The moon hung above the shattered glass of the greenhouse dome like a spotlight that refused to cut to commercial. It was bright, heavy, and judgmental.

  I sat on the cold earth, knees pulled to my chest, wrapped in a leather jacket that smelled of ozone, mint, and the boy sitting next to me. The dirt beneath me was damp, seeping through my jeans, grounding me in a way the hover-pads at practice never could.

  My body felt loose, unstrung. The post-shift ache was there—a dull throb in my joints, a tenderness in my fingertips where the claws had torn through—but it was quiet. The wolf was sated, curled up in the back of my mind, purring like a diesel engine in neutral.

  Danny sat beside me, leaning back on his hands, staring up at the silver disc in the sky. He looked… wrecked. But in a good way. His hair was a mess, his shirt was rumpled from where I’d grabbed him, and his lips were swollen.

  “So,” I rasped. My voice was still recovering, scratching against my throat. “You kissed the dog. I think there are laws against that.”

  Danny huffed a laugh, not looking away from the moon. “It’s not illegal when I kissed your human lips. But you looked like you needed an anchor.”

  “I needed a tranquilizer,” I muttered, burying my nose in the collar of his jacket. “But you worked in a pinch.”

  He turned to me then. The moon washed him out. He looked like a statue. Cold. Still. His eyes were dark pools. His smile died. The air got heavy.

  “Nikki,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have to show you something.”

  My stomach tightened. The wolf opened one yellow eye in my mind. Threat?

  “Show me what?” I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm front and center. “If it’s a card trick, I’m going to be disappointed. I hate magic.”

  He didn't smile. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, folding pocket knife. It was utilitarian, black steel, nothing fancy.

  I stiffened. Knife. Weapon.

  “Danny?” I uncurled my legs slightly, planting my bare feet. Ready to move. Ready to fight.

  He saw the tension. He didn't put the knife away. Instead, he held his left hand out, palm up, bathed in the silver light.

  “Watch,” he said.

  Before I could stop him, before I could even shout, he drew the blade across his palm.

  He sliced his palm. A red line welled up.

  The scent hit me a split second later.

  Copper. Salt. Iron.

  It slammed into my olfactory centers with the force of a physical blow. My mouth watered. My pupils blew wide. The wolf scrambled to its feet, sniffing the air, confused.

  Prey? No. Pack.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed, reaching for his hand to stop the bleeding. “Are you crazy? We’re in a greenhouse filled with rusty metal, do you want tetanus?”

  “Watch,” he repeated. His voice was strained, tight.

  I looked.

  I watched the blood. It didn't drip. It didn't run down his wrist.

  It stopped.

  The blood stopped. The skin zipped shut like a zipper. Smooth. Pale. Gone. It was like watching a video in reverse.

  Completely gone.

  Not even a scar. Just smooth, pale skin.

  I stared at his palm, then at his face. My brain was trying to process the physics of what I just saw and coming up with an error message.

  “That’s… handy,” I whispered. “You save a fortune on Band-Aids.”

  Danny wiped the residual blood on his jeans, closing the knife with a sharp click.

  “I’m not human, Nikki.”

  I looked at him. Really looked at him. The pale skin. The aversion to sunlight. The strength that could stop a lunch tray moving at terminal velocity. The way he smelled—cold, like something that lived in the dark.

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said. My breath hitched. The pieces clicked. The cold skin. The speed.

  “I’m a Dhampir,” he said. The word hung in the damp air. “Half-vampire.”

  I scooted back an inch. Just an inch. It was instinct.

  “Half?” I asked.

  “My father is human,” Danny said, his voice devoid of emotion. “My mother was… Something else.”

  “Something else?”

  “She died. Birth isn't… gentle… when she was sick…”

  He looked down at his hands, flexing the fingers that had just healed themselves.

  “I have the strength,” he said quietly. “I have the speed. I heal fast. But I don’t burn in the sun—I just get sick. Weak. And I have the Thirst.”

  My breath hitched. “You drink blood?”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “I need it,” he corrected. “Synthetics work. Usually. But the hunger… it’s always there. Like a noise in the background that never stops.”

  I thought about the wolf. The rage. The constant scratching needs to hunt, to run, to tear.

  “I know the noise,” I whispered.

  He looked up, surprised.

  “The wolf,” I explained, tapping my temple. “It’s always hungry too. Always angry. It wants to break things. It wants to hurt people.”

  “But you don’t,” he said.

  “I try not to.”

  “Me too.”

  We stared at each other. Two monsters sitting in the dirt, hiding from a city that would dissect us both if it knew the truth.

  “So,” I said, trying to break the tension. “You’re Blade, basically. But with better fashion sense and less leather.”

  He cracked a smile. “I wish I was Blade. Blade doesn't have homework.”

  “True.” I picked at a blade of grass. “Your dad. Is he… around?”

  Danny’s expression darkened. The shadows seemed to stretch toward him, welcoming him back.

  “He’s around,” Danny said grimly. “He works for a pharmaceutical company called Blue Heart. Big one. He’s a geneticist.”

  I took a quiet sigh. Thank god it isn't Pandora Corp.

  “Does he know?” I asked. “About… us? About me?”

  “He knows I’m here,” Danny said. “He watches me. He’s obsessed with potential. With… evolution. He thinks I’m a science experiment, not a son.”

  “And your mom?”

