Chapter 74: Hunger Wears a Quiet Face
Morning – Aria's POV
The ceiling had cracks like veins. Spidering above her, like a body peeled open. Aria stared at them for a long time, her body curled beneath the borrowed shirt and worn blanket, pretending that if she kept breathing slowly, deeply, it would all settle — the tremors, the burn, the feeling of skin that wasn't hers anymore.
She could still feel Selene's breath against her ear. Still hear the low, damning whisper.
You're unraveling.
She was.
Not because she'd killed. Not even because of the rotter's empty eyes and the warm splash of blood that wouldn't wash off her memory.
It was because of what came after.
The silence had stretched. Selene hadn't moved since those last words. She'd returned to sharpening her knife as if nothing had shifted between them. But Aria could feel it. Like a string drawn too tight between them, humming just beneath the threshold of sound. A silent threat — or promise — that if one of them moved wrong, it would snap.
Or worse, sing.
Aria blinked up at the ceiling, her throat thick, her thighs pressed together like they could contain what Selene had stirred loose. Her skin was warm, too warm, and the inside of her mouth tasted like ash and hunger.
She didn't know what she wanted. Only that it centered on the woman sitting three feet away, too calm, too collected, too in control. Selene was always like that. Made of storms frozen mid-strike.
And Aria couldn't stop thinking about the way she hadn't looked away.
The way her voice had dipped low — not cruel, but knowing.
Like she could see right through her.
She turned onto her side, trying to bury her face in the crook of her arm. But the shirt smelled like Selene again — clean, citrus, cold.
That didn't help.
If anything, it made the ache worse. Like the scent alone was enough to coax the edges of her dreams, stir memories of a craving she didn't understand.
"Stop thinking," she muttered to herself, teeth catching her bottom lip.
But her body wouldn't obey. Her skin was hypersensitive. Her nerves frayed like electric wires. Her pulse thudded where her thighs pressed tight, where her breath snagged in her throat. She couldn't lie still.
Selene hadn't said another word. But Aria knew she was watching.
Maybe not openly. But she could feel it — the way cold eyes grazed her, the way Selene's attention moved like a tide, always returning to rest somewhere between Aria's shoulder blades and the space just above her hips.
Her fingers curled into the blanket.
"You're not doing anything," Selene had said.
But she was.
She was coming apart. Quietly. Slowly. Completely.
Aria sat up abruptly, unable to stay curled anymore. Her heart was loud again, louder than it should be. Louder than the hum of the generator. She pulled the blanket tighter around her, the movement exposing a sliver of her bare leg beneath the oversized shirt.
She caught the flicker of Selene's gaze. Quick. Subtle.
But real.
"Stop looking at me like that," Aria said before she could stop herself.
Selene didn't even blink. "Like what?"
"Like you know things I don't."
"I do."
Aria flushed. "That doesn't mean you can —"
"What?" Selene asked, tilting her head. "Touch you? Speak the truth? Point out how your body pulses when I say your name?"
Aria's breath caught.
Selene smiled faintly. Not cruel. Not smug. Just certain.
"Don't look at me like that," Aria whispered again. "It makes it worse."
Selene stood slowly, stretching with the lazy grace of something deadly and half-asleep. Her body cast a long shadow over Aria, and when she spoke, her voice was too close.
"You're not a child," Selene said. "So stop pretending you don't want me to look."
The air in the room shifted.
Aria's lips parted. Her breath hitched. But she said nothing. Because there was nothing to say. Not when the truth sat between them like blood on tile — undeniable.
Selene crouched again, not touching her. Just close. Her hands resting on her own knees, her eyes locked on Aria's like they could peel her open again, and again, and again.
"You keep running from yourself," she said softly. "That won't last."
Aria wanted to deny it. Wanted to fight the tremble in her spine, the heat pooling low and fierce and wordless. But Selene was too close. Too still. Too right.
"I'm scared," she admitted. It came out quieter than she intended.
Selene nodded. "You should be."
That wasn't the answer she expected. But Selene didn't move away. Instead, she reached out — slow, deliberate — and let her fingers brush Aria's cheek, trailing down the curve of her jaw to her throat.
"You're blooming," she said. "And it hurts, doesn't it?"
Aria swallowed hard. "What's happening to me?"
Selene's fingertips ghosted along her collarbone. "Your blood is waking up. Your hunger. You were always meant to crave more than food and warmth, little one."
Aria closed her eyes.
The touch wasn't firm. Wasn't demanding. But it lit her nerves like flint to dry leaves.
Selene leaned in, close enough that her breath stirred the strands of Aria's hair. "You want me to stop?"
No answer.
"I will," Selene said. "If you say it."
Still, nothing.
But Aria's body said everything.
The tremble. The way her hands fisted in the blanket. The way she leaned—not forward, not back, but toward Selene's voice like it was gravity.
Selene's hand drifted down, brushed the edge of the oversized shirt where it clung to Aria's thigh.
"Not yet," she whispered, more to herself than Aria.
Then she stood again and stepped back.
Aria let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Cold replaced the heat. Absence replaced presence.
Selene turned away, back to her blades, her bag, the shadows.
"We'll move before dusk," she said. "You'll need your strength."
Aria pressed her palms to her face, still trembling. Her thighs burned. Her body screamed in confusion. And somewhere in the back of her mind, the dream from the night before flickered to life — the heat, the lips, the voice whispering mine —
Her heart thundered.
She didn't know if she'd ever sleep again.
But she knew one thing for certain.
Selene wasn't going to touch her until she asked for it.
Begged for it.
Craved it so deeply, she couldn't breathe without it.
And that terrified Aria more than any rotter ever could.