“I’m not,” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the floorboards. “Because you’re an anomaly. And I don’t destroy things I don’t understand.” He finally rose from the chair, moving with a fluid economy of motion that was both mesmerizing and terrifying. He wasn't large, but he occupied the space with an unnerving density. “You’re horrified by what you are. I’ve hunted your kind for twenty years. I’ve never seen that.”

He stopped in the center of the room, his gray eyes pinning her to the couch. “So, here are the terms. You will stay here. You will do exactly as I say. I am going to teach you to control the hunger. Not to indulge it, not to enjoy it—to control it. To treat it like the parasite it is.”

“And if I refuse?” Aeliana asked, her voice gaining a sliver of strength.

A cold, humorless smile touched his lips. “Then I will revert to my original plan. The choice is yours.”

That was how her new life began. A life measured in lessons and confinement. Darian’s regimen was brutal in its simplicity. There was no physical training, no lessons in combat. It was all internal, a war waged within the confines of her own mind. He treated her not as a student, but as a weapon he was attempting to disarm.

The first lesson was sound. He made her sit cross-legged on the floor, her eyes closed, and simply listen. “The city is never silent,” he instructed, his voice coming from somewhere behind her. “Your hearing is a predator’s tool. It filters for the hunt: a heartbeat, a gasp, the rustle of clothing. That is your weakness. You listen for prey. I will teach you to listen for everything else.”

At first, all she could hear was the frantic thrumming of blood in the veins of the people in the apartments below, the man on the second floor whose heart beat a little too fast, the woman next door humming off-key. The sounds were hooks, pulling at the gnawing emptiness in her stomach.

“Filter,” Darian’s voice cut through her focus, sharp and commanding. “Ignore the biological. Find the mechanical. The hum of the refrigerator. The sigh of the building’s old pipes. The tires of a specific car passing on the street four stories down.”

It was agonizing. Her mind, rewired for the hunt, fought her at every turn. It craved the symphony of life, the rhythmic pulse of blood that promised release. To focus on the drone of an air conditioner felt like a perversion of her very nature. He provided her with sustenance—chilled bags of animal blood, tasteless and clinical, which he left on the kitchen counter for her each morning. It was enough to keep the worst of the madness at bay, but it offered no satisfaction, only a dulling of the ache. He was keeping her alive, but just barely. This wasn't life; it was maintenance. And every moment she spent in his sterile, weapon-lined apartment was a reminder that she was a prisoner, an experiment, and that the man teaching her to control her nature was the one who would kill her if she failed.

Her compliance was a thin, brittle shell, and it took less than a week for the first cracks to appear. The rebellion started not with a bang, but with a sneer.

“I can hear the filament in that lightbulb buzzing,” she said one evening, her eyes still closed as she sat on the floor. Her voice was laced with a venomous sweetness. “It’s a C-sharp. Truly riveting. Are you sure you weren’t a music critic in a past life?”

Darian didn’t move from his position, leaning against the far wall. “The sound is irrelevant. The act of finding it is the exercise.”

“Oh, I’m finding it,” she shot back, opening her eyes to glare at him. They glowed with a faint, defiant light in the dim room. “I’m also finding the pulse of the delivery boy three blocks away who just cut his finger opening a box. It’s a much more compelling composition.” She tilted her head, a predator’s gesture. “He’s thinking about not telling his boss. He’s afraid of getting fired.”

His expression didn’t change. Not a flicker of anger, not a hint of frustration. He simply watched her, his stillness a stark contrast to the restless energy radiating from her. “His fear is a distraction. The buzzing of the filament is a constant. Control is found in the constant, not the variable. Close your eyes.”

His lack of reaction was more infuriating than any punishment. She wanted to provoke him, to force a crack in that stoic facade, to see the man behind the hunter. But he was impenetrable, a fortress of discipline. So, she escalated.

The next day, while he was cleaning a long, curved blade at the table, she walked past and deliberately knocked a small, wicked-looking dagger from its perfectly aligned spot on the rack. It clattered to the floor, the sound sharp and jarring in the quiet apartment.

