Alpha Dhampir~ On Hold

Chapter 6

Ivan Zeklos

When I had first approached the wards surrounding the Pennsylvania Court, I hadn’t planned on doing much, I just wanted to see if I could get a glimpse of anyone from my past. I had no way of knowing that I was going to run into a ghost and the most feared Strigoi hunter laying there injured. Any other Strigoi would have broken the woman’s neck and taken pride in it, instead I of course, was an anomaly took her home.

The woman had killed over a thousand Strigoi since she was fifteen, the most ever recorded since Anna, and that was back in the fifteenth or fourteenth century, a millennium ago. Whoever this woman was, she was a one-woman army and was determined. Now I had her father, the one and only Zmey in my house, telling me a bedtime story as if I was a child again.

“Once the warrior had joined the team, it took barely any time to locate and reach the Princess and the novice warrior. The warrior and the novice, they immediately had a connection, one that stopped the young girl from being thrown into the streets, instead the warrior mentored her until she was just as much as a formidable warrior as he was. Not only did he train her to be better, not that she really needed it, according to him, but he also fell in love with her, and the feeling was mutual. They fell for each other hard and deep, so deep they were afraid that they would jump in front of one another instead of the Princess should the moment arise.”

I sat there listening to Abe speak, his eyes trained on his mug that moulded to his palms like a life raft. The story may have just started, but it was already clear that it was going to be deep, if not deeper than that of Romeo and Juliet. We sat there in silence, waiting for Abe to gather his thoughts.

“Time went on, and it became clear that the novice was just as much a warrior as the Western hero was. She had killed more foes than he had even though she was younger. What was one more kill? Nothing, right? Wrong, it was what finally opened everyone’s eyes to just how skilled and talented the novice was, that she wasn’t a troubled child, that there was something amiss in the air. Only one kill and the kidnapping of the Princess is what it took. Now, the poor novice, she didn’t really have a family. Her parents weren’t together. The horrible foes that were after the Princess’ kind had hunted down her father’s family, making him escape and take on another identity, while a certain member from another royal family tried to kill the novice when she was merely a young child. The father thought it had to do with revenge on him, but it was to do with the fact that this child, the novice shared the blood of three royal families; the only one to truly hold any claim over the throne.”

I turned to Moira and Lucas, and they were as stunned as I was. We didn’t have any time to voice our concerns and confusion, though. Abe looked up; his eyes blurry as memories assaulted him. “The novice grew up not knowing anything about her family history and continued to live her life without knowing until a year or so later. She had faced and suffered many struggles up to then, the loss of a best friend who had been like a brother to her, protecting two people who were once considered enemies of hers only to be connected as friends through survivor’s guilt. The seasoned warrior and the novice fought their love until it was almost too late. The warrior thought he had lost the novice when she and her friends and enemies were taken hostage by a mutual foe. As I said, only four out of five came out alive, and the loss of the friend was what brought them together.”

I had the horrible feeling on just who the seasoned warrior was and who the novice was, but I was too engrossed in the telling of the story, so I kept my opinions to  myself. “The novice and the warrior continued to fight, but finally, they broke and expressed their love. It was a magical night,” Abe’s voice went a little dark with anger and disgust, but he progressed, “but as all good things in life, it came to an end. There was an attack, and all the warriors fought, banded together no matter their status. Novices and warriors alike, they battled, and they fell. The seasoned warrior included. The novice was heartbroken, she had lost her soul mate, the one given to her by God himself. The academy mourned as one, and as soon as she turned eighteen, the novice left to fulfil the promise her and her lover had made to each other. If one of them fell to the soulless and joined their ranks, the other was to come and free them. She turned the country, Russia, upside down, trying to hunt her love down. There she met his family and her own father, not that she knew it at the time, and finally she located him.”