Hunger

Elize could have sworn that she had smelled him yet again. She drew out the curtains of her bedroom and peered at the building opposite. Through the soft little snowflakes fluttering to the ground, she glanced on the sides and then once again to the roof of the building in the front, but there was no one. She bit her lip and closed her eyes. Tipping her head back to the ceiling, she exhaled heavily. She trudged to her small bed, slid inside the blanket and curled in a fetal position. Has she gone insane? But then with her heightened sense of smell these days, she could scent so many different smells. Besides she was sure that his scent would always linger around her or was she imagining?

Over the last few months, ever since she had returned to Yorkshire, her life had changed drastically. She wanted to escape the sadness, this heartache which had surrounded her on a permanent basis. Her world had tilted on its axis and was now spinning in God-know which direction. She didn't know where the future would lead. There was so much denial, a pained low keen and then some tears—that was how her solitary moments went when she thought she had scented him. The sadness only felt heavier and thicker than before when she remembered what he had done to her. It always left a sour taste in her mouth, and a sensation in which she wanted to shed her skin.

Elize never wanted to turn into a vampire. She had pleaded with him. She remembered their conversation. They were still in his bedchamber in Ixoviya. It was a day before his coronation.

"You said that people want to turn because they are about to die," she had said hoarsely. "I am about to die, but I don't want to turn into a vampire, Caleb. Please—"

"Do you realize that with you gone so many things will come to a standstill? I won't be able to live without you. And by Skadi, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you Elize and I want you back in any form."

"Any form," she repeated softly.

"Think about it, Elize," he said as if speaking to a child. "Think love—what if you could live forever with heightened senses, with a better vision and with the ability to be so strong that you would laugh at others. You will have the strength to defend yourself or save yourself from any untoward danger in an instant?"

"No!" she shouted as loud as she could, but it came out as another hoarse whisper. "I don't want to be a part of your world. I don't want to be a part of the Lore! I wished— I wished I had stayed back with my father!" Her father, a religious man, had instilled such strong values in his children that a deviation from those values was unacceptable, it was mentally unbearable. She couldn't allow it.

Caleb jerked his head back. "You don't want to turn into a vampire? You don't want to be with me? Aren't you in love with me Elize?" His eyes were wide, searching for an answer. The pain on his face was so palpable that it reached her soul. "Won't you do only this much for me? Am I not allowed to be selfish?" Lovers sacrificed for each other. He would have done the same for her. "Pia— Pia had been an abomination. She said she loved me. I tried to give her all I could, but she left me for better— better chances. Now that I have found you, do you even want to leave me?"

"You don't understand." She shook her head. "You are asking for too much from me. Let me die a peaceful death and I will go away happily. But if you turn me into a vampire, I will hate you forever."

After a long moment of staring in her hazel eyes, Caleb had stroked her hair. He had pressed a soft kiss on her quivering lips, wiped her tears and said, "The moment you become a vampire, the moment you will feel the extra strength, you are going to forget this. You will get over it, and we will begin a new life, love."

"No, Caleb." Her gaze darted between his eyes and lips. "I will never be able to forgive you. I reject this situation." Couldn't he see how desperate she was?

He pressed his finger at the word 'reject', as a shudder passed through his body. "You will never say that word," he said as the back of his throat burned, as grief rippled in him like a lake being disturbed by a leviathan lurking near the surface.

"Y— you cannot do this to me," she said, her voice now so slow and ragged. She thought she was about to fade into oblivion. She wanted to see her father and her brother once again. She wanted to thank them for all they did for her. "Please don't make me regret coming to Ixoviya with you, C— Caleb."

"By Skadi, I will risk it."

Her lips quivered. She wanted to bolt out of the room, but she couldn't even move a finger. Her eyes were closing. The darkness, the stillness—everything was closing on around her. She heard him saying to Lord Lorza, "Do it now." He moved back.

She was almost unconscious now, not able to fight off Caleb, who had opened her mouth. She felt warm blood down her throat. It was revolting. She had woken up as a vampire with an insatiable hunger for blood. And she loathed the betrayal by the man who called her his mate. The betrayal felt like shards of glass on her soul, stabbing her, bleeding her very essence.

He had changed the very thing she had been conditioned to dislike. She had growled like a beast. And then on an instinct, latched her canines onto the warm body near her. She needed to drink, and drink and drink… blood.