Loving the leech (Guardians of Red Moon city #4)

Kaylin’s POV

Nathan and William stare at me like I’m telling them that I’m responsible for the holocaust. None of them say anything but instead stare at me with big eyes and open mouths. It’s clear that they don’t expect to hear those words coming out of my mouth. I close my eyes and let the tears fall while the darkness comes back inside me. My heart hurts by the experiences that move past inside my head like a movie. I wish it’s just that, a movie. Instead, it’s things others expose me to that have also broken me down to a place I can’t get myself out of, no matter how hard I try.

“What. The. Fuck!?” Nathan suddenly exclaims, and I flinch at the loud sound.

The point isn’t to hurt anyone but to be able to move on from all the pain inside me. Nathan is simply blameless who ends up in the crossfire, an unwilling participant. I close my eyes, and more quiet tears travel down my cheek. One of the men moves inside the room and stands before me; I hear the heartbeat. A hand lifts my head and wipes away my tears with his thumb. I open my eyelids and look into Nathan’s blue eyes that can make anyone drown. Am I selfish? Possibly. But why can’t I be for once? I’ve heard that I have to think more about myself throughout my life to dare to be selfish sometimes.

But I’m not sure if this might be over the top? I don’t know, and that’s the problem. Nothing makes sense to me anymore, and I don’t know how to distinguish right from wrong. I’m testing them right now to figure out what to do with them. Their reactions give me the facts to decide from.

“How can you even say such a thing?” Nathan whispers and caresses my cheek with sadness in his eyes. “What makes your brain think that this is the right choice?”

“My brain is like Las Vegas; sick stuff happens all the time,” I reply and smile weakly.

Nathan chuckles low and shakes his head slowly. His lips touch my forehead, and the familiar sparks spread in my body. For some reason, they feel different in comparison to the ones I usually get from William. These make me gasp at the feeling, and Nathan nods approvingly. My mate obviously understands what it is I’m trying to find out.

“How can you stand there cuddling with her after what she just said?” William growls and gives me a cold tone. “This is a betrayal, and Kaylin is selfish!”

“Because I love her even now, and unlike you, I have no plans not to show her that every waking moment,” Nathan replies without letting go of me with his gaze, and at this moment, it feels like a promise to me.

I look at William with a cold gaze and feel my sadness at what has happened spreading again. He doesn’t look ashamed in the slightest, and it’s his reaction that gives me what I need. William is no longer loyal to me, at least not in his feelings. He can no longer see his faults, but the only thing he can focus on is that I have a mate with whom he must share me. Don’t ask me how I know; I just do. That’s what all this tense mood is about.

“Sometimes, you can associate the feeling with direct pain,” I answer, and William doesn’t fold under my gaze.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“Usually, I run my own race without following norms around what’s right and wrong. It’s a way of survival that I had to create after my dad’s situation got worse. At the moment, I find myself in a difficult situation where I, a vampire, have not only a beloved but also a mate. I don’t have as much knowledge in the subject, and therefore it becomes a challenge for me, which I prefer; I don’t particularly appreciate it when it’s too easy but also not when it’s too challenging. At the moment, however, you’re making it hard, William, much harder than it has to be.

“If you don’t manage to share me with Nathan, you’re not only going against the will of our goddess but also the will of the moon goddess. You have a choice to make, and I suggest you do it soon. I’m not a toy you can play with when it suits you. All you can see is your pain, and not once have you thought about how I felt down in that fucking cell. Do you think I’m selfish? Okay, fine, think that. But carry with you that at the end of the day, you’re the selfish one out of the two of us!” I roar loud enough to make the whole hospital shake.

My anger spreads in my body. I slam the door open and walk towards the nurse who has my daughter in her arms. She gives me the girl, and I walk through the entrance doors without turning my gaze to any of the waiting in the waiting room. I’m angry, and I don’t know where this anger comes from. Footsteps move behind me, but I’m not stopping. The packhouse gives me an idea, and I hurry in; Miliano and Aleida’s friends sit on the couch with her sons on the floor. Everyone looks at me when I come in.

“Can you watch Aurora for a minute?” I ask, and the boys are quick to answer.

“Of course!” they exclaim at the same time, and I lay her down on the soft blanket.

“Where are you going?” Blake asks, and I look at him with a spark in my eyes.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of your cousin,” I answer with a growl, and he’s quick to follow me.

All the others arrive at the house when Blake and I walk out the door. Nathan looks at me anxiously, but I don’t care now. Does my so-called beloved think I’m selfish? Let’s see exactly how selfish I can be. William looks bored, and that’s when I use my speed to get behind him. I take a firm grip on his neck and throw him into a tree. He’s up in a second and keeps looking bored at me. I attack again but slam my hand into his body and hold his heart in my hand this time. If I want to, I can kill him right here and now.

