Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Warren
“Are you quite sure you are ready for this?” Lena asked, looking me over with just a touch of concern on her stoic face. She wasn’t one to show emotion, but I had been with her every day for a decade, and despite her best attempts to keep me at arm’s length, we had become friends.
“No,” I replied honestly as I fixed myself in the mirror one last time, “but it had to happen sooner or later.”
Lena narrowed her eyes. “You do not have to come. I can handle it on my own.”
I laughed. “Lena, I am fully aware of your capability, but I wish to come and support you, just as I have all this time. Tell me, when was the last time you met with the Authority without me being close by?”
“You say that as though I require your help.”
Rolling my eyes, I pulled her into a forced hug.
She squirmed for a moment, as she always did, before relenting and relaxing into me.
Standing at just barely over five feet, Lena was a tiny thing, though she was formidable, anyway.
Her blonde hair and blue eyes made her look angelic and almost innocent from afar, but you could see the deadly killer beneath the second you were close enough to see her eyes and the dead expression on her face.
“Princess, you never need help, and I know that. But humor me? It is for my own comfort.”
She sighed, elbowing me in the stomach before escaping my embrace. “I hate it when you call me that!”
I pouted, laughing as she threw a pillow at me. “I know.”
“What if he is still there? Are you ready to handle it?”
I knew she was fretting, and ordinarily I would have found it to be humorous, but she had a point.
Returning to New Orleans after so much time away was a big decision and was not one I had made lightly.
The last time I had been in that city was almost the last time I had ever opened my eyes.
Lena had saved me from myself and whisked me far away from Louisiana.
Over ten years had passed, and I still remembered everything that happened like it was yesterday. The pain, the hurt, the love. Yet, it did not pain me so grievously as before. Living with Lena meant learning how to become immortal, how to let go of the humanity that would have been my downfall.
But that didn’t mean I had forgotten him and the ways he made me feel, good and bad.
I forced a smile on my face. “Time has passed. I will not pretend that it has been an easy journey, but I have grown since then. I am no longer that broken human turned fledgling.”
Lena raised a brow. “Technically, you will always be a fledgling to me.”
“And technically, you will always be a pampered princess to me,” I rebutted. That earned me another pillow to the head. “In all seriousness, I will be fine, Lena. I highly doubt he even remained there after so long.”
“I have heard—”
I shook my head. “Our paths will not cross. I will be close by while you have your meeting, and then I will leave.”
Lena sighed, ceasing her argument. “Very well.”
We packed a bag each after that and made our way to New Orleans, my home. It was unsettling to return to the place that had both changed and ruined my life in such a short time. I missed it so terribly, but spending time away from it had shown me how wonderful and large the world was.
When we first left Louisiana, I had been a mess.
To say I was a shell would not do the desolation I felt justice.
I was an empty husk and Lena was determined to revive me.
She first took me to Mississippi, where we holed up in an old mansion she owned.
For months, Lena allowed me to wallow and heal, bringing me glasses of blood to drink each night to sustain me.
She cared for me with a compassion that did not match her character, but also formed an unshakeable bond between us.
“Why are you helping me?” I had asked her. “Why would you want me in your coven? I am broken.”
Lena had smiled sadly. It was hauntingly beautiful, and though she was outwardly young in appearance, her eyes did not hide her years.
“I was broken once, and I did not have anyone to teach me how to be anything other than that. I roamed the world, alone, until I used my pain and turned it into power. I would like to do the same for you.”
“I don’t want power,” I had replied.
“You do not have to want it—you are power. I would like to show you how to use it.”
And she had.
Slowly, Lena had shown me that denying my vampirism would only further push me from humanity. It would make my animalistic traits take over until I became a monster. But if I could embrace it, I could keep control and live amongst humans like I wanted to.
She taught me how to hunt. How to look for people who wouldn’t be missed from society, but also were not so far gone into their habits that their blood tasted poisoned.
