Paranormals

Chapter 12: Hospital Gowns Really Don't Make Me Look Good

"Okay, it's going to be fine. We're going to pick you up and get you to bed, and you'll see, by morning it will all be better."

"I hope so. I hope so because I don't think that I can live with this huge weight on my chest."

"It's just because you're exhausted. The mate bond will fade and you will be fine, we'll all help you through it. I'm happy you decided to come back Casey. I'm almost to you, hang in there."

I didn't respond. Everything was fuzzy. The red taillights of the cars whizzing by me fractured my vision. Slowly, everything went dark, and I slipped into oblivion.

~15 hours later~

Did you know that you never forget a person's face? Obviously, you don't have a conscious memory of every face that you ever meet, but it's there, printed in your head, and whenever you dream, the faces that you unintentionally memorized pop into your mind. Your imagination cannot make up faces.

Because of this phenomenon, it is said that the faces you see most often in your dreams are the faces of those you care most about. I never agreed with this idea, and I just want to state that I still don't. If this was true, then my brothers' and parents' faces should have looped in my mind after I passed out. They didn't. Instead, a very flawless, very immortal, and very dangerous face dominated my dreams. By the time I woke to find myself in Ben's apartment, I had determined that as much as I hated to admit it, Nate was not a problem that was going away easily.

Part of the problem was that he wasn't going away physically. You would think that practically killing myself to escape his mansion and stealing his car would both be clear indicators that I didn't want him to run after me, but apparently these finer details eluded the vampire in front of me.

Yes, in front of me. When I opened my eyes, Nate had been awkwardly sitting in the uncomfortable hospital chair. Currently, he was pacing and ranting about my "foolish and reckless decisions."

"I cannot begin to impress upon you the danger that you put yourself in," scolded Nate.

"Listen, you were the one who came up with the smart idea to imbed a tracking chip into my arm. That was an asshole move, by the way."

"Had I known that you were stupid enough to try to remove it, I never would have," he relied coldly.

Ouch. That stung a little bit.

"Why are you even here? I know you had a tracking device on the car, but you didn't bother to come after me then, so why are you here now?"

Nate sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking at me through hooded eyes.

"I knew you were going to your brother's, so I was going to give you a few days to cool down. I thought you needed space. That was until I realized the extent of your injury," he said. "I told you before Casey, I fully intend on keeping you with me."

"But why? Don't you see Nate, we're not compatible! A paranormal and a vampire cannot be together. The vampire community will never accept it, especially when it's you."

"The vampire community will do well to remember exactly who it's representative is. They'll live. Trust me, they're immortal, they have plenty of time to get over it."

"It's not just that Nate. What about my family? I can't just leave them! And I don't think you understand, in the code, it states that a paranormal cannot enter relations with a supernatural. It's a conflict of interest."

"You can still talk to your family. I never said that you wouldn't have any contact with them."

"And the code? I can't go against the code!"