Aliya's POV
"Bye Esther, goodnight!" I called out one last time before I stepped out of the cafe and closed the door behind me. Pulling my light jacket closer to me, I hung my bag so it was crossed over my shoulder. Glancing up I noticed the dark clouds that loomed over the tall buildings of downtown, notifying me that it was about to rain.
Just as I thought of the rain, an earth-shattering thunder broke through the sky, brightening the streets for a few flickering seconds.
Strange, I thought. The sun was out during the day without any signs of the upcoming rainy weather.
Picking up the steps to avoid getting wet, I started walking towards my home, a route all too familiar by now. It wasn't too late yet and there were still a few cars rushing past me.
I was halfway home when I heard footsteps behind me, but I chose to ignore them as I thought it might be just another pedestrian or a homeless person. Clutching the strap of my bag, I started to walk even faster, too afraid to even turn back and look who was behind me.
As I picked up the pace, the footsteps seemed to match mine, sounding much closer now. My heart was racing against my chest at this point, now aware of the potential danger I might currently be in.
A glass building appeared next to me, giving me the chance to look at my reflection and of who was following me. I saw a figure a foot taller than me trailing behind me, about 4 meters away now.
My body was now fully alert, I was practically running at this point.
The thought of getting home and being under the covers sounded too inviting at the moment, it had been a busy day at the cafe again. I was too exhausted to even walk, but I forced my legs to take me to the safety of my home.
Cursing myself for not being prepared for this, I realized I didn't have anything to protect me.
Just one more block, I thought.
Right when I was about to turn onto my street, I felt an arm make its way around my waist and a hand quickly covered my mouth, forcing my scream to hang in mind air.
My instincts kicked in, using my elbow to push the person off me, I tried my hardest to break free from the hold. A hold that was too strong for me to break out of.
Yet, my body continued to fight as I kicked and tried to squirm away from the stranger. I bit onto his disgusting hand that covered my mouth and he let out a yelp.
The sound and the rough touch of this person was enough to inform me that it was a man.
I continued to free myself, giving up was not an option.
I didn't know what this man had planned for me but I was too afraid to even find out. The last time somebody tried to take advantage of me, Damien was there to save me.
This time, I was all alone. I had to fight my own battles.
The thought that nobody was going to save me this time made me even more scared for my life.
What did he even want?
Was he a robber who wanted money?
Or something else?
Despite my efforts, the filthy man started carrying me backwards. My legs now in the air, I tried to kick my foot at his knee. It only made him wobble a few steps but he didn't loosen up his grip on me.
"Shh, quiet. You're quite a fighter, aren't you?" He whispered smugly against my ear.
I still couldn't get a look at him, but I didn't even want to know what my captor looked like.
It was definitely not a voice I had heard before.
A car came into my view and I realized he might intend on taking me somewhere.
I froze as a I came to the realization, I was being kidnapped!
My eyes scanned the road for any sign of help, but this street was much quieter since it was mostly residential. I looked up at my apartment building, thinking I was too close to reaching home.
Too close.
Another man came into my view, he looked to be in his late twenties or thirties and was dressed in all black, probably to blend into the night.
He had light brown hair and hazel eyes. His muscles popped out of his shirt, his physique reminded me of the guards at the castle.
His hand held out to open the car door, "Xavier, hurry the fuck up," he seemed impatient as his eyes landed on me for a few seconds before looking at the person behind me.
"Not my fault, man," Xavier, the one who was holding me captive, said, "she's much stronger to be a human."
I let out a final scream, putting all my force into it. Just as he tried to stop the noise from escaping my lips, his hold around me slipped for a fraction of a second and I took that chance to stab my elbow into his chest. I heard a noise that sounded like a cough or a painful cry. His arms around me suddenly vanished, dropping me onto the floor.
My lungs filled up with as much air as possible as I felt like I could breathe again.
But I knew it wasn't time to breathe in relief just yet.
Immediately, I stood up onto my feet but the guy who was holding the car door reached out to grab my arm before I could make a run for it.
