Chapter 2: Days of the Past
Crimson eyes, burning pain of the bite, and the growl of the wolves-most of all, these hunted Bera in her sleep. And there was no relief from sleep either: there the horrors took a continuous stream in her head-vampire's fangs dug into her body, wolves approaching her, the bone-freezing chill in the woods.
Every night, it would be a figure that emerged from the shadows-a silent guardian, watching over the sleeping house. It was the boy, the one who had saved her from the wolves. He had found the silver chain, the family heirloom, fallen from Bera's grasp in her panicked escape. He returned every night, hoping to find an opportunity to return it to her, a silent guardian against the darkness that had crept into her life.
He would wait for the house to grow dark, peering through the windowpanes to try and catch her glimpse, watching her sleeping with her face sallow and fallen and her breath irregular. "She is beautiful." He would say, He had felt rise in him, too, something oddly protective-that strange, hard-bitten loyalitas forged on common terror, upon the amazing accession of unsuspected courage forcing him to come between her and his enemies.
He knew nothing about her, neither her name nor her family name. All he knew was that she was in danger: something dark and sinister had reached out and touched her. He wanted to return the chain-a small gesture of goodwill, a silent apology for having intruded upon her life.
Yet he never had a chance. Always there, her parents' watchful eyes scanned endlessly into the night, vigilant. They fitted motion-activated lights around the house, after which it was impossible for him to approach without being detected. He waited by the school gates, in the hope of seeing her, but she was always flanked by her friends, her laughter carried on the air-a sound that contrasted sharply with the chilling silence that had fallen over her in the aftermath of the attack.
He even tried to leave the chain at her doorstep, a small, anonymous gift. But her father, a man of routine and suspicion, found the chain the next morning, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. The chain, once a symbol of hope and family, now became a source of unwanted attention-a reminder of the unseen presence that watched over their home.
The boy retreated into the shadows, frustrated and disheartened by not being able to return the chain. Yet he continued watching the house against the vampire or wolves.
Then it happened. On an especially full moon, the feelings of Bera became strange. A restlessness surged through her, a strange thirst gnawing at her. Her parents noticed the change, the unease radiating from their daughter. Her appetite diminished, replaced by a craving for something cold and dark.
Her father watched his daughter, her face pale. He remembered the bite, the frantic search for their daughter in the moonlit forest, the inexplicable fear that had gripped him. He remembered the man, the creature of the night, his eyes burning with an infernal fire.
A chilling realization began to dawn on him. Bera was changing.
He was a vampire, and he and his wife had kept his true nature hidden from their daughter-a dangerous secret they had carried for years. He had kept his urges tamped down, out of fear for them, for the life that they had built together. He had learned to control his thirst, to exist on the fringes of society, a ghost in the shadows.
He was seeing those same signs now in his daughter—the thirst, the unnatural pallor, the predatory glint in her eyes. And he knew that the time for action had well-nigh arrived.
"Don't go near her," he croaked to his wife. "She's. she's changing."
His wife watched their little girl until her eyes held a mixture of fear and dread, her silent-eyed understanding with him of what was happening: the old curse had touched their child.
Heavy with the knowledge that they had to go, he knew the danger of harming someone was too much risk neither for their daughter nor his wife, nor anyone else in their quiet town. The darkness that touched their daughter shouldn't consume them all.
They packed their things in the dead of night and fled their house, taking along all the memories of the past, leaving behind the boy who waited in the shadows, never knowing that the girl he longed to see had become something quite else.
They left at predawn hours, the night's silence broken only by the soft thrum of their car engine. As they drove away, the father glanced in the rearview mirror, his heart heavy with the weight of his decision. He had sacrificed everything to protect his family, but he wondered if he had truly protected them or merely condemned them to a life of exile, a life forever haunted by the darkness that had touched their lives.
The boy, from behind the trees, watched the car lights disappear into the distance. Some strange pang of loss he could not place stabbed at his heart. He had watched over the house, a silent guardian against the darkness, only to see it vanish into the night, taking with it the girl with eyes of the summer sky.
He picked up the silver chain, the cold metal a stark contrast to the warmth of his hand. He traced the intricate patterns, each curve and line reminding him of the girl he had never known, the girl whose life was forever changed by the bite of the night.
As the first rays of dawn painted the sky, he slipped the chain around his neck.
Twenty years had passed. Now the boy had become a man, growing into a great warrior and the new Alpha of his pack: Alpha Renon. He was torn up over the loss of his grandparents, but he stepped up to the challenge of leading his pack with strength and wisdom. The wolf came, a great creature of the night, and it finally burst forth from his skin-the signal that his powers were rising. He had been granted a Luna, Lyra, a beauteous she-wolf that complemented his strength with her arrogant spirit.
But the memory of the girl with the silver chain, the girl with eyes of the summer sky, would just not stop haunting him. He still carried the chain with him, a reminder of that fateful night in the forest.
By that time, Bera was a grown young woman who appeared to find solace with an aged recluse, an old mystic woman at the edge of town. The recluse had taken her under her wing-the former famous botanist-and granted her refuge after her parents had returned her into the city.
The old woman's grandson was a charming and kind young man, Lucian, who fell in love with Bera at first sight. Unbeknownst to himself, Lucian had been bitten by another vampire on a school trip, which had turned on his own vampirism, laying dormant inside him. The old woman, too, was a vampire, but unknown to Bera, had kept her true identity hidden. She was a princess of the vampire clan, and when her father died, her stepbrother became king; she had to leave the town.
Lucian was kind to Bera; he showered her with gifts, fought her battles, and tried in every way to win her affection. He would bring her flowers that grew only on other continents, serenade her with his off-key singing, and even try to impress her with what little knowledge of ancient history he had learned.
Bera, however, remained aloof, seeing him as nothing more than a friend. She had learned to control her own thirst, to suppress the darkness that lurked within her. She had built a life for herself, a life of quiet solitude, a life away from the shadows.
She worked tirelessly in the old woman's extensive gardens, tending to the vibrant blooms, their vivid colors a stark contrast to the darkness that sometimes threatened to consume her. She found solace in the mundane, in the rhythm of the seasons, in the gentle companionship of the cats that roamed the old woman's property.