Two halves of a whole

His words echoed in the small room and my reaction surprised both of us as a hollow laugh suddenly had escaped me.

I sat there laughing like a lunatic at the words that should have saddened me, completely disconnected from the sinister reality that had suddenly set in.

I must have sat like that for a while because he was now facing me with an increasingly worried expression plastered on his face and I felt my lungs fail me.

The laughter was replaced by a hoarse cough that caused my airway to burn.

It felt as though someone had poured acid down my throat and I let myself flop back down onto the mattress with a pained expression, desperately attempting to suppress a cry.

"Did you hear what I just said?" he asked, and I detected slight annoyance as well as worry and sadness in his voice.

"I heard you loud and clear, although I'd love to have heard you wrong… Please don't repeat yourself, I'm begging you…"

His expression softened and he sat back down to help me as I tried to awkwardly readjust the pillow behind me.

"What do you remember..?" he asked quietly, his voice strained as he was failing to suppress the tears that threatened to well up in his eyes.

I had never seen him like that before and for once I felt absolutely terrified and helpless.

The one man who never seemed to be phased or frightened by anything was not only at a loss for words and trying to make sense of the situation - he was actually crying.

Instinctively I reached up to catch a stray tear that had formed in his eyes and fell down to rest on his cheek, just beneath his lashes.

It pained me to see him like this and I felt my chest tighten as I fought back the tears that threatened to escape my eyes once more.

His eyes locked with mine as he leaned into my touch and they seemed to express a thousand unspoken feelings in a mere second.

I prayed that he would read mine as well and read those same feelings reflected back at him tenfold. I loved this man more than any words would ever be able to express and I was surely going to die if he did not feel the same way - not that it would change the current trajectory of my fate.

I remembered everything.

The man that had always seemed so strong and sure, laid his head down to rest it against my chest.

"What are you...?"

He hushed me quietly, answering my question as he closed his eyes and focused on the sound of my heartbeat.

He looked as though he was clinging to the sound of it to reassure himself that I was still there and that I would be okay.

"I'm still here Zack..."

I quietly reassured him, although not sounding as sure as I would have liked to.

He simply nodded and tightened his grip around me slightly.

"Good.. I'm not ready to let you go"

My brows furrowed slightly at his words as reality seemingly had not set in completely yet and I instinctively replied.

"I'm not going anywhere..."

Those words seemed to spark something in him because he let go of me, kissed my palms and stood up to leave the room.

"Not if I have a say in it"

The feeling of his soft lips against the palms of my hands lingered long after he had left me to myself and I could not help but wonder what he had meant.

Too exhausted at this point to make much sense of it or wrap my head around the situation, I slipped back into the darkness that had taken me away in the cathedral - willingly slipping into a sleep-like state of nothingness.

Meanwhile, Zack met up with Mason and the three cousins in the meeting room where he had first introduced us all.

The air in the room was somber and none of them said a word for a long time as they all seemed unable to grasp what was going on.

Mason seemed to be more calm and collected than the rest of the men in the group, but still, it was Zack who broke the silence.

"There has to be a way to reverse this"

"With all due respect, brother, we're not even sure what 'this' is" Mason replied and the rest of the men nodded in silence in agreement.

Max who had not yet been told what had happened, looked to Jeremiah for clues but was ignored blankly.

A faint pout appeared in response but vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, as he was desperate to keep up with the illusion that he was around the same age as the rest of the group - despite it being an age gap of about ten years.

"Think again brother... We know exactly what this is. We've seen it before in someone even closer to us than Stella - Our own mother"

Mason's expression turned into one of pain and something similar to disgust as he knew all to well what his brother was referring to.

"It's not possible. We broke the bond and it hasn't happened since. That was over 300 years ago…"

Finally, Nicholas and Jeremiah seemed just as confused as Maximus had been at first, both looking at the other questioningly.

"You mean to say that, the blood bond has not been broken?"

This time Max broke the silence and his words needed no more reply than the pained expression that appeared in Zack's eyes. Realization struck immediately and they all fell back into silence and a feeling of helplessness and despair.

317 years prior

A woman dressed in black approached the altar in a beautifully decorated cathedral where her sons and soon-to-be husband were waiting for her.

Her previously beautiful and voluptuous figure had become frail, thin and weak, her long blonde hair had thinned and turned almost ghostly white, her eyes which had been vibrant and blue in the past, dull and dark like gray murky waters.

A human turned by a hybrid, not against her will but without either of them fully comprehending what they were getting into. Had he not turned her, she would have died in labor and neither of his sons would have been alive.

She had for a short while seemed like she was strong and healthy, but time had come to show that something had gone horribly wrong.

The hybrid combination of Azekiel's blood, the blood of her soon-to-be husband, had not had the effect of regular pure vampire blood.

The mixed blood had begun a transformation that had partially been completed, when she fed on one of the servants about seventeen years prior, but the other half of the blood was still in her, fighting the transformation.

This would ultimately lead to the death of not only the mother, but also the father who had created the bond by mistake when he was under the control of his own fears and emotions.

Not knowing any better, the boys grew up to believe that the bond was forever broken, unaware that it was just as physical as it was emotional.

Present time

Zack paced the room impatiently as they all debated on the matter, his mind playing the death of his mother over and over as if grasping for clues.

Stella was not family by blood, nor married into it.

They had never even fully consummated their relationship.

He stopped dead in his tracks and his pale skin turned gray with fear as he realized what he had done.

When he spoke, his voice was no louder than a faint whisper, yet the words seemed to ring out in the quiet room.

"I've killed her..."

The three cousins looked at each other, even more confused than before but Mason simply stood there, frozen in place as the words of his brother slowly sunk in.

When he looked up, their eyes locked.

Mason's gaze was filled with helplessness and sadness for the girl he knew had been damned by the foolishness of his own brother, and Zack's filled with fear and despair at the thought of losing the one woman he ever had, and ever would come to love.

"What have I done…"

[Author's note: Please don't forget to vote and leave a review if you enjoy my novel <3 Thank you!]