Lena herself had a penchant for powerful men, but she had a way about her that made them hypnotized, unwilling to betray her and tell of her true nature by the time she was done.
The first few years, she taught me how to kill, stopping just before their hearts gave out.
We went all across Europe, hunting and feeding.
Lena was richer than I could comprehend and she made sure that I worried for nothing, basking in what it felt like to live in luxury.
I could stand tall for the first time in my life, feeling strong in mind and body both.
Lena rarely killed, even during those years. She had control over herself like no one I had ever met, and once I had learned to embrace what I was, she began to show me how to harness that level of control, too.
But the biggest gift she ever gave me was learning to block my thoughts. How to shut off my mind from everyone around me.
I hadn’t realized in those early months that she was the one keeping my mind quiet. It was a confession that came later, during a weak moment, when I admitted to missing his voice in my head.
“Do you have any idea the work it took me to block him from you?” she had yelled, slamming her hand down on the table.
“You…”
Lena had rolled her eyes. “Yes, you fool! The only way to save you was to make sure you did not give in to your weakness. If you had heard his voice, you would have run back to him a long time ago.”
My lip curled as I had growled at her. “That was not your choice to make, Lena.”
“Actually, it was. You agreed to be part of my coven, which means following my rules and my orders. Have I not given you a good life? Have I not taught you how to be a vampire? Do you not live in a comfort you could never dream of?”
“I did not agree to be a puppet. I never permitted you to be in my head!”
Lena had hissed, baring her fangs at me. “Do not speak to me like I am nothing. I have done more for you than anyone in your life, and some gratitude would be appreciated! Would you have preferred I let you hear him begging? His sobbing, his apologies, his despair?”
“Yes! It was mine to hear.”
Lena had laughed bitterly. “You truly are a fool. But if that is what you wish for, who am I to deny you?”
She had got up from her chair and came around the table. Her eyes blazed as she tilted my chin up to look at her. Whispering something low in a language I did not know, she lowered the barrier of my mind and flooded it with all she had kept from me.
An anguished scream left my mouth as I felt and heard Levette’s suffering—years of torture and pain and heartbreak. While I had been changing into a better version of myself, he had been drowning in the consequences of his actions. Calling out for my return, my forgiveness, my love.
“Lena…stop!” I had cried, clutching my temples as I fell to my knees on the floor. “It’s too much!”
Lena had shook her head, taking a sip from her wine glass. “No. This is what you wanted, my little vampy, and now you must deal with it. Realize what I have protected you from.”
My body had trembled as my stolen thoughts overtook me. I felt my own pain reflected in Levette’s, and it was unbearable. It fortified my love for him, and all the reasons we could not work. We had been built on deception and betrayal and blood; how could a relationship survive that?
I had lay on my side, whimpering, as the thoughts eventually stopped. Only then did Lena get up and reach a tiny hand out to help me to my feet. She had wiped away my tears and cupped my face, her brows furrowed as she looked at me.
“I do not like seeing you in pain, but it had to be done. You must understand what I have done to protect you all this time, from him and from yourself.”
“I am sorry for doubting you and your sincerity.”
Lena had laughed, straightening my shirt out like a protective mother. “Keep your apologies, Warren. Just learn from it so that history does not repeat.”
She had beamed up at me, and I saw that she did not mean to punish me for my insubordination, nor abandon me for my suspicion. Even as my heart had ached and I could hear Levy’s voice in the back of my mind, I knew what had to happen next if I wanted to survive as a vampire, as one of Lena’s coven.
“Can you teach me how to do that? How to block my own mind?” I had asked quietly.
“It would be my pleasure.”
The vibrancy of New Orleans had only increased in my time away from my beloved city.
The stars seemed brighter, and the people had a different air about them.
I accompanied Lena to the large estate in the center of the city, bidding her luck with a kiss to her pale cheek, before making my way back into the streets I once called home.