Memories

Chapter 12

I sat up gasping for breath as I glanced around. The nightmares had gotten worse since last night's events where the Tiger-human group, Jason, Samantha, Damien, Ashley, and Lira belonged to, went up in smoke and fire. Kayla, Riley, and Scott had all died, but we did manage to kill Rick. We had one less vampire to deal with now.

"April, can you tell me what's wrong?" Jason asked from beside me.

I blinked a few times and looked at him to see him sitting up on the couch beside me. Samantha, Damien, Ashley, and Lira had all left to get some food from the breakfast buffet while leaving Jason and me to sleep. Jason grabbed my hand and turned me to face him. His black hair seemed to cover his eyes as he stared at me, expecting me to answer.

"Jason...N-" I was saying before he cover my mouth.

"I want to know why you woke up gasping for breath. You did that back at Riley and Scott's house the first night. You freaked out when you were at the council meeting, and you've called me Luke before. I'm worried about you April, so please tell me." Jason begged me.

"I-I... Fine..." I sighed.

"So, what's wrong?" Jason asked.

"When I still had a group, there were ten of us. Kelly turned out to be a vampire and took me. She let people experiment on me which lead to the vampire I killed called Drake, injecting me with something called R2A. I lost the three years after that and when I woke up, Zoey, Alisha, Swan, and Kate were all gone. After a day, Alex was caught by the vampires again. I went to go save him and got caught by Martha who had pretended to be my mother before that. After that, Luke came to save me but got caught too. I was forced to fight Zack, the alpha of the Florida werewolf pack who was also my ex-boyfriend. I killed him. We had no choice but to fight to the death unless we wanted to die at the same time. After I killed Zack, they pitted me against Alex and Luke, my boyfriend at the time. When I decided to not fight them, they brought out James, Logan, and Arthur. They held swords against Alex, Arthur, James, and Logan's throats and gave me five seconds to attack Luke before they died...I-I refused and they killed them...L-Luke was extremely pissed at me and he attacked me. Everything seemed to slow in time and I had stabbed a sword straight through him...After that, I haven't been sleeping well. I'm hallucinating them, dreaming about them, having nightmares about them, and I constantly am being revealed memories that only seem to burden me further..." I breathed as tears slipped down my cheeks.

Jason hugged me close to him and rubbed my back as comfortable as he could. I didn't know why I told him everything, but it felt good to finally tell someone what had been weighing heavy on my heart and shoulders for so long. It felt like the weight had been lifted off me and that I could finally breathe again. Why didn't I do this before?

The door opened and Samantha, Lira, Ashley, and Damien stopped in their tracks. They stared at us and then looked at one another. Samantha, Lira, and Ashley grabbed the food and placed it on a table before sitting down on the ground in front of us like children would when they realize it was story time. Damien leaned against the door and watched us as if he wasn't that interested in what was going on but rather guard us by keeping himself on high alert.

"What's wrong?" Samantha asked reaching out while staring forward blindly.

"N-Not-" I was speaking as Jason covered my mouth.

"She's experiencing nightmares from her past mistakes." Jason spoke.

"Aw...poor April." Lira said as she stood and wrapped her arms around me quickly.

My eyes widened in sheer shock as she hugged me. I completely wasn't expecting them to hug me at all, but at the same time, it was comforting. Especially after holding Kayla while she lay dying in my arms. I stiffened at the thought of her death and hugged Jason again. Damien rolled his eyes and moved towards us.