Darian didn’t even look up from his work. He continued to draw the oilcloth along the length of his blade with a slow, hypnotic rhythm. He finished, set the larger blade down with meticulous care, and only then did he bend down, pick up the fallen dagger, and place it back in its precise location. He did it all without a word, without looking at her. But she felt his awareness like a physical weight, a silent warning that was colder and more effective than any shout. He was treating her defiance like the buzzing of the filament—an irrelevant noise to be filtered out and ignored.

She felt like a child throwing a tantrum for an audience of one, an audience who refused to watch. The powerlessness was a familiar, bitter taste in her mouth. He was teaching her control by demonstrating its absolute mastery, and in doing so, he was asserting his own dominance over her. Every calm response, every unflappable moment, was a reminder of the chasm between them. He was the master of his own nature. She was a slave to hers. And as the gnawing hunger in her belly intensified, fed by her growing frustration, she knew that one of them was bound to break.

The breaking point came two nights later. He varied the lesson. Instead of sounds, it was scent. He placed a small, sealed container on the low table in front of her. It wasn’t one of the sterile blood bags she subsisted on. This was different. Smaller. A medical vial filled with a dark, viscous liquid.

“Human,” he said, his voice flat. “O-negative. Donated. Concentrated.”

She stared at it. Even through the plastic and the cap, a ghost of the aroma reached her, a phantom signal that made the back of her jaw ache. It was a single, pure note in the discordant orchestra of the city.

“You will sit with it,” he instructed, taking his usual position against the wall. “You will smell it. You will acknowledge the hunger it creates. And you will let it pass. You will not touch the vial.”

The first few minutes were a battle she thought she could win. She focused on the coldness of the floor, the scent of the old wood, the faint metallic tang of the weapons on the wall. But the scent from the vial was insidious. It wasn't a shout; it was a whisper that curled directly into the most primal part of her brain. It promised warmth. It promised life. It promised the silence of the gnawing void inside her.

Her breathing hitched. The room began to shrink, the sounds of the city fading until the only thing left was the frantic, imaginary pulse emanating from the vial. A low growl rumbled in her chest, a sound she didn't consciously make. Her vision tunneled, the edges darkening until the vial glowed with an internal light. Her gums throbbed, a sharp, exquisite pain as the points of her fangs pressed against her lower lip.

This wasn’t the dull ache of her daily hunger. This was a ferocious, screaming need that eclipsed everything else. It was the monster, and it was winning.

She launched herself forward, not a girl moving, but a predator striking. Her hand shot out, fingers curled into a claw, aimed for the vial.

She never reached it. Darian was suddenly there, not touching her, but his body blocked her path. He had moved so silently she hadn’t even registered it. But it wasn’t his presence that stopped her. It was his voice.

“Aeliana.”

He said her name. Not with a command, not with anger, but with a quiet intensity that cut through the red haze. It was the first time he had used her name during a lesson.

She froze, her hand trembling an inch from the vial, her body coiled like a spring. The growl was trapped in her throat, a painful, choking sound.

“I know,” he said, his voice still low, almost gentle. It was so unexpected that it startled her more than a shout would have. “I know what it feels like. I’ve seen it in the eyes of a hundred of your kind. The promise of a full belly and a quiet mind. But it’s a lie. It’s a fire that only asks for more fuel. It will burn you down to the foundations and leave nothing behind.”

He wasn’t talking to her like an experiment anymore. He was talking to her like someone who understood the nature of the abyss she was staring into. His gray eyes weren’t cold or analytical. For the first time, she saw something else in them. Not pity. Something closer to recognition. A flicker of shared understanding of a desperate, lonely battle.

“Breathe,” he said softly. “Find my voice. Let it be the only thing you hear. It’s real. The hunger is not.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, the monster inside her shrieking in protest. But she clung to the sound of his voice, that steady, calm timber. It was the constant he had spoken of, a solid thing in the swirling chaos of her senses. Slowly, painfully, she drew her hand back, curling it into a fist against her own chest. The growl subsided, replaced by a ragged, dry sob. She sank back on her heels, shaking, the strength leaving her limbs in a sudden rush. The red haze receded, leaving behind a stark, humiliating clarity.

Darian remained still for a long moment, watching her. Then, he reached down, his movements deliberate, and picked up the vial. He didn’t say a word as he walked it back to the kitchen and disposed of it. The silence he left in his wake wasn’t one of judgment. It was something new, something she couldn’t yet name.