by Amira Rain
Rejected and nearly drained dry, I should say. The Warrens’ new leader, Axel, apparently allowed some of his people to feed on the kids before clearing their memories and letting them go. They’d been so weakened, though, that one of them apparently passed out and drove their car into a ditch. All the kids were later treated at the hospital for ‘extreme blood loss,’ even though the doctors couldn’t figure out how on earth they’d all lost so much blood without sustaining any cuts or any other injuries when the car went off the road. Eventually, it seems that they chalked it up to some fad diet the kids had been on, thinking that malnutrition could have drastically reduced their total blood volume somehow.”
“And do you think people in Sweetwater are really buying that?”
Hayden said no. “Especially since one of the nurses from the hospital said something to one of her friends about the kids all having mysterious, very tiny puncture wounds in their throats. The nurse’s friend told another friend, who told another, and so on and so forth, to where there’s a rumor in Sweetwater now about there being some sort of an attacker in town who’s trying to collect DNA samples by way of somehow causing car accidents and then drawing blood from people with a needle while they’re knocked out. That sounds completely absurd to people, of course, but you know how people can really get into crazy conspiracy theories in a small town.”
“I know…but it’s good that people came up with a completely wacky theory that has nothing to do with vampires, right?”
Hayden agreed. “But a few more attacks on humans, and people may well start saying vampires…and obviously, that’s a problem. Not to mention that anytime humans are attacked by vampires, it’s a problem for us Watchers anyway. This is why we have to constantly keep the Warrens in check. The only problem with that lately is that because of their growing numbers, I think they’re starting to think that they’ve grown too powerful for us to keep them in check, and they can do whatever they want now.”
“Including attacking Watcher farms, and killing young women and babies that they think might eventually become a threat to them.”
After hesitating for a moment or two, frowning with his jaw clenched, Hayden said yes. “But I want you to trust me when I say that I’ll never let them hurt you or Chrissy, Sydney. I just want you to trust me. Can you do that?”
Avoiding answering his question, I said that it just still seemed like a good idea for me and Chrissy to leave the farm. “Couldn’t we just take a month-long vacation to Alaska or somewhere until you have the Warrens all dealt with or something? We could just go somewhere where there are no Warren groups at all.”
“Right, but then some of the Warrens find you and Chrissy, and then what happens? Then what happens, when I’m thousands of miles away from you?”
Seeing his point but not wanting to admit it right then for some reason, I said nothing.
Hayden had clenched his strong jaw again, and now he unclenched it just long enough to speak. “I need you to promise me, Sydney, that no matter what happens, you won’t try to run with Chrissy, and you’ll stay here on the farm where I can keep the two of you safe. There’s no other way that I keep you both from being harmed…and there’s no other way that our marriage is going to survive all this business with the Warrens. I just need you to promise me that you’ll stay right here, no matter what.”
“So, we’re back to this again, are we?”
Pulling a hand from mine, Hayden raked a hand through his thick, dark hair. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Now we’re back to you telling me that I basically have to make peace with you telling me what to do.”
Hayden snorted. “Can you just at least tell me this? Why are you so reluctant to just trust me? I’m your husband, Sydney. Why can’t you just trust me to keep you safe?”
“Because it makes me feel powerless.”
I’d blurted out what I’d said without even thinking about it, but I now realized that the words I’d spoken had been the truth. I couldn’t simply trust Hayden not because I didn’t trust him, but just because the act itself made me feel powerless. It made me feel like I had no control over my own life. Having revelations one right after the other, I realized that my issue during my first argument with Hayden hadn’t truly been that I felt controlled by him, but instead, that I felt like I had no control over my own life myself.
Hayden didn’t respond right away to what I’d said, and to my horror, I suddenly felt tears began prickling behind my eyelids. All I could think was that Hayden probably thought that what I’d said was silly or trivial. Embarrassed, I wrenched my hand free from his to wipe my eyes, even though I could have done this with my hand that was already free.
“I’m not going to shut you out again, because I promised I wouldn’t, but I think I just want you to leave me be right now. Just please go to some other part of the house, or—”
“Sydney, please just—”
“See, Hayden, you may be the leader of this community, and you may get to tell everyone what to do, but I’m not just ‘everyone.’ I’m your wife, and I think that if I ask you for privacy to cry alone, you should respect my request and just do what I’m asking you to do. So, please just leave.”
I needed him to, because my prickly eyes were getting worse, and I was determined not to let him see me cry over something so stupid, just because I’d blurted out some words that had embarrassed me.
After a long moment just looking at me, Hayden rose from his barstool. “Fine. I’ll go, if you really want me to.”
“I do.”
“All right, then. I have to go visit the other homes on the property and check in with some of my fighters anyway before everyone gets some rest. Everyone’s tired, but we still have some security plans to make and some things to deal with. But before I go, as for what we talked about earlier…about me needing you to promise me that you won’t try to leave the farm with Chrissy….”