“Do you feel the pain every time your heart beats?” I growl, and he gasps at the pain I inflict on him.

“Kay, please let go of my son’s heart!” Ozzandra exclaims, and I look at her.

She has tears on her cheeks, and I look back at William. I let go of his heart, and he falls to the ground.

“That’s the feeling I felt every single fucking day I was locked up. While you had your tongue in your ex’s throat and fucked her senseless, I was locked in a cell with a pain I’ve never felt before. The worst part is that you don’t even realize for yourself how much it has broken me down. Please don’t press the wrong buttons; there aren’t really margins for that at this state. Make your choice, but if you choose wrong, rest assured that you’ll never see me again,” I growl and walk away.

I walk back into the house, pick up my Aurora, caress the boys’ cheeks and walk out again. Aleida hurries after me, and I don’t know where this anger comes from. She says nothing but leads me to a large hall with stone floors. Our footsteps echo, and Aleida walks up to a piano.

“Can you sing?” she asks, and I nod. “Sing out your feelings, I usually do. All pain, anger, and sadness must come out somehow.”

(Put on You raise me up by Celtic Woman if you want to set the mood.)

I know the notes she plays and the lyrics by heart. My feelings are hard to understand, but when my little girl looks at me with her big eyes, I realize I’ll sing for her. My voice echoes in the room, and I dance gently around with Aurora, wholly lost in the music. I can’t stop looking at my girl, and I use all the strength of my voice to show her that she is everything I have. Nathan comes into the room and looks at me in amazement. Aleida continues to play and sing vocal songs, making it all even more beautiful. When the end clip comes, I close my eyes tightly and channel all the emotions into tunes.

In the end, tears fall, and I kneel with my girl in my arms, overwhelmed by everything that has happened. What’s happening to me? Everything is so confusing, and I can’t handle it! Aleida comes up to me and hugs me.

“Let everything out, Kaylin,” she whispers, and I shake by the tears that don’t stop. “You need to let it out before you can start focusing on what’s important.”

My body aches, and if I didn’t have Aurora in my arms, I would fall on the floor. Surprisingly, she’s such a quiet and kind baby, as if she understands what’s going on.

“It hurts so much!” I scream through my tears, and Aleida takes Aurora from my arms.

Ozzandra comes up to me with watery eyes and sits down next to me. Her arms embrace me, and I shake even more when thoughts of how not even she recognized the threat in their own home.

“I’m so sorry, Kaylin. We didn’t know,” Ozzandra whispers, and her voice breaks. “There are no words to make amends for the pain you must have felt. If there’s anything I can do, let me know, and I’ll do it.”

“Persuade your son to stop hurting me,” I whisper, and she gasps.

“Oh, my delicate little Kaylin, you know I would if I could,” she replies, wiping my tears.

At the moment, it isn’t Nathan who’s a problem, but William. They obviously share a story that I haven’t taken note of, but they’ve got to decide whether it’s worth continuing to quarrel over or learning to live with it. My mate doesn’t show as much disgust towards my beloved as before, whether it’s because of me or something else I don’t know. I don’t think Nathan forgave William for whatever it is between them, but he’s obviously making an effort to try and make this work, even if we’re ultimately three and not two.

“Give him some time to figure out what he wants,” Ozzandra says, and I feel the pain in my chest again.

How am I supposed to give him time to figure out what he wants when I myself haven’t even figured it out yet? I’m not sure if I wish to have a beloved and a mate or if the best thing is to live alone. As a human, it was never a problem. But I’m not a human being anymore, I’ve changed, and I feel that many more changes are moving in the direction of the chaos that is my life.

William’s POV

When Kaylin lets go of me and walks away, it hurts more than when she literally holds my heart in her hand. My friends rush up to me, but I growl at them.

“Don’t touch me!” I roar and walk the other way.

Why can’t I let Kaylin in the way she deserves? There’s not much she wants from me after all. My beloved needs my understanding and my patience; it’s not too much to ask of her man, right? Even so, I’m incapable of offering it to her. What I’m doing is wrong, and I know it. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, since I continue to ignore and belittle her feelings. Not even once have I paid attention to her pain and experiences while I found myself in my bed with the woman I really hate. Do you know what the worst part is? Part of me misses Jennifer, despite the horrible person she is today.

I find myself comparing them more often than I dare admit. It’s wrong, and I know it. Even so, I can’t stop. I sit down under a tree inside the forest and put my head in my hands. Why do I keep doing this!? Kaylin just gave birth to my fucking daughter after everything that happened before that; I have no right whatsoever to treat her the way I do. A blow to my head makes me fly up from my seat and put myself in a defense position. In front of me stands Benjamin with a ferocious gaze in his eyes. He breathes heavily enough for his nostrils to flutter, and I already know that this won’t end well.

