by Anna Santos
I wanted them to stop. I was shaking with apprehension—I knew I was. My angel was confused. She was rejoicing at Cedric’s action, but she was also in pain because of my own suffering. I didn’t want them to fight. I didn’t want Cedric to act like a brute and react with violence before even listening to what I had to say. I didn’t like violence. Why is he fighting Philippe? Philippe hadn’t done anything to me. He could have been a jerk, but he was acting nice. He’d taken care of me the previous night while Cedric had hurt my feelings by ordering me to go home and failing to show up at the nightclub. I drank alcohol because I’d been mad at Cedric. Philippe didn’t have anything to do with the pain I was feeling. I’d been miserable because my boyfriend would rather have me locked in a house than go out with me.
“Cedric, I don’t want to hurt you,” Philippe said, trying to push him back.
“I should have killed you the moment I found out that you were her former mate. It would have spared me a lot of trouble.”
I was going to say something, but I noticed the guy who had been upstairs with Philippe slowly coming down the stairs. He didn’t seem worried. He had a creepy smile on his lips. Sean and Gabby were also witnessing the events, looking down from the top of the stairs. Gabby was recoiled against Sean’s chest, cringing at the noise.
“I hope you’re happy,” the guy said.
“What?” I asked, unsure if he was talking to me.
“I remember you from the boat. You were human then. Philippe was curious about you,” the guy said, talking casually, as if there weren’t a fight going on nearby. “He made us look for you for a couple of days after you fell into the river. I don’t quite understand what’s going on here, but I’m guessing this is your fault. You’re playing both guys. How? I’m baffled by how you were able to fool both Philippe and Cedric with your naïve face. You aren’t that stunning either. What do they both see in you?”
“Go to hell,” I told him, boiling with anger. His pretentious smirk was getting on my nerves. I sighed. He wasn’t far from the truth. What was going on was my fault. Still, I hadn’t asked for it. Cedric was being unreasonable, and Philippe shouldn’t have come after me. “Do something! Stop them!” I urged the guy.
“Stop them yourself. Aren’t you an angel? Philippe’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. If he was foolish enough to sleep with Cedric’s mate, then he has to face the consequences.”
Red flared my cheeks as I clenched my hands into fists. “We didn’t sleep together! This is just a…misunderstanding.”
Arguing with the cocky vampire made me realize that I’d gotten my voice back. “Cedric! Stop with this nonsense at once!” I screamed out loud.
Cedric and Philippe were punching each other—neither seemed to be winning, though.
I gulped, sensing the change in the atmosphere. Cedric’s wings had come out and he was flapping them, generating a force field that was pulling the debris from across the room. That didn’t seem good. He was going to use his powers. I had no idea what those powers were since he’d never used them in front of me. His transformation was making my angel restless. She wanted to come out and protect me from the debris that was coming our way. Until then, they’d been careful enough to fight around me, but the movement of Cedric’s wings was making everything in that place fly across the space in a tornado.
The air was cooling down. Cedric pushed Philippe, making him hit the ground and, before I could understand what I was doing, I saw a wave of ice coming out of his hands, and I was exploding in fire and rushing to place myself in front of Philippe.
“You will not hurt him,” I said in a guttural and unfamiliar voice. It came out of my mouth, it was me who was stating that sentence, but it felt powerful and abnormal. My angel had chosen Philippe’s side. It was unthinkable. Either that or I had taken control of my own powers and was preventing Cedric from harming Philippe.
Placing my hands in front of my body, I blocked the wave of ice that came in Philippe’s direction. The wave melted into water as my eyes met Cedric’s. He looked confused and hurt. I was mad at him. He wasn’t letting me explain and picked a fight without understanding what had happened. He was assuming that I had done something wrong, that Philippe had done something to me.
“Why do you have to be like this?” I asked, my voice shattering due to the pain assaulting my soul. Tears stung my eyes as my wings flapped around my body.
“Why are you protecting him? He’s a coldblooded murderer who tried to kill you, remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” I lowered my arms. “Philippe rejected me. I don’t know if he tried to kill me…” I whispered the last sentence as my throat went dry. Breathing deep, I added, “I don’t easily forget important things like that. But you’re overreacting. Nothing happened, nothing will happen, and Philippe didn’t hurt me.”
“So what are you doing at his place, and why are you wearing those clothes?”
“What clothes?” I asked, staring down at myself. I had borrowed Gabby’s clothes. The dress was a bit revealing, but there was nothing wrong with it.
“You weren’t wearing that yesterday,” he said.
I blushed. “What the hell are you implying?”
Cedric voiced the question that must have been haunting his mind. “Did you sleep with him?”
“Of course not!”
“Did he touch you?”
“What do you think happened between me and him?” I enquired, glowing red and placing my hands on my hips. Anger stirred inside me.
I saw Philippe moving behind me out of the corner of my eye. I glimpsed him as he sat, fixed his hair, and then got up and straightened his clothes. Luckily, he seemed calm, and I was hoping that he wouldn’t talk. Cedric wouldn’t believe anything that he said.
