Surrender

      "We are afraid we can't take a no from you." The man, Seha said, startling Celeste out of her train of thought. Her eyes which were set ahead of her and were looking aimlessly at a random tree snapped toward the voice. 

     Seha's dark brown orb bore holes in Celeste's face. "You should come with us." The man whose name is still unknown says, nodding his head to himself as if to register his own words.

     Celeste just looked at them with wide fearful yet gorgeous blue orbs of hers. Words are failing her again. She would have acted like a mute if it wasn't for her having a conversation with the man who had caught her sleeping on the dirt. 

     Now there's no choice. She should have taken that possibility for granted. 

    "You know what, lady? We don't have the luxury of time to wait till dusk to hear the words that will fall out of your mouth. You should hurry and let us know who you really are or else we would have to forcefully take you to the palace." It's the arrogant nameless man again. Celeste wants to roll his eyes so badly and it takes all in herself for her to not do that. 

     "Would you do that favor for us, lady?" He adds and this time Celest can't seem to control her eyes from rolling back in utter annoyance. Well, she was not the only one in annoyance, she can clearly sense and smell the annoyance oozing out of their healthy and chiseled body. 

    "Why do you want to take me to the palace? Can't you just pretend you didn't see me and walk off? Let me live my way. And believe me when I say I mean no harm." Celeste says, head held high not wanting to seem small in these strangers' eyes.  

      The nameless man's head is tossed back as a laugh pushes out of his mouth. The noise is loud as it slices through the quiet air of the woods. "Why would we do that? Didn't think you are that crazy to think we, people of Atelah walk off like they didn't see anything when you clearly can be a threat."

     "But we don't know if she is a threat, honey," Seha says, lips pressed in a thin line as he cuts his gaze from his partner and looks into Celeste's eyes. 

     "Yeah, you don't know! And I swear, I'm not one!" She prays the desperation dripping down each of Celeste's words is enough for the men to believe her innocence. If only she could tell them what she had gone through and ask for help and ask for shelter.

    But she's a vampire, a pure-blood vampire and they are wolves. Werewolves hate vampires. If she tells them the truth, she has no doubt she will be sentenced to death. 

     "We don't know that's the thing. You could be a threat and we don't know so it will be a wise move to take you to the palace." seha's partner says, calculating eyes watching Celeste's every move. 

      Again, Celeste fell silent. And she never realizes silence can be this deafening. Silence is crawling up her skin like a wild creepy insect, digging its scrawny limbs into her skin. 

    The silence is cracked by the sniffing noise in the air. Her eyes snap up from her foot to see the man's nose twitching as if trying to smell something. Confused eyes of his bored into her confused ones. 

       "I can't smell you, lady." He blurts out, eyes narrowing as a growl rips out of his mouth. But then his eyebrows creased as if to remember something, "On a scent suppressant?" He asks. 

     Celeste bit down on her lips, not even understanding what he was asking. Sent suppressant? She hasn't even heard of it. But she couldn't help the bob of her head. 

 "Why does a beta need scent suppressant?!" Seha hisses, the whiteness of his fags flashing at Celeste. 

       Celeste flinched, eyes zeroing as she look at Seha taking angry strides toward her. A snarl bubbled from his chest. 

     "Now you could be a threat and we as the people of the Great Elyzhn, need to take you to the palace." 

     "I think I don't have a say in it," She whispers, defeated. The back of her eyes burns and her vision blurs. 

        What is this fate? 

        Why does she have to die so early? 

     She's barely lived twenty years of life? What sin does she commit in her past life to deserve a death like this? 

     When Celeste steps her foot outside the threshold of the great walls of Atelah she had hope. She had hoped for a life out there, not in Alyzhn, but somewhere in the deepest corner of the woods or anywhere, where she can live peacefully in the dark. 

       But now her hope along with her lifeless heart crack into pieces and fall before her feet. It's painful. It's paining her physically and mentally. 

    She thought of finding a way to be untouchable and elusive to come back to Atelah— her palace, her home. To be the Queen her people need, and to demise the man that selfishly killed off her parents in his greed. 

       But now… she is the one who's going to be killed by the hands of the rival of her species. By the goddamn werewolves. 

     "Take me…" She whispered wetly. She's ready, ready to surrender in the vicious hands of death. Maybe it can hold her a little gently and provide her the peace she's desperately looking for. 

       Maybe it's a good start to something she doesn't know awaits her…

      … Something she's going to relish.