Loving the leech (Guardians of Red Moon city #4)
16. Day one

Kaylin’s POV

It hurts like hell; even though the skin heals together quickly, it still burns on the inside. Like werewolves, vampires have enhanced healing powers, but this is ridiculous. Even though it aches, I climb up high in the tree and show my middle finger to the camera. Joseph will have to pay for the fact that he pulled me into this. Yes, it was William who bit me from the beginning, but this kind of punishment is incomparable. Salazar explained how it works during a vote. There are five council members, and all of them each have a say when they’re tackling a problem.

Salazar has the casting vote because he’s the “king” of the council and for all vampires throughout the United States, but if the other four members think differently from him, he can’t make a decision all by himself anyway since it’s not morally right. That doesn’t mean that he actually is king, considering Aleida Mendez, the werewolf queen, holds that power at the moment since she’s a god now and there isn’t a vampire royal alive. Well, except me, but others don’t know that yet. Before my mentor gives his voice, he must think carefully and draw logical conclusions while considering his colleagues’ views.

This means that even if he’d known me before all this happened, it wouldn’t matter if the other four were against him saving me. I focus on the sounds I hear nearby, break off a branch and attack the man below. My weapon penetrates his body quickly and mercilessly, but instead of meeting with horror, his eyes reflect understanding.

“My name is Gabe, and I’m proud that it’s under your power that I end my life instead of any of the other sinners, travel in peace, my queen,” he whispers, and I smile quickly before returning to my cold expression.

The branch penetrates Gabe’s body again, this time in his forehead. He dies instantly, and I get up. Before I walk away, I look back at his dark eyes staring up at a sky he will never experience. Vampires are creatures of darkness, which means that we burn in the purifying fires of hell when we leave mortal life. I’m running south, someone’s sure to find Gabe’s corpse soon, and I have a feeling that most of the remaining participants are looking for me, given that I’m the main imminent danger in here. Time perception here is a joke; I have no idea how long I’ve been inside the arena.

It was bright when everything started, and now suddenly, it begins to darken. Is it already evening? I keep running and counting the seconds in my head; when I reach the rippling creek, I have calculated 658 at the right speed. Ten minutes have passed without me encountering anyone; that’s alarming. I bend down and take the water in my cupped hands; I’m thirstier than I thought. Suddenly I hear an ear-piercing scream on the other side, and I immediately run there. A child who can’t be more than seven years old sits under a birch tree with tears on her cheeks and a large scratch on her knee. When the hell did they let kids in here!?

(Put on “While I’m still strong” by Weeping willows if you want to set the mood.)

“Are you okay?” I ask softly, and the girl immediately looks up at me with a frightened facial expression. “Are you alone here?”

She looks at me with eyes that I recognize but can’t place. I take a few more careful steps towards her, and when I stop a few feet away, she rises; I catch her in my arms. The girl lifts her face to look at me, and I study her carefully. I softly caress her cheek, and she closes her eyes.

“Baby girl, what happened to you?” I ask quietly.

“I’m alone because you betrayed me,” she replies, tearing herself away from me.

“What do you mean?” I ask and feel confused; I don’t recognize her at all.

“You stopped caring about me a long time ago and focused more on everyone else being happy. I was left alone and started hating myself because of you!” the little girl roars and shows her cuts on her arms.

My tears fall when I see this little girl this destroyed when it’s apparent that we don’t know each other at all. How can someone harm a poor child this way? She backs away every time I try to approach her, and for some reason, it pains me. I must embrace, protect and love this beautiful child! There’s nothing but that spinning inside my head; I feel a powerful maternal instinct when I see her and can’t do anything about it. Two floating cameras approach us, and I ignore them to keep watching her. Suddenly she takes off her clothes, leaving her in thin linen and panties.

I gasp when I see her body full of ugly scars; what scares me is that I recognize those more than I dare admit. Every. Single. One.

“YOU DID THIS!” she keeps crying out, and I cry with her.

“What’s your name, little girl?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

She wipes her tears and sobs softly before her big blue eyes stare back at me.

“My name is Kaylin Clarkson, and I’m you,” she replies, causing the blood in my veins to freeze. “I’m your inner self; my scars are all the damage you caused yourself over the years. Goodness doesn’t always lead to good things, just like evil doesn’t always lead to bad things. Some people steal, don’t get caught, and live the good life. Others lie, are unfaithful to the person they claim to love the most, and become elected president. Generous people who help others can be beaten to death so that the robber can steal everything the abused owns and has without being aware that they have already given everything of value to others who don’t really deserve it. There’s no way to be able to comprehend how life will end or begin, but how you choose to play your cards as life has dealt is entirely up to you.”

