The Awakening: A Witch-Vampire Romance: Feel the Heat.

by Anastasha Renee

  “You were going to take me and my brother to a place where we could run into someone that you broke one of the greatest taboos of our race with,” I roar at him.

  Jaxx isn’t the man I thought he was. He is a liar. Everything about us has been a lie, a callous lie.

  “Does Sebastian know? Did he keep this from me too?”

  Jaxx just shakes his head in the negative. He stands still as stone, searching my face for something. Whatever he sees there, he doesn’t like. He looks like he has found the answer that finally breaks him. He turns his back to me, finds a shaft of moonlight, reaches for it with his gift, then dissolves it into mists. He leaves me alone on the side of the highway. I wonder where we could have possibly gone so very fucking wrong.

  When he disappears from view I lose it, slumping to the dirt, I break. Shattered. Nothing is holding me together now. I have nothing left. I am empty, a husk that a weak breeze can even blow away. All I can think is why? Why did he lie? I would have understood, just as I told him. I would have found a way to work around this. He left me, I think. After dropping this shit on my lap. He just left.

  My head falls to my knees and I start to slam my fists into the concrete beneath me. I scream bloody murder at the top of my lungs, all the pain and torment making itself known and echoing off the nearby trees.

  One moment I am alone, sitting in the road screaming out my pain for the world to hear. Then the next thing I know I am being surrounded by what looks like living black shadows. They are wearing what looks to be tattered darkened cloaks torn at the edges. I can’t seem to catch sight of a face on either of them. I have to cover my ears because they are making a screeching sound with each pass that is threatening to make my ears bleed.

  Gavin had stayed in the car, letting Jaxx and I have some semblance of privacy while he dropped his shit sandwich into my lap. He stayed put until Jaxx left me here. Now he is pulling me into his arms and lifting me to his chest. Taking off, sprinting for the car.

  “What are they,” I scream at my brother as he sprints away from the screaming shadows following closely behind us.

  “Wraiths,” he grunts out. “There is no way to fight them off, they have no weaknesses. Those creatures are only attracted to a terrible sadness.” He looks me in the eyes and I know that they were drawn here because of me.

  He is carrying my clinging form to the Lexus where he practically throws me into the passenger seat. I quickly buckle my belt as he runs around to the driver’s seat and starts the car. He pulls a U turn and heads back the way we came from. I can smell the rubber from the tires burning against the black top.

  “Will they come after us,” I whisper to him.

  “No, they only go after things weaker than themselves. They are the vultures of our world. We shouldn’t have to worry about them again.” Gavin checks the rearview mirror and lets out a long sigh of relief. We must have lost them. He seems quite pleased by that until he looks over at me. I must look a hot mess because the pleased look on his face fades into one of anger mixed with a sadness of his own.

  “Listen to me, Ella. People make mistakes. He must have thought that you couldn’t forgive this.” There is a quiet certainty in his voice.

  “Doesn’t he know me at all, Gavin? I could forgive him almost anything. This shit happened before us. He didn’t even know me. Or even that I existed yet,” I sigh out.

  Gavin continues to talk as he speeds down the barren highway.

  “The bonds of the destined are unbreakable. You can hurt them. You can stretch them taught, but they can’t be broken, but he has grown up in a True witch’s world. What he has done isn’t done. You have to understand that. It is the most taboo thing that you could do. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I do know what it is like to be tempted. She was a means to an end for him. That’s all.”

  “I understand that, but he left. He just left me there. Why would he leave if it wasn’t over?”

  “That is what you are not understanding, you can’t be away from one another. Especially since you haven’t went through the mating rights and consummated your relationship as of yet.. He can’t stay away or you and he will both weaken. You will eventually die if you are not together.”

  “There is so much that I don’t understand about this world, Gavin. So much that I need to be taught. That I need to learn.”

  “I know, Ella. You will. You have me for that. You will have me always. Forever.”

  “He told me forever also.” Tears finally start to streak down my cold cheeks, finally letting the hurt out.

  “You have to forgive him for misleading you, for thinking that you couldn’t get past what he stupidly did. He is a male. No matter the species. We make mistakes and think that we can’t come back from them, when all we have to do is trust in those who love us. They will always see us through. That’s what he needs to realize about you. Give him a day tops. He will find you,” Gavin insists.

  “You know she meant nothing to him. Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say reluctantly.

  “Will you see him when he comes?”

  “Dunno,” I mumble into the window I have my head jammed against.

  “You will have to eventually. I have never seen a destined pair with such a strong bond. He was scared, Ella. Forgive him his weakness.”

  “I already have. I just didn’t think he would ever leave.”

  We speed through the darkness of the night in silence. Gavin holds my hand, squeezing it every once in a while, as if to give me comfort. To let me know that I will never be alone again, Jaxx or no Jaxx.

  “Where are we going,” I ask after we have driven for a while.

