Arena Wars Trilogy

by Hoffman, Samantha

  “So if she’s ready to give birth any day now, does that mean Roger will speed up his plans for us?” Haley asked. “We should really hurry back before Roger gets desperate. He does not want these children born, and would probably do anything to keep it from happening. He’s become consumed by this war he’s trying to start. Once they’re born, everyone will see how cute and harmless they are, and Roger won’t have a leg to stand on. His persecution of you can’t continue. This is his last chance to make you and your family pay.”

  Violet nodded. “If he plans to do anything, he’ll have to do it soon. We should go back and start setting up some kind of defense. We’ve got the sentries scattered around the property, which should give us some kind of warning, but it won’t be much.” She looked at me and offered me a small smile. “Are you ready for the fight of your life?”

  “Earlier, you told Quinten that he needed more practice because the fight ahead of us would be more intense and more dangerous than anything we’ve ever faced before. What did you mean by that? We’ve been in some pretty intense situations before, Violet. We survived the Arena, and those were fights to the death. What makes you think Quinten isn’t ready?”

  “War is not the same as a two on two fight with rules and guards to keep people in line. Everything is far more chaotic than you could possibly imagine. There will be probably close to a hundred people all in those woods, and many of them will be trying to kill you. People will be coming at you from all sides and everyone begins to blur together and look the same. You can’t tell friend from enemy and you’ll get tired and you’ll make mistakes.”

  “Everything happens so fast,” Haley said. “You don’t have time to think about what you’re doing. You either react or you die. When it’s just you against one other person, you can take a few seconds to analyze the situation and plan out your next move, but not with all out war like this. Even if your opponent gets tired and needs a break, there will be someone to take his place. Someone that doesn’t need to rest yet. So even though you’re tired and exhausted and not thinking clearly, you’ll have to face an opponent that is fully rested and can take full advantage of your condition.”

  “Not that you’ll be doing much fighting,” Jenna said, wiping the gel stuff off my stomach with a small cloth. “Ray wants someone with you and me at all times, preferably Jax or Violet. That way if you go into labor, I’ll be there to help deliver the babies and we’ll have protection while we do it. You’ll be at your most vulnerable while you’re giving birth. If Roger is still thinking clearly, that’ll be the time to strike.”

  “Alright, let’s get her home. It’ll be safer for her once she’s surrounded by the people planning to protect her,” Haley said quickly. “Even though I know anybody would be stupid to try something out in the open like this, I still don’t like being away from our base of operations for so long, especially since you can’t really run much, can you?” she asked, looking over at me and my bulging stomach.

  “I can run,” I said defensively as I hopped out of the chair. “I just have to waddle while I do it,” I said, ignoring their chuckles. People loved to watch me walk, and it was one of the things I was most self-conscious about, which was strange, since I had those horrible stretch marks over my hips, thighs, and stomach. But for the most part, nobody saw them except for Quinten, so maybe that was why I wasn’t so embarrassed about it. But everyone could see the waddling, and aside from making me feel uncomfortable, it also made me feel weak and kind of helpless.

  The ride back home was mostly silent, aside from the polite conversation that Jenna and Violet made with one another. Haley and I listened to the two of them talk with interest. It was obvious that they were slightly uncomfortable with one another, but they were making an effort to get along, probably for my sake. I wondered if they would still be as cordial with one another after everything was over. Surprisingly, I hadn’t really thought about what might happen to everyone like Violet.

  What about Dennis and Haley? They’ll probably go off and live their lives and I’ll never hear from them again. The same goes for Brent and Nolan, and Jonathon, and the others. The only people that will stay with me are Ray, Jax, Darren, Jenna, and Quinten. Everyone else will fade away, and they’ll move on with their lives. I’m not close with most of them, but what about Violet? I’d definitely miss her if she decided to leave with Maria…

  *****

  “Alright, Alanna. Just breathe,” Jenna ordered firmly. “Just listen to the sound of my voice, and breathe. In, out, in out. That’s it, keep going.” She had my hands in hers, and she was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me. She was staring into my eyes, and she was breathing deeply along with me.

  “How much pain can I expect to be in?” I asked. Quinten was sitting behind me, giving me something firm and warm to lean against while I pretended to push and work on my breathing. “I mean, on a scale of one to ten, is labor like a ten? And is it worse for women that are having twins?”

  “Well, I’ve never personally experienced it myself,” Jenna said, peering into a book in her lap. “I’ve heard that the contractions are the most painful part, and the pushing feels like a relief. And every woman’s contractions vary. Some may say it ranks about a five on the pain scales, others say it ranks about a ten or higher. To be honest, I really can’t give you a definitive answer. Plus, it depends on if you get an epidural or not. You won’t be able to have one of those since we most likely won’t be in a hospital when you deliver, but there are ways to cope with pain. Knowing how to breathe is one of those. So you just have to keep practicing.”

  “Okay, but how long do you think this whole labor thing will take?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t really answer that either. It varies wildly between mothers, and there are a few other factors to take in and consider. Werewolves tend to give birth much faster than normal women, as a werewolf’s healing factor will kick in and help speed the process up, but these babies aren’t normal even for a werewolf. So, it could take much less time, or it could take much more time. We’ll just have to prepare as much as we can and hope for the best.”

