Becky woke with a start.
No scream.
No gasping.
Just stillness.
But it felt heavier than a nightmare.
She sat up in bed, staring at the wall. Her mind repeated his words over and over:
"The next offer won't be a question."
That meant something was coming.
Something she wouldn't get to say no to.
And yet, she wasn't trembling like before. Not crying. Not frozen. She felt… angry.
She got dressed quickly and grabbed a notebook
—not her regular one.
A new one.
Empty.
At the top of the first page, she wrote in bold letters:
THE DREAM RULES.
Then underneath:
1. Wine = Offer
2. Refuse once = Warning
3. Refuse twice = Punishment
4. Third glass = Something irreversible
5. Eyes = Watchers
6. Vampire = Manipulator. Liar. Threat.
7. Petals + Butterflies = Signs it's about to shift
She stared at what she wrote.
And then she added:
8. I am not his.
Later that day, she went to the university archives
—places even the librarians barely touched.
She searched for folklore. Rituals. Dream invasions. Vampiric contracts. Silent realms. Anything. Even fiction. Something had to match what was happening to her.
Hours passed.
And then she found it.
A passage from an old, untranslated text. A single quote someone had scrawled in the margins:
"What cannot take blood… will take choice. Refuse the wine, and you refuse the chain."
Becky sat back in her chair, breath catching.
So that was it.
The wine wasn't just temptation—it was a chain.
And she hadn't drunk it.
Yet.