I sat in the driver’s seat of the car Carter had given me, hands resting uselessly in my lap. I wasn’t preparing to leave. I wasn’t even pretending I might. The engine stayed cold, and the world outside the windshield felt far away, like something I’d already stepped out of; like coming outside a movie theater after being so wrapped up in that world of make-believe. After that, the real world seemed so… lifeless.

  I just sat there, alone with the silence, replaying it again and again… turning the moment over in my mind until it felt worn thin, like a word said too many times, and then it made no sense. I tried to find the place where I should have known. The moment I could have intervened and gotten Alex to stay. Some invisible hinge where the future might have bent differently if I’d just been looking in the right direction.

  But the truth was too simple for all that. Alex had told me what she wanted multiple times. She hadn’t hidden it. She hadn’t softened it as we got closer. A long time ago, she had made her peace with the idea of death… of the sun… with release. With an ending that didn’t stretch on forever in this cursed life.

  I think I just… refused to let it be real. I put on blinders as we got closer.

  Somewhere along the way… between shared nights and quiet understandings, I started treating her desire for the end like a distant possibility instead of something fast approaching. I let myself believe we both had found something to hang onto in this fucked up life. Two monsters walking the long road together, defying the inevitable darkness simply because we wanted to.

  I wanted her with me… and I knew that she wanted to be with me, but she wanted to be free of this life. Both things were true, and one had to win out over the other.

  What hollowed me out wasn’t just that she was gone… it was knowing that when the sun found her, she was alone. That in that final, painful, intimate moment, when the world burned her down to ash, I wasn’t there. No hand to hold. No one to witness her unspoken courage as she faced down death. Just the sky and the light and her resolve.

  So I sat there, watching dust drift lazily off the dashboard, each particle catching the light before disappearing into the air of the car. It felt wrong how ordinary it was. How easily dust could exist, but Alex couldn’t.

  I tried to think about nothing. Every thought of Alex that surfaced, I shoved back down into the deepest part of myself, where it couldn’t breathe. Thoughts of Autumn tried to follow, but I forced those away, too. Even the idea of going home felt contaminated now, like the city had marked me on the way out, leaving a residue I couldn’t shake.

  Everything felt unstable and untethered to my previous will to go home. But there was one thing that grounded me, if only barely. I was still me. I was still the monster. Somehow… there was comfort in that.

  The world hadn’t stopped needing fangs and talons just because I’d lost someone. There was still work to do, still weight to carry… lives to claim. It was in that grim constancy that I found something solid enough to lean against.

  When the silence finally became unbearable, I did the only thing that made sense. I turned the key. The engine came to life with a quiet hum. It was still too loud in the stillness of my grief. But nevertheless… I eased the car out of the parking lot.

  It felt wrong to leave without her. I had imagined us doing this together… side by side, moving on to whatever came next. Instead, the passenger seat stayed empty, a quiet accusation I couldn’t look at for too long.

  The only piece of her I carried was the small picture frame of her and Jerry. The same one she used to stare at for hours beside her bed. It rested in my jacket pocket now, close to my chest. Not just a reminder of her, but of the weight she carried, the pain we recognized in each other, and the bond we forged in the joining of our brokenness.

  I could feel it with every mile as I drove back across town toward the Chasse house. The picture pressed against me like a pulse. I kept it close, separate from the other things I carried in my small bag of sentimental remnants. This one wasn’t ready to be tucked away yet.

  For now, it deserved its own place.

  It didn’t take long to reach Carter’s. The traffic blurred past me, present but meaningless, as if I were moving through it rather than with it. I drove on instinct alone, hands steady, mind hollow, forcing myself into a numb, mechanical calm to make it back in one piece. Feeling anything too sharply right now felt dangerous.

  I turned into the curved driveway and brought the car to a stop in the exact place I’d taken it from that morning, like I was trying to pretend the day had never happened. The tires crunched against the gravel, loud in the quiet, and before I’d even killed the engine, I saw movement in the house.

  The blinds shifted. It was Autumn. She had heard me coming before I ever pulled into the driveway and had watched through the blinds.

  When I stepped out of the car, the front door opened, and she emerged into the daylight. For a moment, she looked almost unreal; dark brown hair spilling loose down her back, catching the sun as it moved in soft waves around her shoulders. Her deep brown eyes locked onto me instantly, sharp and searching, framed by that familiar, barely-contained primal presence that clung to her like a second skin now.

  She walked toward me, slow at first.

  I tried to school my face into something neutral. Tried to lock everything away the way I had in the car. But grief has a way of leaking through the cracks, no matter how tightly you hold yourself together.

  She saw it. Not in my posture or my steps, but in my eyes.

