The Night Everything Changed

Elena stood frozen in the doorway, her champagne glass slipping from her fingers. The crash barely registered as she stared at the scene before her.

Marcus—her boyfriend of two years—had Izzy pressed against the wall of his bedroom. Her best friend since college. The two people she trusted most in the world.

"Elena!" Izzy gasped, pushing Marcus away. Her lipstick was smeared across her mouth. Across his.

Time seemed to slow. The party music from downstairs became a faraway thud as blood rushed in Elena's ears.

"How long?" she whispered, her voice so quiet she could barely hear herself over the rain raging outside the window.

Marcus stepped forward, hand outstretched. "Elena, please—"

"How. Long." Her words came out sharper now, cutting through the air between them.

The guilty look they exchanged told her everything. This wasn't the first time.

Elena backed away, bumping into the door frame. The pain barely registered compared to the heavy weight in her chest. She turned and fled down the hallway, ignoring their calls behind her.

She pushed through the busy living room, past laughing strangers celebrating Marcus's gallery opening. Nobody noticed the tears beginning to form in her eyes. Nobody ever did.

Outside, rain poured from a black sky. Elena didn't care. She stepped into the downpour without pause, glad the rain would hide her tears. Her designer dress—bought especially for tonight—clung to her skin as she walked randomly through the streets of Ravenshore City.

Her phone buzzed repeatedly in her bag. Marcus. Izzy. Their excuses wouldn't matter now. Nothing they could say would fix this hole in her chest.

Elena had always been the one who fixed things. Who survived. After losing her parents at eight years old, she'd bounced between foster homes, learning early that depending on others only led to failure. She'd built walls to protect herself, but somehow, Marcus and Izzy had slipped through.

"Never again," she mumbled to the empty street as rain streamed down her face.

The city lights blurred through her tears, changing streetlamps into hazy stars. She hugged herself against the chill, her soaked dress giving no protection from the wind that cut through Ravenshore's narrow streets.

As she walked, a strange tingling feeling spread from the birthmark on her inner wrist—a spiral pattern she'd had since birth. The mark warmed against her skin, a sharp contrast to the cold rain.

Elena rubbed at it, confused. This had happened before during times of extreme stress—like when her third foster family told her they were sending her away, or when she'd nearly failed her final art exam in college. Those times, she'd experienced what her doctors called "dissociative episodes"—blackouts where minutes or hours disappeared from her memory.

She felt that familiar feeling now—the tunnel vision, the disconnection from her body. The world seemed to fade around the edges.

"Not now," she mumbled, leaning against a brick wall. "Please not now."

The spiral birthmark burned hotter, almost glowing beneath her skin. Elena's vision narrowed further until darkness claimed her fully.

When awareness returned, the rain had stopped.

Elena blinked, confused. She stood in an unfamiliar alley with no knowledge of how she'd gotten there. The small passage between buildings was eerily quiet, as if the entire city held its breath.

Her dress had dried somewhat. How long had she been walking? She checked her phone: 2:37 AM. Nearly three hours since she'd left the party.

"What's happening to me?" she whispered to the empty lane.

That's when she heard it—a painful groan from the shadows ahead.

Common sense screamed at her to turn around, to run back to the safety of streetlights and latenight coffee shops. But something pulled her forward instead, a force she couldn't explain.

A man lay crushed against the brick wall, halfhidden behind a dumpster. Blood pooled beneath him, black in the dim light.

"Hello?" Elena called, her voice echoing against the tight walls. "Are you okay?"

She inched closer, struggling for her phone's flashlight. The beam illuminated the stranger, and Elena gasped.

Despite the blood and dirt, he was incredibly beautiful—sharp cheekbones, ravenblack hair, and eyes that seemed to swallow the darkness around them. His expensive suit was torn, showing deep gashes across his chest and arms.

"Don't... touch me," he warned, his voice a seductive baritone despite his obvious pain. "Just go."

But Elena couldn't move away. Something about him pulled at her—the same unexplained force that had drawn her to this alley in the first place.

"You need help," she said, kneeling beside him. "I'm calling an ambulance."

His hand shot out with surprising strength, grabbing her wrist—right over her birthmark. "No hospitals," he growled.

When their skin touched, Elena's birthmark flared with searing heat. Images flashed through her mind: candlelit halls, old stone chambers, and blood—rivers of blood flowing across marble floors.

She jerked back, but not before spotting something strange. Where the man's fingers had touched her wrist, the spiral birthmark had darkened, its design more defined than ever before.

More troubling still, the wound on his arm—the one closest to where he'd grabbed her—had begun to close.

"What are you?" she whispered.

His dark eyes studied her face with great interest. "I could ask you the same question."

Elena should have been afraid. Every instinct told her to run. But tonight, she'd already lost everything that mattered. What else did she have to fear?

"My apartment is three blocks from here," she heard herself saying. "Can you walk?"

A flash of surprise crossed his features. "Why would you help a stranger?"

Elena thought of all the times she'd needed help—all the times no one had been there. "Because no one helped me when I needed it," she answered honestly.

With effort, she helped him to his feet. He was tall, looming over her fivefootsix frame, and heavier than his lean build suggested. He leaned against her as they stumbled toward the street, his breath ragged against her neck.

"What's your name?" she asked, trying to separate them both from the effort of walking.

He paused, as if weighing whether to tell her the truth. "Lucian," he finally answered. "Lucian Blackthorn."

"I'm Elena Carter."

"I know," he whispered, so quietly she barely heard him.

Before she could ask what he meant, they exited from the alley onto an empty street. The city remained strangely silent, not a car or person in sight. Even the constant fog that shrouded Ravenshore had lifted, showing a night sky dotted with stars.

"Something's wrong," Elena mumbled, the hairs on her arms rising. "The city's never this quiet."

Lucian straightened slightly, searching the darkness with predatory focus. "We need to move. Now."

As if triggered by his words, a low growl sounded from behind them. Elena turned to see a figure at the far end of the street—humanshaped but moving with an animal gait, closing the gap between them with unnatural speed.

"What is that?" she gasped.

Lucian pushed her behind him, despite his injuries. "The reason I was in that alley," he said sadly. "Run, Elena. Don't look back."

But when she turned to flee, two more figures blocked the way ahead, their eyes reflecting the street light like animals. They were trapped.

Lucian cursed under his breath. Then, with moves too fast for Elena to follow, he pulled her against his chest, one arm wrapped around her waist.

"Close your eyes," he ordered.

The world blurred around them. Elena felt a feeling like falling from a great height, the ground vanishing beneath her feet. Wind rushed past her ears, bringing whispers in a language she shouldn't understand but somehow did.

When the world stopped spinning, they stood in a different part of the city. Elena identified her own apartment building across the street.

"How did you—"

"There's no time," Lucian interrupted, his voice stressed. His cuts had reopened, fresh blood staining his suit. "Get inside. Lock your doors. Don't invite anyone in."

"But you're hurt—"

"I'll survive," he said, moving away from her. "I always do."

Elena reached for him, but Lucian was already fading into the shadows, his dark eyes fixed on her with an expression she couldn't read—something between hunger and sorrow.

"This isn't over, Elena Carter," he called softly. "It's only beginning."

Then he was gone, leaving Elena alone on the empty street with nothing but questions and the memory of his touch still burning against her wrist.