Chapter Text
The night was thick with fog, curling across the forest floor like the grasping hands of the dead. Trees loomed close around Katya’s castle, their black silhouettes clawing at the sky, brush winding so tightly that no human could pass without being torn apart. The very air itself seemed to hold its breath.
Perfect.
Katya liked the solitude. Her castle had been built for it. Designed to sit cloaked in silence, nestled deep in the woods where no one wandered without reason. She’d made sure of that. Every stone laid with whispered prayers by trembling builders, their final breath promised to her in exchange for completing her home.
And she’d taken that promise, of course. She always did.
Nothing got near her castle without her knowing. Her senses were too refined. Her hearing too sharp. Her nose—well, if someone so much as stepped on a twig within a mile, she could smell the shift in the air.
So when the scent of blood hit her. Fresh, coppery and raw, she didn’t mistake it for prey.
Something else was bleeding.
Then came the sound. A low, wounded whimper. Ragged and soft. Weak.
Katya set down her book, a single perfectly arched brow lifting. Her bare feet whispered across cold stone as she crossed to the heavy door, unlatched it, and let it creak open.
The fog rolled in thicker out here. Cold. Quiet. But the scent grew stronger.
Then she saw it.
A wolf. No, not just any wolf, a werewolf. Pale-furred, too pale. Almost white, with a hint of warmth like sunlit blonde, though it was caked in blood and dirt now. The creature limped forward slowly on trembling limbs, one leg dragging, its head bowed low. Blood dripped from a deep gash along its leg, soaking into the earth. Its breathing was ragged. Labored.
Katya’s lips curled into a frown. Werewolves didn’t come here. They knew better. She’d seen them from her balcony on full moons, howling and tearing into anything stupid enough to cross their path. Messy, violent, impulsive things.
But this one, this thing, was alone. Quiet. Hurt.
And beautiful, in a pitiful sort of way.
The wolf stopped just at the edge of the courtyard, as though unsure if it had the right to come closer. It whined once, a high, soft, almost broken whine. Not a threat. Not a challenge.
Katya didn’t move.
She should have killed it. Snapped its neck and left the corpse for the crows. That’s what any sane vampire would do.
But something held her still. That fur. That sound. Those wide, watery eyes staring at her through the fog.
The wolf collapsed.
“Shit,” Katya hissed under her breath, and before she could talk herself out of it, she crossed the courtyard in three long strides.
Up close, the creature reeked of blood and magic, but it didn’t snarl or flinch as she knelt beside it. It just lay there, trembling, breath shallow.
Katya studied it with a narrowed gaze. “What are you?” she murmured. “A spy? A mistake?”
The wolf blinked slowly.
“Or just unlucky.”
She hovered a hand over the creature’s back leg. Blood soaked through the thick white-blonde fur. A clean cut, deep. Claw marks.
Katya clicked her tongue. “Hmph. You’ve got some nerve crawling to a vampire’s doorstep like this. Desperate little thing.”
She stood.
And then, sighing as if annoyed with herself, she bent down and, with unnatural ease, scooped the limp wolf into her arms.
“You better not die on my floor,” she warned coldly. “I just had the rugs cleaned.”
The doors shut behind her, sealing the wolf inside.
The fog swallowed the courtyard whole.
—
Katya really couldn’t believe this was how her Friday night was shaping up to be.
She had fully intended to finish her book; the one she'd been putting off for nearly two weeks, the leather-bound volume dog-eared and comfortably creased from long hours spent by the fire. Maybe, if the mood struck, she’d even go for a midnight hunt through the dense Carpathian Forest, where blood was warm, thick, and just beginning to chill in the crisp spring air.
But no.
Instead, here she was. Kneeling on the stone floor of her drawing room, the flickering light of the fireplace painting golden ribbons across the black fur of the creature before her. Her hands, cold but practiced, moved gently through the thick tangles, wiping away crusted blood and dirt with a damp cloth. The wolf’s fur was matted along its leg, streaked with gore and streaks of ash. The uninjured leg trembled now and again, the muscles twitching involuntarily.
Katya sighed. Really, could God or whatever petulant celestial creature had decided her fate, give her a break? Immortality, bloodlust, cursed visions, and now this?
The castle was silent except for the quiet crackle of the hearth and the rhythmic, shallow breaths of the wolf. Outside, wind howled through the mountains, brushing against stone with the sighing moan of spirits long dead. The rest of the world felt impossibly far away, as though it had been tucked behind velvet curtains and forgotten.