He pulled me back harshly as I heard the two men talking back and forth to tame me and planning their next move. But it all sounded like a background noise to me.
All the negative thoughts that I was holding back suddenly won and washed over my brain.
Is this how I was going to die?
Just when I thought I had a chance at life again, it was being snatched away from me yet again.
Was I truly not meant for peace and happiness?
I cursed my life for being so cruel.
However, just when I thought there was no hope for me, I heard a third voice.
"Get your fucking dirty hands off her," the Vampire King ordered, "before I chop them off and feed them to you."
A look of pure shock took over my kidnappers' faces, I took this opportunity to free myself and hurriedly step away from them, as far back as possible.
I looked to my right to see Damien standing there, but I couldn't help but notice there was something different about him. His posture was usually calm and collected, beaming with confidence. Now he looked stiff and ready to battle, but he also looked terrified at the same time.
His golden eyes, which were shooting daggers at the strangers, shifted towards me and that was when I realized he wasn't terrified of them, he was scared because of me. Or rather, for me.
"It's the king," the guy who was holding me a second ago said to his partner.
The two men instantly shifted to face Damien, their attention now fully on his stance. They looked ready to defend themselves if a fight was to break out, they didn't seem scared of him.
If anything, it seemed like they hated him. There wasn't any hint of respect when Xavier announced the king's presence.
"King or not, let's just finish him right here. Why go through all the unnecessary bullshit when he's standing right in front of us?" Xavier cracked his neck to the side and looked straight into Damien's eyes.
"Trust me, when I'm done with you, you wouldn't be so pleased to meet me."
I was too shocked with the situation to even mutter a word, so I stayed glued to the spot. I knew I should've turned back and ran as fast as I could towards my home, and lock myself in. But something told me I wasn't in danger anymore. As if nothing could happen to me in the king's presence.
As long as he was here, I would be okay.
It confused me to be feeling this way, but before I could even move, Damien zoomed past me using his vampire speed. He grabbed a hold of Xavier's head from the back and knocked it over onto the car, breaking the windshield with the impact.
A small scream escaped my lips as I stepped back when the glass shattered everywhere, some pieces landing on the ground.
Damien left him there to recover on his own as he made his way towards the other guy and his fingers wrapped around his throat.
"You invited your own death with just the thought of touching her. Look at me, I am your death," he tilted his head to the side and smirked, as if enjoying the way the man's eyes were turning lifeless.
Just when I thought he was going to die, Damien let go of his throat and landed a punch right on his face. The impact made him fly back and hit the wall besides me. As soon as he landed on the ground, he looked up at me, almost angrily.
Damien walked towards him slowly.
"Let me give you some advice, the next time you dare to look at her, think about how you're going to function without your eyes."
He coughed up some blood on the pavement and spit out the rest, then made an attempt to stand up, "I don't need advices from you, you bloodsucking bastard."
"I changed my mind. There won't be a next time."
A furious Damien kicked him harshly, making him fall to the ground again. Before he knew what was happening, Damien kneeled down and started to land punches towards his face, his back was towards me, but I could tell he was aiming straight for his eyes.
He kept hitting him again and again and his screams filled the air around me, making me close my eyes and cover my ears.
I wanted to tell him to stop but no words came out of my mouth.
When I opened my eyes again, I noticed two guys running to the scene. One of them was Xavier who had blood dripping down the side his head, and the other I hadn't seen before. Something tells me he was in the car when they were trying to force me into it. He must've been the one driving it.
"Damien!" I finally found my voice as I tried to warn him of the men running towards him with what looked like a baseball bat.
It seemed as thought he was already expecting the hit as they aimed for his head, dodging it swiftly and swiping one of his legs out, which made the new guy lose his balance and fall.
Damien quickly got up to his feet and started to fight both of them at once, sending a blow towards each one of them one after the other before they could even recover from the last one. However, the two men seemed well trained and they definitely never learned to give up. They seemed to be putting up a fight til their last breath.
