The forest was quieter in the pre-dawn gray. The shadows had softened from black to charcoal, and somewhere above the canopy, the first pale suggestions of light were beginning to bleed into the sky.

You walked in silence for a while. He stayed three paces ahead, moving with that unsettling, liquid grace, his white shirt catching the faint light like a ghost. You clutched his jacket around you and tried not to think about the fact that your entire survival strategy had been reduced to follow the vampire and hope for the best.

"You're not going to kill me," you said. Not a question — you were testing it, saying it out loud to see if it felt true.

He glanced back. "I already told you—"

"I know what you told me. But you also chased me through the woods and pinned me against a rock, so forgive me for needing to hear it twice."

Something shifted in his expression. Not offense — something rawer. He looked away. "No. I'm not going to kill you."

"Why not? You're hungry. I'm right here."

"Because—" He stopped walking. His back to you.

"Because I spent two hundred years taking things from people against their will. Bodies. Blood. Autonomy. Because someone told me to." He was quiet for a moment. "And the sound you made when you asked me not to hurt you — I've heard that sound a thousand times. Every time, I was the one who caused it."

The forest went very quiet.

"I don't want to be that anymore," he said, barely above a whisper. "I'm not entirely sure I know how to be anything else. But I don't want to be that."

You stood behind him in the leather jacket that smelled like rosemary, and for the first time since you'd woken up in this impossible forest, the fear loosened its grip on your chest. Not gone — not even close to gone — but loosened. Enough to breathe.

"Thank you," you said sheepishly. "For the spiders."

"Don't." The wall went back up. "Don't look at me like I'm some sort of hero. I fought them because they were disgusting multi-legged freaks who ruined my shirt, and because—" He stopped.

"Because?"

"Because if you died out here, it would have been my fault," he said flatly. "And I've had quite enough guilt for one eternity, thank you."

You kept walking.