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Franklin’s POV“Rydan.”His name came out before I had decided to say it, the automatic response of recognising someone in the dark. I crossed the room in four steps and reached for him and my arms found nothing.The shadow was gone.Not stepped away, not moved to another part of the room… gone, the way things went when they had not been there in the way real things were there. I stood in the space beside the sofa with my arms slightly extended and the room empty around me and the particular cold of having reached for something that wasn’t there.I stood very still for a moment.Then I pulled out my phone and called Vivian.It rang. Then rang again. Then the voicemail picked up with her recorded voice, brisk and familiar, telling me to leave a message.“Vivian, call me back. Something… just call me back.”I hung up and called Rydan.It rang six times and went to voicemail. I ended the call and tried again and got the same result and stood in the dark of the apartment with the phone in

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Franklin’s POVThe door came open before I had gotten off the bed.Not unlocked, not knocked… opened, with the force of something that had decided the door’s opinion of the situation was irrelevant. I was still holding my phone and still processing the messages on it when the room changed and the air changed and my neck was in a grip that I recognised before I saw the face attached to it.The wall met my back.“Rydan…” His name came out compressed, the grip making proper volume difficult. “Rydan, stop.”His eyes were not the eyes I knew. They were in the territory I had seen before, the territory that meant the person I knew was present somewhere behind what I was looking at but was not currently in charge of the decisions being made.“Let go,” I said. “Please. Let go.”He didn’t let go.I stopped pulling against it because pulling against it made it worse and I had learned that lesson before. I went still and kept my eyes on his face and waited, which was the only thing available.Af

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Franklin’s POV“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t ever call me dumb.”My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was the one thing my body was doing correctly this morning. Everything else… the headache, the sore throat from where his hand had been, the residual unsteadiness of last night’s bad decisions… none of that was steady. But my voice was, and I needed him to hear it.“I’m not insulting you,” he said. “I’m telling you that pointing at a laptop is not an explanation.”“I’m not pointing at it as an explanation. I’m telling you I was typing last night when I was drunk and angry and I don’t fully remember what I wrote.” I held his gaze. “That’s not the same as lying to you. That’s me being honest about something I’m not certain of.”Something moved through his expression. Not softening exactly… a recalibration.And then the memory arrived.Not fully formed, not with the clarity of something I had been present for consciously. The kind of memory that surfaces from the drunk hours with the

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Rydan’s POVI don’t know exactly when he stopped moving.It wasn’t a moment I can point to cleanly… there was no specific punch that was different from the others, no line I was aware of crossing. It was more that at some point the thing I was responding to stopped responding, and the absence of response reached me in a way that the previous several minutes hadn’t.I pulled back.Franklin was on the floor.He wasn’t moving. His face had the particular stillness of someone who was not choosing to be still, and the blood was from his nose and from a cut above his eyebrow and it was on the floor beside him and on my hands and the room was very quiet.Something arrived in my chest that I had not felt in a very long time.“Franklin.” I was on my knees beside him before I had decided to move. “Franklin, wake up.”Nothing.“Franklin.” I put my hands on his face, careful now, catastrophically careful given what those same hands had been doing sixty seconds ago. “Open your eyes. Please.”Nothi

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Rydan’s POV“We go to her,” I said. “Right now. Before she does anything further with it.”Franklin nodded and pushed back from the table and stood up and then made a sound that was sharp and involuntary and sat back down immediately.I was beside him in a second. “What…”“My ribs,” he said, through his teeth. “When you…” He didn’t finish the sentence but his hand went to his left side and the expression on his face finished it for him.I crouched in front of him.“Let me see,” I said.“I’m fine.”“Franklin.”He lifted his shirt with the specific reluctance of someone who didn’t want the evidence of something to become more real by being looked at. The bruising was already forming, dark and significant, spreading from just below his ribs toward his side.I sat back on my heels and looked at it and then looked at the floor.“I know,” he said.“I’m going to…”“I know,” he said again. “Just… fix it. We’ll deal with the rest after.”I got the first aid kit from the bathroom and came back

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Franklin’s POVI watched Rydan’s face change the moment he answered.He had the phone to his ear and his eyes on the road but the road wasn’t what he was seeing… his jaw had set in the specific way it set when information was arriving that required him to immediately begin managing it rather than simply receiving it. I had learned to read that jaw.He said very little on the call. “Yes.” A pause. “I understand.” Another pause, longer. “I’ll be there.”He ended it and put the phone in the holder and drove for a moment without saying anything, which was the version of him that was buying time to assemble the delivery.“What?” I said.“The coach,” he said. “The article reached him. He’s calling it a serious situation and wants me at the academy.” He paused. “Immediately.”I looked at my hands in my lap. The ice bag had lost most of its usefulness and was now just cold water in a bag, which I was still holding against my face out of habit.“Vivian,” I said.“I know.”“Someone needs to get

All Chapters of Falling for my Vampire Captain : Chapter 161 - Chapter 166

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