Growing Pains Keeping Me Up At Night - Prologue (Early Access) (Patreon)

The knock came deep into the night. Only moonlight bounced off the furniture in Kira’s bedroom when she sat up, dazedly searching for the source of the noise.

He didn’t wait for her to call him in. The door opened and closed silently, and he padded to her bed on bare feet. His pyjamas were tousled like he’d gotten into a punch-up with his pillow. Knees climbed up onto the mattress at her side and his butt dropped to rest on his feet once he had scooted in close.

Two trembling words, holding a truth he didn’t seem ready for. “It stopped,” he whispered over her head. She couldn’t tell if he was looking down at her, the moonlight only allowed her to see his outline with her weak human eyes.

Kira lifted her hand to his raggedly buttoned shirt and slid her fingers beneath the material, feeling for the heart that would no longer beat. A larger, lukewarm, hand covered hers against his skin. Silence echoed inside of his chest beneath their layered fingers. Nothing was moving inside of him, heart or otherwise. Not a pulse of blood or a twitch of intestine.

There wasn’t anything to say that seemed appropriate. Congratulations? Condolences? The approach of his adulthood hadn’t been something they dared approach in conversation. Now she felt as unprepared as he sounded.

She curled the hand under his shirt, fisting the material, and dragged him down to the sheets with her. Following her lead, he scrabbled at the blankets, pulling them over in a cocoon. Protecting them from having to face reality for just a little longer. In their fleecy bubble, time was nothing but a concept.

His long arms curled around her and she wrapped her own over his shoulders. Her forehead rested against his collarbone and his chin balanced atop her hair. They held each other in silence until the sun could not be ignored, shining through their blankets like a torch.

Aiden climbed free of their embrace, then of the bedding. Kira remained in the husk, afraid to join him in facing the future.

The last remnants of his humanity had finally shed away. He was a man now.