Her words make my brain go haywire and think about all the times I let myself down. All the time, I have overridden my own needs and what I wanted to make others happy. How can I ensure that others are happy while I myself am unhappy? My thoughts as a child thunder inside my head like a loud drum. It sucks, right? To feel that you aren’t good enough, no matter how much you try. During that period, my days went from being remarkably depressed to really happy, hating life, loving life, being happy, sad, and not knowing who I am.

“How could you deceive yourself to the point that you began to hate yourself and continue living a life like in a dream, where you don’t know who you are or what you want?” she goes on, and I look her in the eyes, where I see grief without equal. “You betrayed me, and thus you betrayed yourself. How are you going to love your beloved if you can’t even love yourself? When will all the devastation end? When will you begin taking care of yourself and realize that you have more potential than all the participants together? But most of all, when will you just stop surviving and start living?”

“Forgive me,” I whisper and open up my arms again; this time, she lets me hug her. “Sorry for not taking better care of myself; I’ll be better from now on, I promise.”

“Don’t hide your scars; let them tell others the story about how you fought with death and survived,” the girl says, then snap her fingers to disappear into thin air.

I feel an infinite shame inside, a shame because I left myself in the dark to shine a light on everyone else. It’s time for a change, and it’s starting now. I’m a vampire, changed, and no longer the weak human I was. I have to show my beloved and his entire clan that I deserve their respect. Respect is earned and not something you can demand. I try to get up but notice that my body won’t move; it’s stuck to the ground. My upper body works flawlessly, but my legs refuse to move; I look up when I hear an echoing laugh in front of me. A guy stands in front of me with a grin on his lips, and his eyes have a different color; it’s he who controls my body.

“If it isn’t the weak Everton pussy that deserves nothing but death,” he taunts and circulates me. “The unattractive, inexperienced, desperate, and undeserved whore who believes that the clan will receive you with open arms.”

I’m trying desperately to move, but I’m locked in place. The man suddenly stands behind me with his arms around my neck; if he thinks I give up so easily, then he guesses wrong. The sharp blades of the ax shine, and I’m quick to pull up one of them. He backs away and thinks it’ll help him, which I’ll let him believe for now.

“I’ve studied you, and you have two secrets you don’t want others to know; you’re stupid if you think you can keep that information away and can’t stop me from telling,” he continues mocking, and that’s when I lose control.

William’s POV

“She shouldn’t drink that water; it’s bewitched!” one of the clan members exclaims.

“Haven’t you gone through the possible threats in there!?” another exclaims and stares at me, which makes me growl.

“Watch your tongue, Wallace. Remember that it wasn’t we who trained her,” I answer.

“Is the water dangerous?” Vivienne asks uncertainly.

“No, not physically,” Elijah replies. “But it evokes your absolute greatest fear and tells a story about the person.”

“I guess we’ll finally get to see what our Nyx fears the most,” Benjamin says, and the rest of us lean forward to see better when my beloved jumps over the creek.

A girl who looks like a younger Kaylin cries under a tree. We listen to the child’s words, and my heart hurts when I hear how much my love sacrificed in her life. I count to forty-eight scars on her arms that everyone looks new, and they sure were when she was that age. When I’ve seen her bare body, I haven’t thought about looking for scars since my Kaylin is beautiful, no matter how she looks. In my eyes, she’ll always be beautiful, and no damage or imperfections in the world can change that. I wasn’t aware of how much Kaylin hates and how little she values herself. How can she despise herself that way?

There’s no stronger and more beautiful woman than Kaylin. How come everyone else sees it except her? Even though I hear everything, I don’t understand the meaning.

“What’s going on?” I ask and feel stupid.

My mother looks at me with a sad smile and caresses my cheek affectionately.

“Your beloved fears herself and her inner darkness the most,” she replies, and I suddenly understand everything Kaylin has ever said to me.

✿❀ Flashbacks to what she has said earlier on several occasions ✿❀

“Don’t bother. Because I won’t forgive you, and I’m already dead anyway.”

“I don’t know; maybe the best thing would be if you left me down here.”

“So let me die!”

“Scared? I’m terrified, Eli! How long have I been in this world? A few days tops. I know nothing about being a vampire, and I’m not as strong as the others; they’ll break me in half like a twig!”

“I’ve always been alone.”