  I sighed. “Well, I’ve dealt with quite a bit of pain in the past. It’s not like it’s a foreign notion to me. I mean, it can’t be much worse than everything else I’ve experienced. I’ve had my blood drained from my body, I’ve had my throat practically torn out, I’ve been cut down the chest, and I’ve had my unborn children shifting inside of me. All of those experiences were really horrible. Honestly, I think childbirth will be a piece of cake compared to all of that.” Ray snorted from his place behind us on the couch, and I turned and glared at him, even though I couldn’t help but smile. “What?”

  “It’s okay if you believe that,” he said, trying not to laugh. “Carmen thought the same thing. She told me she wanted to do it without pain medication so she could have bragging rights, but by the time we got to the hospital, she was nearly screaming her head off and swearing at the nurses and attendants, and she was begging for pain medication of any kind. When we had Ilene, she didn’t even consider natural childbirth.”

  The thought of screaming and begging for pain medication was an uncomfortable one. Like Jenna said, there probably wouldn’t be time for any kind of pain medication. I’d have to do it naturally, and I wouldn’t have a say in the matter. Childbirth was already a terrifying though without throwing in a lack of pain medication and some people trying to kill me while I squeezed out two supernatural children. I didn’t know how things would turn out yet, but I knew that Quinten and everyone I loved would be there with me, helping me along.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You know, I loved Peter,” Violet said quietly. She leaned against the porch railing and looked out at the woods around us. “I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone before or since. I even loved him more than myself. Peter was that rare kind of man that never did anything that would hurt someone else if he could help it. He helped others, even vampires. That’s actually how we
met.”

  “What happened?” I asked just as quietly. I’d come out to the porch to get some fresh air, but I was happy for Violet’s company at the moment. Everyone else was busy planning our defense, and I had no more patience for anything relating to war. “How did you two meet?”

  She smiled slowly, looking much younger and even more beautiful in the process. “I was new in the city; I’d been split up from Maria for some time, and I was beginning to really feel the sting of loneliness. I had begun to briefly consider making someone else into a vampire to keep me company, just like Maria had done to me. However, I was still angry that Maria had not given me a say in the matter, and I refused to take that choice away from someone else. So, I set out to find someone that wanted to die.”

  “Why?”

  “I figured if I could find someone that wanted to die, I would be able to live my life without blame. They would never be able to blame for what I planned to do to them since they’d already planned to throw their life away. And after a few days, I met a young girl–no more than fifteen–that was planning to kill herself. When I asked her why she was doing it, she told me that she had nobody in her life that cared about her, and I told her that I didn’t either. I was planning to offer her immortality, when a young man stumbled out of the darkness.”

  “Peter.”

  She nodded, smiling wistfully at the thought of her lover. “Even though he was a few years younger than me physically, he was still one of the most beautiful men I’d ever met. He didn’t notice me at first though. His gaze was locked on the young girl. He began to plead with her, begging her to think about what she was doing. After awhile, he managed to talk her down from the ledge she was standing on, and he took her home in his car. I should have just turned around and searched for someone else to turn, but there was something about this young man that I couldn’t possibly ignore.”

  “So you followed him.”

  “Yes, I did. I followed him until he stopped in front of this building and let the girl out. She’d stopped crying for the moment, and I was startled when she hugged him.”

  “They knew each other?”

  “They were cousins, I found out later. After she shut the door behind her, he walked back down the steps, and instead of getting into his car, he walked over to where I was hiding in the shadows, watching him. He stopped about a stone’s throw from me and said, ‘You know, I don’t know whether to thank you for keeping her talking long enough for me to get there and stop her, or to kill you for even considering turning her into one of you’. Believe me; I was more surprised than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  “He knew what you were?” I asked, surprised. Not many people knew about the existence of either vampires or werewolves. “How?”

  “Up until that night, I had never met a werewolf. I didn’t even know there was a possibility of them being real. I thought it was just us vampires. Maria had wanted to keep us out of the fighting, so she neglected to mention that we did in fact have mortal enemies. Peter was already a werewolf when we met, and he could smell me from a mile away.”

  “If you’d tried to turn his cousin, she would have become a werewolf, and not a vampire,” I said. Clearly Violet knew that now, but she hadn’t known it then. She wouldn’t have made a companion to travel the world with her; she would have made a mortal enemy that probably would have tried to kill her at some point. Many werewolves held a grudge against the vampire that turned them.

  Violet nodded. “I stepped out of the darkness to face Peter, and the look in his eyes when he saw me,” she said, sighing wistfully. “It was like I was the most amazing creature he’d ever seen, even though he knew that we were destined to be enemies and not friends. Of course, I was instantly enamored with him. Peter was young and handsome, and he seemed to understand what I was. And for just one moment, he looked at me, and didn’t see a monster. He saw someone that he thought he could save. We were like Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed lovers.” I groaned, causing her to smile. “What? Don’t you like Romeo and Juliet? It’s wildly considered to be one of the greatest love stories of all time.”

