Desire To Love (#2 in The Hybrid Wars series)

Chapter 13 ~ Hearts

© 2016 by Authorninja. All rights reserved.

Chapter 13 ~ Hearts

       It was hard to feel safe when everything around you felt temporary. 

  I stared at the ceiling of my temporary room, on my uncomfortable temporary bed and felt a temporary feeling of tranquillity. Charlotte and Margret left me alone in our shared bedroom to have breakfast and give me a moment to process things, but not having any distractions felt foreign. All this time of fighting, conflict and vigilance contrasted deep inside me with this sudden new change. I never felt close to the memory of my mother, I hardly knew anything about her growing up because I knew how it hurt my father deeply when I tried learning about her.

She knew even before she had me that I was going to be here, almost like my arrival at Noson was destined by the woman that I held so closely in mind but was estrange from my life.

Cora Alder had a bigger role in my life then I could ever have imagined.

I sighed, sitting up on my bed and staring down at my worn black combat boots that were flung to the floor. What Eli said echoed inside me, how all our lives everyone around me was conditioned to be the way we were. Everything we stood for, about protecting humans and hunting Vampires. Could it all have been wrong?

We were modified to believe in everything we stood for as shifters, unknowing of our big oversight in our part in damaging our society between the three Hybrids. There were millions of Hybrids out there corrupted by what we have been conditioned to believe, but who decided that it was the best for us? Who were they to force us in to feeling what we felt, and compelling us not to think for ourselves?

I tightened my hands into porcelain fists. Whoever stripped us of our emotional freedom needed to pay, no one deserved the fate that shifters and vampires alike were unknowingly facing.

There was a gentle tap on the door, and I was surprised to see Peter as he entered the room.

"Morning, Alder." His voice was a coarse murmur, "Sorry if I'm interrupting."

"Nope," I began putting my boots on, almost hesitating to put my stake in but still shoving it in just in case. "What's up?"

"We were wondering how you were holding up," Peter scanned me. "There was a lot to digest yesterday, maybe a little too much."

"I'm fine," I returned the gaze with a questioning look. "You didn't seem surprised."

"It all made sense to me," Peter shook his head. "When you've lived as long as I have you realise that things never really did add up. But somehow none of us questioned the constant conflict between the hybrids, I suppose we just assumed that's the way things have always been."

"I've never heard about the superiors getting along," I shook my head. "But I didn't think it was this extreme."

"Almost a century ago, when I finished developing into a pure vampire, it didn't seem so bad." Peter crossed his arms, leaning on the door. "The hybrids weren't exactly mates, but there wasn't as much fear either. It escalated strangely, it went from disagreement to pure hatred - shifters became scary bedtime stories for vampires and vampire hunters became more absolute. The change should have been obvious, I hate that we didn't notice soon enough to stop it."

"You couldn't have stopped it," I sighed. "This is big, something that must've been getting planned for a long time. They changed the minds of generations of shifters, making them their own weapons."

"It probably didn't seem like such a brain-washing scheme at the beginning," Peter muttered. "Vampires have been killing off humans and innocent hybrids for a long time, it was statistically shown that the arrival of hunters decreased the number of deaths. But I guess that caused a whole new body count."