SEVENTH MONTH OF YEAR 992.
DAHLIA:
“I dragged myself through hell just to make you suffer, and I’ll make sure you really suffer!”
These were your bitter words to me, my dearest Tristan, the words that had finally woke me up and shook me awake for what you really were.
You said you’ve only come to me for revenge – to see me spill the blood that have been spilled similarly by your pack, by your own people, but did you not see that I was also one of your people? I am your wife now, your other half… Do you really think so poorly of me that you’d rather see me die and wither away like this rather than save me?
When I accepted your hand back then, I admit that I was scared… I have never known what love was like. I had never known what freedom was like too, and you had given me those choices when you extended your hands towards me.
“Dahlly,” you said, calling me softly by my childhood name, “Dahlly, come and run away with me. Come with me… You have nothing to fear. I shall give you the freedom you deserve and the love you longed for so much in this life…”
But where is that promise now, my dearest husband? Where did that promise go?
I sat here, awaiting the vampires to drink my blood. To them, my existence was nothing more than a breath – a passing meal for the night. I was just a sustenance delivered to them that will help quench their thirst for blood, and yet, why do I feel that I have more value to them than I can ever be to you?
Was it because you have never loved me from the start?
You have never loved me, I know. Who, in their right minds, could ever love their enemy so willingly? Yet here I am, painfully and deeply in love with you.
You are my enemy. You have approached me as an enemy, and yet I thought I could turn you somewhat to my side. I thought that if I tried my hardest and do penance for my pack and my father’s sins, that if I give you every ounce of sincerity in my heart, you will really start to love me or at least like me… I thought you’d recognize the real shape of my heart beneath all the violence and the dark pasts that surrounded our lives…
But I was a fool for believing I could change you… I had always been a fool when I placed all of my trust in you by the bridge or when I took your hand and conceded to the kiss that marked our intertwined destinies… I had been a fool to love you at all, Tristan Dmitri Abell!
Now, I shall pay that price with my own life… As the vampires’ fangs sank into my flesh, all I could think of was you and how you had delivered me to them… All I could think of was you and how elated your heart must feel that I will be finally gone in your life now.
The agony burned in me as the canines of the blasted one collided into my veins.
Ahhh! It’s too much! The pain is too much!
It was an unbearable kind of pain, but right then, all I could even whisper was your name, the very name of my savior, the name of my tormentor, and the name of my unborn child’s father who would sadly never get to see his lovely face....
“Tristan!”
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TRISTAN:
I hurried to the place where they kept you and cursed the Moon Goddess and myself for bringing you there!
Why of all times, why of all places did you have to be there? Did you not know that this was the place I have sworn never to return to? This was the very place I have sent my father and the rest of my pack to their final rests… Why, of all places, did you have to be here?
You were my enemy, and you should remain my enemy until the end - that was my simple plan.
I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with the girl who had robbed me of an opportunity to live a peaceful existence, and yet, what am I doing here, hurrying to you like a mere pet dog? Why is my heart about to burst at the thought of you losing your life at the very place I had lost my entire family?