Katya had no idea what to do. What did one do when a werewolf; bleeding, shivering, barely conscious, showed up at your doorstep?
She dipped the cloth into a basin of warm water and wrung it out with care. The scent of iron was sharp in the air, mingling with wet fur and smoke. The wolf had collapsed here in front of her fire not long ago, too injured to run and too proud to ask for help. It had just looked at her. Watched her with quiet, pained eyes as though pleading for mercy.
She hadn't turned it away.
Katya sat back on her heels, and for the first time in what felt like hours, let her eyes travel down to the wolf's face. Its massive head was resting in her lap now. She hadn’t even noticed when it moved, and large, expressive brown eyes gazed up at her. They were soft and strangely human, glimmering with something almost like gratitude. Or maybe amusement.
The tail gave a quiet thump against the aged velvet rug beneath them.
“You’re not a dog,” Katya muttered, trying to shake the sudden tightness in her chest. “Stop acting like one.”
Her voice came out sharper than she intended. She hadn’t meant to sound angry, just… distant. She was never good at talking, and certainly not at comforting. A flaw she’d once thought time might sand down into something tolerable, but even after two centuries, she still wasn’t there yet.
The wolf whimpered softly and stopped wagging its tail.
Katya cursed under her breath and pressed a length of bandage against the wolfs leg. The wolf flinched, but didn’t pull away. With hands steadier than she expected, Katya wrapped the cloth around its leg with care that bordered on tenderness. Far too gentle for a creature with fangs of her own.
When she was done, she reached out and brushed a stray clump of fur away from the wolf’s eye. “Are you…” she hesitated, feeling idiotic. “Hungry?”
The wolf’s tail wagged again, just once.
“I might have something…” she murmured. “Something you can actually eat.” She let out a small, humorless chuckle, barely a breath of sound. “Not blood, obviously. Not unless you’re into that sort of thing.”
The wolf snorted softly in what might’ve been amusement.
Katya stood slowly, brushing her hands off on the hem of her long coat. Her gaze drifted to the book on the end table beside the couch, left open to the chapter she’d just started when all of this had begun. With a sigh, she gave it a mournful glance.
“So much for finding out how that ends.”
She padded quietly across the grand room, her boots soft against the flagstones. The castle was too large for one person. Too full of ghosts, both real and imagined. The kitchen, cavernous and mostly unused, felt more like a chapel than a place to prepare food. Stone walls arched high overhead, the air cool and still, humming faintly with memories of banquets and feasts long since passed.
Katya didn’t keep much on hand. She never needed to eat, and even when she fed, it was... different. Her cabinets were barren, save for some cracked plates, a few bottles of long-fermented wine, and enough cobwebs to knit a funeral veil.
She ducked into the pantry, searching out anything remotely edible for a werewolf. Some dried meats, perhaps. Maybe an old bag of oats? A half-stale loaf of bread?
And then it hit her.
A scent so rich and strange it nearly knocked the air from her lungs.
It coiled through the air like perfume. Ripe cherries and warm vanilla, laced with the faintest hint of blood. Not just blood, human blood. Sweet and potent. Young. Alive. It smelled like summer solstice and birthday cake and sweat-damp skin under moonlight. It smelled… divine.
Katya froze.
Her fangs ached, sharp and sudden in her gums. They slid down against her will, the tips grazing her lower lip. Her body tensed, all instincts flaring at once like fire licking across dry parchment. She hadn’t fed in days. Two, maybe three. She couldn’t remember. Time slipped when you lived in a place like this.
She turned on her heel and strode back toward the living room, fingers digging into her palms.
And then she saw her.
The girl, no longer wolf, was curled up by the fire, swaddled in the blanket Katya had left draped over the back of the couch. She’d managed to pull it tightly around herself, but her bare shoulders peeked out from the top, delicate and dusted with freckles. A smear of dried blood ran down one bicep. Her hair: blonde, tangled, still damp from melting snow, hung around her face in loose curls.
She was sitting up now, looking down at the flames, blinking slowly as if waking from a dream. Katya could hear her heartbeat. Steady, slow, and so close.
Katya stopped just inside the doorway; one hand braced against the mantle. She didn’t breathe. Didn’t dare to breathe.
Because if she did, she might lose what little control she had left.