  Her pace faltered… just for a heartbeat, but it was enough. Her lips parted slightly, then trembled as fear crept in, raw and instinctive. That primal aura flared for half a second, something alien and sharp stirring beneath her skin… and then it fractured.

  Understanding hit her before I ever spoke.

  Whatever thread bound her to Alex… bloodline, instinct, something deeper and stranger than love, it pulled tight and snapped all at once. Her eyes glossed over, disbelief giving way to certainty, and her knees nearly buckled beneath her as she took another step toward me.

  I barely had time to catch her before the words slipped out in a rush.

  “She’s gone…”

  That was all it took.

  Autumn crumpled into me like her bones had forgotten how to hold her upright. The strength drained out of her instantly, that predatory edge evaporating as the girl beneath it broke open in my arms. Her hands fisted in the fabric of my jacket, gripping like she was afraid the ground itself might give way next.

  The sound she made, half sob, half broken breath, cut deeper than I expected.

  I held her as tightly as I dared, one hand braced between her shoulders, the other tangled in her hair as her weight sagged fully against me. The aura that had surrounded her, that barely restrained hunger and power, collapsed inward until there was nothing left but grief and loss and a young woman realizing someone she needed was never coming back.

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  I could feel it in the way she shook. In the way her breath hitched against my chest. Maybe she’d hoped Alex would teach her how to live with the beast inside her. Maybe it was the bloodline calling to her creator that no longer existed… There would never be an answer in that bond. Whatever it was, it had been ripped away completely.

  So, I stayed there with her in the driveway, sunlight too bright and the world far too normal, holding her while she fell apart. I let her grieve without speaking, because I was trying to maintain my own emotions and the complicated truth of everything between all three of us.

  Later that evening, we gathered in the Chasse family kitchen, and the house settled into a subdued stillness that only comes after something irreversible has been spoken aloud. Eleanor stood near the counter with a glass of wine cradled loosely in her hand, more for comfort than taste. Carter leaned against the island with a beer, untouched for long stretches of time. Autumn sat at the table, hands folded in front of her, gaze distant—quietly mapping out a future that no longer looked the way she’d once imagined it. A future without the guide she’d been so sure would be there.

  For a while, no one spoke.

  Then Eleanor broke the silence, her voice gentle but tired, like someone who had lived through too many goodbyes.

  “You’re never truly ready for a loss,” she said. “Even when you know it’s coming.”

  Carter nodded, eyes fixed on the grain of the countertop. “I know I’ve already said it,” he added after a moment, “but I am sorry, Sam. Truly. Friends like that don’t come around often… and losing one…” He stopped, the rest of the sentence unnecessary.

  I nodded, my throat tight but steady enough to speak.

  “Part of me,” I paused, choosing honesty over composure, “the selfish part, wishes she were still here. That I could have had more time.” I swallowed and went on. “But another part of me knows how badly she wanted her curse to end… how bad she wanted to go home… back to Jerry. To the people she loved before all of this.” I stared down at the table as I spoke, grounding myself. “I know she’s happy now,” I finished quietly. “That doesn’t make it easy… but it matters.”

  Autumn shifted then, drawing all of our attention without meaning to. When she spoke, her voice was soft, but there was a steadiness there that hadn’t been present earlier.

  “If it’s true,” she said slowly, “and there really is something beyond this world… then I’m glad she’s there.” She took a breath, as if bracing herself. “I think I understand her better now, after I’ve had more time to sort through what I saw in her mind… through our bond. What she felt, the hunger, the weight of it… the loneliness.” Her fingers tightened together. “But I’ll have something she didn’t.”

  She looked around the room at Eleanor, at Carter, then finally at me. Eleanor and Carter were clearly getting more emotional as they heard their daughter speaking so openly and vulnerably about her new plight as this supernatural creature she had become… and all the baggage that came with it.

  “I’ll have you… all of you; as long as I can, before I ever have to think about being alone like that.” Her voice wavered, but she didn’t look away. “And even then… I’ll still have you, Sam.”

  The words landed heavier than anything else that night. The impact on Autumn's parents was beyond evident. Knowing their daughter would live far beyond them and feel so alone until she was ultimately brutally killed by something … it was a lot for parents to have to hear.

  I wasn’t sure Eleanor or Carter fully understood what was being exchanged in that moment. What it meant to acknowledge the long stretch of years ahead, the quiet inevitability of outliving everything human you’ve ever loved… it was massive. But Autumn understood, and so did I.

  For the first time since everything had changed, I felt something settle between us; an understanding forged not just by loss, but by recognition. She was seeing the shape of my world now. And I was seeing my own pain reflected clearly in her eyes.

  I met her gaze and nodded once. “And I’ll have you.”

  And for a moment, despite the grief, neither of us felt quite so alone as we had just moments before.

