At the age of 18, every dhampir can decide when their heart stops, but not all of them can choose their allegiance. Melissa Sault is one of these dhampir, a half-blooded immortal whom attends a secondary school built for students just like her--stud...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The vampire didn't return. I lost count of the sunrises and sunsets since that day.
Without the extra adrenaline rush, classes stretched into forever, studying drawled into random thoughts, and I went through the motions again. The thing that kept me going somewhat, that made knots tie in my center, was the possibility of seeing him again.
A vampire without the urge to hunt, but to converse.
I never thought I'd see the day.
Even then, I had met vampires in past. One or two of them were solid family friends, some lingered around the neighborhood, others blended into my home community as well as the other suburban families that opted out of having kids. They were beautiful in their mutated way, kind, good at acting out the mundane, mortal scene of saying hello and asking about my week and time at school.
There were vampire staff at the school in Canaan and Headmistress Ochre alongside two more second-year professors. The point was, I'd seen them before. I'd interacted with them. But something about his nature placed him in his own category, and if I couldn't call him my hunter, I didn't know another name for it.
He snuck up on my conscience when I relaxed too much or my mind wandered into aimless territory. Yet, the longer he vanished, the less he crossed my mind, which made room for the other blunder to nest and get comfortable in the hole the vampire left.
My loss to Namjoon.
Loss was a harsh word for it. True to Jimin's advice, I didn't take it to heart. If the appointed head of security let a high school senior beat him in something so simple, that would have been far worse for all of us. I was happy that he won.
What stumped me was that the sticky feeling I tried to shimmy off my shoulders when leaving that class in particular never came off. The instinct to turn my face from guards around campus became involuntary. Any black uniform careened me in the opposite direction. And sometimes, when that jingle of silver so much as tinkled in a corridor ahead, I whipped out a book, a phone, a watch quick enough so that when I passed, my nose was buried in a distraction rather than my feelings.
Thinking it aloud--feelings--made my hands fumble for something to do too.
Any vorvian had viper-like reflexes and a keen eye. They were trained to be smooth and efficient, and it could almost be argued that was in their transformation.
But maybe it was his strong hands and coy smirk that made a difference. His confidence was as stark as his darker uniform. The kindness to his wisdom, and how he measured everything without doing anything extra. Like he knew how long you would live, and how swiftly he could cut that expectancy down as easily as snipping a ribbon with silver scissors.
Memories of his teasing--what I so eagerly interpreted as flirting--plagued me even as I headed to the dining hall early for lunch. Each class must have had the same idea. When I rounded the corner, students had already taken their places at tables or in the serving lines.
