The Original: Book 3

Chapter 8

Sitting in bed the next day, I flipped the page of the book I was reading. Nik had sentenced me to spending the next couple of days in bed while I healed. Feeling eyes on me as I read, I stated, "You've been staring at me for the past twenty minutes." I looked over at Nik, who was sitting in a chair by the window, having abandoned his own book. "Something on your mind, my love?" Getting up, he came over, sitting on the bed by my feet.

"When you got back yesterday, you collapsed just inside the front door. When I got to you, you had already started hallucinating," he explained and I wondered where he was going with this. "You kept insisting that it was an accident, begging for your father to stop. You were screaming." Gulping down the lump in my throat, I lifted my book back up, going back to reading.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," I choked out.

"Well, you're out of luck because I do," Nik contended, taking the book out of my hands and setting it aside.

"Nik," I muttered, running my hands over my face, "Please, don't."

"You've never talked about your father before."

"There's a reason I don't talk about him, Nik." I could tell the he wasn't going to give up on this anytime soon, so I let out a sigh, looking down at my hands. "Your father may have hated you while you were a human, but at least he didn't try to kill you. My father tried to kill me. Several times, actually," I admitted as my eyes began to fill with tears.

"Why?" I shrugged a shoulder.

"That's just the way he was. Whenever I would do something that he didn't like, he would punish me for it. He's the reason I have a fear of fire...There was one evening that I remember most often. He had come home late after a hunting trip with some of the other men in our village. They hadn't caught anything and he'd had a rough day. I was making him dinner and accidentally let it burn. That threw him over the edge. I tried apologizing and insisted that I would make him something new, but he wasn't having it. He wrecked the entire place. He threw things; at the walls and at me. He beat me, yelling about how I never did anything right and that I was a disgrace to him and to our ancestors." A few tears had fallen from my eyes, so I wiped them away before continuing on with my story. "He kept saying that I shouldn't have been born. That he should've killed me while I was still in my mother's womb. He said that I was good at burning things, so he was going to burn me. I begged him not to, but I couldn't fight him off. He grabbed hold of my arm and held it over the fire. I screamed as my flesh burned away," I paused, more tears falling from my eyes as I subconsciously rubbed my arm and took in a ragged breath. "I'm sure he would have continued to burn every inch of my body, if my mother hadn't stopped him. She said that if he killed me, the other families in our village would start to ask questions. Not to mention, she still needed me for her own personal gain. That's also why she helped heal my burn. She knew that if she left it, it would get infected and there was a possibility I could die." My anger grew as I thought about my mother. Nik stayed quiet. I let out a small chuckle, wiping my eyes, "And you thought my mother was the mean one." It was quiet for a moment before Nik spoke up.

"I'm sorry I made you relive that moment. I didn't realize what kind of a man he was. I just wanted to know why you never talked about him and why you seemed so scared every time I brought him up."

"Don't worry about it. We've known each other for almost a hundred years, it was bound to come up some time," I remarked, shifting so that I was lying down.

Nik did the same, "Just so you know, if I knew you back then or if he had come back to life like your mother did, I would've killed him for hurting you." I chuckled, curling up into his side.

Little background into her life with her father. Man, she had some mean parents.

My character and her story are of my own imagination. They belong to me and nobody else. Please do not steal. Copyright 2017.