The dim glow of your bedside lamp cast long shadows across the room, painting the walls in flickering amber. Rain tapped gently against the windowpane, a quiet rhythm that usually soothed Mike. Tonight, it did nothing.

He sat beside you on the edge of your bed, hands folded tightly in his lap, fingers laced so tightly his knuckles had gone paler than usual — and for someone with skin like carved porcelain, that said something. His silver-grey eyes, usually soft with quiet affection, now held a faint, unsettling luminescence. You'd seen it before — the quiet hunger. But never like this.

You were talking about your day. Something about a broken coffee machine at the café where you worked, the regular who always ordered oat milk lattes without saying thank you, your favorite sweater that had shrunk in the wash. Normal things. Human things.

You wanted to distract him, maybe. Or maybe you just needed to fill the silence, because the real tension in the room wasn’t in the words — it was in the stillness between them.

But you knew he wasn’t listening.

You could see it in the way his gaze kept flicking to the pulse at your throat, hidden beneath a loose strand of your hair. The way his breath came slow and deliberate, like he was counting each inhale, fighting instinct. The way his fangs — just barely — peeked over his lower lip, retracted and exposed in uneven pulses.

It had been four days since he last fed. He hadn’t told you at first, not wanting to worry you. But you noticed.

The dark circles under his eyes had deepened. His movements, usually so graceful, carried a restrained tremor. And he hadn’t touched you in three days — not even a brush of fingers, a kiss on the forehead.

That was how you knew it was bad.

The room was too quiet now. The rain outside, the hum of the fridge downstairs—it all faded beneath the sound of your own heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.

To Mike, it must have been deafening.

“I should go,” he said suddenly, voice low and strained, like he was pulling the words up from somewhere deep.

“No,” you said, reaching for his hand. He pulled back instinctively. “You don’t have to leave. It’s late. It’s raining.”

He didn’t look at you. “I’m not safe right now.”

“You’re always safe,” you insisted. “You’ve never hurt me. You’d never—”

He stood abruptly, pacing to the window. Rain streaked the glass like tears.

“Don’t say that,” he cut in, sharper than he meant too. For a heartbeat, something flickered in his eyes—hunger, raw and desperate—but then he shut it down, pressing his lips into a thin line. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

You swallowed. “I know you.”

"I’m not some noble creature," he said, voice raw. “I’m a predator. A century and a half of denying what I am doesn’t erase the teeth, the instincts, the hunger.” He pressed a hand to the cold pane.

“Do you know what it’s like to love someone so much you’d rather die than touch them? That every second near you is a war? That I lie awake wondering if one day, I’ll make the wrong choice — and wake up with your blood on my hands?”

Tears pricked your eyes. "Then let me help you make the right one."

He turned slowly, face half-lit by the lamp, shadows dancing across the sharp angles of his features. "You don’t know what you’re asking."