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What was wrong with me?

“I never wanted any of this...” she said quickly, turning her head away.

I knew she was close to tears, and I felt sorry for her. Julie deserved a better life, a carefree youth, and much better friends.

“He distracted you, didn't he?” I asked her, and Julie turned to me abruptly.

“Huh?”

“Erik,” I clarified.

Her eyes filled with a flood of emotions.

Bingo.

“Another miserable situation. Now he wants to find me.”

“What?”

I stopped abruptly.

If that was true, Julie was screwed.

“Yes,” she sighed, obviously desperate and somewhat exhausted. “But I can't. It would make everything even more complicated, especially because of the Councils and the prophecy.”

“Shit,” I sighed.

That prophecy should've been shredded and used for hamster bedding.

“He won't find you. Don't worry.”

It felt like I was trying to calm myself down. I knew what obsessed men were capable of, having experienced it firsthand. That was exactly why the thought that Julie might now face the same problem frightened me.

I would keep my eyes open, keep an eye on Julie.

I didn't know this Erik, but I knew I could take on a human being.

“Sometimes I wish everything were different,” Julie continued. “If I were human, I could just leave. With Erik. We could go somewhere. I don't know where exactly. I wouldn't care. As long as it is far away from these people.”

So maybe deep down she wanted him to find her?

“Oh God, yes,” I laughed dryly. “If I were human, I probably would have listened to Bay and disappeared, never been bitten, and been able to have children.”

The thought alone made my heart ache.

I felt Julie's scrutinizing gaze from the side, but I didn't look up.

“It's funny how fate gives us both what we don't want,” she finally said.

I wondered if I would want to trade places with Julie. Would I even want to have children if I had gone through the same shit as her? Unlike me, she had grown up with a family, but not a loving one. And as for our fate...

My mouth took on a life of its own. “I can't hear that word anymore.” I kicked a stone off the side of the path, which landed in the bushes covered with the residual snow, and Buddy chased after it. “Fucking fate? We should change this town and show these people that everyone has power over their own future.”

I knew how idealistic and naive I sounded, but the people who owned this island were abnormally cowardly, conservative and lived in the past.

And us? We were just children to them. They would try to lull us, manipulate us, until they had burrowed their way so deep into our minds that we became just like them.

The thought terrified me. Never would they be able to manipulate me like that. But what if they could? What if it was easy for them? They had obviously already managed once to get young people like us, who had formed a secret society, to throw all their values out the window and submit to the old order.