  “We are going to get my bike. Stowe our shit and get the fuck outta dodge before any more trouble finds you. You have had enough. You need time to rest and rebuild yourself.”

  “Yes,” I whisper in the positive to his plan.

  “But where are we heading after we get to your bike?”

  “I own a hunting lodge that no one knows about. It’s around a couple of hundred miles from here. It’s my home away from our father’s clan. No one knows about it, no one but you… now.”

  I nod my head. All I want to do is sleep, to forget this night.

  “Sleep if you want, Ella. I won’t tell Sebastian if you drool on his seats,” he chuckles and tries to get a reaction out of me.

  I don’t respond, but I appreciate the effort. I love him for it, but I want to keep the numb feeling that has once again taken over. I don’t want to feel yet. I don’t know what I am going to do when Jaxx does come to find me. I know that I have already forgiven him for fucking someone else before he was with me. There is really nothing to forgive on that. The archaic beliefs of our people aren’t mine. What I am going to have trouble forgiving him for is leaving. Not staying and trying to fix this shit that had gone so wrong between us. You don’t leave when things get bad. You dig your feet in as hard as you can and you fight it out.

  I eventually start to drift. I glance over at Gavin thumping his fingers on the steering wheel as he drives, barreling down the road is more like it. I feel the darkness taking me, swallowing me whole. I want it. I crave the oblivion it offers, the emptiness where the hurt isn’t waiting to wrap itself around me, to strangle the remaining life out of me. My last thought is that he’d left.

  He left me. He said forever. He had lied.

  Chapter 13.

  It has been four days. Four days since Gavin and I arrived at his home. Four days of not moving and growing ever weaker. Four days since he just up and left me. Four days without his smile, his touch, his embrace, his forever. It was all an exquisite mirage. A lie.

  I know that I am dying, but I can’t seem to even care. Gavin is growing continuously worried. I just can’t seem to find it in me to reassure him, not when I can’t even reassure myself that I want to go on.

  Gavin’s home is beautiful. All redwood and exposed beams. The room he gives me is gorgeous, of course. It is decorated in diff
erent shades of blue, ranging from the lightest blue of the sky to the darkest blue of midnight.

  I know that I am depressed. I am supposed to be using this time to train, but I can’t even move from the bed anymore. Gavin said it is because I am too young for my body and soul to deal with that much torture. That is exactly what it is. Physically I am disappearing into myself. My spirit was sucked dry the minute he disappeared into the moonlight. The moment he walked away from me like I was so much trash. He is done. And now so am I.

  Literally.

  Gavin has been raging. So much anger and despair and I don’t know how to help him. My heart, what is left of it, is being twisted dry. To see someone you love in so much pain. I guess I know what he is feeling. I can’t stand by and watch him fade.

  He made a call to my father’s clan this morning, asking for help. To say that they were astonished to find out that Gavin has a twin is an understatement. They will be arriving tomorrow, but even I know that it will be too late by then. I will have moved on into the everlasting darkness by then.

  Gavin even tries reaching out to Sebastian, but he has gone off the grid. Much like Jaxx, just thinking his name makes me shudder. I live in a constant void of pain. I have begged Gavin repeatedly to end me, but he refuses every time that I ask. I knew that he wouldn’t when I asked, but it was at a moment when the pain became too much. I couldn’t take it anymore. I can’t take anymore now, but I am holding out for him, hoping he will come back to me, so that I might get a chance to say goodbye. To tell him that he left me for the wrong reasons. He had no reason to leave. My love is eternal. Never breaking. Especially over something or someone that doesn’t matter.

  “You have to fight, Ella. You can’t let yourself wither away like this,” Gavin begs me endlessly.

  “Even like this, when you are withered and weak, you are still beautiful. Twisted. But still my beautiful sister.”

  Gavin is speaking to me again. He does it quite often, but I can’t answer him, even when he rages at me. I am locked deep inside a void, a void so dark that even the smallest hint of the light left inside me has been snuffed out like a weak candle.

  My room has so many holes in the walls. Gavin’s rages are getting worse. He prays by my bedside most nights, days, mornings, and minutes. He is hoping and begging for something that will never happen.

  Destined Mates are not supposed to be separated. He knew this. He knew this. He left me to die. I realize that now, but I still love him more than my own life. I have forgiven him for everything.

  I can hear Gavin on the phone once more.

  “She’s fading Celian. Her skin has turned grey, her hair is falling out by the handful, she has lost so much weight that she is a husk of who she once was, and her eyes. My Goddess, I think she is blind. They are almost completely true white now. There is barely a whisper of the former vibrant jade that they once were.”

  I listen hard, but he is quiet for a moment, listening to whoever is on the phone. Celian, he’d said.

  “No I can’t get her to speak. I don’t even think she can. She has been silent since we arrived here. Besides when she begged me to end her.”

  Pause.

  “Is the clan still coming?” Gavin waits for an answer in silence.

  I can hear him pacing the wood floors.

