Expect The Unexpected

Choices

Chapter 4 - Choices

Stefan POV

She was wearing a fine linen shift when she came to me.

It was the night before the day she had names, the day when she would!! announce her choice. And she came to me.

A white hand parted the curtains around my bed, and I woke from sleep, sitting up in alarm. But when I saw her, pale golden hair gleaming about her shoulders, blue yes lost in shadows, I was struck with silent amazement.

And with love. I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life. I trembled and tried to speak, but she put two cold fingers over his lips.

"Hush," she whispered, and the bed sank under with new weight as she got in.

My face flamed, my heart was thundering with embarrassment and excitement. I'm sure that I looked like Bella right now. There has never been a woman in my bed before. And this was Katherine, Katherine whose beauty seemed to come from heaven, Katherine whom I loved more than my own soul.

And because I love her, I made a great effort. As she slipped under the sheets, drawing so near to me that I could feel the cool freshness of night sir in her thin shift, I managed to speak.

"Katherine," I whispered. "We-I can wait. Until we are married in the church. I will have my father arrange it next week. It-it will not be long..." After all, I was raised to be a gentleman.

"Hush," she whispered again, and I felt that coolness on my skin. I could not help myself; I put my arms around her, holding her. "What we do has nothing to do with that," she said, and reached out her slim fingers to stroke my throat.

I understood. And felt a flash of fear, which disappeared as her fingers went on stroking. I wanted this, wanted anything that would let me be with Katherine.

"Lay back, my love," she whispered.

My love. The words sang through me as I lay back on the pillow, tilting my chin back so that my throat was exposed. My fear was gone, replaced by happiness so great that I thought it would shatter me.

I felt the soft brush of her hair on my chest, and tried to clam my breathing. I felt her breath on my throat, and then her lips. And then her teeth.

There was a stinging pain, but I held myself still and made no sound, thinking only of Katherine, of how I wished to give to her. And almost at once the pain eased, and I felt the blood being drawn from my body. It was not terrible, as I feared. It was a feeling of giving, of nurturing.

Then it was as if our minds were merging, becoming one. I could feel Katherine's joy in taking the warm blood that gave her life. And I knew that she could feel my delight in giving. But reality was receding, the boundaries between dreams and waking became blurred. I could only feel, and my feelings spiraling up and up, caring him higher and higher, breaking his last ties with earth.

Sometime later, without knowing hoq I had gotten there, I found myself in her arms. She was cradling me like a mother holding an infant child, guiding my mouth on the rest of the bare flesh just above the lower neck of her night shift. There was a tiny wound there, a cut showing dark against the pale skin. I felt no fear or hesitation, and when she stoked my hair encouragingly, I began to suck.

It might have been a dream, but the two little wounds on my neck were real. I was surprised to find that they did not hurt and that they seemed to be partially healed already and they were hidden by the high neck collar of my shirt.

Her blood burned in my veins now, I thought, and the very words made my heart race. She had given her strength to me; she has chosen me, not Damon.