Forbidden Tragedies

Chapter 1

A/N: Hello hello and welcome to this new story!  I'm just gonna state right away that if you haven't already, it's imperative that you read the two books above  before jumping into this one for basic understanding purposes.

And if you'd like a quick refresher as to who were dealing with here, I suggest rereading Prey Ch 73.

With that, let's get into it!

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"Hurry up Kiari!" My father grit from a few steps ahead of me, pushing away a branch so that he could pass through, "The vampires only gave me so much time to make this work."

I only glared daggers into the silhouette of his body at the memory of what he traded for that information. For that promise of safety they gave us that I didn't trust one damn bit.

It was the dead of night, and not even the full moon could cut through the thick foliage of Bronwyn's bordering forest enough for me to see where I was going.

Instead, I was getting snapped at for tripping and forcing my way through every bush that scraped my ankle through my pants.

Still, I pushed and trudged ahead. I didn't have any other choice.

This was the night he'd been planning for years. The one he'd put my uncle and his family through a few years prior and now it was up to us to follow in their footsteps.

Our great escape as he called it. To the other side of the border to a place unclaimed by any vampiric Lord.

A little hidden town vacant of all vampires. Free of them entirely. At least that's how dad obsesses over it.

He says his brother, Lewis, was successful in his escape. He's kept the letter he sent saying so in his pocket ever since. Using it as a morale booster if anything else while he rushed the business he attended to before having us follow in their lead.

Which by now was almost six years ago.

The only thing holding him back? Me.

He'd made it a goal to figure out and cure the illness I was born with. The one I was convinced was the universe's own little way of spitting in my face the second I left the womb.

In a world full of bloodsucking vampires, I was born with something that made me produce too much of it. Continuously. Agonizingly.

He'd said that it was fixed- that I was 'done', and yet my symptoms were the same.

The countless serums he made by hand and injected me with over the years with not a hint of improvement.

The side effects were still there, the haunting symptoms whenever my body would tell me that I had too much to deal with.

I still had to somehow empty myself of blood every other week if dad didn't have one of the vampires he snagged into his inner circle do it for me.

And yet here we were, inching closer and closer to the border of this territory with nothing except the clothes on our backs.

'Lewis will have everything ready for us,' he says, 'and your aunt and cousins will make it a welcoming celebration.'

He's fucking delusional.

One letter six years ago and he treats it like a drug.

I've tried telling him, but he doesn't listen.

Had it not been for the fact that he was trying to fix me, I would have left him a long time ago like my mother did.

The crunch of rocks beneath our boots was the only thing to be heard in this forest.