No matter their attempts, Damien always seemed to have an advantage. His supernatural powers were very well visible now, something that I often forgot he possessed. He always looked like a normal human being, but watching him fight so effortlessly reminded me just how powerful he was.
"You son of a bitch, which one of my enemies sent you?!" Damien hissed.
"I'm going to need one of you alive, to deliver my message to your leader. Tell him to start praying that I never get my hands on him. Because when I find him, I'm going to rip him apart limb by limb, put him back together only to do it all over again. I'll catch him on the brink of death as he watches me swim in his own blood and drink every little drop of it, right after I'm done torturing him."
Damien's threat caught me by surprise. He was willing to go through all that trouble for me. He was fighting to save my life, he was fighting for me.
The movements were becoming too much for me to follow as a haze covered my eyes. I realized I had been blinking back tears that were now clouding my vision. A few drops of the water landed on my face, when did it start raining?
I felt someone grab my arm, I would've freaked out but the sparks that I felt were enough to tell me who it was.
"Aliya," he said, softly tugging on my arm.
"Are you alright?" His voice dropped to a low whisper, the threatening tone he was using earlier long gone.
All I managed was a small shake of my head, no.
"Shit! Hold on, let me teleport you to your apartment. Wrap your arms around me," he instructed and I followed.
My arms wrapped loosely around his shoulders as he wrapped his around my waist, then I felt a sudden change in temperature. Closing my eyes, I buried my face in his neck, the musky scent of his cologne mixed with sweat and death made its way up my nostrils. It was too strong and I tried to focus only on the sweetness of the cologne. My tears landed on the collar of his shirt, damping it. The wind picked up and then slowed down drastically, until it was calm and peaceful.
I opened my eyes to see I was now in my dimly lit living room.
He had teleported me here. Not being in any condition to walk, I was glad he had such abilities.
I should take a step back, I realized.
However, my body stayed glued to his. It was probably still recovering from the shock. Instead of loosening my hold, I held onto him tighter, too afraid to let go.
As if he would disappear in thin air again if I released him.
"Hey, it's okay," he whispered, running his fingers up and down my back gently.
The way he was acting was so foreign to me, I didn't know how to take it in let alone react to it. The touch of his hands reminded me of the time when he was beating up the men who tried to harm me. This time, his touch was gentle as compared to hard and merciless.
"No, it's not," a sob that I had been holding in for too long finally broke free, surprising the both of us.
I could feel his muscles tense under my touch, I knew he wasn't used to human emotions. He became defensive and awkward when it came to showing his emotions, and he definitely didn't know how to handle someone else's.
"Aliya, I- I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner."
"Why didn't you?!" I gave him a gentle push, still not ready to let go. But I did, just enough to look up at his face to read his expressions.
He dark eyes looked down at me with pain hiding within them, he opened his mouth but then closed it again. He didn't have an explanation.
How did he even know where I was?
"I followed your scent, I was here at your home waiting for you to return from work when I felt a sudden change in the air. I can't explain it but- I feel like I somehow sensed that you were in danger. At first I ignored the feeling, thinking I'm going crazy. But then it got to a point where I couldn't ignore it anymore, every muscle in my body was telling me to go to you. And so I did."
He sensed that I was in danger? How is that even possible?
I couldn't help but think why he didn't react sooner.
"Do you know what happened before you got there?" I asked.
A scowl appeared on his face and his voice dropped, "what did they do?"
"They were trying to kidnap me and I- I tried my best to fight my way out of his hold, but he was too strong. His hands were touching me here and there while I fought him like my life depending on it, which it did. I don't know what would've happened to me if you didn't show up when you did, I thought I was going to die!"
With every word I said, Damien seemed to be growing more enraged by the second.
His eyes looked out in the distance with a fire burning in them, and then he glanced back at me while his eyes softened to sadness and.. pity?
His hands had let go of my waist and his fingers brushed my face lightly, "are you hurt anywhere?"
Besides the exhaustion, there wasn't any physical pain that I could feel at the moment. Maybe because of the adrenaline or stress, but I knew my body would be complaining later. I just needed to rest.