  Before anyone else could speak, Autumn straightened in her chair and pulled us onto a different track, her voice calm in a way that felt deliberate and anchoring.

  “But first,” she said, meeting my eyes without flinching, “you need to go home. Go get your family. Reunite with them while you still can… It’s been long enough.” She took a breath, steadying herself. “Show them who you are, and what you’ve become. It isn’t a bad thing… just different.” Her gaze softened. “And if you need help… You already know. You don’t have to do it alone. All you have to do is ask.”

  After that, the conversation unraveled slowly, gently, into things that had already been said in a dozen different ways: quiet assurances, close embraces, promises whispered low, like saying them too loudly might tempt fate. Eleanor cried the most, unashamed, maternal tears for someone she had come to think of as a son.

  At some point, I felt myself start to pull back. Not sharply or noticeably, but just enough to survive the night. I built the wall brick by brick, numbing myself the same way I used to when the monster inside me threatened to claw its way out. How I kept it caged when everything felt so raw and overwhelming. It was a familiar discipline. Don’t feel everything, and just focus on motion.

  Left, then right… left, then right.

  I could see it in their faces; Eleanor, Carter, Autumn, they all noticed the shift in my mentality. They knew I was closing myself off, as they had seen in the past. But no one called it out. No one tried to stop me from reverting in this way. I think they understood that I needed this distance to do what came next… to leave.

  My last words to Carter were simple. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “For everything.”

  He nodded once and clapped a hand on my shoulder… firm, grounding. It was enough.

  To Autumn, I lingered longer.

  “We’ll stay linked,” I told her. “Call me, text me, every day, if you need to. If something comes up, if you need advice, or someone to talk to, or just… help carrying the weight.” I held her gaze. “That’s what I’m here for. Don’t hesitate, seriously. Everything else will work out. I can be back faster than you think if you need me here in the city.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just stepped forward and pulled me into her, holding me tight as she pressed her face into the curve of my neck. I let myself stay there a moment longer than I probably should have if I didn’t want anything else to tempt me to stay.

  My final words were for Eleanor. She was smiling through tears, the kind of smile that holds more hope than certainty.

  “I’ll miss you,” I said. “You were something familiar I didn’t even realize I needed. When all of this is over… I’d really like for you and my mom to meet.”

  “I would love nothing more,” she said softly. “Take care of yourself, Sam. I think we’ll be seeing each other a lot sooner than you think.”

  She pulled me into one last hug, gentle, knowing, like she was sending one of her children out into the world with a truth I wasn’t ready to hear yet. I took it for optimism and let it go.

  When I finally stepped back, I set the car keys on the kitchen counter.

  “I won’t be needing the car,” I said. “I think I want to go on foot. Clear my head before I get there.” A faint, tired smirk tugged at my mouth. “Besides… fuck driving. I’ll hop a train and let the machine do the work. Traffic around here is bullshit!”

  They didn’t argue. They just nodded with light smirks.

  I walked to the door, stepped outside, and with one last look back at them… at the warmth I was leaving behind… I closed it. The moment they fell out of my sight, I felt that numbness wrap around my mind and close myself off to the doubts.

  Night had settled over the outskirts of Saint Louis by then. I’d spent the entire day talking, remembering, mourning. I was grateful for the darkness. It felt like permission. Like I could finally step into those shadows and disappear.

  The shadows wrapped around me like a familiar blanket as I moved south. I didn’t transform, not fully, but I wasn’t human anymore either. I became something in between. A blur, a presence; a wraith slipping through the world without truly touching it.

  The city smeared into streaks of light and dark as I ran, fueled by Primeval strength and the quiet, ever-present weight of Death’s blade tethered to my soul. I didn’t let myself think. I just moved.

  Left, then right… left, then right.

  I counted every step, even as fear tried to claw its way back in. I let the faces come… Mom, Dad, and Seth. My sisters and their husbands, my nieces and nephews.

  Then… the two faces that terrified me most of all. Vicky… her blonde hair, blue eyes, and that form that haunted my dreams every night in the first few years of isolation… my wife. Then… the little soul I only met once… the one who took those short, shallow breaths in her crib that night while a monster lurked in the shadows of her room. Little Caydee…

  Would Vicky even recognize me? What would she see when she looked at my face for the first time since that night? The night I left the bedroom to see what the noise was that woke her up… when I never came back?

  I let the doubt hit me. Let it gnaw and try to tear apart my resolve. I let every instinct scream at me to turn around and hide from them again. But… I kept running home. I was not going to let any fears or excuses wash over me and stop me from what I had finally decided to do.

  It was time to stop running from this. Time to face the people who deserved the truth more than anyone else.

  It was time to go home.