  “I never knew her,” he said, looking at the moon again. “I think… I think she was sick. Before me. My father told me she had a mutation. A blood disorder. It forced her to drink blood even before she met him. He said he doesn't like to call her a vampire. Maybe she was, or she was an unfortunate mutant.”

  He laughed bitterly. “That’s why I called myself a Dhampir. Half freak because of his dead mother.”

  “I’m so sorry, Danny,” I said softly.

  “It is what it is. I can't escape from who I am, and my father is a control freak.”

  He turned to me, his eyes searching mine.

  “That’s why I have the scrambler,” he said, tapping the device on his belt. “The Daddy Blocker.”

  “To hide from him?”

  “To breathe,” he said. “He tracks me. His security teams track me. If I don’t scramble the signal, he knows where I am every second of the day. He knows my heart rate. He knows my caloric intake. I’m not a person to him, Nikki. I’m a pet who needs to be watched.”

  So wrong. He was just a kid trying to breathe.

  “The static,” I realized. “The electric shocks. The way you fried Handy.”

  “The scrambler puts out a high-frequency electromagnetic pulse,” Danny explained. “It scrambles digital signals. GPS, cameras, audio bugs. It keeps his eyes off me.”

  “And it creates a static field,” I added. “Which is why we spark when we touch.”

  “Yeah.” He looked guilty. “I should have told you. I didn’t know it could harm your… watch.”

  I snorted. “My watch is an illegal military-grade AI named Handy. And you knocked him out cold for four hours.”

  Danny’s eyes widened. “Wait. You have an AI in your watch?”

  “Wrist unit. I also implanted a bone conduction so he can whisper inside my head. He’s annoying, sarcastic, and currently recording this conversation for posterity.”

  “I am not,” Handy chimed in, his voice suddenly buzzing in my ear. “I am monitoring threat levels. And for the record, the ‘Thirst’ is a highly problematic biological variable. I advise keeping your jugular vein covered.”

  Shut up, Handy, I thought.

  “He says hi,” I told Danny.

  Danny shook his head, a look of wonder crossing his face. “You’re full of surprises, Nikki Nova.”

  “I’m a werewolf cheerleader with a hacker AI,” I said. “Werewolf cheerleader. Vampire hacker. We sound like a bad comic book.”

  “You’re amazing,” he said.

  The word hung there.

  He wasn't looking at me like a predator. He wasn't looking at me like a science experiment. He was looking at me like I was the only real thing in a world of holograms.

  “You’re an outcast,” I said quietly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too.”

  I reached out. I didn't care about the static. I didn't care about the shock.

  I took his hand.

  Zap.

  A small spark, blue and sharp, jumped between our fingers. It stung, but neither of us pulled away. We let the current run through us, a physical connection bridging the gap between Dhampir and Werewolf.

  “We’re monsters,” I whispered.

  “Maybe,” Danny said, squeezing my hand. His skin was cool, healing, and strong. “But we’re hiding in the human world together.”

  “Pack,” the wolf whispered in my head.

  And for once, I didn't argue.

  The shared trauma was a heavy blanket, but under it, we were warm. We understood hunger. We understood the fear of the mirror. We understood what it meant to be built for violence and trying desperately to be gentle.

  Danny leaned in.

  The moonlight caught the sharp angle of his cheekbone, the darkness of his lashes. The smell of mint and iron filled my senses, drowning out the rot of the greenhouse.

  “Can I?” he whispered.

  He wasn't asking for permission to take it. He was asking for permission to join.

  I nodded.

  He kissed me.

  It wasn't like the first kiss—the desperate, adrenaline-fueled crash. It wasn't gentle. It was hungry. He tasted like wintergreen and iron.

  I leaned into him, my hand coming up to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck. The leather jacket creaked as he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against his chest.

  I could hear his heart.

  Thump… thump… thump.

  Slow. Powerful. Not human, but alive.

  For a moment, the static in my head cleared. The fear of Pandora, the weight of the Black Box, the looming threat of the full moon—it all faded.

  There was just us. Two glitches in the system, holding on to each other in the dark.

  We broke apart, breathless.

  Danny rested his forehead against mine.

  “We should go,” he murmured. “Before the sun comes up. I… I can’t be out when it rises.”

  “Yeah,” I said, though I didn't want to move. “And I have to get back before my parents realize their daughter is missing and send drones.”

  “Or the cheer squad.”

  “The squad is scarier.”

  We stood up, brushing the dirt from our clothes. Danny picked up his helmet, spinning it in his hands.

  “Nikki,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “My father… he doesn’t trust anyone near his son. If he finds out about you…”

  “He won’t,” I said fiercely. “We have the scrambler. We have Handy. We have… whatever this is.”

  “We have trouble,” Danny corrected with a wry smile.

  “We handle trouble.”

  He laughed, and the sound chased the last of the shadows from the greenhouse.

  We walked back to the bike in silence. The city lights were a distant halo on the horizon, promising noise and chaos and danger.

  But as I climbed onto the bike behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my chest against the cool leather, I didn't feel afraid.

  I felt armed.

  I had a secret weapon now. A boy with void eyes and a healing factor. A partner.

  The engine roared to life, a high-pitched whine that scattered the silence.

  “Ready?” Danny shouted over the noise.

  “Drive,” I ordered.

  We shot off into the night, leaving the greenhouse and the ghosts behind, racing toward the neon skyline.

  Two monsters, one bike, and a city full of enemies.

  I smiled against his back.

  Bring it on.