I shook my head.
"I understand it was my responsibility to keep you safe and I failed. I should've sent my guards with you, I should've never let you be alone. I need you to understand that I'm going to do everything in my power to track down the mastermind behind this and make them pay every penny for it, they'll have to pay for every drop of tear that has escaped from your eyes tonight, I promise you that."
He held my gaze while wiping the tears off my cheeks which continued to fall freely. His brought his index finger closer his face, examining the tear that had fallen on it.
"I know you will. But right now, I don't want that. I know you feel you're responsible for me because you stripped me of every happiness in life and you want to make up for that. But right now, I don't want the vampire king who feels responsible for my safety and sees me as a part of his redemption. I want the Damien who can't stand to see tears in my eyes because he deeply cares about me. I want you to just be there for me because you're the only person who can make me feel better."
There, I said it. I told him exactly what I wanted from him.
"How can I make you feel better when I've hurt you so much in the past? I can't even look at you without those memories coming back to haunt me," He questioned me, his hands dropping by his side, turning into fists.
He was clearly mad at himself for how he has treated me in the past. And I understood that because even I was angry at him for the longest time. But then I realized if I wanted to be happy and move on, I had to forgive him.
"These last few months, I surrounded myself with every little work possible, even when I had hundreds of people available to do those tasks. You know why? Because every time I would be alone or in my room, all I would think about is you. How I fucked up your life so bad that I couldn't do a single thing to fix it. I knew letting you go back to the human world was nothing compared to how much debt I owe you."
Damien turned away from me, as if to hide the emotions that were starting to show on his face.
"No matter how many times I told myself that it's for the best that you left, I would expect to wake up to your cheerful ass pulling back my curtains just to annoy me. I would go through my closet not wanting to move things from their place because that's where you last left them at. And why didn't you take all your stuff with you, huh? Your clothes are still there as a reminder than you walked into my life and flipped everything upside down. I had a routine, that I had been following for the past hundred years."
Turning around slowly to face me, he took a step in my direction as his hand reached out to tuck a stand of hair behind my ear, "but you made me realize that I wasn't even living until the moments you challenged me just to get on my nerves. The life that I was living was empty without you. It's like I was a dead corpse, funny because what else are vampires? But you made this vampire believe he had a heartbeat again."
Damien grabbed one of my hands and brought our clasped hands up towards my chest, resting it where my heart was located. The back of his hand was touching my shirt while mine covered his. The thin fabric of my shirt wasn't able to stop the tingles that his touch sent down body. I could hear my heart thumping loudly, as if enjoying his touch.
"But then I realized it wasn't my own, it was your heartbeat that made me feel alive again."
I stopped breathing for a few seconds, as realization drawn on me that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. He constantly thought about me too.
"Then why did you let me go?" My voice dropped to a whisper.
"So you could be happy, and live your life like the way you wanted all along."
"But nothing is the same anymore, is it? I have no one in this world, where are my parents? Dead. There's not a single soul who would care if I was to disappear or die tomorrow. I-"
I choked on the words as another sob came from me, sometimes I hated being so emotional.
"Don't say that," he took a steps closer and places his hands on my shoulder, making me look at him.
"Do you think I'm happy?" I asked him, "I'm the same as you were all those years, just going through this cycle called life, barely alive. I'm still trying to find who I am, I'm trying to find my identity and what I want out of life. Surely, I couldn't have been born just to be miserable? But when nothing at all makes sense, I close my eyes and you know what I see? All it takes is for me to see your face and suddenly everything starts making sense. As if we were meant to cross paths one way or the other. Prophecy or not, I was going to meet the vampire king and-".
I paused for a second.
"And?" His eyes desperately searched mine, perhaps to find out what I wanted to say.
I cleared my head and said something else.
"And learn to care deeply about him too."
"Damien! You're hurt," I noticed there was a rip in his shirt, a cut about four inches long on his chest which was stained in red.
How did I not noticed that before?