The scent was overwhelming now. The girl’s blood didn’t just smell good—it sang to her. Called her name in a voice soaked in honey and temptation. Every cell in Katya’s body screamed for her to move, to take, to bite.
Then the girl looked up.
“I—I’m so sorry,” she blurted, voice rushing forward in a flurry. “I didn’t know I’d shift back so soon, I didn’t mean to, I—uh—I’m Trixie, by the way, sorry—”
Katya only caught one word.
Trixie.
The rest blurred into a low hum, like static. All she could focus on was the curve of Trixie’s throat, the warmth radiating off her flushed skin, the pulse fluttering just beneath the surface like a whisper of wings.
She dug her nails into the stone of the fireplace mantle, trying to anchor herself. She would not lunge. She would not break her own rules. But God—if she got any closer—
Katya swallowed hard, her throat dry as bone.
“You smell…” she murmured, voice hoarse, “like sin.”
Trixie blinked, confused. “What?”
Katya turned away, fast, her fingers trembling. Her shoulders were rigid, her jaw clenched so tight it ached.
“I need a moment,” she said, her voice like ice and ash. “Don’t move. Don’t speak.”
And she fled the room, vanishing into the shadows of the corridor, her fangs digging into her bottom lip.
One second she was standing in the doorway, staring at the girl curled up like an offering on her rug and the next, she was gone, vanished like a shadow on the edge of candlelight. The door to her bedroom slammed shut with a thunderous crack , echoing through the stone halls of the castle like a gunshot.
She pressed her back to the heavy oak and slid down until her knees hit the floor.
She was shaking. A vampire. Shaking.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” she whispered to the dim, dusty chamber.
The firelight didn’t reach here. Her room was all cool stone and old velvet; shadows tucked in every corner like sleeping beasts. The only light came from the crack under the door, soft and golden and tainted with the unbearable scent of her .
Trixie.
She didn’t want to say her name. Not even in her head. Saying her name made her real. Made this real. The smell of blood, warm and floral, blooming through the corridors like jasmine in July. Like summer fruit just pulled from the tree. Skin bursting, sweet juice running down your chin.
Katya groaned and pressed her palms against her eyes. “Okay. Okay. Pull it together, you melodramatic crypt rat.”
She hadn’t fed in two days, but this was worse than hunger. This was a primal ache . Like something inside her had cracked open and the need was slithering out. She could taste Trixie on the air. Could feel the beat of her heart like it was inside Katya’s own chest, thumping wet and fragile.
God, her mouth was watering.
“No. No ,” she growled, dragging herself to her feet and pacing across the rug that had once belonged to some bishop or other, she’d killed him in Rome in 1482, she couldn’t remember why. Probably said something annoying.
“You’re not going to drink her,” Katya muttered, jabbing a finger at the cold stone wall like it was the universe itself. “Because she’s a werewolf, and we don’t drink werewolves , remember?”
There were rules. Ancient ones. Written in ash and blood on crumbling parchment buried deep beneath the ruins of the Citadel. Some of them made sense — like “don’t enter a witch’s house uninvited unless you want to wake up with your lungs turned to moss.” Others were more... ceremonial. More about balance. Harmony. Not starting the apocalypse.
And one of them — one of the really big ones — was:
Never feed on a werewolf.
Because it did things to you. Bad things. Mind-bending, soul-twisting things. She’d heard stories. Tales of vampires who couldn’t stop once they’d tasted it who lost their minds, tore through forests like rabid animals, howling and laughing and crying all at once.
And that was if you survived the taste.
Something about the blood of a werewolf was incompatible with a vampire’s body. Like oil and water. Like arsenic in wine. It would either make you more. More hungry, more monstrous, more wrong or it would kill you in minutes.
And Trixie… Trixie smelled like the worst kind of death. The kind you craved.
Katya slumped into the velvet armchair near the armoire and stared at the fireless hearth. Her arms dangled limply over the sides. Her fangs still hadn’t fully retracted, they poked out just barely, scraping the inside of her lower lip. She hated that. It always made her feel like a teenager again, freshly turned and constantly awkward, like some overgrown bat with a blood addiction.
“She’s not even that pretty,” Katya said aloud to the empty room.
A pause.
“She’s fine.”
Another pause.
“Okay, she’s stupidly pretty, but that’s beside the point.”
