I roll onto my back as Ren leans over me, locks of his dark smoky hair falling over his forehead as his playful, desire-filled dark eyes latch onto mine. Only for a moment do I forget everything that happened between us, but then it suddenly comes back, making me tense and freeze all over.
Lust cannot make you forget betrayal. No matter how sweet it might be.
Ren sees the resolve, the spite and hate burning in my eyes as his expression changes. Guilt burns so brightly in his eyes, and I can only watch, the urge to understand him so strong it hurts.
“I never meant to hurt you. I lost control, the mating bond for vampires is so strong,” Ren softly explains himself. “I was weak and lost myself in you when you kissed me. Come back to me, and I promise to protect you always.”
“You hurt me; you turned me into a vampire without my permission!” I shout at him, smacking my fists against his chest. “I. Hate. You. I hate you!” I scream over and over until blood pours from his chest where I hit him, and darkness smothers us both.
I wake up with a gasp, breathing heavily and covered in sweat as I look around Myles’s cabin, and the rocking of the ship slowly reminds me I’m safe and Ren isn’t here with me. Not yet anyway. The dream felt so real, so vivid, like Ren was really with me, and I could feel his fingers on my skin, sense his guilt like a real thing in the world, so strong I can almost taste it in my mouth. Closing my eyes, I tell myself once again it wasn’t real and Ren doesn’t feel guilt for what he did, he just took what he wanted, and I will forever hate him for that. I thought he was my friend, my saviour in the light, but it turns out he was the demon in the darkness that I needed to avoid. Not fall in love with. I lean back on the pillow, knowing I should get more sleep before the morning comes and with it, my return to the academy. After our meeting, we realised it was the middle of the night, and returning at night isn’t the best of ideas.
I slide out of bed, knowing how difficult it was to go to sleep in the first place and figuring sleep isn’t going to come easily to me a second time. I brush my hair with Myles’s hairbrush and put on my clothes before heading out the room and down the corridors. Instead of going into the common areas, I head up the stairs that lead to the top of the ship. After walking up three levels of stairs, I get to double metal doors and push them open. Cold, salty air brushes my hair around my cheeks as I breathe in the smell of the ocean and close the doors behind me. The ship is much larger than I remember seeing it in the water, but I guess I was at a distance. The ship is almost shaped like a cruise liner, but instead, it has a near flat surface with high gates surrounding the upper part. Bright orange escape boats line the edges with floating rings in the middle of them, and I swiftly turn around as I sense I’m not alone anymore.
“Gabriel,” I say as he folds his bright white wings and walks up to me, his arms resting in the middle of his back behind him. I once looked up to him, trusted him even, and now I realise I was so naive about this world and my place in it. The angels told me they were the good guys, and I believed it, and I shouldn’t have done.
“I wished to talk to you alone,” he says and looks away from me, staring above at the stars. I follow his line of sight to the moon, which looks so bright and alluring out here in the sea. “Ever since I was a wee lad, I believed in the light above because he would talk to me, keep me sane when I was very alone as a child. I was brought up in a church with nuns, and they were very good to me, but their hearts belonged to the church, and I longed for more than they could have given me. Even when I died and became an angel, the Great Light above never left