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"But?"
But... How I hate the word 'but.'
Chapter Twenty
Tristan
The relief of having her back in my arms is short-lived. After a moment that seems to stretch out for an eternity and simultaneously ends too quickly in the blink of an eye, the girl pulls away.
She looks up at me with those haunting violet eyes, and there is such intensity behind them that I do not protest.
"I'm going to tell you a story, and it's not going to make a lot of sense at first, but I need you to listen until it's finished. Once it's done, I hope you will understand why I did what I did. In the end, you will see why I am sorry and why I cannot have you..." she says slowly, and my brow furrows when her gaze flickers down to my lips with resignation. "No matter how much I want you."
She takes my hand, and I let her guide me over to the large table in the center of the room. She takes a seat and motions for him to join her, but I merely move to stand across from her, leaning back against the edge of the table. There's too much energy pent up inside me, and I watch her wordlessly, waiting for her to say what she needs to tell me.
She takes a deep breath and starts her tale at the very beginning, laying out the truth for me.
"Many years ago, a wolf named Vanessa Massen met a nightwalker called Marco Silas..."
She tells me the story of a kind woman and how her ambitious older brother dragged her into a conflict that would change her life. She tells me of the vampire king that fell in love with Vanessa and that she loved him in return despite their differences, and how her tyrant brother eventually became the Alpha of the Banes.
I listen patiently, stoic and silent, as the girl explains the secret affair and the lovers' plan to elope when Vanessa discovered she was pregnant. But their carefully crafted hopes fell apart after the premature birth of their daughter, and the father was left to believe the baby had perished along with her mother.
There's a trace of guilt in the girl's eyes when she talks about the complicated labor and Vanessa's death, and it makes something inside me burn.
From there, the tale takes a turn for the worse.
She brushes over the most painful parts, and I cannot tell if it's too difficult to talk about or if she does it to spare me the details of her horrific upbringing.
But I have seen the scars, and just when my anger is twisting my stomach into a knot, her expression changes suddenly.
"And then this stranger arrived at my cousin's mating ceremony," she says, a soft smile dancing on the edge of her lips. Her eyes grow distant with awe, lost in the memory. "He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He radiated strength, and he was unlike anyone I'd ever met before. But all I'd ever known was the cruelty of those in power, and even though he offered me his hand and gave me a choice, I couldn't forget my fear."
That fear followed her even after she left the Banes. But slowly and surely, the nameless girl began to change. She talks about how stunning the Villa du Lac seemed through her eyes and how different this new pack was from the life she'd always known. Her voice catches when she describes the impact of seeing the garden for the very first time. She speaks with such tenderness and wonder that I can scarcely believe this character in her story is me.
I watch regret darken her eyes when she talks about that night she pushed me away after her nightmare. At the time, I'd believed she thought of me as a monster, and I feel like a fool for not seeing the truth.
She wanted to let me in, but the pain in her heart didn't let her. Each time we got closer, each time I'd reached out for her against my better judgment, and she'd pulled away... it had been because of that curse that ran through her veins.
She tells me about the strange voice that called out to her in the lake and how she feared she was losing her mind, even as she found herself thriving in a new home.
"I couldn't make sense of it," she says softly, shaking her head.
Then the curse kept pulling us apart, and she became determined to find answers.
"I don't think I fully expected to actually find them. But there they were, clad in darkness, in the way I'd least expected."
She explains how her father first appeared to her and how he stole her away when she was far enough from the protective spell of the villa.
"He thought he was rescuing me," she says with a soft chuckle. "It seems to be a recurring theme... hurting each other in an attempt to protect each other. It was just one misunderstanding after the other."
But the Night King agreed to bring her back to me. He would have dropped her off back at the edge of the lake if she hadn't remembered to ask about the mark on her chest.
"I didn't want to believe it," she mumbles softly as she explains her father's revelation. "I wanted to think that he was lying about the curse. But I knew... I could feel the truth of it in my bones. I would have gone back anyway, but it wasn't just my life at stake. That's why I had to stay. I thought if you believed I'd run away that you would hate me. Maybe you'd even forget me."
It sounds too absurd to even say out loud, but the sadness in her eyes stops me from arguing.
"I finally knew what I was. I finally knew where I came from, and I didn't care if it made me a monster. I spent most of my life believing I was a mutt anyway. But I cared about the Rovers. More than anything else, I cared about the curse, and I did not trust myself to contain it if I went back."
