To China

Reproducing blood so quickly somehow became second nature to me, I know it sounds impossible, an instinctive action rather than magic or vampirism. Yet each time I touched my own wrist, felt the pulse slithering beneath the skin, I was reminded of the fragility of the barrier between life and death. It was a thin line, one I seemed doomed to cross again and again, never quite escaping the hold it had over me.

The warmth surged through me, its energy as swift as it was insatiable, tempting me to surrender, to let it carve a path and spill into the world, as if begging me to cut myself and set it free. It was overwhelming, like a river coursing through veins not built to contain it.

And somewhere in the current of it all, I had grown closer to Dominic—bonded in a way beyond words. Somehow, we’d broken past boundaries, reached into each other’s minds. Now, I could hear his thoughts as if they were my own, feel the steady beat of his heart echo within me.

I first sensed it in a moment of w