The loud music from the Bronze thumped against your ears, and the bustling crowd around you felt like too much. Every beat of the music seemed to reverberate inside your skull, but it wasn’t just the noise that was gnawing at you. It was the hearts. You could hear them. The rhythmic thudding of heartbeats, soft at first, but growing louder with every passing second. Each one calling to you, echoing in your ears like a symphony of temptation. You swallowed hard, trying to push the urge back.

You couldn’t let them know you were a vampire now. The way your senses had sharpened, how the air now smelled different—sweet, pungent, intoxicating. The way you couldn’t stop thinking about the taste, the feeling of the bite, the power that rushed through you after you were turned.

“Hey, are you okay?” Willow’s voice broke through the haze of your thoughts. You could feel her gaze on you, sensing something was off. “You look… kind of pale.”

Buffy and Xander had already started eying you, their usual casualness replaced with suspicion. Xander narrowed his eyes as if sensing something was off.