Daybreak|| Jasper Hale {1}

Chapter Twenty Six

January 1863

And we come to a full circle. My life flashing before my eyes, or at least what mattered of my life.

The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, staring straight into my eyes, hers, blood red. Animalistic, seething with rage. Her eyes detracted from all the beauty of her features.

This was how I died.

  "You're pretty." The angelic woman said, her accented voice lilting melodically, transfixing me as I stood with my back against the frail tent, my body shivering in the winter wind. "I can see why he couldn't let you go."

I didn't know who he was, at least not definitely, but I had a suspicion. "Jasper?" I asked, my voice choked.

Jasper had gone missing after the battle of Galveston, assumed to be one of the many casualties. He and his men had been escorting the women and children out of the city, bringing the injured to our camp so that I and the other nurses could tend to them, but Jasper had never returned.

  I twisted the ring on my finger that he'd gifted me, trying to look for ways to escape.

  "Smart too." The woman said, tilting her head, and I watched her as fear entered my veins, my chest heaving. "You'd make a good one of us." She said, stroking my cheek in an almost loving manner.

What did she mean, one of us? What had she done? Was she in charge of Jasper's death somehow? My shaky voice ask these very questions, though I was unsure of why I was so terrified of a woman who was smaller than me, "What did you do to him?" I asked, and she laughed, her laughter sounding like bells in my ears. The laughter wasn't sincere, I knew it wasn't, yet on some surface level she had me fooled.

"I made him better."

This woman had me terrified, her very presence setting every hair on my body on end, my very essence screaming danger as she looked at me with her hungry red eyes, stroking my cheek yet again with a ice cold hand, the cold burning as she left a trail down my face.

I tried to turn away from her, but she was circling, like a vulture.

"The first thing he wanted when he woke up was you. He was so trusting, so eager when I said that I'd find you for him. He'll be heartbroken when he learns that you didn't make the change." The woman spoke in a mocking tone, pouting as she spoke about me not making it, trailing her hands down to my neck.

"What change?" I asked, my skin ablaze despite the fact that her hands were freezing cold.

She continued as if I had never spoken, and a cool breeze rustles by. "It's all he talks about, really. He insisted I come to find you. I promised I did, and I don't break a promise." she smiled at me, her perfectly white teeth glinting against her tan skin. "It's a shame he didn't make me promise to bring you to him alive."

  "Who are you?" I asked, my voice shaking wildly and my heart beating faster than it had ever beat before. I clenched my first, my cool engagement ring digging into my skin, providing a  small bit of comfort as the woman positioned my neck, but I couldn't find it in me to move, frozen in instinctual, primal fear.

"My name is Maria." the woman said softly, and she lunged forward, sinking her teeth into my neck as I let out a fragile scream, before falling limp, blackness consuming me. "Not that it matters."

-

When I opened my eyes next the world was unfamiliar, changed, and my thoughts and my body weren't my own, simpler and smaller. A face stood out in my mind as I was cradled to the chest of my mother, a handsome face with blond curls framing it and steel blue eyes.

My name was Michelle Edgren. I grew up differently, my parents putting all of the love they could into me, despite my strange behavior. I was an artist, coming alive within my work, and my parents were proud.

I was born in 1931, and I had no idea of the tragedy of the past, consumed instead by a face that I knew better than my own, but couldn't recognize. Haunted by this man that I should know.

A/N
That's all folks!