She kicked her heels up onto the arm of the chair and groaned, letting her head hang upside down over the other side. From this angle, the cracks in the stone ceiling looked like constellations. She used to trace them like stars when she couldn’t sleep, not that vampires really needed sleep, but the idea of it was romantic. Poetic. Like she was still human. Like she could dream .
Now all she could see behind her eyes was the image of Trixie’s bare shoulders, speckled with blood and freckles and glowing like moonlight. Her wild hair tangled around her like smoke. Her eyes full of apology and nerves and something else. Trust.
Katya groaned again and pulled a throw pillow over her face.
“Stupid, stupid girl,” she muttered into the velvet.
There was a scratching at her door. Just a soft little shuffle. The barest sound of someone hesitating.
Katya sat bolt upright, eyes wide.
No. No, no, no, she couldn’t do this. She wasn’t safe. She wasn’t stable. Her instincts were too close to the surface, and Trixie smelled like a nightmare dipped in honey.
“Go away,” she snapped.
A beat of silence.
Then a small voice, muffled but unmistakably hers: “I, uh… I found soup.”
Katya pinched the bridge of her nose.
Of course she had.
“There was a can in the pantry and I — well, I sort of got blood on your rug again, sorry about that, but I cleaned it! And I made the soup! I mean, I didn’t make it, it’s just canned, but I added a little pepper and —”
“GO. AWAY.”
Trixie went silent.
Katya didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Until, finally, she heard her footsteps retreat down the hall.
Katya let out the longest exhale of her undead life and flopped back onto the chair, boneless with tension and shame.
This was a disaster. A furry, freckled, soup-making disaster.
She was going to have to figure something out. A way to get the wolf-girl out of her house before she did something she’d regret for the next three centuries. But the thought of sending Trixie away made something tighten in her chest. Some old, rusted organ she thought she’d buried with her humanity.
She hadn’t felt like this since... God, she didn’t even remember. Maybe Paris. Maybe Constantinople. Maybe never.
She pressed her knuckles to her lips and whispered into the dark:
“I’m so, so screwed.”
—
Trixie didn’t think soup could start a war.
But the moment she’d tried to bring Katya a bowl of it. Steaming and perfectly un-poisoned, the vampire’s voice had exploded through the door with the force of a shotgun blast.
“GO AWAY.”
The words slammed into her chest like a brick. The door had rattled in its frame, the very air seeming to pull back from it. Wood groaned. Shadows shifted. For a second, just a second, the hallway felt like it might twist into something else entirely. Something darker, hungrier.
Trixie had jolted backward, nearly sloshing hot soup on her bare skin. Her heartbeat was a panicked drum, rapid and rabbit-fast, and she had to remind herself to breathe.
She’d offered her soup. Not poison. Not a stake. Not garlic.
She didn’t know what had gotten into Katya.
When Trixie had been in her wolf form, the vampire hadn’t acted like this. Sure, there had been a wary kind of distance — Katya clearly wasn’t used to guests, especially furry ones — but she’d been... gentle. Or at least, not feral.
Not like this.
Not like she was now, hidden behind a locked door, muttering in broken tongues and sounding like she was about to claw through the walls.
Trixie wrapped herself tighter in the blanket as she curled up on the plush, old-fashioned couch in the sitting room. Every cushion smelled faintly of wood smoke and something older. Something that reminded her of moonless nights and cold stone. The blanket was thick but did nothing to warm her. It felt like draping a fancy rug over a corpse.
She sat in silence and ate the soup she’d made for two.
It was decent for soup from a can, but it was warm, and after everything she’d gone through tonight, the hunt, the betrayal, the arrows, the transformation, the running. It was enough.
The soup filled her stomach, but not the hollow feeling creeping into her chest.
Why won’t she come out? she wondered, slurping at the broth like it might give her answers. She cared before. She bandaged my leg. She let me sleep here. So why not now?
Maybe it was because she stank. She probably did, she hadn’t looked in a mirror, but she could feel the grime, the dirt and dried blood crusted in her hair and under her fingernails. Her wolf form had taken most of the hit, but she knew she hadn’t exactly emerged from the forest looking like a perfume ad.
Still.
She thought Katya could stomach a little dirt.
Maybe Katya just didn’t like her.
The idea felt... wrong. Unlikely. Impossible.
Trixie was likable. That was sort of her whole thing. She was the bubbly one. The flirty one. The little firecracker with a sharp tongue and a smile like she didn’t know how badly the world could hurt her.
