“Where are we?” I mumbled, as I was looking at the places we had been passing, “This seemed to be far from the city?” I should have been scared by now, that’s a normal response, but I wasn’t. I don’t feel even a bit of fear.
“Making sure you will not expose our kind,”
“Our what?!” I exclaimed and looked at him, who was not even fazed by what I just done, “Kind?! What the hell do you mean?! Stop babbling nonsense! I want to go back, drive me back home, I’ll just keep myself at home!”
“Do you think, you can do that by yourself? Don’t make me laugh, Vera, You were different, the moment you were born, you weren’t a real human, like you were claiming you are,”
My eyes started to moist, “How could you say that to me? How could I possibly become one of you guys?”
“You have met someone like me, right?” I met his eyes, “Werewolf?” I slowly nodded, “When?”
“When I was sent by the village for the upcoming project of your company,” I answered, still looking out the window.
“Where were you sent? I can’t remember I sent you to a village outside my territory, is that why I can’t feel your presence for the past three days?”
My brow furrowed, “Feel what?”
“You, for some unknown reason, I can feel your presence, then after some weeks, I started to hear your breath, even what you feel, this is kind of weird too,”
“Then why—” I stopped, hesitant if I should tell him, “Why didn’t you save me when I was in danger?”
I heard him sigh, “Like what I said, I just suddenly felt this one day,”
“If.. if you knew I was in trouble, would you save me? You wanted to kill me when I first saw the real you, saving me will only expose you, right?”
“I didn’t intend to kill or scare you, Vera,” His voice suddenly softened, “Do understand that it was an animal instinct, I’ve been living like this for the rest of my life,”
I turned my face to him, “What am I, Zacharias? Am I like you too? Will I have to eat humans too? Bloods? Raw meat? Well, raw fishes and meats were tasty like sushi—” I heard chuckled, “I mean, uh, am I still a human?”
His intense eyes met mine, “You can answer your question, Vera, what happened tonight proves that you are no longer part of the mortal world,”
“Where do I belong now?” I lift my hands, there were still traces of blood, from my nails earlier, “Will I have to isolate myself from the others?”
“No, you just have to know how to control it,” he said like it’s an easy thing to do.
“How do you know Sydney? I didn’t know he was associated with people like you, does she know the real you? Does she? You’re putting her in great danger! What if your instinct kicks in again?! You will kill her!”
“Calm down, will you?”
“How will I calm down? Knowing that she’s—”
“She knew, okay? So lower your voice, I can hear you even if you’re whispering, no need to shout at me, you sly girl,”
I heaved a sigh, “W here is this place?” that’s when I noticed that we were already at a familiar place, “Is this where we held the team building? This looks similar to pacifio,”
“You’ve noticed?” I nodded, “We’re here, but the team didn’t get to reach here, this was the most secluded part of the woods,”
“Why?”
“Because I said so,”
I scoff, “Are you some kind of owner of this place—”
“Yes, I bought this, not a long time ago after I found this place,” My face straightened, and looked at him, waiting for him to say that he was messing around, “I’m dead serious,”
“Okay,” I closed the argument, “Why here?”
“I can properly stop you here if ever your body will do something without the tolerance of your mind,”
“I’m human—”
“You are not, Vera. Learn to accept that from now on, you are not from the very beginning,” he motioned me to sit on the big rock, I also heard the swift sound of flowing water, there must be falls nearby, “I’ve been living for seven hundred thousand years, but this was the first time that I encountered someone like you,”
“Like me? Like what?”
“The average wolf will transform in their true form at the age of sixteen, the time when both natural and special abilities manifest will be at the age of eighteen, and no one ever had to go through past that age without that timeline, it may be a little early or a little late, maybe a month or two, but you, you reach this age without undergoing any of those,”
“Should I be happy that I didn’t manifest those? Dude, I would freak out,” I mumbled, “How about you? Co-habitat between wolves and vampires were considered taboo, right?” I read it, while I was looking for answers about his real identity, “I mean, why was it considered taboo? People have the right to choose who to love, your heart can’t be dictated, you can’t choose whom to love,”
“You’re funny,” he scoffed, “And stupid,”
“Whatever—” I stopped when I noticed something on the water. Fireflies! “It’s beautiful..” I mumbled, looking at them like I was bewitched by their beauty.
“For vampires, fireflies signify disaster,” his voice was as if he wasn’t bothered by that, “It was said that when thousands of fireflies appear from the darkness, blood will drip from the moon,”
“Do you believe in that?” I asked back, still—looking at the fireflies, some were already in my hands, which made it more magical, “Does beauty really resemble death?”
“My opinion wasn’t important,” he said, “I always have to follow the rules—”
“Rules are meant to be broken,” I cut him off, and look at him, “What? I mean, you don’t have to always follow it, you will enjoy life if at some time in your life you experience breaking it, won’t you?”
He was looking at me like it was the last thing he would expect to hear from me, but that look ended up in a short laugh, “You’re unbelievable, before we came here, you were bawling, rejecting the fact that you were different from those humans,”
I sigh, “What can I do to become human again?”
“Again?” he chuckled, “You weren’t in the beginning, and only death could make you be a human, well, the probability rate was like seven percent,”
I looked down, my heart and my mind were in chaos, This night was unbelievable to even think that it actually happened, and Zacharias, whom I thought was of monster, wasn’t really different from me, I was too. My parents, are they looking for me? Are they wondering too, what I am doing right now? Are we looking at the same sky? Breathing the same air? Counting the same sum of stars? What do they look like? What’s the sound of their voice? Their laughter? Do they weep?
“Emotions were really confusing,” my immediate response was to look at him, “I never felt these various kinds of emotion,” from the fireflies, he turned his gaze on me, “It was indeed fascinating,”
“Even if you’re a vampire or a werewolf, there would still be room for emotions,”
“Shared feelings were one of the most distinct signs of a wolf or a vampire meeting their mates,” I became speechless for a while, “When I saw you with an insignia on your hand, and you changing your eye color, I thought for a second that you were my mate,” I heard him chuckled, “I even shared with your emotions, but you didn’t felt anything for me, the shared feelings, the insignia,”
“That insignia, is it supposed to appear for your mated one?”
He chuckled, “Yes, it is, but mine doesn’t, so it means, we weren’t the fated ones, maybe you have met yours, without knowing it, so don’t think anything sexual, I’m just helping you, because it would not just hurt you, but our kind, just if ever, you accidentally expose our kind,”