Leof was gone. I wanted to scream again at the thought. My Leof was dead, laid out in the shrine where I'd left him just before dawn. It hadn't taken an army to kill him, all it had taken was one wolf, one man whom he'd shown mercy to. Fenrir had done his job just as predicted, and I'd lost the only thing that mattered to me, the only thing that had kept me sane after the truth of my past was revealed. Conn was my strength, my heart, the very best parts of me and I'd never see him again. Once his body was given to the sun and his echo vanished I'd never hear him say the three words that were my reason to exist. I love you. I love you. I love you... But I'm not ready to let be alone. I'm not ready for goodbye. Condemning my Leof to Valhalla is something I can't do, but what if there's no way to bring him back? Can I just fade away? Slip into the coma and forget everything? Would it be fair to when the cohort needs me to protect them from Osier, from the Bloodied Hand, and from our ever increasing number of enemies?

TBC

Let me tell you what it was to be made vampire. It wasn't birth. Birth implies pushing, tearing forth into the light, screaming. Becoming immortal was to be pulled, to be tugged irrevocably into darkness, and it was silent. I should have fought, any person should fight, but my mind had been filled with a hazy calm which forbade any battle. Struggling had been the last thing on my mind, even when my bus arrived and my assailant waved it on, dismissing my last hope of escape. Yet my lack of rebellion was far from the most unsettling part of the stranger's control over me. The truth was that the man could've asked anything of me and I would've complied, but he didn't need to vocalise his request. I knew instinctively what he wanted. I sighed and surrendered myself as he held me against his front in a lover's embrace, tipping my head and willingly giving him access to my throat. "One day you'll understand," he whispered, his tone subdued. I've often wondered since if he was really talking to me. Perhaps he'd been talking to himself, persuading himself that one day I'd know and accept his reasons for what he'd planned for me. I wouldn't. I couldn't. Because when my fangs came in, my world altered irrevocably. It became somewhere dark, somewhere filled with murder and blood, where magic was sinister and where even my closest ally seemed more like an enemy... Even if he did make my heart skip a beat. VAMPIRE/PARANORMAL/URBAN FANTASY