Everyone liked her.
Well, almost everyone.
Her stomach turned a little as she thought about the pack. The way they'd looked at her when she’d gotten too close to the mark on the last hunt. Like she was in the way. Like she was a liability. Like she was nothing.
She could’ve taken that guy. She could’ve. He wasn’t even that big.
Her claws were sharp enough. Her teeth were quick. Just because she was smaller didn’t mean she was useless. But they’d turned on her like she was.
Like she always would be.
Trixie stared into the bottom of her empty bowl and felt her throat close up.
If she hadn’t gone tonight, maybe she’d still be home. Safe in her little bed. Maybe she’d be sleeping in curled-up bliss, tail twitching, belly full from a plastic container of supermarket beef liver.
She liked nights like that. Quiet. Domestic. Stupid, maybe, but peaceful.
Her tail would wag sometimes for no reason at all. Just because she was happy. Just because she was warm.
None of the other wolves wagged their tails. They weren’t supposed to. It wasn’t cool.
But it felt good. Like being human in a different way.
She missed it already.
She sighed and stood, holding the blanket closed around her like a makeshift robe. The bowl in her hands was empty, her stomach full, but her nerves were still on edge. She shuffled toward the kitchen, taking a wrong turn down a hallway of closed doors before finally finding it. She rinsed the bowl, unsure if vampires even used dishes, but it felt like the polite thing to do.
Besides, it was something to do that wasn’t standing in front of Katya’s door, shaking like a leaf and hoping not to get shouted at again.
Still, the blanket was slipping. Every step was a risk. She couldn't keep doing this whole ghost-of-Christmas-past look. She needed clothes.
And Katya had to have something. Anything.
But the memory of that voice made her skin crawl. Something about it had been off. Like it didn’t belong in a human throat. Trixie was no stranger to supernatural rage, but this… this had sounded ancient. Something that could unmake her.
She swallowed thickly and made her way back to Katya’s bedroom. The hallway was dimmer now, the candles flickering low and the shadows taller. The door stood at the end like a warning sign. Her fingers twitched.
She didn’t want to knock.
She did anyway.
Tap-tap.
"Um… Katya?" she asked softly, trying to sound casual. “Sorry to bother you again, I just—uh. I need some clothes. Anything, really. Something to cover up.”
There was silence at first.
Then movement. Footsteps, slow and heavy. A creak. And then—
Mumbling.
Katya was talking to herself. No, arguing with herself. At first in English, then Russian, then something else altogether. A language with too many consonants and a sound like wet stone scraping metal. Trixie blinked.
Was she summoning something? Was she losing her mind?
Are all vampires this unhinged? Trixie wondered, pressing her ear to the door. Katya sounded like someone standing on the edge of a cliff, trying to talk herself out of jumping.
The muttering went on for five minutes. Trixie stood there awkwardly the whole time, hugging the blanket like it might protect her from whatever weird vampiric breakdown was happening inside.
And then—finally—the door cracked open.
Just a sliver.
A pale hand reached through the gap and thrust something soft and pink into Trixie’s arms.
"Here. Keep it," Katya snapped, voice tight, and the door slammed shut again before Trixie could reply.
Trixie looked down at the garment in her hands.
A pink silk dressing gown.
Silk.
Pink.
She blinked. Then grinned.
"The fact that you own this is gonna keep me alive for another week," she whispered, chuckling to herself.
She padded off down the hallway, the dressing gown clutched against her chest.
Behind the door, Katya leaned against it with her head in her hands, eyes squeezed shut. Her pulse, if she’d had one, would’ve been racing. She could still smell Trixie on her fingers. The scent of fur and blood and sweetness and heat.
God.
She was doomed.
And she had no one to blame but herself.
—
Trixie couldn’t sleep.
She tried. Really, she did. The couch was soft enough, if a little dusty, and the dressing gown was warm despite being a bit too long in the sleeves. She’d even curled up with the soup bowl on the little end table like a weird security blanket. But every time her eyes started to close, her mind drifted back to the sound of Katya’s voice. That voice, when she’d screamed.
It had rattled more than just the door. It had rattled Trixie. Deep down. All the way to the bone.
And it made no sense.
Katya had been… well, not kind, but she had saved her life. She’d cared for her, if roughly. But then she’d locked herself away like Trixie was contagious. Or dangerous. Or…
Was it really her scent that had set Katya off?
