fighting to get inside. There’s a strange smell, like scorched metal, and red lights flash overhead.
Inside it’s a disaster. The floor is coated in dust, walls cracked and scarred, people packed together, shoving, screaming. Some sob in corners, others pound on locked doors farther in, and the air is thick with sweat and fear. I force my way through them, my strength making it easy—the bodies part before me like dry grass. I reach the main door, the woman still in my arms, and push.
Nothing happens. My body slams into something invisible, a jolt that rattles my shoulders. I frown, push again, harder, but it’s like hitting a solid wall. I step back and try once more, my shoulder crashing uselessly. What is this? Some human door I don’t understand?
She looks up at me, eyes widening, and lets out a scream that freezes my blood.
“He’s a vampire! He can’t come into the shelter!”
I release her by instinct, and she drops to the ground, her body smacking the concrete. People turn, faces flooded with terror, and the chaos erupts again. I raise my hand, striking at the air, and my fingers collide with that invisible barrier—solid, cold. I look up and see engravings on the door, lines and letters carved deep that I don’t understand, don’t recognize. They glow faintly, a dull red, and panic claws up my throat.
“He’s a vampire!” someone else shouts, and the woman crawls, trying to drag herself away, her arm leaving a smear of blood on the floor.
The crowd detonates. People running, shoving—some toward me, others fleeing. A man pushes me, falls, and another tramples him, boots stomping without mercy. The woman I tried to help is on the ground, trapped, and the mass swallows her, her screams fading beneath desperate feet. I can’t look at her. I can’t stay.
I run, legs carving a path in the opposite direction, noise hammering me from every side. Tall buildings loom around me, their lights flickering. People dart everywhere, screaming, colliding, and the alarms drill into my ears. I don’t know where I’m going. It’s all chaos, metal, glass, and I’m caught in it.
I close my eyes, breath hitching, and think. I have to get out. I relax my body, let instinct take over, and run. Not like them. Not like a human. My speed explodes, a blur slicing through the air, legs moving faster than they should. The street becomes a smear, buildings whipping past like shadows, and the noise fades behind me. I run, wind whipping my face, until the smell changes, until concrete gives way to earth and leaves.
I open my eyes. Forest. Tall, dark trees, soft ground under my feet. I stop, panting, chest heaving fast. The city’s roar is still there, distant, a sound that doesn’t reach me anymore. I look at my hands, stained with dried blood—hers—and my throat tightens. I helped her. I carried her. And now she’s dead, trampled by her own kind, because they saw me.
“What am I?” I whisper, and my voice dissolves into the silence. “I don’t belong here either.”
The forest wraps around me, trees silent, sunlight filtering through branches and warming my skin. I understand nothing. The humans, their shelters, their strange letters. I can’t enter. I don’t belong. My hand touches the collar at my neck—cold, useless now. They left me outside, pointed at me, and I… I ran.
I know I can’t stay here. I can’t go back to… to whom? I have no pack, no father, no home. I don’t belong with the vampires… If I go back, Enzo will probably kill me. I have nothing.
I need Lois.
I sink to the ground, back against a trunk, and close my eyes again. The blood on my hands smells strong, and my head spins. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. I only know I can’t go back there, to that chaos, to those eyes full of fear.
They fear me. It was better when I lived in a world that ignored me, that overlooked my existence.
I miss my father, and—damn it—even the stupid university, the life that was coming together, the… the routine.
A knot forms in my throat, my mouth goes dry. I close my eyes, but suddenly they feel wet.
I slide my fingers across them and see the liquid between my fingertips.
Tears?
Are these tears?
“Aidan… Aidan. Help me! Aidan!”
It’s Lois!
I leap to my feet, searching around me, trying to catch her scent, but there’s not a single trace. She’s not here.
“Aidan!” Her voice is a plea inside my head.
“Where are you, Lois?! Tell me.”
“Aidan, please, help me.”
“Lois!” I shout with all my strength and drop to my knees, hands shaking, chest aching. The tears keep coming, but they don’t feel like mine… They don’t seem like mine.
I focus on her, keep listening. She repeats my name like a prayer, her pain flooding me—so strong, so real.
“Please, Lois! Where are you?”
“Border… with my pack.”
Border? Border with her pack?
I remember she belonged to Alpha Joseph’s pack.
What bordered it?
I think there was nothing there. Right?
What was there? Concentrate, Aidan!
Nothing. Empty territory, where everything ended, a forbidden place or just nothing.
Is Lois… not with Emmanuel and Ezequiel?
“Damn it!”
I don’t have time for this. I don’t even have to stop and think. I just have to cross, run to her—and for that I have to pass through Alpha Thorne’s border, avoid the vampire territory, and cut across almost between all the packs.
It could be simple, as easy as a walk, if they weren’t surely looking for me.
But if they don’t see me… they won’t sense me either.
My mind had already decided, and my body was already moving—running at full speed toward wolf territory. I had to help Lois.
“Hold on, Lois. I’m on my way!”