  “I can’t believe people actually think that. Romeo was seventeen, Juliet was thirteen, and they fell in love over the course of like two days. Then, at the end of it all, they caused the death of several people, including themselves. Romeo was in love with another girl the day before he met Juliet. I don’t call that love. I call it stupidity, and I think that’s what William Shakespeare was trying to portray with that story: the stupidity of young love.”

  Violet grinned. “Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree. Anyways, Peter looked at me, and he told me something that shocked me. He said, ‘I won’t let my cousin turn out like me. Immortality sucks, and few people can really handle it. She hates her life now; if she were to end up having to live forever, she’d still find a way to kill herself. It would just be harder for her than it is now’. I was in complete shock. Many vampires believe that immortality is the greatest gift you can give someone, and I was one of the few who disagreed with that. And here I was, having found someone else who shared my belief that living forever wasn’t all that it had cracked up to be.”

  “So you two felt an instant connection with one another?”

  “Yes. He and I were never meant to be anything more than enemies, but I didn’t know that at the time. He seemed to understand that I didn’t know about werewolves or anything, and instead of attacking me or killing me like he could have, he didn’t. He took pity on me, and he sat me down and explained what he was and what his cousin would have been had I bitten her. Then, he sat there and listened to me. He listened to my problems and my fears and my insecurities. I’d come to terms with what I was and could never be, but there was still a small part of me that longed for more.

  “And Peter felt the same way I did. He wanted someone to understand him. He wanted someone to listen to him without passing judgment. And I gave him that. He and I sat out in front of his cousin’s house for hours, just talking. We didn’t care if anyone saw us. We didn’t care if anyone knew. We just talked to one another.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything and anything. Sports, places we wanted to go, the things we wanted to do with our lives, and even love. Something just clicked between the two of us that night. When it was finally time for Peter to return home, he gave me his name and address, and asked me to meet with him again. Not once did I ever consider saying no to him. After just one night talking to him, I knew I wanted to be with him more than anything. It never occurred to me that someone might have a problem with it.”

  “What happened next?”

  “We met up once, and then we met up again, and again, and again. During our first two or three meetings, he was slightly uncomfortable at being so close to a vampire. Even though we’d had a long talk before, he wasn’t sure if I was as sincere as I had been when we’d met. But he quickly came to like and even trust me.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Peter and I were never friends like you and Quinten were. The two of you were always close, even before you became lovers. Peter and I jumped right into a relationship, which is seldom the right thing to do. But it worked for us.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Not long enough,” she said quietly. Suddenly, her eyes hardened and she clenched the porch railing so hard it creaked under the pressure. “We tried to keep our relationship a secret to avoid confrontation from both sides–we knew that nobody would ever understand us–but we didn’t count on catching the attention of Roger Mason. To this day, I still have no idea how he found out about us, but he did. He tracked us down and attacked. Peter died that day, and I couldn’t even be with him when he passed. I had to come back later after Roger was gone to find Peter’s cold lifeless body on the ground.” She sucked in a deep lungful of breath, fighting sobs as she rocked back and forth.

  Putting my arm around her, I pulled her closer. Right now, it didn’t matter that this woman was a vampire, or tha
t she was centuries older than me. All that mattered was that I understood the pain she was feeling. I had lost my mate, and even though Quinten managed to come back to me, I still knew what the pain of losing him felt like. He had technically died, shattering both our bond and my heart. If it hadn’t been for Carmen, I would have lost him forever, and I probably would have turned out like Violet.

  “I’m sorry about Peter,” I said gently. “I know what it feels like to lose someone you love with every part of yourself. People always say that it gets better with time, but that’s bullshit most of the time. You–”

  “You can’t move on until you get your revenge,” Violet said harshly. “And my revenge is almost here. Soon, Roger Mason is going to pay for what he’s put me through. Or I’ll be dead, and I’ll be with Peter once again. Either way, things will be looking up for me, and I have you to thank for that.”

  “Do you think you could ever love again?” I asked softly.

  “Could you love again after Quinten?” she asked, watching me intently.

  Quinten is the love of my life…there’s no doubt about that. Not only is he my soul mate, but he was my closest friend and someone I could always confide in. Even before he and I knew we were soul mates, we had gotten closer than any two normal people ever could have. We just had that special bond, and even before I knew I loved him, I would never have been able to get over his death.

  “No, I wouldn’t have been able to love again. I knew that when Quinten died in that Arena. If my mother hadn’t been able to revive him before turning him, my life wouldn’t have meaning now, and it never would again. There are just some things you can’t ever move on from, and losing him would have been one of them.” I looked over at her. “I’m sorry, Violet. I know how you feel.”

  Violet was silent for a moment, and she and I stared out at the woods surrounding the house. I could tell she was still thinking heavily about Peter, and I didn’t want to disturb her anymore. “I know,” she said finally. “As long as I live, be it another day or another century or even until the end of time, I don’t think I could ever love someone as much as I loved Peter. Even though Peter and I weren’t soul mates, we had this wonderful bond that could never be found again.