That thought stayed with her. A werewolf’s scent was strong. Musky, wild. But not bad. Not unless she’d done something wrong. Maybe she had. Maybe just being here was wrong.
So, instead of sleeping, she got up.
The castle was silent, the only sound the soft creaking of old wood beams shifting in the cold. Trixie stood barefoot on the stone floor for a moment, trying to decide if this was a good idea.
Then again, she’d already been yelled at. Might as well make the most of it.
She padded down the hall.
Every door was old, carved with ornate designs. Roses, moons, vines, something that looked like a screaming face on one of them. She didn’t go in that one.
The first room she opened was filled with books. Floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with dusty tomes and strange symbols on the spines. One was chained shut with iron locks. Trixie stepped back from that one immediately. The air in there smelled old. Not just old like paper, but old like forgotten memories. Like something that had slept in those pages and didn’t want to be woken up.
She kept moving.
Another room was painted all white, or had once been white. Now the walls were faded cream, and everything inside was covered in sheets. Trixie lifted one out of curiosity and found a beautiful harp beneath it. The strings had snapped and curled like dead hair. She didn’t touch anything else.
The third room she opened made her stop short.
It smelled like blood.
Not fresh, not quite, but coppery and cloying, metallic in the back of her throat. Her nose wrinkled before she even stepped in. The door creaked a little, and her hand trembled.
Inside, she could barely make out the shapes of old surgical tables. Shackles. Something that looked like a chair but with straps and dried stains. Trixie’s heart jumped into her throat.
She shut the door quietly and walked faster.
Eventually, she found a room that was different.
Smaller.
Intimate.
There was a desk by the window and sketches pinned up on the walls, hundreds of them. Trixie’s hand reached out before she even realized it. Most were in charcoal, some in ink. People, mostly. Women. All kinds of expressions: serene, angry, wild, weeping.
One of the drawings looked eerily like her.
That stopped her cold.
The woman in the sketch had her nose, her jawline. But the eyes were wide, glassy. Like she was caught mid-scream.
Trixie took a step back.
On the desk were sketchbooks, bound in leather. She flipped one open.
More faces. Some of them half-finished, others frantic and dark, the lines carved deep like the pencil had been pressed down with fury.
Who were these people? Victims? Friends? Lovers?
The room felt sad, somehow. And lonely. But it was also the first place in the castle that felt alive. Like someone real had lived in it.
Her curiosity tugged her further.
Eventually, she reached a larger bedroom.
She knew instantly it was Katya’s.
It had that crisp perfume lingering in the air, rose and smoke and something sharp, like ozone before a storm. The bed was large, neatly made. Black sheets. The fireplace glowed low in the corner.
Trixie hesitated on the threshold.
Then stepped in.
She just wanted to look, that was all. Not to snoop. Not really.
She wandered around slowly, brushing her fingers across the vanity, the spine of a book left open on the nightstand, some old Russian novel, written in a script she couldn’t read.
She peeked into the wardrobe. Velvet. Lace. Silks. Things that would never fit her. Not just in size, but in spirit. They were garments for someone cold, and elegant, and powerful.
Trixie touched the sleeve of a sheer black blouse and smiled faintly.
Then she froze.
The front door slammed.
Katya stood in the castle entryway, blood cooling on her lips, rage already boiling under her skin.
She felt it before she even saw it. The wrongness. The scent of her up the stairs, seeping through her home like smoke.
She moved fast. No hesitation. Just fury.
When she reached her bedroom, she found the door open.
And Trixie.
Standing.
Right in the middle of it.
Touching her clothes.
Looking around like she belonged.
Katya didn’t see red, she became it.
“What the HELL do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.
Trixie jumped back, visibly terrified. “I-I— I was just looking around! I didn’t mean to— I couldn’t sleep—”
“You came in here?” Katya’s voice dropped. Low. Trembling. She wasn’t even yelling, not yet, and that was worse. “This room is mine. This is not a hotel, mutt. You don’t wander around and sniff things and—” Her breath hitched. “You touched my clothes.”
“I didn’t sniff anything—!” Trixie said, offended more than anything.
Katya advanced a step.
Trixie backed up.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?” Katya hissed, hands clenched so tight her knuckles were white. “Do you want me to lose control? Is that it? Are you that stupid?”
“No— I just— I thought we were okay!”
“We are not okay.” Katya’s voice broke.
