Zara's eyes fluttered open to darkness.
For a moment, she lay still, her ears straining against the silence. The air was damp and cool, carrying a faint metallic tang that clung to her tongue — blood. Her blood.
She reached for her neck. The moment her fingertips brushed the tender skin, a sharp sting made her flinch. Her mind stumbled through fragments of memory. The alley. The men. The stranger in black. His voice. His bite.
A dim light flickered in the corner, barely cutting through the shadows. Rough brick walls boxed her in — not her apartment, not any place she knew.
"You're awake."
The voice came from the dark like a shadow given sound — calm, steady, far too certain.
Her head turned sharply toward him. He was leaning against the far wall, black clothes blending with the gloom, hood pushed back. His face was sharply cut, like something sketched in perfect lines. Too composed. Too still. Too unearthly.
"Where am I?" Her voice was hoarse.
"Safe," he replied, the word sliding from his lips like a fact carved in stone.
Safe. Yet the way his eyes pinned her told a different story.
"You—" her voice cracked, "you bit me."
His gaze flickered, not with guilt, but with something harder to name — restraint, maybe, or a calculation. "I had no choice."
Her pulse quickened. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"If I hadn't," he stepped closer, each step deliberate, "you would've been dead in that alley."
The space between them seemed to shrink, though he was still several feet away. She wanted to argue, to demand why he thought that was an excuse, but her thoughts snagged on the way shadows bent subtly around him, as if they knew him — obeyed him. And then there was his gaze: faintly glowing, steady, ancient.
She tore her eyes away, forcing her voice to sound sharper than she felt. "Why me? Why help me at all?"
For a moment, something unreadable flickered across his features. "I don't usually answer questions."
The word usually landed heavy, making her wonder what made her different.
She crossed her arms, trying to shield herself from both the cold and his presence. "Fine. At least tell me your name."
He gave the faintest curve of a smirk. "Names have power."
"That's not an answer."
"Exactly."
Before she could retort, he turned toward the door. His hand hovered at the handle for a beat, and then he spoke without looking at her. "They won't touch you again."
She froze. "The men in the alley?"
"They know better now."
There was weight in his tone — not a threat, but a truth as inevitable as nightfall.
Her throat went dry. "What did you do to them?"
He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes catching the faint light. "You don't want to know."
Their gazes locked. Something in the way he looked at her pressed against the edges of her mind — not invasive, but persistent, like the tide reaching for the shore.
And then he was gone, the door closing with a soft click.
Zara stayed seated on the narrow bed, her fingers drifting again to the bite mark. It throbbed in rhythm with her heartbeat, a reminder of him — of what he'd done.
And somewhere deep inside, beneath the fear, was a question she didn't dare put into words:
What exactly are you?