"Don't worry about it, it'll heal," he looked down to inspect it, tugging at his shirt.
His clothes were covered in blood which I'm sure was not just his own. I had gotten so carried away with my feelings that I forgot he was just involved in a fight.
"Take off your clothes," I suggested.
"What?" His surprised look me told where his mind was heading.
"They're covered in blood, I'll put it in the washer. It'll be clean in no time."
He fake gasped, "are you gonna try to take advantage of me?"
He crossed his arms over as if to cover himself. I rolled my eyes, "yes, I'm going to do exactly that. Now take them off,".
Letting out a chuckle, he started to take off his clothes. I took off my jacket too and my shoes. Damien took off the coat that he was wearing, dropping it on the floor. He paused when he was about to unbutton his shirt.
It seemed as though an idea hit him as he looked at me with a sly smile.
"The world is spinning, you do it," he grabbed my hand before I could react and placed it in the middle of his shirt.
I could not believe he remembered that day. He had said the same thing to me in the same tone when he was drunk and I had helped him take his clothes off because his "world was spinning".
I felt a blush forming on my cheeks.
A thought hit me, why should he always be the one to have his way?
Instead of stepping back shyly, like he expected me to, I took a step forward.
I could clearly see the surprise on his face as I started to unbutton his shirt, going over each bottom slowly. My eyes looked up at him to watch his reaction. He continued to look at me as if to read me, but I kept my thoughts clear. Emma had taught me a few tricks on how to trick a vampire into not being able to read your mind.
This was the first time I was truly trying it.
Making sure to brush my fingers against his naked skin, I was overjoyed when I received the same reaction from him as the last time. He shuddered under my touch, as if getting goosebumps.
The fact that I still had that effect on him motivated me to keep going.
I pulled the rest of his shirt which was tucked in his suit pants, unbuttoning the rest of the buttons. I slid the cotton shirt off his body slowly to uncover his carved perfection. It was like unwrapping the most awaited present.
The wound on his chest which was taking some time to heal stole my attention, it appeared to be smaller now. There were a few other scratches and bruises on his body, which pained me to even look at.
When his shirt was completely off, I threw it on the floor and dropped my gaze down to his pants. My hands, as if having a mind of their own, reached out to grab his buckle. But his hand stopped me, "don't start what you can't finish, princess."
Damien seemed to be holding himself back somehow. I don't know what he was afraid of, perhaps he was scared of hurting me or losing control.
His actions were limited, he wasn't touching any part of my body but his eyes, his eyes told a completely different story. He looked at me like he wanted nothing more than just to close the gap between us, forever.
How do I prove to him that he didn't need to be afraid? That I trusted him, now more than ever.
"Did you miss me?"
I asked him a small question, but I knew that the answer would change the course of our relationship altogether.
He was deep in thought for some time, moments like these I wish I could read his mind too. I don't know what he was thinking but I knew he was struggling to find an answer, maybe I was wrong and he didn't miss me at all.
But he did mention that he would think of me everyday.
What he said next answered all my questions in an instant.
"'Miss' is such a small word used by mortals. I would have to depart from you to miss you. How can I miss you when you became a part of my soul and never left?"
Hearing him confess that made my knees feel weak, they wanted to give up so he could welcome me in his arms.
He placed a hand on my face again, "It's like I had been drowning my whole life and you're the thought that keeps me afloat."
His words lingered in the air as they repeated themselves over and over again in my head, he just called me his lifeboat.
Overwhelmed with a rush emotions, that I've tried to hide for far too long, I allowed myself to feel each and every one.
Before he could say anything else, I brought his face closer to mine by placing my hand on the back of his neck and crashed my lips with his.
Stealing the sweetest kiss from the vampire king who just saved me from drowning.
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Author's Note
Dun dun dunnn XD
Wow, this was the longest chapter ever!!
Also, not edited yet.
But I couldn't stop writing or even change chapters cuz it was just too good to take a break from!
I might end up splitting it into two later on...
Hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it!!
Thank you so much :)
-J.S