Chapter 17 Running
/Luca/
Being a vampire, I know I have no business walking under the damn sunlight but today, my monster wanted out. I’m probably the weirdest vampire to ever exist, because unlike the rest of my kind, I can talk to mine. Not metaphorically. Literally.
Every vampire book I’ve read and yes, I’ve read a lot says our monsters are instinct. Silent. Mindless.But mine? He talks back. You smell it too, he growled in my head, voice like smoke and thunder.
“I wasn’t going to say it out loud,” I muttered under my breath, adjusting the hood of my jacket as I walked down the forest edge. “But yeah… I smell it.”
Her scent was chaos and divinity woven together moonlight and blood. It didn’t belong in daylight, and it sure as hell didn’t belong to a wolf. But it was. She was. The moment i realized she smelt me i did my best to run.
And that’s what made every cell in my body tremble. My monster snarled again, restless. She’s close.
“I know,” I hissed. “Which is exactly why we need to keep running.”
Run? He laughed a sound like cracking bones. You want to run from what’s ours?
“She’s a werewolf,” I snapped. “A wolf, do you hear me? We don’t mix. We don’t bond. We kill each other.”
You don’t understand, he said, quieter this time, almost reverent. Her blood calls to me. To us.
My pulse if I still had one would have spiked. “You mean you.”
No, he corrected. Us.
I stopped walking. For a moment, the forest went silent except for the whisper of leaves.
The scent hit me again faint, but enough to make the world tilt. It was sweet, ancient, and terrifyingly familiar, like I’d known it in another lifetime.
My fangs ached. My monster pressed harder against the walls of my mind. She’s running.
“What?”
She’s coming this way. And before I could even react, he took control. The ground cracked beneath my feet as our speed activated, the forest melting into streaks of green and shadow. The wind tore past, carrying that intoxicating scent closer, closer, closer
“Stop!” I barked, trying to claw my way back to control. “We can’t do this!”
We can and we will! he roared. You can deny blood, but I can’t. I’ve waited centuries for this scent. You think I’ll let it go?
“She’s not one of us,” I gritted out, fighting him as trees blurred by. “If we find her, if she sees us—”
Then she’ll know.
“Know what?” I demanded.
That we belong to her.
The words hit like a blade to the chest. I know i can't be with her... she smell of wolf and being the king of vampire, it was impossible for me to be with her...
I stumbled to a stop, gasping, forcing him back into silence with everything I had. My hands shook. My claws had extended without me realizing.
I could still feel the echo of her presence in the air wild, sharp, impossible.
And it terrified me how right my monster felt.
Because for the first time in centuries, my monster wasn’t hungry for blood.
He was longing.
I should have left.
Turned around, vanished into the shadows like I always do. That’s what four centuries of existence has taught me never get attached, never get curious, never follow the scent. But here I was.
Standing in the middle of the forest like some freshly-turned fool, trembling because a single whiff of her blood made my monster whisper words like mine.
“I’m losing my mind,” I muttered, pressing a hand against the nearest tree. The bark cracked under my grip.
No, my monster purred, voice curling around me like smoke. You’re finally finding it.
“Finding it?” I hissed. “She’s a wolf.”
And yet her blood called to us. Doesn’t that tell you something?
“It tells me the Creator has a twisted sense of humor.”
My monster chuckled lowly. You always say that. But you forget, the Creator doesn’t make mistakes.
I scoffed. “I’ve lived over four hundred years, and trust me I’ve seen mistakes.”
Then maybe this one’s different.
I fell silent. The air was thick with her scent still clinging to the wind faint now, but enough to stir the hunger deep inside me.
Not just bloodlust. Something else. Something primal.
I hated it.
I hated how my chest tightened.
How my fangs ached not from hunger, but from want.
“Four centuries,” I whispered to myself, shaking my head. “And this is what it comes down to losing my mind over some wolf.”
My monster hummed thoughtfully. She’s not just a wolf. There’s something else in her… old magic. Familiar.
I froze.
“Familiar?”
Her blood sings in two tones. Light and shadow. Wolf and… something more.
My jaw tightened. “You think she’s a hybrid?”
No. I know she is.
That made me pause. A hybrid. That would explain the strange pulse in her scent not entirely wolf, not entirely anything. Just… forbidden. And damn me, I wanted to know more.
“She’s dangerous,” I muttered, already stepping forward despite myself. “If any creature catch wind of this, they’ll hunt her.” How the fuck was she still alive till now... I've never heard of an hybrid existing on this earth. Does anyone else know she's an hybrid...?
Then we better find her first, my monster purred.
I exhaled sharply, glancing toward the direction she’d run the trees bending slightly from her earlier passage.
“Just to make sure,” I lied to myself, already moving.
“Just to see what she is.”
Sure, my monster teased, laughter echoing in my mind. We’re only stalking her for research purposes. Right, Luca?
“Shut up.”
But he was right.
I was already following her scent cautious steps through the forest, quiet enough not to stir a leaf. The predator in me moved instinctively, every sense heightened. It had been centuries since anything anyone had made me feel this alive.
And that terrified me more than sunlight ever could.
My monster’s voice softened, uncharacteristically calm. You’ve lived over four hundred years without a heartbeat, Luca. Maybe it’s time something or someone reminds you what it feels like.
I clenched my fists, jaw tightening. “Don’t romanticize this. It’s a curse, not fate.”
Maybe it’s both.
I didn’t answer.
Because deep down, I already knew the truth.
Whatever she was… whoever she was…
She wasn’t just a passing scent.
She was a beginning or the end of everything I’d built in four centuries.
And as the sun began to dip behind the trees, I followed her trail deeper into the shadows, whispering to the monster within me:
“Let’s see what kind of soul the Moon dares to tie to a creature like me.”