WARMTH ENVELOPED SOPHIE'S body, in all the best ways possible. Awareness seeped through her veins, washing away the haziness of sleep that lingered. On her side, she laid with her cheek against Eli's bare chest. One of her legs was thrown around his. His skin was hot against hers. It was nice. It was sweet. It was happiness.

Her fingers twitched against Eli's chest. As she lifted her head a bit and her eyes adjusted to the darkened room, she stared at her hand. Confusion trickled through her system, followed swiftly by the hair prickling tingle of alarm.

A rusty color stained her fingertips.

She blinked several times and sat upward even more. Her gaze followed a trail of dried blood up her arm and across her chest. A startled gasp escaped her lips and she surged backwards, fumbling over the edge of the bed. She hit the ground with a loud thump. Her heart stopped entirely in her chest. "Not again," she whimpered.

Eli shifted around on the bed. Sleepily, he sat upward. A hand lifted to scratch at the back of his head. "Sophie?"

All the air in her lungs solidified as Eli's gaze dropped down toward her. Said organs squeezed her heart into a tiny, shriveled raisin as she watched him blink. Once. Twice.

Concern immediately flooded his features, followed swiftly by confusion and a brief flicker of disgust. "What the fuck?"

Tears began to fall down her cheeks.

He launched from the bed, immediately in front of her. His hands grasped her face. A thousand questions poured from his lips. "Sophie, what's wrong? What's going on? Where did this blood come from?"

"I don't know." Each word came out around blubbered sobs, nothing more than a shattered whisper. "I don't know. I don't know what it's from. I don't know what is going on."

Eli's concern seemed to increase tenfold. He fluttered around her, trying to figure out what was wrong with her. There wasn't an obvious spot where the blood seemed to originate from on her body, though it did seem to accumulate the most around her throat. It confused him. There didn't seem to be much around her actual face or mouth, where the blood would have been had she been feeding. Yet he still decided that the blood wasn't her own. It was also obviously not Eli's blood, as his body was blood-free.

"Sophie, when did you leave the bed? I don't even remember you getting up."

"I have no idea," she told him. "I don't remember anything. I don't know what happened."

His lips pursed and he hesitated. The doubt was evident in his expression.

The hurt that rocketed through her made it hard to think, hard to breathe. She couldn't handle this. This. This was exactly what she'd been terrified of. There was no answer that she could give without some sort of seed of disbelief forming in his mind. She couldn't answer any of his questions, which allowed him to speculate, as he seemed to be doing now. She'd obviously left the bed without him realizing it. She'd obviously hurt someone, as she was now covered in someone else's blood. It didn't matter how hard she fought to convince him that she was as clueless as a walnut. He still doubted her.

"Alright," he said. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. "Alright. Alright. Come on. Let's just get you washed off. Once you are calm, we can figure out what happened."

He reached out and helped her to her feet. She forced herself to walk toward the bathroom. His fingers curled around her own, squeezing tight. Sophie squeezed her eyes shut.

His doubtful expression still haunted her.

The shower curtain rattled as it was wrenched aside. There was a small squeak as Eli twisted the faucet on. A soft rumble swiftly filled the air as water poured through the pipes and rushed toward them. She forced herself to take a deep breath and stepped into the shower. Water burst from the showerhead and rained down upon her.

It didn't take long to get all the blood off.

As Sophie dried off with a towel, she heard Eli mutter, "I just don't understand."

"What?" she croaked.

"The blood wasn't on your face," he said. "It was mostly on your throat. It almost completely covered your mark. So I don't think that you were feeding or anything. I just don't get what you would have been doing or how you could have gotten covered in so much blood without feeding."

Sophie buried her face in the towel. "I don't know either," she muttered into it.

His hands grasped her wrists, yanking them downward. She blinked, surprised, at the sudden lack of towel over her face. "What are you doing?" she rasped out.

"Your mark," he said. His fingers pressed against the skin of her throat. "It's hot. It has to have something to do with this. Maybe you are bleeding. Maybe this is what is causing it."

"But it didn't smell like my blood," Sophie whispered. "Not this time or the last."

Eli blinked.

"This has happened before?"

She grimaced. "Once."

Anger transformed his expression. "Why didn't you tell me?"

His shout made the hairs on her arms rise. She took a small step backward and brought the blanket up, half hiding behind it. "I didn't want to worry you," she croaked. "I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know where the blood came from. I didn't know what to do."

"And what if I did?" Eli growled. "What if I knew what was causing it? What if it was something that required immediate medical treatment?"

"But you don't know," she snapped at him. "It's not something normal vampires go through. Don't forget. I teach the basics of vampirism. I'm not stupid. I just didn't want to worry you yet --not until I had more facts. Not until I could answer your questions. The last thing that I need is for you, the one person who is supposed to be on my side, to not believe in me."

"I do believe in you."

"Don't you dare lie to me. You doubted me. I saw it. I saw it in your eyes, Eli. You made it quite clear that you genuinely didn't believe me."

He blinked. His hand lifted, fingers curling around a fistful of his hair. "I mean, my vampire girlfriend somehow snuck out of the bed and got covered in blood --all without either of us knowing it. I can't help but find it a bit far fetched that you don't remember anything."

"But I don't," Sophie said. "I don't remember anything at all. Don't you think that I would have told you if I did?"

"You didn't tell me the last time this happened," Eli pointed out.

She closed her eyes. "You're right. I apologize. Because if you woke up one night, randomly covered in someone else's blood with no idea what happened, you'd totally wake me up and tell me. Right?"

He didn't answer.

"Exactly," she said. Her eyes opened and she pinned him with watery glare. Her voice cracked with emotion. "Don't sit there and lecture me about this when you would have done the exact same thing."

That seemed to shatter his anger. He blinked and his shoulders sunk. "I'm sorry," he said. He took a step closer and his arms wrapped around her, pulling her into him. "I'm so sorry, Soph. You're right. I wouldn't have said anything either. I guess I'm still just trying to understand what's going on."

"I am too," she whispered against his skin.

His lips pressed against her forehead. "We need to talk to Aelia in the morning," he told her. " Or Aubrey. I think it has something to do with that mark."

Sophie cringed and glanced up at him. "Aelia has enough to worry about with the missing students. Maybe Aubrey can find something about the mark on the internet."

He nodded. His forehead rested against her own. "Please, just promise me that if you wake up in blood again or if anything startling or fishy happens that you'll tell me next time. The first time."

"I promise."

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this chapter. I'm not sure that it feels quite realistic. But it needed to happen. Ugh. Oh well, thank you all for reading! ♡