When Indra finally awoke, sunlight was penetrating the curtains he and his wife normally kept closed.
Even without opening his eyes, he knew that she was nowhere around.
But someone else who he lived with was.
"I've lain beside you thousands of times. I know when you're sleeping and when you're awake."
Opening his eyes, Indra sat up on the bed and found Keran sitting in the room with him.
For the first time ever, her slender pale arms were folded across her buxom chest as she frowned at him.
"Hello, Keran. I suppose I don't need to ask why you're looking at me like that."
"You're damn right you don't! Do you think if anyone knew what you were going to do they would have let you??!"
"No." Indra admitted.
When he left Enyo initially, he'd told her that he needed to step outside when the moon arose to collect a bit of it's energy for his cultivation.
The Dark Moon art he practiced was one that sometimes called for such a thing, so she did not think anything of it.
Imagine her surprise when Indra still had not returned after thirty minutes, and she found him on top of the roof unconscious.
The remnants of sand in the tank immediately told her what he'd done, and she was just grateful that he was still alive.
Things truly could have gone so very horribly wrong.
"But.. I have done it." Indra muttered as he held up his hands.
His bones, organs, and flesh were now made of incredibly durable black diamond, giving him a toughness that was well beyond his cultivation base.
But Keran didn't care.
"Indra!! You could have died! You could have left us behind again… left me behind..!"
The sight of tears running down the face of the woman he once loved was enough to give Indra that familiar pain in his chest.
She wiped her face out of embarrassment and switched the focus around to someone other than herself.
"E-Even if you don't care about me, what about Enyo? Do you know how much it terrified her to find you unconscious like that?
She hasn't left your side for four days, Lucia had to literally drag her to the market to take her mind off things!"
Feeling even worse about the decisions he'd made, Indra lowered his head and croaked out a small apology.
"Forgive me… I was only doing what I thought was best."
Choked up, Keran threw herself into Indra's arms as she held him tightly and cried.
"I-I know that you want to be strong and none of us want to stand in the way of that, but I beg you to think about us more!
You are all that we have and if you aren't careful we will fall to pieces without you!"
Indra brought his arms around Keran's waist and hugged her silently, the familiar yet unfamiliar smell of lavender flooding his nose.
"I understand… and for what it's worth, I do care about you, wolf."
"…little wolf." Keran corrected.
"I'm the one who gave you the name. I should be free to alter it."
"You're not off the fucking hook, bat boy."
"Yes ma'am."
This was the first normal-ish conversation that the two of them had ever had, and Indra had actually begun to find this time rather pleasant.
While Keran held him tightly and tried to stop crying, he was silently trying to figure out a way that he could apologize to Enyo.
In his mind, he figured that using the dust to refine his body would take him no more than a few minutes.
He would go back inside, reveal the truth of what he'd done, and Enyo would lightly chastise him before marveling at the toughness of his new physique.
But that's not what happened.
Instead, he scared her.
He never ever meant to scare her.
He had put himself through that terrible pain for her.
So that he could always protect her.
Just thinking about the look on her face when he finally saw her was enough to tear his heart to pieces.
*growl*
Indra and Keran jolted as she slowly released him and stared at him with an awkward smile on his face.
"I guess you would be hungry after all of your circulated blood was burned out of your body, huh?"
"…It seems like it." Indra said hollowly.
Keran brushed her hair to one side and exposed her slender neck to him.
"Here… Vermeil is out with the girls so, you'll have to make do with me."
For some reason, Indra didn't particularly like like the words that came out of his ex's mouth just now.
Therefore, as he grabbed her waist and brought her neck to his lips, he let her know that.
"Don't say 'make do'… you are more than enough."
A small smile formed on her lips as his teeth grazed her skin, and punctured into her soft and succulent neck.
A loud moan escaped Keran's mouth; not expecting the wave of pleasure that rushed through her as Indra drank without spilling a drop.
She briefly recalled the day where she saw Vermeil behaving very erratically after being bitten, and realized that it was no mere act.
'This… feels so much different than before..!'
As Keran moaned and let herself be drank from, Indra was dining on her blood and sifting through the contents of her mind.
It was like a movie being played with the fast forward button on, as he could see brief meaningful images of he and Keran spending time together in the past.
But for some reason, there felt like there was a greater force at work.
Like something was intentionally pulling him through the isles of a grocery store without even allowing him to stop and look at anything.
Just as he started to get the inclination that something might be wrong, his vision began to darken, and he could see no more.
All he could hear was a deep and menacing voice that seemed to be coming from all around him, speaking as if it already knew him.
"Finally! You truly have no idea just how long I've waited for you to drink from my apostle, nightstalker. We are overdue for a chat."