I’d been staring down at the granite countertop of the island, but I suddenly lifted my gaze. “I get it. I promise to not leave the farm with Chrissy, Hayden. I give you my word, lest to lock me up in some cage or something to keep me from leaving.”
With clear hurt present in his eyes, Hayden frowned at me. “You really think I’d do that?”
I found I couldn’t look at him and dropped my gaze to the island again. I found I couldn’t respond to what he’d said, either.
“Please just go, Hayden. Please just leave me be.”
“All right.”
After a last long look at me, he moved across the kitchen, heading toward the front door but then paused at the threshold of the foyer, as if he had one last thing to say. However, if he did, before he could say it, I suddenly stood, realizing I had one last thing to say as well.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Looking at Hayden’s back, I began blurting out words like I’d done earlier. “I really love you, Hayden. I really, really love you, with all my heart. I love our baby, and I love our family, and I love being your wife. I trust you, too. I know it may not seem like I do, like, at all, but I do. I trust you to keep me and Chrissy safe. I trust you to take care of the situation with the Warrens. I just don’t like the way that you’re making me feel about it all, though. I don’t like the way this whole situation with the Warrens is making me feel. Like I said before, leaving things completely up to you is just making me feel powerless, and I hate that.
I hate it with every fiber of my being. Can’t you understand this? Can’t you understand why my urge is just simply to run, rather than stay here and have to just sit on my hands because I’m not a vampire and can’t help to fight the Warrens? Can’t you at least try to see all this from my perspective?”
From where he was standing maybe ten feet away, Hayden had turned to look at me with his expression so serious he was actually almost scowling. Maintaining this expression, he now came over to where I stood at the island and took my face in his hands. “I want to say something to you now, Sydney. I love you. I love you so muc
h that sometimes I actually feel overwhelmed by how much I love you. I just feel like I’m never going to be able to tell you or show you just how much I love you, no matter how hard I try.
My love for you is why I do what I do, and say some of the things I say to you sometimes. It’s not because I want to take control away from you, or make you feel powerless. I can understand how you feel, even though I didn’t realize how you felt until just right now. I get it, though. I’m just sorry that it took me so long.”
After swallowing a lump in my throat, I told him not to feel sorry. “I should have told you how I was feeling earlier. The only reason that I didn’t was because I think that I just figured it out now myself. I just don’t like feeling powerless, Hayden…but I do trust you, and I do love you with all my heart. Nothing will ever change that, and I’m determined to make our marriage work.”
“So am I. In fact, I’m going to spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make it up to you for the couple of days that we didn’t speak.”
With my heart swelling and my eyes a little misty, I covered his hands with my own, smiling. “Well, we both had a little something to do with that, so I should probably spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make it up to you, too.”
Pulling me into his arms, Hayden smiled. “Tell you what. How about if we both just resolve right now to make a fresh start. No more silences. Better communication. More telling each other how we really feel. This way, our marriage will just get stronger and stronger over time…and eventually, we’ll look back on our ‘first real fight’ and the ensuing days of silence and just laugh.”
I laughed feebly right then. “I want that. I want that so bad…just to look back on the stress and uncertainty of these early days and all the problems with the Warrens and just laugh.”
Hayden told me that he really believed that that would become a reality. “That’s not to say that the Warrens, or some vampire group similar to them, will ever stop being something of a problem for us, but I know that in time, our Watcher community will have more peace. We just need to get through what’s happening right now.”
I know. “I just want our love, and our family, to be able to survive what’s happening right now, first.”
“It will, Sydney. We just need to continue with this open communication with each other, and we just need to have faith. Our love is strong enough to get through this. In fact, I still feel the same way I felt on our wedding day…that our love is strong enough to get us through anything.”
Deeply moved, I realized that my misty eyes had now overflowed with tears, and they were now sliding down my cheeks. I began lifting a hand to wipe them away, but Hayden stopped my hand with a little smile.
“Nope. Let me do it. Speaking of our wedding day, do you remember what I told you at the reception, when you started crying during our first dance because you were just so ‘overflowing with happiness,’ as you said? I told you that I’m your tear-wiper from now on. So, don’t you even dare try to do it yourself.”
Although I hadn’t realized it at the time, this was what I’d wanted Hayden to say when my eyes had first become misty while we both sat at the island. I realized now that I really hadn’t wanted him to just leave me alone to let me cry.
With the pad of his thumb, he wiped the tears on my cheek away, before brushing a tender kiss against my lips. “Now, no more crying. I have to get going to check in with my fighters, and I want to see you smile before I do.”
Still profoundly moved by the fact that he’d remembered exactly what he’d told me on our wedding day, I shook my head. “I can’t smile right now.”
Wiping my fresh tears away, Hayden gave me a little smile himself. “Come on, GG. Not even for your JV? Or am I not your ‘jello vampire’ anymore?”
Now I couldn’t help but smile, a very small one, anyway. Hayden’s smile got a bit bigger.
“That’s what I like to see. I like to see my GG happy.”
I smiled again. “You do make me happy.”