Trixie looked at her, wide-eyed, breathing hard.
And for a moment, just a moment, Katya wanted to kiss her just to shut her up.
Instead, she turned sharply, stalking toward the window.
“If you want to stay alive,” she said, voice flat, trembling with restraint, “you stay out of this room. You stay away from me. You do not touch me. You do not smell like me. You do not even think about me. Understood?”
Trixie didn’t speak.
Katya didn’t turn around.
The silence between them was loud.
Then, quietly, Trixie stepped out.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Katya stared out the window, her throat burning, her fangs aching again despite the kill.
This wasn’t going to end well.
Not at all.
—
Katya did not dream.
She hadn’t in centuries.
Not in the way mortals did. No meandering nonsense stitched together from thoughts and memories. No muddled symbols. No forgotten fragments at dawn.
When Katya dreamed, she saw.
It struck her not long after Trixie left the room. She’d dropped into the velvet chair by the window, rage crackling off her like static. But as she stared out at the moonlit trees, her breath hitched—
And her eyes rolled back.
The vision was sharp. Painfully sharp.
The forest.
The air reeked of iron and pine, thick with winter mist curling through the trees like ghostly fingers.
Trixie was running.
Not the way she had before, injured and scared and desperate, but trying. Really trying. Her paws kicked up dirt, her breaths came fast and panicked, and behind her—
They were gaining.
The pack.
Shadows leapt between the trees. Growls. Snarls. Glinting teeth in the dark. They weren’t chasing her like prey.
They were hunting her like a traitor.
Katya felt it in her chest, a visceral dread, alien and choking. She tried to move, to stop it, to call out—
But she wasn’t there. Not really.
A voice, the voice of the alpha, boomed across the trees:
“She brought the bloodsucker into our woods. She’s not one of us.”
Trixie skidded, stumbled.
A claw slashed her side.
She yelped, a sharp, canine cry that echoed through the forest.
She shifted mid-sprint, fur pulling back into skin, bones cracking, a horrible shift that left her naked and gasping in the cold. She staggered, her eyes wide—
And that’s when the first set of teeth sank into her throat.
Katya screamed.
Not aloud.
Not in the waking world.
But in that cold, cruel place inside the vision, she screamed so hard her throat tore.
Blood gushed.
Trixie thrashed weakly.
One of them, a larger wolf, grabbed her by the leg and ripped.
There was so much blood.
Trixie’s eyes were still open when she hit the ground.
Mouth parted like she had one last thing to say.
Katya snapped upright, gasping.
The room was cold, but she was sweating. Her hands shook. Her fangs were out, slicing her lower lip.
It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.
She told herself that over and over, but her body felt it.
Her chest ached like she’d watched someone she loved die.
And that’s what terrified her the most.
She didn’t love Trixie.
She didn’t even like her. Not really.
The girl was loud and nosy and had no sense of self-preservation. She was all golden hair and bright eyes and a tail that wagged too easily.
Katya didn’t want her here.
She’d tried to be cruel. She’d tried to push her away.
But that vision—
That vision told her something she didn’t want to know.
If Trixie left… she would die.
Katya stood slowly, heart pounding like a wardrum.
“No,” she whispered aloud, throat dry. “No, I won’t let that happen.”
She didn’t understand the why. Why it mattered. Why this particular wolf had burrowed under her skin like silver.
But she didn’t need to.
Trixie couldn’t leave.
Not now.
Not ever.
Katya crossed the room, yanked the wardrobe open, and tossed a velvet cloak over her shoulders. She didn’t bother with gloves. Her hands were still shaking.
She left the room.
She had someone to find.
And this time?
She wasn’t going to yell.
She was going to make her stay.
Even if she had to chain her to the goddamn castle walls.
The castle was silent.
The kind of silence that seemed too still, heavy with waiting.
Katya padded barefoot down the corridor, the velvet cloak dragging along the stones behind her. Moonlight poured through the high windows, cutting the darkness into sharp slats of silver and shadow. Every step she took was careful, cautious. Not out of fear. No, not fear. Vampires didn’t fear the dark.
But she dreaded what she might find.
Trixie had wandered somewhere deep into the western wing, a part of the castle Katya rarely ventured into herself. It was older, stranger. The architecture turned in on itself in that wing, like it had been half-dreamed by the first generation who built it.
Some doors didn’t open.
Some opened too easily.
