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Sebastian
MY HANDS TREMBLED AS I filled a glass with blood. Blood splattered on the countertop, but I didn’t bother to clean it up. I needed a drink, and I needed it now.
Bringing the glass to my lips, I took a few huge gulps.
I should have realized what a bad idea it was for me to be alone with Lila, knowing that I was already thirsty. She had smelled so alluring.
The last thing I wanted was to be responsible for killing the girl I loved. And yet, every time I was around her, I had to fight the urge to sink my fangs into her pretty little neck and go to town.
Lila wasn’t safe with me. She was neither safe in my presence nor alone with me.
It didn’t matter how much I loved her; the reality was that I was dangerous to Lila DeHaven’s life.
I knew I couldn’t allow myself to think of this right now, not with all of the other important things that were going on with our coven.
What would my father have done in a situation like this?
Yet again, I found myself wishing I could just speak to the man. In fact, never in my life had I felt such an incredible urge to speak to my father. Our relationship could only be described as a love-hate relationship at best, but it felt like I needed him now more than ever before—and I was Sebastian Stark. It was rare for me to ever own up to needing anyone, let alone someone who I didn’t align with on anything.
It didn’t matter that Alessandra had found a loophole around the Abandonment clause. The fact of the matter was that I needed to at least try to find my father. I needed his advice. I needed to figure this whole Lila thing out.
Part of me thought that I should go looking for my father before agreeing to marry Alessandra. If I could find him, the situation could have been diverted and there would have been no need for me to marry Alessandra.
As great as that option the sounded, I couldn’t just ignore Zoe’s prediction, either. If I didn’t get married, there was a very real possibility I could have been murdered by members of my own coven in just a few months’ time.
Therefore, I had no choice but to go through with this wedding. I had to marry Alessandra, but I promised myself I would embark on the journey to find my father the following day.
I wondered what my father would think when he learned of my relations with Lila—who, to him, would only ever be known as Julia.
I doubted he ever would have understood the situation. If anything, he would have told me I was a fool. I knew that, because I knew exactly how my father felt about me developing feelings for someone.
My mind drifted back to a conversation we had once had. It had been January 29th, 1991, but the memory still replayed through my mind like a movie:
My father had been sitting in his office, reading The Deadwood Times, one of the two main newspapers that reported about our world.
As I stood in the doorway, I cleared my throat.
His nearly black eyes moved to meet mine. “Sebastian. What do you want?”
“Do you have a few minutes, Father?” I asked. ‘There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“Now isn’t the best time. I’m reading.” He motioned to the newspaper in front of him.
“My apologies. Some other time then,” I replied quietly.
I turned around and had just entered the hallway when I heard him say, “Wait, Sebastian. Come in and have a seat.”
As I reentered the room and sat down in a chair across from his desk, he laid the newspaper down and sighed. “I’m sorry, Son. I was just very involved in the goings on in our world today.”
“What is it that you were reading about?” I asked, feigning interest. Despite my Royal lineage and the fact that I was the next heir to the throne if anything should ever happen to my father, I had never been all that interested in current events. It’s not that I didn’t think the world around me was important. It was just that reading about them bored me.
“Horrible things... unspeakable things. But things that are bound to affect our future in years to come,” he murmured, shoving the paper in one of his drawers dismissively. “Enough of the news. What is it you’d like to speak to me about?”
I hesitated for a long moment. “What are your thoughts of a vampire falling in love?”
My father chuckled. “What would ever make you ask that, Son?”
“I just wondered what your thoughts were.” I shrugged.
His eyes met mine curiously. “Surely there’s a reason you’ve come to question such a thing. Are you in love, Sebastian?”
“No,” I replied, even though it was a lie. I was in love—or what I thought was love, at least. I wasn’t so sure just yet. This girl made me feel something, but I wasn’t entirely sure if it was love. I wasn’t sure if a vampire could love, even if they wanted to. “I just wonder if a vampire can ever experience love in the same way that a human does.”
“A vampire cannot love as a human does in the same way that a human and vampire can never fall in love,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“How do you know?”
“Because when humans fall in love, regardless of who they are, there’s one quality that they look for—a quality that we, as vampires, do not possess.”
My eyebrows lifted. “What quality is that?”
My father stared into my eyes. “Humanity, Sebastian.” He rose to his feet and began to pace. “We will never have the humanness, the compassion, that humans have.”
“That doesn’t mean that we’re unable to love someone completely, does it? We must be able to love in our own way,” I insisted.
“Vampires are too selfish to truly love anyone. Think about it, Sebastian,” he replied as he stared out the window. “If you were to fall for another vampire, what would happen if the two of you were locked in a room with one another with only a limited supply of blood? Once your hunger took over to point where you knew you wouldn’t survive much longer without that blood, what would you do? Would you allow your vampire lover to have the blood? Would you die for them?”
“I suppose it’s possible that you would,” I insisted.
My father glanced over at me. “You wouldn’t. Believe me. Your own hunger, your own needs, would come before hers.”
“Are you saying that you don’t love Mother?” I questioned.
He seemed to hesitate for a few long moments. “Your mother and I have come to a resolution of sorts. We provide each other with what the other needs, but make no mistake, Sebastian. I have never allowed myself to get too close to your mother, because I know that what we have is a fallacy of sorts.”
“How is it a fallacy? Unless you’re locked into a room together without blood, you’ll be okay, won’t you?”
“I will do whatever it takes to protect myself and my throne, even if it means putting your mother’s life at risk.”
Although my parents had never shown any real signs of affection, it was the first time my father had ever admitted to me that he didn’t actually love her.
“Well, what if you fell in love with someone who wasn’t a vampire?” I pressed. I wanted to believe there was a chance that what I was feeling was real, a possibility that it could have been everlasting.
“That would only be worse,” he replied, shaking his head. “What would you do if you allowed yourself to feel for a human but then your hunger took over? What if you killed the human who you believed you loved?”
When I didn’t answer him for a few long moments, he continued. “We’re simply too selfish to love anyone, Sebastian. Do you want my advice?”
“That’s why I’ve come to you,” I replied with a nod.
“Whoever she is, let her go. One way or another, you will end up killing her.”
As my father’s words from so long ago echoed through my mind, I sighed.
I’d listened to him at the time, coming to the conclusion that maybe he was right. I’d thought that maybe a vampire really couldn’t fall in love—that maybe I couldn’t fall in love.
When I met Lila, I realized that maybe he was wrong all along. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was possible for me to fall in love... even with a human. And maybe it was possible for her to love me, too, in spite of my lack of humanity.
Except now, I couldn’t help but wonder if my father was right during that conversation back in 1991.
Was I so selfish that I would end up killing the girl I loved?