"...stop it. Don’t kill him. Please. Don’t..." she said, tears streaking down her face.
Rohan’s roaring head imdiately cleared, and he turned to hold her, but she turned away from him and went down on her knees close to the human.
With trembling hands, she checked his breathing. She sucked in a sharp breath and cried out, "He’s... he’s not breathing. He’s not breathing..." She looked up at him with fear and anguish, more tears streaking down her bruised face.
Rohan stood in place without moving. He couldn’t believe how she could cry for soone who had been forcing her to leave and had also hit her. Unable to watch her cry for the loser on the ground, he bent and wrapped his fingers gently around her upper arm and then said, "He has a heartbeat. He’s knocked out. He’s not dead."
She quickly pulled her arm away from him and leaned her head down to the unconscious human to check for his heartbeat. When she heard the faint beating, she sighed in relief and fell back to sit on the ground.
Then she pulled her knees up and buried her head between them, her shoulders shaking, but she made no crying sounds and only remained like that, rocking herself back and forth.
"How could he? I loved him truly, I did. How could he say all that? How could he hit ? How could he..." she kept murmuring, her voice muffled and small, but his sharp hearing made him hear everything.
The clouds hovered over the moon, montarily blocking its rays and then cleared. The wind blew in her direction, and she seed to shiver slightly but did not move to stand up, and kept murmuring words that Rohan belatedly realized could be due to the drugs he could sense in her blood.
The bastard had drugged her, and it began to make his blood rise in fury again, but he reined it in and crouched on his heels beside her.
"Sweetheart?" he called softly and gently. "He’s not worth your tears. Let’s go ho." He reached his hand and held her shoulders, but as if in pain, she cringed away from his hold and looked up at him. She wasn’t crying, he realized, though her eyes looked hooded and heavy, like she was trying—forcing—to see through them.
"I am not crying for this bastard! I am grieving for the man I knew before. Jamie is dead to now. He is... he gave drugs and forced and dragged on the ground. He’s a bastard, but I don’t want him to die. He has family who depends on him at ho..." She blinked in a way like she was trying to clear her eyes and then shook her head forcefully.
"My head is spinning and throbbing," she groaned, then dropped it back on her knees, rocking herself back and forth again. "My stomach feels less painful when I rock like this... Let do that for a while and then we will leave... We will go back to our ho. I will be your wife forever. Only yours... only yours."
She wasn’t herself, Rohan could tell. However, her words gave him imnse pleasure.
She had been his many years ago when he first set his eyes on her doe-like, adorable hazel eyes. He recalled how those eyes had looked into his in curiosity—how, instead of running after gaining consciousness after what had happened that day, she had reached out and touched his trembling hands, asking with a small voice,
’Are you sick...?’
’Co ho with . Mama and Papa will call a doctor to look after you. I have a big beautiful room, I can let you stay there until you get well. What is your na?’
Only a human kid would be foolish enough to ask that of soone who had almost killed them, he had thought. But then she had been smarter than he gave her credit for, and the mont she realized what he was and what had happened that day, she had run away from him—away from the cave where he had been camping with her.
The mories were so vivid. Her fear of him and how she had run away...
It was so disturbing Rohan had had to do what he did to her to make her forget all of it. He recalled his promise to the little girl when she walked away after he compelled her.
’I will find you again, little bunny. You will be mine so day.’
Back then, he had the face and body structure of a teenage boy, but his age was much older, as he had been stuck in that phase where vampires continue to age ntally but do not grow physically. He had watched the little girl run away from him.
Even before she knew who he was, he had marked her as his. Now that she said these words under the influence of the drugs, it made him want to wrap her in the warmth of his arms and never let go. Never.
He didn’t know what love was supposed to feel like, but he knew if he had a heart, it would love her with every drop of blood it pumped.
As much as Rohan would like to drag the human to his dungeon and give him the sa drugs he had given his bunny and make him choke to death the rest of the way—he was on the way anyway—he thought of how it would break her heart if she knew he’d killed the bastard.
While she was rocking herself, Rohan pulled off his coat and took off shirt. He tore at his shirt and moved closer, beginning to slowly tie it around her bleeding knees without disturbing her rocking. He wiped the blood on her leg, fighting the strong urge of his vampire traits to take and bite her.
The sll of blood was too enticing, and he had to hold his breath to wipe and clean it. He made sure to tie every bleeding wound before it could make him lose his fragile control.
Done with that, he draped his coat gently around her body, and without giving her the chance to pull away again, he gathered her into his arms and carried her bridal style.
She tensed and groaned but then eventually relaxed when he whispered, "Shh, it’s fine," into her ear.
However, as he was preparing to open his wings and fly her back ho, she quickly tensed and pushed her head up to look down at the human again.
"Don’t leave him. We can’t leave him here. We can’t leave him," she kept repeating weakly, her voice hoarse.
Sighing, Rohan said, "I will co back after I take you ho. I will send him back to Aragonia. Is that all right with you, my love?" he whispered in her ear.
And despite the dicine in her system, she wasn’t immune to him. She turned her head, a flush rising to her cheek, staining it with another shade of pink apart from the red mark on her right cheek.
To Rohan’s astonishnt, she wrapped her arms around his neck and then leaned into him, smiling softly with drowsy eyes. She pressed her lips against the side of his lips and then pulled back to rest her head against his bare shoulder.
"Thank you... for coming and for not killing him," she murmured, her eyes slowly dropping closed. The sleep was so strong she could no longer fight it anymore. His warmth was all she needed now.
It was the feeling of safety that finally made Belle fall into the intense sleep she had been fighting.
Rohan looked down at her resting face. He tried not to look at the bruise on her face because he thought if he did, he might take her ho and co back to finish up the man. But then that look of trust and gratitude he had glimpsed in her hazel eyes made him, for the first ti, want to do sothing another person believed to be right.
He could still feel the lingering touch of her lips at the side of his mouth, which made his mouth curl into a small smile.
"Tsk. My silly little bunny. You’re rubbing off your damn morals and values on . I don’t want to save the bastard, but for you, I will bring heavens on earth."
He moved his head down and pressed his mouth to her forehead at the sa ti his wings opened, and he flew up and then away from where she had completely lost a past lover.
Reviews
All reviews (0)