Isabelle shuddered as she bit back a fierce sob. “He was just as determined as I was to avenge their deaths. He had been doing his own hunting, destroying any vampires that he came across. We fought, I could have killed him, but I didn’t. I could sense that he wasn’t evil, wasn’t like the others. Brian’s powers hadn’t matured enough for him to sense the same thing aboutme. When Iexplained to him that not all of us were evil,that we aren’tall cold blooded monsters, we joined together to hunt the ones that were.
“With Brian’s help I was able to kill even more, to go after ones that were even stronger. After a hundred years, we found the two that had killed Brian’s family. They were the strongest we had ever come up against, but we were able todestroythem. Both of us left the battle severely wounded, but much stronger from their blood.
“That was when we decided to go back to Europe. Most of the older ones had remained on the continent, not wanting to travel to a new land because they were content where they were. Our strength steadily grew as we moved through the continent, hunting and destroying everyone that we could find.
“I never found Brenda, and after thirty years we decided to return to the states. By this time, I was beginning to fear that I was never going to find her, that maybe she was already dead. It was twenty years later that I ran into her in New Orleans. By that time, I was stronger than she was. I had been feeding off of some of the most powerful of our kind, absorbing their strength and powers. Brenda was a monster, pure and simple, she lived off of humans, took pleasure in destroying families.But their blood wasn’t as strong as the blood that I had been surviving on, thriving on.
“The battle was short and brutal, and when it was over, I was left with nothing. For the last two hundred years I had been consumed with a need for revenge. It was the only thing that had driven me, the only thing that had kept me alive. After Brenda was dead, there was nothing left to fuel me.
“Brian and I continued our mission, but it wasn’t the same. I was just going through the motions, just surviving.I began to realize thatallmyexistence had ever been, and ever would be, was nothing but death and destruction. There was nothing left to drive me, except for survival, and the need to try and make sure that no other families were destroyed, but it just wasn’t the same.
“I wasn’t much better than the monsters that I had been killing. I had also thrived on it, for the same reasons that they did, forthepower. Granted, I didn’t destroy families, I didn’t take innocent lives, but I was a brutal killer all the same.”
Isabelle shuddered, her eyes closedas she clung tightly to him. Never had she thought that this side of Stefan could exist. Never had she ever dreamed that it could be possible. It frightened the hell out of her.
“Two years ago, we ran into a group of human hunters. I killed one of them, Brian killed two. Neither of us had ever killed a human before, and it rattled us both. I vowed then that I was done, that I would never kill anyone, or anything, again. Brian was more determined than ever to destroy everything in his path. He hasn’t been killing humans, but he has taken everything to a darker place than heeverhad before. He relishes in the kill more than he used too, thrives on it. It gives him a purpose, something to live for.
“I lost everything that day. Brian and I went our separate ways, the idea of killing anything again made me sick. I had done the one thing that I had vowed never to do, the one thing that made me exactly like the monsters that I had been killing for centuries.I hated myself for it. I no longer felt the urge to destroy our kind. I realized that I was becoming toosimilar to them to hold any kind of judgment over them.
“I just wanted to live in some semblance of peace, but I never found it. Everywhere I went, I was alone. That’s when I started settling down with just one girl at a time, for a couple of months at a time. It was at least someone to have around for a little bit so that I wasn’t completely alone, but it wasn’t enough. I was still alone, no matter what I tried to do. Until I came here, until I met you, and felt alive for the first time since I was a little boy. Felt as if I had found a place where I belonged, and had a purpose other than death.”
Isabelle sobbed softly into his shoulder, clinging tightly to him. She couldn’t imagine such loneliness, such pain.She ached everywhere for what he had gone through, for what he had lived through. She hated herself for the words that she had uttered the other night, the hurt that she had inflicted upon him. There was no way that she could take the words back, no way that she could erase his past, but she vowed that his future would be better, that she would make sure it was better.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry for everything. I didn’t mean it. I love you Stefan. I love you more than anything. Please forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he whispered softly, gently stroking her hair.
“There is!” she sobbed. “What I said to you the other night, the way that I reacted was completely unforgivable. I should have listened toyou;I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I should have known.”
“Isabelle, you were angry and upset, I understand that.”
His forgiveness, and caring words, didn’t help to ease the anguish that she felt. They only made her feel worse. She wouldn’t have forgiven him so easily if it had been the other way around, but he readily did. It made her hate herself even more. Her hands dug into his neck as she clung to him, crying softly as waves of self hatred washed through her. She truly was an awful person.
“How can you be so understanding?” she sobbed.
“Easily,” he said, laughing softly. “I know you Isabelle, you’re quick to anger, quick to judge, and very quick to lose your temper. But you’re also strong, proud, determined, loving, and one of the most loyal people that I have ever met. I love you for all of those reasons, the good, as well as the bad. Iwouldn’t change a thing.”
He really wasn’t making her feel anybetter;he was just making her feel worse as she wept into his shoulder. “I’m sorry that you lost your family,” she whispered. “I wish that it had never happened.”
He sighed softly as he hugged her tighter against him, his hands running along her back. “It was a long time ago Isabelle. It may have taken me awhile to come to terms with it, but I have. It is the past, and the two of us are going to have a wonderful future.”
“Yes we are,” she vowed fervently. “I promise we will.”
He laughed softly as he dropped a soft kiss on her neck. “Stop crying Isabelle. I hate it when you cry.”
She tried to stifle her sobs, but she couldn’t stop the tears that continued to flow. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.
He sighed as his hands stopped stroking her back. He reached around and gently pulled her head out of his shoulder. He turned her toward him, tenderly wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes were filled with misery, and sadness, as she hesitantly met his gaze. Her lower lip trembledslightly as she valiantly tried to hold back her sobs.
“When Brian and I first met David, I was surprised about the way that he talked about his friends. For the last hundred and fifty years all I’d had was Brian, and death. Davidhadan air of freshness and innocence that shocked me. When he talked about how none of his friends had ever killed, nor ever wanted too, and how amazingly close they all were, I wondered what it was like to be that innocent, and naive. He had a vague idea of what our kind could be capable of, but he had never witnessed it.
“When I came here, you were so naive, and so beautifully innocent that the last thing I wanted was for anything dark to touch you. Until that night at the club, you had no idea what the world could be like, how cruel and vicious it can be. I didn’t want you to knowIsabelle;I didn’t want you tainted by it, tainted by what I was. I wanted to keep you protected from it, and I had mistakenly thought that the past was over with. You gave me a reason to live, to feel, and Inever wantedto take anything away from you. I was not about to let darkness into your world Isabelle.”
Tears slipped free as she stared into his dark, warm eyes. There was so much tenderness, so much love radiating from him that it shook her very core. She stroked his cheek lightly, extremely grateful that somehow fate had managed to throw them together.That ithad managed to give her someone as wonderful as he was. She truly realized just how lucky she was to have him in her life.
“You told my mom all of this.”
He frowned. “I didn’t tell your mom any of this. You and Brian are the only two that know.”