“What did I say about mistreating her?” he asks in a scary calm tone. “You keep treating her like garbage, and I’m not going to accept it! Luckily, Kaylin has a mate because she deserves so damn much better than you are!”

His words make me angry, and I attack back. We exchange hits, and not in a playful way; this is a fight without equality. My fist hits his cheekbones, and his arm takes hold of my legs, resulting in us both landing on the ground.

“What the hell are you doing!?” a voice exclaims that I recognize.

We both stop with what we’re doing and stand up. Blake stands with another vampire beside him and stares at us indignantly, waiting for an explanation that none of us intend to give. My cousin isn’t an angry person, not violent either, for that matter. He’s actually one of the few I respect enough never to hurt, unlike my little brother, who keeps making me question our kinship.

“What’s going on here?” he asks, and Benjamin is the first of us to give in.

“We’re discussing William’s treatment of his beloved, which he, incidentally, doesn’t deserve,” Benjamin replies, looking at me when he says the final part.

Again, I get angry and am about to attack him when Blake shows up in my field of vision. He stops us from continuing, and gratefully, my brother backs away; otherwise, I would’ve killed him.

“I understand that it annoys you that William doesn’t treat Kaylin in a way that you consider right, but it doesn’t get any better by violently solving the problem. She’s your friend, and you want to protect her, which is admirable. But it’s not your beloved he treats badly,” Blake says in a calm tone before turning to me. “Even if he deserves the violence you’re handing out.”

Great! My cousin also hates me for a behavior I obviously have no way of controlling. Can everyone else see my inner struggle, or do I just seem like an asshole to them? If so, does it matter? In my eyes, it doesn’t, considering I’m an asshole to the woman I should love with all I am. Instead, I begin to yearn for my ex, who’s an evil creature without shame in her body, which hurt not only me but thousands of others. She doesn’t deserve my love; even so, there’s a part of me that misses her every day. Especially after spending all those months with each other when she really should’ve been locked up in the cell Kaylin occupied.

How can my feelings be drawn between the woman who ruined my life and the mother of my child? Blake sighs soundly and rubs his face in frustration.

“William, what are you doing? You if anyone should know what it feels like to be betrayed by a beloved, what pain a betrayal’s mark leaves behind,” Blake says, and I understand directly what he’s referring to.

After all, I’ve been through it myself, with Jennifer. She cheated on me with Nathan, and that’s why I hate him. However, he didn’t know that she had a beloved, but I didn’t care about that in my pain and anger, which resulted in me sleeping with his girlfriend a few years later, to hurt him back. It may be hard to believe, but we were good friends once upon a time. That circle we’ve repeated many times since then, all to get the last word and hurt the other more than we’re injured. It’s childish, I know, and he probably does too. It is what it is.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t know what I want,” I answer with a sigh and look at the green leaves on the trees above me.

“What do you mean “you don’t know what you want”? How can you not know that?” Blake asks, stunned, and Benjamin looks annoyed at me.

“Yes, William. How is it that everyone else can see what an amazing woman you have in your life, except you?” Benjamin mocks, which makes me explode.

“Because I still love Jennifer! She was there before Kaylin, always will be, and no one can change that. Part of me will always love Jennifer in a way that I can’t offer Kaylin. Jennifer is the only one for me!” I growl, and a gasp makes me react.

Kaylin looks at me with tears in her eyes with the rest of the family behind her. She says nothing at first but just stares, with watery eyes threatening to overflow—all of them shifts between looking at me with anger to waiting for Kaylin’s reaction.

“I knew it was never worth it. Deep down, you always knew it was Jennifer you had with you, but you didn’t care. You never cared about me,” she says, stunned, as if she can’t understand it and her eyes let the tears gush down. “My only mistake was to love someone who didn’t love me back, and that’s why I get to pay the price for it now. Again. I thought immortality meant living forever, but now I realize that immortality is living alone, while everyone else dies and disappears.”

With those words, she slowly walks away with stiff steps. My mom slaps me with tears rushing down her cheeks before she and Vivienne hurry after Kaylin. I realize that I lost her forever, and this time there are no excuses; everything is my fault...

A/N:

Hello everyone!

William is obviously not worthy of Kaylin, given that he’s still stuck on his evil ex, who could have cost him his daughter. He’s a selfish person and doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

❀ Should Kaylin reject him?

✿ How do you think this will affect Kaylin’s healing?

❀ Are her feelings understandable?

Please let me know your thoughts since they help me develop in my creative process! Thank you for reading, lots of love.<3