---
"Will you be all right feeding like that?" That question was in the air. She needed some time to process it. So, Lily did not answer at once.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of everything she had just seen.
The pale faces of the men.
The sound that had come out of the first one when Vera's fangs entered his neck.
The way the bodies had shaken. Not from death, but from the helplessness of being held still while something intimate and terrible was taken from them.
The way Vera and Vela had not looked wild while doing it. That was somehow worse. If they had snarled like beasts, Lily's mind could have placed the moment in a cleaner box. Monster. Predator. Horror. Easy words. Manageable ones. But there had been no theatrical cruelty in it. No madness. Only control. Need. Familiarity. The normality of something she had only ever imagined through fear and story.
That was what unsettled her most.
It had looked real.