Katya knew where to look, though. Something tugged at her bones, a thread, a whisper. The same cold magic that had shown her the vision.
And it led her to a narrow corridor.
A familiar smell drifted to her, not blood, not wolf, but something... wet.
Salt.
Tears.
Katya paused outside a partially cracked door, her hand hovering over the carved wood. She didn’t need to knock. She already knew who was inside.
She pushed it open gently.
The room was one of the unused studies, all faded rugs and dust-covered tomes, long-abandoned oil lamps and moth-eaten tapestries. But in the middle of it all, curled up beneath the window in a heap of crumpled silk and bone-pale moonlight—
Was Trixie.
Her arms were wrapped tight around her knees. The pink dressing gown dwarfed her. Blonde hair spilled over her shoulders in a tangled mess. Her face was blotchy and red, mascara smudged down her cheeks like warpaint.
She didn’t notice Katya at first.
She was sobbing so quietly it sounded like a haunted song.
It cut something open in Katya’s chest. Something she didn’t know was still capable of bleeding.
She stepped in.
The floor creaked.
Trixie jumped violently, her head snapping up, her whole-body tense, wild eyes gleaming in the dark.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted before Katya could even say a word. “I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to come in here. I got lost, and I was just— I’ll go, I’ll—”
“Trixie.”
Her voice was quiet. Too quiet. Like she was afraid that if she spoke too loud, the girl might bolt.
Trixie stopped rambling.
Katya took a few slow steps forward, careful not to loom, careful to keep her posture soft, gentle. As gentle as something like her could be.
She crouched a few feet away, cloak pooling around her.
“I’m not angry.”
Trixie’s lip trembled. “You yelled at me before.”
“I know.”
Silence again. Trixie turned her face away, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked so small. Smaller than she had even in wolf form.
Katya tilted her head.
She wanted to say something, anything, that could ease the sharpness in the air between them. But her tongue was too old, too brittle with pride.
So she said what mattered most.
“I had a vision.”
Trixie blinked at her. “What?”
Katya sat down fully now, back against the opposite wall, so they were eye-level. She folded her hands in her lap.
“I don’t dream,” she began, slowly. “But sometimes… sometimes things show themselves to me. Not the way I want them to. Not when I choose. And earlier, when you were wandering, I saw something.”
Trixie leaned forward just a little. She wasn’t crying anymore. Her breathing was still shaky, but she was listening.
“I saw your pack,” Katya continued. “Chasing you. You shifted back. You were hurt. They…” Her voice caught, just slightly. “They tore you apart. And you died.”
The last word hung between them like a noose.
Trixie stared.
Katya waited for her to laugh, to scoff, to say something stupid like “Well, that won’t happen, don’t worry.”
But she didn’t.
She just whispered: “That sounds about right.”
And the sorrow in her voice made Katya’s gut twist.
“I don’t know why I saw it,” Katya said. “But I think… I think it was real. Not just some nightmare. A warning. And that means I can’t let you leave.”
Trixie blinked slowly. “You’re… keeping me here?”
Katya flinched. “Not like a prisoner. I just—” she hesitated. “I think you’re safest here. Even if you hate me. Even if I hate you.”
“You hate me?”
Katya opened her mouth.
Closed it.
She looked at Trixie then. Really looked at her. Eyes too big for her face. Skin bruised and bandaged and soft in places that shouldn’t have survived. Fragile, loud, infuriating girl.
“No,” Katya said quietly. “I don’t.”
Trixie laughed but it was a sad little noise. “That’s a shame. I think you’d be fun to hate.”
Katya gave her a faint smile. “You’re a terrible houseguest.”
“You’re a terrifying hostess.”
They looked at each other.
Then to Katya’s complete horror, Trixie crawled over on her hands and knees, slow and hesitant, and settled beside her.
She didn’t touch her.
She just sat there. Close. Warm.
Real.
“You really saw me die?” she whispered.
Katya nodded. “Yes.”
Trixie bit her lip, staring down at her lap.
“…Thank you for telling me.”
Katya didn’t know what to say. Her body ached with restraint, she could still smell her. Could still hear her heartbeat if she focused. And yet… the hunger had dulled, if only just a little.
For the first time, something else filled the space where her bloodlust lived.
Something quieter.
Something not unlike… belonging.
Katya closed her eyes.
She wasn’t sure what came next.
But for now?
She didn’t want Trixie to leave her side.