“Good. Now, twenty minutes ago, I told my fighters that I’d be by to check in with them in about five minutes, so what should I tell them about why I’m late? Should I tell them that I’m not quite as stoic of a vampire as I seem, and that I got hung up sharing an embrace and some cuddles with my GG? Do you think they’ll still respect me if they know I actually answer to the nickname of JV, or ‘jello vampire?’”
Soon Hayden had me not only fully smiling, but laughing as well. After we’d shared a few kisses, he then released me from his arms, saying that if he didn’t force himself to do it right then, he might be tempted to carry me upstairs to our room, and then he’d really be late. As disappointed as I was that he had to go, I knew he was right in thinking that if we kissed any longer, it would surely lead to other things.
As tempting and as devastatingly handsome as he looked even with dark circles under his eyes, and as good as the length of his long, hard body felt against mine, I was pretty sure I would have asked him to carry me upstairs to our room within a minute.
Right after he left the house, a few squawks through the baby monitor let me know that Chrissy was awake, and I went upstairs to change her, dress her, and bring her down for breakfast. Once we got back down to the kitchen, I found Carol sitting up to the island with a cup of coffee while Jen worked at the stove, scrambling at least a dozen eggs in a pan.
Smiling, I asked her if she was still hungry even after her breakfast-in-the-bathtub, and she said she was actually ravenous.
“See, I only got to have about nine or ten pieces of bacon before Wanted put his whole snout in the plate and gobbled all the rest up. We got our awesome selfie before all that, though. Gonna post it on all my social media pages later today.”
Carol glanced up from scrolling through her phone. “Just remember your dad’s rule, Jen. Just make sure that you’re fully clothed in any picture posted online, and never post any pictures that would, in any way, be embarrassing to our family.”
Looking from her pan of eggs to Carol, over her shoulder, Jen snorted. “Define ‘embarrassing.’”
Frowning, Carol had already gone back to scrolling through her phone, and she looked so preoccupied that it didn’t seem she was going to answer Jen.
After a quick stir of her eggs, Jen tried again, looking over her shoulder at Carol. “Carol? What’s ‘embarrassing?’”
Still frowning, Carol continued looking at her phone for a long moment before suddenly looking up at Jen. “I’m sorry, sweetie. My literary agent is trying to negotiate a new deal with my publisher, and I’m just a little preoccupied reading through a lengthy email from my agent right now. Did you ask me something?”
Jen said for her to just never mind. “But now that I’ve got your attention, how many eggs worth of scrambled eggs do you want?”
Carol said that two would be just fine and thanked her, and Jen turned back to the stove, muttering.
“No one in this house ever eats much…I’m surprised you don’t all just blow away in the wind.”
I pulled Chrissy’s high chair over to the island and began putting her in it, and Carol looked up at us and said good morning with a smile, as if she hadn’t realized we were in the kitchen before then. She remained distracted all throughout breakfast, saying “Sure, sweetie,” when Jen asked her if she could have “maybe about fifty dollars” to take with her into Sweetwater that day for “candy money.”
While feeding Chrissy a little bowl of mushy baby cereal and another little bowl of pureed peaches, I realized that Carol was kind of lucky to have the distraction of a successful career to distract her from the threat of the Warrens.
In fact, she’d told me a few days earlier that although that situation with the Warrens made her anxious sometimes, she found it easy to “just forget all about it” by immersing herself in plans for the new book she’d soon be writing. It was because her last book had been such a commercial success that her literary agent was negotiating a new deal with the publisher.
Although I had my own career of sorts being a full-time mom, not to mention that I still worked part-time at the creamery, I myself didn’t find it quite so easy to forget all about the Warrens. Even while I continued feeding Chrissy her breakfast, I couldn’t help but think about how the threat of the Warrens remained.
This thought took away from my happiness at being reconciled with Hayden. I was also kind of troubled by the fact that even though I’d finally identified what I hated most about the Warren situation, which was feeling powerless, and even though I’d finally shared my feelings about this with Hayden, I still hadn’t been able to come up with any idea to change the way I felt.
If I had been a vampire, things would have been easy. I would have just joined the guard patrol, like Mel. Or, I would have volunteered to also be a spy or a fighter, like many other vampire women on the farm who fought against the Warrens right alongside their husbands. This way, I would have felt like I was actually doing something, instead of just feeling powerless, waiting for Hayden and everyone else to take care of everything.
As nervous as I was about the prospect of becoming a vampire someday, and as many questions about it as I still had, I might have at least considered it as a possibility right then anyway, if not for one little thing, which was that Hayden and I had decided that we wanted to have at least one more child before I was turned.
No matter when this happened, I was sure that it wouldn’t be in time for me to be turned into a vampire so that I could help fight the Warrens. So, me actually helping the community in any physical way was definitely off the table. This put me right back at square one, which was feeling powerless at not being able to contribute like most everyone else on the farm.
Lost in thought, I was only vaguely aware that Jen was saying something to me while she polished off her second bowl of baby cereal. She said my name, and I turned my focus to Chrissy from Jen, feeling as if I were coming out of a dream.