Chapter 18 | Aiden’s POV IV

The lights in this room made my skin feel too tight.

Buzzing. Cold. Flickering like they could cut right through skin if you sat here long enough.

I was on my second glass of water. The detective hadn’t touched his.

He just sat there with his notebook open like it mattered. Like anything he wrote down would actually make sense of what was happening.

“This is just routine,” he said, again. “You understand, right?”

I didn’t answer. I nodded once. That was safer.

Routine. Sure.

They wanted to see if I’d flinch. See if I’d lie.

But the truth? I didn’t have the energy to fake anything today.

I was tired. And more than that—I was confused.

Because ever since that night, things hadn’t felt normal. Not just in a “someone died” kind of way. But in a something’s wrong in the bones of this town kind of way.

And maybe it started before Ash even died.

Across the table, the detective scribbled something into his notebook, eyes flicking up to watch me like he could catch a lie on my face before it ever reached my mouth.

“You said you didn’t see Ash leaving the party but you did see him at the party.”

“Yes.”

My throat went dry. I didn’t want to mention Noah or the slight struggle between the two of them.

The detective nodded, jotting that down. “Did you see who he might’ve gone with? Any cars leaving? Strange behavior from anyone else at the party?”

“I wasn’t paying attention.” I rubbed a hand across my jaw. “It was late.”

The pen stilled.

Before he could push further, the door opened again. Another officer leaned halfway into the room, face pale and tense. His voice was low, but the urgency bled through it.

“Sir, we’ve got a situation. The school just called something in. One of the students found a body.”

The detective straightened in his chair. “Another?”

“In the gym,” the officer said grimly. “Locker room. Male student. Looks like the same M.O.”

A pause.

“Marks?”

“Neck. Two of them. Deep.”

The air shifted.

Everything in my chest pulled tight as their words settled into the space like lead.

Another student.

Dead.

At school? With neck marks?

The detective exhaled through his nose, shutting his notebook. “Jesus Christ. And we’re still sitting here grilling a kid.”

I sat frozen, listening like the floor might drop.

That was when my mom came in. She must’ve heard. She looked like she was already halfway into a fight.

“You found marks on Ash and didn’t think that was worth telling us before bringing our son in like a criminal?”

The detective turned. “Mrs. Hale—”

“No. No, don’t, Mrs. Hale,” she snapped. “This is garbage. You knew this wasn’t our son and you still dragged him in for what, optics? Because you didn’t want to look like you missed something?”

My dad stepped in quietly, voice like stone. “Is this how you run an investigation? Suppress details until they fit the theory you don’t have?”

“I can’t comment on—”

“You should’ve told us.”

“We’re done,” the detective said quickly, signaling toward the door. “He’s free to go.”

But I was already gone.

Not out the door yet—but somewhere else entirely. Inside my own head, stuck in that memory like it was on a loop.

Noah’s lips at my neck. Her breath, hot and shaky.

That gentle nip that wasn’t gentle at all.

Had she really bitten me?

It hadn’t broken skin. I didn’t think it was intentional. It hadn’t really hurt.

But now there were two dead bodies.

Both with neck marks.

Things like these never really happened in Ravenshollow. Not until I met Noah.

I didn’t wait to listen — I shoved past the front desk, out the station doors, and into the sharp morning air that felt too bright, too wrong. Like the world was pretending nothing had cracked.

Every step felt like a question I didn’t want the answer to.

But I kept going.

Down the steps. Across the pavement. Past the sharp sounds of honking cars and murmuring officers trying not to look rattled.

And then I saw her.

Running. Toward me.

Hair wild, shoes slapping pavement like her legs were moving faster than her body could handle. Her face was flushed, but when I really looked—she didn’t seem out of breath.

She didn’t look tired.

She looked otherworldly.

Sunlight hit her skin like it didn’t know what to do with her—catching on the slope of her neck, the sharp line of her cheekbones. It shimmered over her like a layer of glass, or frost, or something too precise to be human.

She didn’t look like someone who’d been sprinting across town.

Her eyes locked onto mine—wide, burning, unreadable.

She stumbled to a stop a few feet away, barely catching herself, and for a second we just stared at each other like we’d both stepped off different cliffs and landed here.

“Noah—”

“They found someone,” she said, voice raw and scraped thin.

“Another body. At school. Locker room.”

She looked down, then back up. Her hands trembled at her sides.

“They can’t pin Ash on you anymore.”

The words hung in the air like a fragile kind of relief. But I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything except the ringing in my ears and the heat crawling up my neck.

She looked at me…. her chest heaved like she was holding something back. Like she wanted to explain but didn’t know how. The sunlight caught again on her skin, and I couldn’t unsee it now—the way she glowed. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Everything inside me twisted.

I didn’t take a step back. Didn’t run.

But the words clawed their way out of me before I could stop them.

Low. Shaky. Certain.

“…What are you?”