A scowl ruined her beautiful face. “Excuse me?”
“You’re a reincarnation, not a doubleganger,” I explained. “Rena gets reborn every fifty years. You’re the same person, not a double.”
“Ah…okay. Whatever you say,Wolf.” She made a face and glared at Asher. “I don’t know what the FUCK is wrong with you,” her glare shifted to me, “or you, but thanks for the entertainment, boys.” She backed away and spun, heading out of the clearing. “By the way, vampires don’t wear glasses. They don’t need them. I’m outta here. I have a nail to remove.”
The leech blurred and blocked her way. “You can’t leave. You need to know the truth.”
She gasped. “Stop doing that. What the hell are you?”
“I already told you.” He removed his glasses. His eyes dilated into black holes, and his disgusting fangs protruded under his lips.
She yelped, staggering back, almost falling down.
He pulled back his human mask and shoved the glasses in his pocket. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I never wanted you to see me like that until you’d made your choice, but I had to so you would believe me.”
“What fucking choice?” she demanded incredulously.
“Please sit down so we can tell you the whole story.” Asher brought a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and gave it to her. She flinched at first, but then she snatched it out his grip and unfolded it.
“That’s me,” she gasped again.
“This is Rena,” he said.
The woman who started it all.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a beautiful woman named Rena met a man named Alec. They fell in love. They were happy. Until a demon tore them apart. A vampire who claimed he loved her, too, and stole her away.
They didn’t know Alec had a demon inside him as well. A beast that wouldn’t be silenced. One horrific night, when everyone was drowning in their Halloween festivities, the beast roamed and found his mate in the arms of the vampire.
The two beasts fought over her, both sinking their fangs in her for a vicious claim.
Rena’s unaccepting body couldn’t take it and gave. Not turning into either monsters, she bled out in both their arms.
Desperate, the two beasts sought a witch for help. “Bring her back to life, and we will do anything,” they had said.
The witch told them Rena came from a cursed bloodline, and she belonged to the devil now that she was dead. If they wanted to bring her back, they had to make a deal with him.
My brother and Asher shook hands with the devil that night, only to relive this tragedy every fifty years.
When Rena had to come back to life and choose a clan, then a mate by Halloween night.
Or else…
Of course, as they both perched down on the grass and wildflowers, the vampire was telling Belle the story from his side, where Alec was the one who stole Rena from him, not the other way around.
Alec’s wolf breaths huffed closer. Then the unmistakable bone shattering pelted my ears. His bare feet chomped the way from the forest to the clearing. “Don’t believe a word he says. You’ve always been mine right from the start.”
Asher jumped up. “Back off, Mutt. She loved me first. She just didn’t tell you.”
They pounced on each other and fought as humans. I didn’t give a shit. I’d seen it a hundred times before. My concern was Belle. Her head jerked from one direction to another. She was silent the whole time, her heart skipping a beat after a beat, her eyes wide yet vacant.
She was in shock.
I examined her neck from where I stood. The two holes a vampire would crack were there, faded, almost healed, and so was Alec’s mark.
They both had bitten her, and if Alec’s story about this morning was true, then Belle was turning for real.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Would you stop fighting already? I’d like to know why you called for this meeting, Asher? And why you’re expediting things like that, dumping everything on her all at once?”
