Selena Valerius

Wilred County Selena’s POV

I stare down at the diary on my pillow, then at the bedhead. It’s been twelve minutes since I laid over my stomach, attempting to write the next motivation that will get my blood pumping to go for jogging. Unfortunately, doing this always doesn’t end well. I fall asleep, and I postpone. I must do it this time.

I drop the pen, pick up my headset, and select that song by HBCMusic on YouTube titled I’ll Stay Anyway, and as it begins to play, I shut my eyes, take in a deep breath, and before I release it, I tell myself that I’ve got this.

I force myself off the top bed of the bunk bed, but not without snatching my inhaler first, just in case. Without shoes, I begin walking fast and eventually turn it into speed. I meet two of my dorm mates while heading out and offer a nod and smile in response when I see their lips opening and shutting rapidly.

Three minutes in, and I’m panting like a marathon runner. The cold air lashes against my skin, and unlike how that’d make me yawn and fall asleep if I was in bed right now, I smile broadly and pick up speed.

Usually on a Friday night, everywhere is loud and there are people scattered all over, but tonight—tonight looks oddly different. Thirty minutes into the run and my lungs are burning like how they did when I tasted that Korean noodle. The thought of it makes it even more difficult to breathe, so I halt to catch my breath, hanging the headset around my neck.

“Seval!” someone calls out.

There is only one person that calls me that—Lana, a wanna-be friend of mine, but to me, she is just a roommate. Somehow she thinks combining my first name and surname together to form a middle name isn’t weird.

“Lana,” I respond, but my voice comes out in a strained gasp, making the f*ck-off tone I wanted to portray fail.

I don’t hate her. I just don’t like her trying so hard to be in my business. The last person that was, when I needed them most, disappeared, and till today, that man I called father hasn’t shown his face—hence my foster life and preference for solitude.

“I thought you were gonna join us for the party tonight. Besides, it’s the last thing before exam and graduation… well, there’ll be another—”

“Not, not now…” I gasp in return, cutting her off, but she quickly catches me from falling because my breaths had turned hotter and burning in my chest, while my body felt like all my blood had been emptied into Dracula’s stomach or wherever vampires store what they s*ck.

“See, we make a great team,” she adds, and I regret having been at her mercy because I see her lips moving and shutting several times even after she said team. For a blubber mouth and a girl who keeps eating candies and weird things for breakfast, her grip on me was awfully powerful.

Far off in the distance, although my vision is presenting everything as hazy and blurred while she helps me sit on the side of the road, I see someone jump out of the forest and stand powerfully on their legs without falling.

By jump, I mean several uncomfortable meters high—so much as if he had fallen from the night sky.

“O..kay. Stay here,” Lana whispers, patting me on the arm.

I try pointing at the figure I was seeing behind her in the distance, but she is focused on me and telling me to lay down so I can stabilize my breathing. I try to shout when I see something like an animal on four legs come out of the forest and stand in front of the person I had seen.

“I’m gonna go get you some water. Don’t move,” Lana cautions and gets up.

The wind lashes against my face at once, and I feel she is gone. I try calling her name, but even if she were three meters away, she wouldn’t hear me.

I reach into my pocket for the inhaler, which I had forgotten I picked, and when I had s*ck*d enough to improve my breathing and could see a bit clearly, a sudden whoosh in the air causes my heart to hop in a way I thought my spirit left me.

A man, in a tight round-necked shirt, was in front of me out of nowhere. The figure I had seen first in the distance seemed to be in a white shirt, but—

“Hello, madam,” he says in a masculine voice that was only rough on the edges.

I didn’t get a chance to respond because at once, he scooped me off my feet—literally—and at once the inhaler dropped. Just as it did, I could see it ten, fifteen— in less than three seconds, we were super far from almost anything I could recognize.

But for some reason, he stopped. And I could swear my heart had never beat as fast as he made it.

“Julian, that’s enough! Put. Her. Down.”

Another character swept into sight from out of nowhere. This voice, although not as thick as the one whose arms I couldn’t wiggle out of no matter what I did, sounded—and looked—angry, with gritted teeth and veins popping out to his forehead, highlighted by the streetlight.

“Else what, Finn? What are you going to do about it?” the man holding me captive threatened.

Finn, the man whom I hoped had come to my rescue, balled his fingers into fists and was about to take a step when my captor, in a blur, dropped me to my feet and appeared behind me, holding my arms together so tightly that I began to scream because I felt my shoulders shudder.

“Think, Julian. She has nothing to do with this—she is just a—”

“Another step and her death will be on your hands,” Julian threatens, and I begin to feel him breathing heavily against my neck.

Oh my God. He’s a vampire.

“Somebody hel—”

Before I could finish, I felt excruciating pain race through my body, beginning from my neck, and I choke, gagging on blood. My blood.

“No!”

I heard a loud scream, but that was it. The pain came again, and I felt myself drop to the ground.

There was a complete stillness in the air as Selena hit the ground with a thud. Julian, already having covered two hundred or so more meters, stopped and turned to his brother. He had hoped Finn would come after him. But the latter had stopped by the girl.

“Oh, come on, brother,” he shouted across the distance. “She is a dead human, nothing wolfy. These are disposable.”

Finn looked up, the girl cradled in his arms. “And what did you gain? Killing an innocent teenager?”

“Nothing… yet. I don’t recall saying we’re done. The full moon is still active, and if you don’t stop playing saint and kill some nothings, she won’t be the last.” He paused, looked around, and saw a few people heading their way. “Maybe that pregnant woman over there will be next,” Julian added. “I wonder how her blood will taste on my tongue.”

“You’re sick. Get help,” Finn replied, his chest bouncing while his hands held the girl in his arms steady.

Julian lifted his right hand and start