Cedric’s eyes analyzed my every movement as he stepped closer. “He’s your former mate. You spent yesterday with him. You spent the night with him and ended up at his place. What do you think I believe that happened? Moreover, you had someone lying to me this morning, telling me you were at your uncle’s place!”
“I didn’t ask Gabby to lie. I was drunk yesterday. Philippe was kind enough to let me crash at his place.”
“And how did you end up drunk and here in the first place?”
“I brought her here,” Gabby said from the top of the stairs.
Cedric stared up, probably noticing for the first time that we weren’t alone.
Gabby let go of Sean and faced Cedric. “I’m Gabby, her cousin. I was the one who lied. I didn’t want her to get in trouble because of me. It wasn’t her fault. She had too much to drink, and I didn’t want to go home. Philippe didn’t touch her. You don’t need to be rude and trash his place.”
Cedric growled, staring at me after a while. “Is that true?”
“Yes, nothing happened. Philippe didn’t touch me or harm me.”
“I don’t want you being with him. You’re mine now. He tried to kill you.”
“I know.” I stepped forward and motioned for him to relax. “Cedric, please calm down.”
He combed his messy blond hair with his fingers and inhaled. “I’ll calm down when we leave this place.”
“We could have already left if you hadn’t gone all Hulk in here and trashed his house.”
“I was planning to kill him, so…” He shrugged.
I clenched my jaw as I narrowed my eyes. “If you had done that, I would have never wanted to see you again—or talk to you, for that matter.” He could be extremely hardheaded sometimes. It seriously rattled me.
He looked hurt by my words but then he said, “Let’s go home. I don’t want you here anymore. We’ll talk away from prying eyes.” He turned around to leave, but I stood there.
One moment he was mad and the other he was bossing me around. Who does he think he’s talking to?
“You trashed Philippe’s home. Aren’t you going to, at least, tell him you’re sorry for what you’ve done?”
Cedric turned around to face me. “I hope y
ou’re joking, Aria. Philippe tricked you into going to the Louvre to meet him. He took you to a nightclub and got you drunk, and now you want me to tell him that I’m sorry for putting him in his place? He’s trying to steal you from me. He doesn’t care about you. He didn’t want you in the first place. He’s just having fun causing me pain! Now stop with the tantrums and follow me to the car. I’ve had enough of this place.”
Cedric’s words echoed in my mind like a bad song. I looked at Philippe, who seemed as confused as I was by the prince’s accusations.
“We’re leaving, Aria. Either you come with me now…”
Cedric didn’t finish his sentence because I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t! Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t try to intimidate me.” The coldness in his eyes and voice was breaking my heart.
“How do you want me to talk to you?” Cedric asked with an exasperated expression. “You’ve spent the night in this piece of shit’s house. Unless you’re that desperate to be his new whore, you better come with me now or else…”
Once again, he didn’t have time to finish his sentence because Philippe snapped and jumped to grab his neck and crashed Cedric’s body against the opposite wall next to the door, smashing a painting in the process.
“Don’t talk to her like that or I’ll kill you myself. You want her, you respect her and treat her like she’s the most precious thing in the world. You don’t boss her around, you don’t call her names, and you don’t doubt her word. Or I’ll stop playing nice; I’ll get her back and restore our bond. Do you understand me?”
Philippe’s voice was dark and dangerous. My heart beat loudly as my mind got clouded by his words. Taking control of my limbs, I rushed to their side, noticing how Cedric was running out of air and how Philippe didn’t want to let him go.
Putting my hands over Philippe’s hand, I begged him, “Please, let him go.”
Philippe’s vampire face turned to me and he released Cedric.
Looking at his hands and then at me, Philippe whispered as his eyes returned to their calm and composed chocolate. “I’m sorry. I was trying to keep my cool. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
“I’ll be fine,” Cedric grumbled after clearing his throat. Grabbing me by the waist, he declared, “You’re coming home whether you want to or not.”
Before I could protest, we were eclipsing out of there, and we appeared inside his bedroom.
He let me go, and I stepped back, dizzy by the materialization and extremely hurt by his actions.
“I can’t believe you did that to me,” he said.
I frowned at him with incredulity. “Did what?”
“Cheat on me.”
“I didn’t!” I gasped.
“I’ve been nothing but good to you and the first chance you get, you go behind my back and you…end up in your ex-mate’s home. The guy who tried to kill you. The one who rejected you!”
He wasn’t raising his voice, but I could feel the disappointment in his tone. His accusations made me want to cry and run away. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t cheated on him. He was jumping to conclusions. And he didn’t trust me.
“You don’t understand, Cedric. Nothing happened.”
“I told you to come back home. I said I didn’t want you in that nightclub. You didn’t obey me. I guess you were having too much fun with him to care about me.”
“Of course I care about you!”
He pointed a finger at me while he continued to lash out. “It doesn’t look like it. You should have called me the moment you wanted to leave that nightclub, so I could bring you home. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
I screamed, “You could have joined me there!”
He shouted back, “I was busy!”
Stepping away, I tried to explain myself again. “I was with my parents! I’m not your prisoner. I can go out, and I can spend time with my parents.”