“All I wanted was to somehow numb the pain within me, the confusion over all the new information I’ve got. In some periods, I even wanted to die; nothing could brighten up the darkness that was my life.”

“But now we’re here, and none of us know what the future will look like if it’ll even exist...”

✿❀ End of flashbacks ✿❀

All this time, it hasn’t been about Kaylin being afraid of the arena or us; she’s scared of herself and the darkness that can devour her whole from within. She doesn’t trust herself, and this is what causes her downfall.

“I have to help her,” I say out into the air without thinking and trying to climb over the arena wall. “Let me go!”

My family holds me back, and no matter how much I try to tear myself away from the anxiety deep in my chest. Honey, please forgive me for not wanting to see the truth! Someone clears their throat behind me, and it makes me stop. Salazar Duran stands before us, and we all bow out of respect. He nods back to acknowledge our gesture.

“I understand you’re worried about your beloved, William,” he says. “But I promise you that you have nothing to worry about, I’ve trained her well, and she knows what she’s doing. In fact, I’ve never encountered a more inspiring and determined individual before. She reminds me of my fallen daughter.”

His gaze sweeps across the arena and away towards the horizon as if he’s thinking back to an easier time a long time ago. But he focuses just as quickly again.

“Kaylin has two great secrets, one of which the closest Everton family already know,” we nod; that she’s of royal blood. “The second secret isn’t mine to tell, but I want you to promise not to get angry at her. Do you need someone to be angry with, then be angry with me, because it was I who forbade her to tell anyone anything before the battle in the arena finishes.”

“Can’t you even give us a clue as to what it’s all about?” Oliver curiously asks, and Salazar shakes his head, amused.

“Unfortunately not. But what I can say is that worrying is like paying back a loan you haven’t yet taken,” Salazar says, leaving us. “Don’t even try to climb in the arena if you don’t want to be as grilled as bread in a toaster.”

What’s Kaylin hiding? Is it serious? The rest of my family look questioningly at me, and I bring up my hands in surrender to show that I’ve got no idea what Salazar is talking about. They look disappointed, and that disappointment I can understand because I feel much the same; I want to know. Everything circulating Kaylin is of interest to me; she’s my beloved, after all, even though I don’t always treat her like that. She doesn’t understand our bond the way I do. The confusing feelings that one moment can be anger can just as quickly change into an immortal love.

Like when we had sex, just a moment before that, she was sad and disappointed in me, then suddenly she was passionate and wanted to share an intimate moment. These feelings, a human can’t understand, half-vampire or not. All supernatural beings learn about how the bond works from early childhood, so we’re all prepared for the confusion that may arise when we meet our soulmates. Kaylin isn’t used to any of this since she’s not born in the supernatural world, even though she really should’ve.

“Will, look!” Benjamin exclaims. “Kaylin is about to lose control!”

My gaze snaps back to the screen in front of us, and I see the anger inside her eyes.

“I’ve studied you, and you have two secrets you don’t want others to know; you’re stupid if you think you can keep that information away and can’t stop me from telling,” says the man in front of her, and then there’s like something snaps inside Kaylin.

She stares at him with such a fire that I can’t even describe it to you; he starts screaming and holding his hands on his head. Blood flows from the nose, ears, and eyes; she crushes him from within. She rises from her seat, takes a grip on his neck, and then lifts him several inches above the ground.

“Don’t ever dare call me weak,” she growls and displays her sharp fangs that seem more prominent than the last time I saw them. “I’ve given up my whole life to be with my beloved, even though it was involuntary in the beginning. At present, I choose a life with him, and I have fought my way through life, repeatedly being slammed down by patriarchy like you. And now I’m tired of it!”

She releases him, and he falls on the ground in a lump, then she bends down to whisper something in his ear. He begins to run immediately after that while she’s strolling behind, laughing at him. Suddenly she catches up with him and takes a firm grip on his neck once more, and crushes his windpipes. Her power throws his body several yards away from her, and I feel proud of what she accomplished. But the anger that vibrates within her like a whirlwind is going to be a problem if she can’t handle it...

A/N:

Hello everyone!

Kaylin is making progress not only inside the arena but also spiritually.

❀ What do you think Kaylin’s second secret is?

✿ Why do you believe Salazar keeps helping her over and over again?

❀ What do her chances look like now, do you think?

✿ Will the Everton clan receive their Nyx with open arms, or will they demand more than Kaylin can give?

Please let me know your thoughts since they help me develop in my creative process! Thank you for reading. Lots of love.<3

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