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Lila
THE SHORE OF TRANQUILITY was exactly as it sounded. A strip of land with beautiful sand that was rose gold in color sat alongside the ocean, which appeared calmer than ever. There was hardly any movement in the water. For miles, all I could see was only the slightest ripple of the waves.
As I dipped my toes in the water, feeling a small tickle from the fish as they brushed against my toes, I couldn’t help but feel at peace for the first time since I’d arrived in Deadwood. Somehow, I just knew I would be safe there. It was everyone who I cared about that I wasn’t so sure about.
I hadn’t questioned Sebastian further about what he planned to do with Sean, mostly because I was too afraid to know. As much as I wanted to believe Sebastian was only capable of doing good... Well, I wasn’t stupid. He had killed girls—many girls—just for claiming to be me. I didn’t even want to think about what he could potentially do to a guy who loved me.
And that wasn’t even to mention the fact that I was afraid for Sebastian’s safety. If he did end up having to go to war, whether it was with that other vampire prince or his own aunt, would he be safe? Would he be able to fight? I knew he was strong, but how much stronger were the other vampires? I was afraid that things could get ugly, that I could lose him in the crossfire.
The idea of losing either of them completely scared the hell out of me.
Trying to shake the thought away, I focused on my surroundings. I glanced around the shore. There was no shelter in sight. How long did Sebastian really expect me to stay out here? I knew it probably was the safest place for me, but it wasn’t a long-term solution.
Then again, what was the long-term solution? Was it for me to stay in Deadwood forever, to live as Sebastian’s slave? Just the idea of that sounded crazy. The hard truth was that, eventually, I would grow older... and he wouldn’t. He would lose his attraction for me, and he would either give me up to another vampire who needed a blood donor or... do whatever he did with the slaves he no longer wanted.
The alternative was to go home. And as much as I wanted to see my parents again, even if it was just to let them know I was okay, the truth was that I still didn’t want to go home.
The reality was that if I went home, I knew there was no way I could ever go back to a normal life as a human teenager, not when I knew there was another world where vampires and mermaids were real.
I would have rather been held a prisoner, a captive, in this completely foreign place than go back to the human world knowing that Deadwood existed.
Maybe I had a major case of Stockholm Syndrome, but just like Beauty, I didn’t want to leave my Beast.
Sighing, I laid the blanket that Sebastian had given me on the sand. Plopping down on it, I stared out at the ocean. I could hardly believe how complicated my life had become. It was crazy to think any of this was reality—my reality.
A part of me really wished I could tell Juniper and Krista, my friends from back home, everything that had happened. I wondered what their reactions would have been if I told them I was in love with a vampire prince who had made me his slave. As if that weren’t bad enough, they also probably wouldn’t believe I’d fallen out of love with Sean. I had loved him for as long as I could remember.
Well, just add that to the growing list of things that had changed in my life, to the list of things that had become more complex since the night I’d fallen into that lake.
Maybe things weren’t as complicated as they seemed at the moment. Maybe there was a solution that would fix everything, a solution that wouldn’t require me to stay here and grow old orgo home and pretend to live a normal life again. It was an idea I’d thought of once before but hadn’t given any serious consideration to. I wanted to pursue it more than anything now.
I wanted to become a vampire.