“You weren’t spending time with them. You were spending time with Philippe. And we both know that Philippe has your parents under his spell. Can’t you understand that he doesn’t care about you? He enjoys making us doubt each other and making me suffer. He isn’t sorry about what he did. He just doesn’t want us to be happy.”
“Then I guess he has succeeded since you aren’t making any effort to understand my reasons and to believe me when I say that nothing happened between me and him!”
We stared at each other for a few moments. My heart throbbed in my ears as I tried to control my uneven breathing.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” I whimpered, emotional by what was going on. “You aren’t being reasonable.”
“You protected him,” he said, stepping back because I moved forward to reach and touch him.
Having him reject my touch made me hurt more.
“You were going to kill him. You would have frozen him to death.”
“So? Do you think he doesn’t deserve it?”
My stare became blank and my breathing paused. I didn’t know how to answer to that question.
He growled. “You have feelings for him. He’s a monster. He didn’t want you! How can you be there, at his side, defending him and his actions?”
“I’m not,” I mumbled. “I’m trying to tell you that nothing happened between me and him. We just talked, he asked me for forgiveness, and I told him I wouldn’t forgive him for what he had done. I got drunk, I ended up at his place, and I phoned you after I woke up. Is that so hard to understand?”
Cedric kept staring at me and it hurt me that he doubted me in the first place.
“I have no reasons to lie, Cedric. If I wanted to get back with him, I wouldn’t have called you to tell you what had happened.”
“You have feelings for him,” he said. I was going to refute, but he motioned his hand to quiet me down. “You do. He was your mate—even if he tried to kill you—and you still have a connection. It’s up to you to break it or not. Do you want me to die?”
His question saddened me even more. “Of course not!”
“We will fail the trial if you have feelings for him. If you fall for his lies and fake regret. You need to stay away from him.”
“I will,” I whispered, troubled by the reminder of what would happen to him if I didn’t love him enough. “I’m sorry, Cedric,” I said, wanting to run into his arms and hold him.
“Don’t,” he ordered when I made a move to get closer to hug him. “You need to think about what you’ve done. You need to go to your room and understand the consequences of your actions. This isn’t a game. You’ve become my whole world since we were bonded, but you need to want me to be your whole world, too. Being my mate is not just fancy parties and pretty dresses. It comes with a lot of responsibilities and sacrifices. You won’t be human anymore. You can’t fulfill your old dreams. I’m in your life now. We need to make new dreams. If we survive the trial, we’ll need to keep the peace, have children, kill vampires if they cross the line, and deal with your former mate. You’ll see him with other women. It’s in his nature. Why do you think he didn’t want a mate in the first place?”
His words were harsh and unnecessary. Is he saying all these things to hurt me or to test me? I had no idea. They hurt nevertheless. My silence must have made him realize that he was being too hard on me.
“Think about all of this. Then get changed and meet Camille to resume your practice. You can’t skip your magic lessons. You need to focus on what’s important. Sightseeing is something you can do after we survive this. Your parents are a liability. I’ll make sure I send them back to America and keep them safe from Philippe’s manipulation.”
“Leave my parents alone!” I told him, snapping out of my numb state.
“We have to cancel the dinner. I must send them away. As long as they’re here, Philippe will use them to get to you. And if he hurts them?”
“You will leave my parents alone,” I stated once again with an authoritative voice. “I’m not kidding, Cedric. Stay away from them.”
> He narrowed his eyes, and I noticed how he tensed. After a moment, he said, “Fine, do whatever you want. They’re your parents. I’ll be in my office with Jacob when you’re ready to ask forgiveness for what you’ve done, and when you want to act like a grown-up woman.”
He left after his speech, leaving me staring into the void in deep thought. His words echoed in my mind until my body gave in and I sat on the floor, sobbing like a little girl. I wasn’t sure why I was crying so much. Something inside me hurt. A part of me was shattering into pieces. Then, my phone started to vibrate in my pocket. I took it out and saw it was Philippe calling. Even if I didn’t want him to know that I was crying, I picked it up anyway. I wasn’t sure why, though.
“Are you okay? Aria, Aria?” He was talking, but I couldn’t answer right away. “Why are you crying? Did he do something to you? Do you want me to go there and get you?”
“I’m okay,” I mumbled, trying to quit sobbing.
“So why are you crying?” I felt the concern and sadness in his voice.
Trembling, I brushed my tears away. “You shouldn’t have called.”
“I was worried about you. I didn’t want him to punish you for something that he thinks I’ve done.”
“He’s mad because I’ve hurt his feelings.”
“Do you want me to come get you?”
“No! I’m fine,” I protested. “Why don’t you believe me?”
“Then stop crying. It’s hard to believe you when you’re crying so much.”
“I’m trying to stop...”
Philippe’s voice was sweet when he spoke again. “Okay, I’m sorry. I know this is all my fault.”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed, wiping away the new tears. “You should have left me alone. I was happy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that,” I said. “It isn’t helping.”
“I know.”
I stopped crying, relaxing at the notion that he was on the other side of the line, listening to me and waiting for me to calm down. It was peculiar, but knowing that he was keeping me company soothed my pain.
