Page 260 of Shifting Hearts 1
“Stop it! Just stop it!” Cass screamed, frantic now as if the scene had slipped beyond her control.
Morgan wiped her mouth and lifted her head, eyes locking on Cassandra. “Fight this. Please.”
“I don’t want to fight anymore. Get out!” Morgan spat, voice ragged.
Blood sprang at the corners of Cassandra’s eyes. “I’m not leaving you, Blaze.”
“I said, leave!” Morgan hissed. Cassandra backed away, and for the first time in a long string of horrors she obeyed.
That feeding became the pattern. Whenever I thought Morgan would petrify for good, Cass returned with more blood and more force. Days bled into weeks. Time lost its edges.
Once, I watched Matt and Raymond tinkering outside with a fire gun; something about their movements finally made sense. Blaze, who had always been strong until the night Collin “killed” her, was gone. What remained was Cass’s maintenance, keeping a corpse of a woman alive for the coven’s sake.
I stood and moved to the foot of Morgan’s bed. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling like someone reading a page she couldn’t remember.
“This is pathetic,” I said, because silence was unbearable and words felt like ballast. I didn’t expect an answer.
Tears burned behind my eyes anyway. “I didn’t think it would come to this. I never imagined you would lose yourself like this.” My voice cracked on the confession.
“I know where you belong,” I told her. “And you do too, you just refuse to remember. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to remember either. If you still want out, I’d do it. Maybe we were never meant to be, Morgan. Maybe it wasn’t fate; maybe it was power. I got that wrong. I’m strong enough now to let you go.”
A part of me knew none of this was entirely her fault, Cass’s gift bent her, and Morgan never asked for any of it. But the darkness she’d become that was hers.
I wiped my cheek. I didn’t know why I still showed feeling. I told myself I didn’t love her anymore. I wasn’t sure I believed it.
Cassandra tried everything.When Morgan finally refused the livestock and lay curled in silence, Cass brought her begging instead, pleading like a lover and ruler rolled into one. I never imagined this stage for her: not the surrender, not the want to die. Still, I kept talking. Kept dragging her through the filth she’d made of her life, telling her to stand like a man and own it. It was the territory we all walked, sin and survival. We’d all done ugly things; none of us, though, had burned through people the way she had. My cup took longer to crack than hers, but even if her reign was brief, the damage was private and total. I had no one in my pack to share it with.
When words failed, Cassandra resorted to fast food, bags of blood. Morgan sipped them like charity. The portion barely sustained her; her stomach cramped, she doubled over, a small animal with a broken ribcage.
“This is what happens when you don’t feed,” Cass snapped. “You need regular blood. You can’t let months slip by.”
Months. How long had we been trapped in that room? How long had this gone on?
Morgan had told me, in the drugged, half-remembered hours, that she didn’t know how much time had passed, that Cassandra had refused to let her die. When Cass left the chamber, I stayed. I kept talking, making her relive every ugly thing she’d done, whispering the names of her sins until the words might break something loose. If she could hear me, really hear me, then maybe this pathetic half-life could finally end.
TWELVE
JASON
Icouldn’t believe how long she’d meant when she said her cup had shattered. It stretched on like years.
Eventually Cassandra gave up barging in herself; others took over the duty of keeping Morgan fed. She was finished, hollowed out in a way Annie and I never were, no matter what we’d done. Maybe her human life had been too gentle. Maybe her darkness had been that much worse.
New faces drifted through the chambers, strangers who lingered to watch the ruin. Time slid past in a blur; I knew years were stacking up, but not how many.
Once a newcomer actually taunted her, slapped her across the face. Morgan did nothing. I watched, searching for the woman I’d loved during those lockdown nights, but all that answered back in my head was ash and fire.
It was a kind of sorrow that rotted from the inside, the awful truth that we couldn’t fix one another, not this time.
A soft knock, and Steven stepped inside. I didn’t move from the sill, habit kept me there, an observer on the edge of everything.
“Blaze, what are you doing to yourself?” he asked, though his eyes went first to her.
“Steven.” Natasha’s voice scraped from disuse. “Don’t. I can’t take another lecture.”
He sighed. “So the rumors are true. You don’t want to exist anymore.”
Silence hung between them until she asked, small and hollow, “Why did I want to become a vampire?”
