ADRIA’S POV
I couldn’t have heard my mother right, and I had to stare into blank space to try to process everything, and thankfully, she didn’t say a word. She gave me time to think. My heart pounded in my chest as I couldn’t bring myself to believe what she had said.
Even though I knew I had fought with Lucien the other day and something in me had wanted to bite his neck and taste his blood, I couldn’t bring myself to believe I was a vampire of all creatures.
A vampire? A vampire? No, that couldn’t be. All my life, I had seen blood, come into contact with blood, even tasted it. When I was younger, anytime a friend got a cut on their finger, I always put it into my mouth to stop the blood from pooling out, and it had never tasted sweet nor had I ever longed for it.
“The vampire side of you was stirred recently. A shocking exposure to the reality of supernatural beings.” I heard my mum say, and I couldn’t help think of when Monica had washed the blood of the rats before feeding it to me.
Had the headache been a reaction from the smell and not because I was disgusted? Were my dreams all pointing out to the reality of who I was? Was the hotness in my body due to vampire blood cells fighting to take control? It was all too much to take in, and I didn’t even know where to start arranging my thoughts.
“Take it slowly. I will explain it all to you.” My mother assured, and with tears in my eyes, I turned to her, and tried to sit. “No, no, you should still…” she was saying, but I paid her no heed. Instead, I continued to rise, and eventually, she had no option but to help me rise.
Then she got off my bed, dragged a stool to herself and sat on it, facing me.
“How can I be a vampire? How can I be one when you’re a witch? Are you… are you the vampire Queen?” I asked, and she gave a deep sigh.
“Adria. The Witch and the Vampire Queen are two different people.” She let out slowly, refusing to meet my eyes.
What did she mean? I was the daughter of the Vampire Queen, and she wasn’t the vampire Queen? It suddenly felt like my head wanted to break apart. My world was crumbling.
“You’re not…”
“Yes, Adria. I am not your mother.” She replied before I completed my statement, and something hard hit my chest.
“You are the sole daughter of the vampire Queen.”
How… how could she not be my mother? I had known her all my life. We looked alike and liked the same things. She never acted like she was never my mother for once. The kind of love she had shown me over the years was only one mothers showed to their children.
My tears fell down my cheeks quickly, and I sniffed, wondering why I had to learn all of it in one day.
“A long time ago. Just shortly after you were born, the vampires were attacked. It was a great war and the vampires fought with all their might. Your mother had to fight, but she also had to keep you safe.
“Left with no option, she hid you in the bushes and fought for her people and when she was dying, she crawled to where she had kept you and when she saw me there, she pleaded earnestly with all she had left in her. Asking me to keep you, begging me to save you. She said you didn’t have to know about who you were, but if your powers ever became too strong, I was to let you know everything, and that brings us to today. It is why I’m telling you everything. I have to keep you safe.” My mother narrated, and the tears flowed down my eyes non-stop.
I didn’t know what to say. I simply cried.
“And I hope you know what this means. As of this moment, your life has changed. It will never be the same again. There are responsibilities you have to shoulder and burdens you have to bear. As of this moment, you will need blood to survive. You must have read a lot in the novels, but this is more crucial than they let you know in the novels.”
“Blood?”
“Yes, from now on, you have to careful because you’ll be sensitive to blood. Your body will crave it, and if you’re not careful, you will not be able to control it, and it would be a problem.” She explained, and I felt scared about the whole thing.
My life suddenly changing was terrifying. All the things I could do freely were going to change. How could I be taking in blood? How was I supposed to appear normal? What if I lost control and ended up killing someone? What if it was someone close to me?
And just then, the most horrible thought slipped into my mind.
I was a vampire. Lucien was a wolf.
Vampires and wolves.
Those words repeated themselves in my mind over and over.
What was I to do? Lucien had told me about the bad history between wolves and vampires, and he was current hunting down vampires.
I felt a raw panic set loose in my chest. Of all the things I could have been… A vampire?
Why?
“And it also means you have to keep your distance from wolves. They are enemies.” My mum added, corresponding to my thoughts, and I took in deep breaths.
There was no way Lucien would leave me because I turned out to be a vampire. I hadn’t even known I was one until that night. Even that night, I had not been aware of what I was doing. There was simply no way he’d leave me all because of that.
“Lucien said he’d stop coming once you were fine.” My mum added, and my heart fell down a thousand feet.
“He said that?”
Did that also mean…?