  “What do you mean, ‘something has happened and you can’t make the trip’?”

  Pause.

  “No, I can’t bring her there! If I move her she might die!”

  Silence and more pacing.

  “Yes four days. I think at first it was voluntary. Now she can’t move, let alone tell me anything that she’s experiencing.”

  More silence.

  “She isn’t one of your fucking science experiments to come and study old man! She is your Goddess’s damned grandchild!”

  I can actually hear yelling from the other end of the line.

  “Please. Help us,” Gavin begs our family.

  And then suddenly I can hear the person on the phone.

  “You are weak. Just like your father. If you are begging for the life of someone you just met, then you have no place in this clan. Your mother’s line must have been defective to create such parasitic offspring.” My supposed grandfather has hung up.

  I hear Gavin throw his phone across the room and start to sob. My heart breaks a little more. It isn’t like my stoic brother to beg anyone. I need to help him somehow. With the last of my reserved energy I concentrate on the person he was just speaking to. I focus my mind’s eye on him. It feels almost like instinct is driving me. I start to hear someone, or something. I need to do something to help Gavin. And that means that I have to help myself.

  I start to hear faint thoughts coming from someone that is not Gavin. The person is scared and so very dark. He has the darkest soul that I have ever encountered. The thoughts I can hear inside his head are getting stronger. I can now hear them as clearly as if they are my own.

  Am I developing yet another one of my gifts? I think.

  I wonder if I speak through this strange connection, if he will hear me.

  “I can feel you. I can hear your thoughts,” I say through the strange connection I have formed.

  The person I am speaking to inside his head is startled. I can feel his physical responses also.

  “You’re wrong about my brother and about me. I can see your soul. I can read your thoughts. Feel your fear. You are the one who is weak. You always have been, haven’t you?”

  “Who is this? What gives you the right to steal into my head,” he finally deigns to respond to me.

  “My blood is my right. I can see now what truly happened to my father. Why my mother had to separate us. Your hatred and jealousy knows no bounds. You wanted her for your own and she spurned you. You sick fuck!”

  With that I disconnect from his wretched mind. I feel sick and dirty. I want to rip my nails through my mind and wipe away all I had seen. Sick twisted old fuck is putting it mildly.

  He’d had my father, his only son and heir, tortured, trying to find information from him, answers that he didn’t know. Even after my mother and father had truly mated, he still wanted my mother, but my mother didn’t tell my father of her plans. She left in the dead of night and ran with me. The old man wanted to drown me at my birth. His hatred toward all females knew no bounds. When he couldn’t get the answers he was seeking from his son, he killed him, making it look like an accident. Then he tried to twist Gavin, tried to make my brother into a monster just like him. He didn’t succeed though. For that I am glad. I’d caught something that had to do with Jaxx also, but I didn’t have enough strength to search his mind further.

  A thought occurs to me. If I could talk to that foul soul through my mind, I wonder if I can reach my brother also. I concentrate on him, trying to push through his barriers. They are strong, stronger than his grandfathers are.

  “Gavin,” I whisper into his mind.

  I hear running. Then he is here crouching beside me. He is kneeling at the side of my bed.

  “Ella?”

  I force my body to move and shift my head toward him.

  “Help me,” I whisper into his mind. The link is weak because of the strength I’d used to connect with our grandfather.

  “Ella,” he says out loud again. “Goddess knows that I have tried. Please tell me what I can do.”

  “Take my hand. Share yourself with me,” I urge him.

  “I wish I could, but it doesn’t work like that. You can only heal yourself with Jaxx.”

  It hurts to hear his name spoken.

  “Please. Have to try. We are soul twins. Blood. Stronger than most anything.” I can feel the connection to him fading as was I.

  Gavin takes my hand into his own.

  My body starts to soak up his strength like a dry sponge. I can feel myself rejuvenating, my body filling itself outward, and gaining back my eye sight. I gasp out at how wretched my brother looks. He hasn’t slept in days. He looks so tired and is loo
king more tired by the moment. I shake my hand lose from his tight grip. I could suck him dry if I don’t break the connection.

  “We are more connected to one another than we thought, brother.”

  “Ella!” He grabs me to him, holding me tight.

  “How did you know that we could do that,” astonishment is lacing his voice.

  “We can do anything together, Gavin. We are more than mere siblings. Sebastian told me that twins born of two True Witch parents are rare. So rare no one has ever heard of it happening before. We are different.”

  He smiles at that, crawling onto the bed and facing me. His arms are wrapped around me now and he looks like he is about to pass the fuck out. I am feeling stronger, but I have a long way to go before I am back to my old self. Then I have plans to make. People to find. Fences to mend and all that shit. I wrap my arms around Gavin and I think that we must look like we did when we had lain in my mother’s womb. Wrapped up, tightly entwined in each other.

  “Forever,” he whispers to me. He still has a connection to mine. I can feel it now. That is going to get uncomfortable if Jaxx ever gets his head out of his ass.