"So, it really is serious, then?"
It was my last day in the hospital, and Stas had decided to celebrate with burgers. By the time I'd managed two cautious bites, he'd already polished off half of his cheeseburger — without a single spot on his beige corduroys. Always immaculate. Always perfect. Always every inch the vampire.
Meanwhile, my palms were smeared in grease and ketchup, and I sat helplessly on the bed, hands raised like some supplicant saint, trying to figure out how to make it to the sink without redecorating the blanket along the way.
"I told you," I reminded him, half sulking, "we have an open relationship. Love, plans, domestic bliss — none of that's my thing."
Stas stopped chewing long enough to rummage in the paper bag, fish out a couple of napkins, and hand them over like he was granting me a royal favor.
"Does Tatyana even know about this little arrangement?" I asked, dabbing uselessly at my fingers. The shine on them wouldn't go away.
"Of course she knows. Do you think I'd bother otherwise? As long as we're having fun, why complicate it?"
"And if one of you actually falls in love?"
He popped the last bite into his mouth, chewed with maddening slowness, and washed it down with a sip of soda. I couldn't tell if he was dragging it out just to watch me squirm or if he genuinely needed the time to come up with an answer.
"Then we part ways as easily as we came together," he said at last. "She's human. Even if I wanted a future, it'd be absurd. In less than ten years, her face will change. Wrinkles. Time. All that. And me? At some point, I'll stop changing. Freeze." He shrugged. "That's what my father says, anyway."
"So as long as it's casual, she's your shiny new toy. But the moment it smells like commitment — tail between your legs, and you vanish?"
"That metaphor suits your kind better," Stas grinned.
I ignored the jab, though it stung more than I wanted to admit.
"I still don't see it. Is the game worth it?"
He tilted his head, thoughtful, like he wanted to explain something too complicated for words.
After that Halloween night, Stas and I had grown close — close enough that I might have called him a friend, if not for one inconvenient detail: Tatyana. Jealous, watchful, always nearby with Dasha. We never had the chance to talk properly in her presence. Since the accident, she seemed to hold a private grudge against me, barbed but subtle, slipped between words like hidden needles.
And the worst part? I had no idea why. Neither she nor Dasha knew what had really happened that night in the woods. They believed Dad's convenient story about a wild animal attack — the same story everyone in town swallowed without question. That explained the hospital stay, the missing month. Not the truth.
"This might sound selfish," Stas went on, "but I want to spend my senior year like a normal teenager just as much as you do. Hanging out with girls, sneaking into movies, going to parties, doing all those stupid firsts just to remember what it's like to be ordinary."
I burst out laughing. The way he pronounced that word — "ordinary" — made it sound like a punchline.
"And this is your version of ordinary? Dating the richest, most popular girl in school?"
"She's pretty, too."
"Compared to Violetta and Diana, anyone's beauty fades."
"They're my sisters."
"That doesn't stop Artur and Maxim," I shot back, barely suppressing a grin. I liked these arguments — sparring with Stas always forced me to think about things I usually avoided. And it was easier than letting my mind spiral into dark theories about what I was becoming. A werewolf. Whatever that actually meant.
"The twins came later," Stas protested, indignant. "That's different. Diana was always there, in my earliest memory. Artur came a year after. Viola and Max showed up at fifteen. Love at first sight, if you believe them. Birds of a feather. It happened so fast I barely understood anything before they were telling mom and dad everything."
"Speaking of Vladimir…" I glanced at the clock. "Isn't he late today?"
"Hope I'm not being mentioned in vain?"
The door to the ward creaked open, and Dr. Smirnov stepped inside.
Every time he entered, a chill crawled down my spine. I saw Galina's ruined face in my mind — the life he had shattered. A month later, I still couldn't relax in his presence. He was my doctor, yes, but that only made it worse.
I wanted to run. To put as much distance between myself and this deceptively gentle man as possible. But two things chained me here. First, Kostya trusted him. And that trust, inexplicable as it was, terrified me more than Smirnov himself. Second — there was simply no one else. No other doctor who even pretended to understand lycanthropy. Believe me, I checked. It's not hard to imagine what Yandex spits out if you type in how to cure lycanthropy.
"Not at all, Father," Stas said smoothly.