Chapter 79 - Bad Old Days

"Our friendship was almost ruined.." Delice gasped slightly, remembering how she had dashed out of the room immediately, her heart shattering. How Laura had folowoed her, wrapping a bedsheet around her body in a hurry, hickeys littered across her neck, her lips swollen from kisses, her eyes hazy with lust, blood dripping from a side of her lips.

"She told me she would banish him, that she had only conducted a test for him to see if he was worthy of me."

"And you believed her?"

Delice didn't answer immediately until she finally did.

"Laura loves me." She gulped, nodding. She looked up at Zezi, before looking down slowly, saying the next words underneath her breath like she was trying to convince herself of something she already had reasonable doubts about. "She loves me."

There was something about this whole situation that reminded Zezi about that time in the Alpha's office, when George had thrown her right across the room because his wolf had taken over and he was about to fight with Alpha Gery.  The Luna had asked her if he was always violent with her like that, if she was safe and she had answered by saying, 'he loves me.'

She never knew how pathetic and blinded that had sounded until now that she was hearing it from someone else, until now that it was playing right before her eyes.

"If she had banished him, would he even be a Governor..."

Delice stiffled from her earlier tears.

"Laura didn't banish him. I know she didn't. That was why I was hurt."

Zezi tsked.

"She sounds like a terrible friend."

"She is not."

"She is."

"She is not."

"I said she is."

"She--"

"--is!"

Delice looked up at her, blinking, her lips pressed together.

"What?" Zezi asked with a stubborn shrug. "That is exactly how she sounds like. Terrible. If there was a word worse than terrible that I can think of right now, then she is that word."

Delice shook her head, resting her head against Zezi's shoulder again.

"You won't understand. Our friendship is different. Special."

Zezi felt more enraged.

Those were the same words she used to say about her and George.

That they were different, special, unique!

She loved him, she knew but being with him was a problem she should have stopped herself from having a very long time ago. Certainly right from the first time his wolf had gotten violent with her. She couldn't still get rid of the memory of how his wolf had almost killed her the cave, right in front of their daughter.

As much as Delice's friendship with Laura wasn't violent, Zezi couldn't help but sense that it was that same thing.

Laura was manipulating Delice and she was allowing it. Something told Zezi that Delice wasn't stupid to what was going on but was allowing it because of how dependant she had become on the idea of them sticking together. That she was afraid of stepping out of the status quo because she believed her world would crumble down if she did so. She was scared of the new world that change would introduce her to, and the fear of that was keeping her right where Laura wanted her, believing that at least she knew what to expect from it.

Zezi didn't want to think about why Laura had that sick definition of love, with how she was always sticking up for Delice, or if she did that for ulterior motives.

She could only bring the white flag so high. If she worried for Laura, then her white flag would transcend the sky!

As for Delice's fear, that had been what happened to Zezi too. She had also been scared for the people that would be affected if she tried to change things, but Zezi didn't know if Lady Delice had any sought of commitment that might suffer, just like she did.

"She is using you and one day, when you become useless, she will dispose of you."

Delice moved away from her embrace and Zezi let her hand fall from her. She most likely didn't need that comfort anymore.

"She made me realize that my destiny was with the King."

"By sleeping with your Chosen?"

"Her ways are different but she means well."

Zezi stared at her through narrowed eyes and folded her arms across her.

"So I guess you took the betrayal of the two, of the most important people in your life with a smile of warm understanding."

"I was heartbroken because I was too blinded to see past my heartache to understand things as I should have."

Wow!

She was even blaming herself.

How far gone was she?

"So I left and because of what she did, I was able to go on a little adventure." She stared up at Zezi, her eyes glimmering with tears. "That was when I had a child."

Something turned in Zezi's belly. There it was, that thing she had been telling the herself that she didn't care about.

She curled her hand into fist against the ground, then let it go almost instantly.

"Oliver's?"

Baby steps to the big question.

Delice shook her head.

Zezi managed to let not her demeanour seem shaken but she could feel her throat tighten with a force grip.

"The King's?"

"No."

The relief that rushed through her veins had no business doing that.

She didn't care about the King or whosoever he had been in realationship with or was in a relationship with presently.

He was none of her business.

"He wouldn't even touch me. it was, you know, an adventure."

"Yes, adventure."

Delice nodded eagerly, tears welling up in her eyes even more.

"That was the only time in my life I was without Laura and even at the end, I still needed her. She was the one who buried my son."

Zezi's heart deepened in grieve that wasn't her own as her gaze moved to the gravestone.

"Right here?"

"No. I moved far away from Lavida back then."

"Do you pay his real grace a visit?"

"I don't. I don't know where it is, Laura won't tell me."

Zezi blinked, shocked.

This was beyond anything that she had experienced with George.

This? This was worse!

"Why?"

"She wants me to get over it. A dead child is a flaw. The King mustn't know that I have a flaw. She is only doing it for my own good. She did allow me to dig this one."

Suddenly, her hands started moving along the gravestone.

It started slow.

"Laura shouldn't find out I'm here. Laura will not be happy."

Then her movement grew frantic.

She started shaking. "I don't want Laura and I to fight. I want Laura to be happy. I must make Laura happy."

Zezi mouth fell open with shock, her hands moving quickly to smolder Delice in an embrace to stable her.

It felt so unnatural to see her like this, this broken, this unstable, this shaken to her very core.

It scared Zezi in a way she couldn't explain.

"You should stay away from her. She isn't good for you." She pulled her out of her embrace, placing her hands over her shoulders, staring right at her. "She. Is. Not. A. Good. Friend."

When she spoke again, she sounded more like the Delice she knew.

"But she is my friend still."

Zezi hands fell from her in defeat and she pressed her lips together tightly.

Any more words said, would be just as useless as the ones earlier spoken.

Delice continued talking about how
when the King took the throne after the Dark Times, he needed a Queen. She had been the best candidate, because he sired her, she was the only vampire he had ever sired. She was the only vampire he was most connected with asides from his sister. Laura had easily looked for her to take her place but had found her in labour. How that had been when she had just lost her child and he had given her time to grieve.

How for ten years she had grieved and even now, she was still doing. But Laura had told her that if she kept him waiting for too long, he would lose interest and leave her. So at the end of the tenth year, she had gone to him and claimed that she was ready to be his Queen.

It was all Laura this, Laura that.

Laura.

Laura.

Laura.

It was interesting to find out that she wasn't just terrible to the people she hated but also to the people who she claimed to love.

How could Delice not see the need to fight this?

But once again, it was none of her business what they did.

They were vampires, and vampires were monster.

Every terrible thing that happened to them, they deserved.

But why had her heart felt heavy with that last thought?

It wasn't after they were already in the carriage, did Zezi remember something that she shouldn't have even forgotten in the first place.

"What time is it? Do you have a clock with you, Lady Delice?"

Lady Delice noticed that her tone didn't suggest any sarcasm. Although she had been comforting her while they had been at the gravestone, her persona had changed immediately they got into the carriage.

A cold atmosphere had settled in-between them too.

"It dont know what the time says exactly but I'm sure it's way past midnight."

Oh no.