Chapter 17

Erick

Seagulls. Those nasty little things.
If I could only get my hands on one of those damn brats! Yeah, as if that would be of any help. You cut off one, and a thousand take its place. Ah, the benefits of having a beach house. I didn't need an alarm clock. These damn pests did a fine job of waking you up at three o’clock in the morning.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I sat up groggily. I was startled into looking around the room when I couldn’t feel that familiar warmth next to me. Somehow, I ended up falling asleep next to her last night, afraid that if I left her alone, Emiel might get to her again.
“Alina?” I called out. Did she leave as soon as I was out? I couldn’t blame her for that if she did. Yesterday, hell, the whole week, has been terrible for her. She needed to know that running isn’t an option, though. Besides, she was too curious to just up and leave without knowing the whole story.
Yesterday was the first time in my life that I had ever felt so afraid. I was afraid of losing Alina, and it was the worst feeling in the world. Even since that incident four years ago, I felt horrible leaving her all alone, but I knew that staying with her could only mean worse dangers for her. I couldn’t bear to wake up in a world where she didn’t exist, so I left her alone. I let her hate me because I knew it would keep her safe. I came back only when I was sure there weren’t any threats to her life, but I guess I was wrong. He was still out there.
I got off the bed and walked towards the bathroom. I needed a really long shower. I stunk of alcohol, and I needed to cool my head before I could go chase after Alina.

****

“I thought you left.”
She gasped and spun to face me, her back to the kitchen counter.
“God! Stop doing that! You scared the hell out of me,” she snapped, putting a hand on her chest. Her heartbeat was like music to my ears. She had no idea how hard it was to control myself around her. Her blood was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted, which was normal, given who she was.
“I thought you had left,” I repeated. My earlier assumptions were proven incorrect the second I came out of the shower and her delicate earthy scent hit me. Red roses on damp earth, their mingled scent were what made Alina so warm and familiar. I came to the kitchen while inspecting the scent, to find her preparing breakfast for us in one of my tees and shorts.
“Oh, no! I’m not leaving without hearing an explanation from you. We were out of eggs, so I went to the grocery store,” was her answer. I thought she didn’t realize it herself, the fact that she just said ‘we’ even though she didn’t stay with me.
“In my clothes? Nice.” I smirked. It was a good thing my scent was all over her, but there was also another serious topic to be discussed. “But also stupid. You shouldn’t have gone out on your own, especially not after yesterday.”
Her face paled at the reminder, and it hurt me to see her so vulnerable. “Hey.” I moved towards her and lifted her up so she could sit on the kitchen counter with me standing between her legs. “Here, drink this.” I handed her the tea mug that she had set out for the both of us.
She took a sip and placed the cup back on the counter. Leaning her head against my bare chest, her hands came up to clutch the sides of my unbuttoned shirt. “How did you know I was in danger?”
“I had a hunch, but it was my fault. I shouldn’t have left you alone.” I wrapped my arms around her, and she snuggled closer to me. “How did you know it wasn’t me?”
I felt her lips curve against my skin like an intimate caress. “He apologized too much.” It had my lips curving as well
It was unusual for Alina to show affection towards me. She had hated me almost her entire life, and I didn’t expect her to change so soon. Yesterday’s events had shaken her pretty badly. I kept having nightmares the entire night, thinking that if I had been a second too late, she would have fallen to her death on the sharp rocks that formed the bottom of the cliff.
My arms tightened around her in a fraction of a second. “It’s a curse.”
“What?” She looked up at me with those curious green eyes. I released her and stepped back.
“Over five thousand years ago, Marcellus and Tobias, the twin brothers, were born into the Royal Family. It was a rarity among vampires because our fertility rates were already very low,” I continued. “Tobias was an hour older than Marcellus, so according to tradition, he was supposed to be the next king. However, Marcellus wanted the kingdom for himself. His greed and ego wouldn’t let him rest until he had it all. So, on the night of the coronation, Marcellus tricked Tobias into drinking Tangenina extract, a plant extract that acts like a drug if consumed in low proportions but can paralyse the consumer if taken in large quantities. Supposedly, it only worked if the consumer is a vampire.”
This story had been passed down for generations in my family, so it wasn’t so difficult to recall, especially since my life was intertwined with this twisted fairy tale.
“What happened to Tobias after that?” Alina asked, breaking the silence.
“Marcellus killed him,” I said, “in cold blood. He killed his own brother. It was a heinous crime for a vampire because we don’t let our emotions rule us, and Marcellus did exactly that. He let his greed come first. For us vampires, our population is already diminishing, and we can’t let it dwindle further by killing each other. We survived natural selection by trusting and sticking up for each other while the humans murdered and destroyed their own race. It was a cruel murder of a royalby another royal member, that too when they were brothers. Needless to say, it led to serious consequences. The kingdom was in an uproar. The previous king, Dominik, Marcellus and Tobias’s father, immediately ordered the execution of Marcellus before a civil war broke out amongst our race.
“The strife quietened down after Marcellus was executed, but the death of the future king, as well as the execution of the killer, caused a ripple effect within the vampire race. Those who had always harboured emotions of greed or jealousy within their hearts took this as an opportunity to go out on a killing rampage. In the end, it wasn’t just vampires who were slaughtered, but humans as well. Our identity was almost revealed, but Dominick was a cunning king. He somehow managed to round up all the troublemakers and executed them with his own hands, and people regained their trust for the Royal Family once again.
“But in the end, the price was too high. Hundreds of humans and vampires were killed, and our population was down to its final hundreds. Dominick knew that if another such incident happened, it would wipe the slate clean. That was why he made the prophecy that from now on, any twins born to the Royal Family will be separated at birth. Marcellus’ supporters and descendants would be in charge of one of the twins while the Royal Family kept the other. The Royal Family was divided, and Marcellus’s descendants were exiled to one corner of the country to be shunned by all. Tobias’s unborn child was made the next king. From then on, there have been four more twins born in our family, and they were all separated at birth and taught to hate each other. Emiel and I are the fourth set of twins, and our destiny is the same as all those who’d come before us.”

Alina

I heard what he told me and absorbed it all into my brain, but I couldn’t understand it.
Just because one set of twins hated each other, they were condemning all that came to some stupid prophecy? That didn’t make any sense!
“I know what you’re thinking, but you have to understand that we aren’t human. Your population is over seven billion people. If you consider the number of zeros that are present after the seven, it’s a hell of a lot more than ours. Vampire population is only in thousands,” he explained. “A civil war can and will wipe out our race while the loss of mere thousandswon’taffect the human population that much.”
“Okay, now you’re being completely illogical. You’re talking of a few thousands, yet you say it like we’re a swarm of bugs that can be easily crushed. Do human lives even matter to you?” I asked him, a little hurt that he spoke about us humans so carelessly.