The Vampire Queen's Resurrection

CHAPTER NINE: FOX AND RABBIT

The day turns into the sunset, but the fox is still chasing the rabbit. Both were getting exhausted losing their energy. The rabbit continues to hop and run without looking back at the fox. The fox becomes so tired that he gives up chasing the rabbit. The insignificant prey survives the chase and was safe and sound.

Aaliyah awoke up feeling with that fable in mind, her body sore like someone had beaten her up. There was no pain, she duly noted. Only mild discomfort, and she stretched languorously, her arms spread wide apart on the bed. She stopped short when she encountered another warm body. Warm naked body.

At the same time, memories of the previous night came flooding back and a surge of heat invaded her cheeks. She didn’t remember her past s****l life, but she didn’t seem to have any sort inhibitions with him. Part of her wondered about their broken relationship. Considering the night the s****l intensity they’d shared, she wasn’t sure that things were that bad between them. For the moment, however, she had to curb her curiosity because he seemed to clamp up whenever she brought up the past.

For some reason she didn’t want to explore yet, she didn’t want to spoil the newly acquired intimacy between them. Her eyes flew to his sleeping form shyly, but when she saw his eyes closed, she gave herself the full freedom of admiring him.

With his face muscles relaxed in sleep, he looked less alluring. More approachable. There was even a faint tinge of vulnerability in his features, his thick eyebrows, and lush eyelashes more visible even in her upturned viewpoint as her head lay beside him on the pillow.

The hard lines around his mouth were not that prominent, and she longed to touch his face to feel the raw skin under her fingertip. A stubble of beard already adorned his jawline, giving him the rugged outlook of a bad pirate. A very bad one at that.

“Good morning,” he said with his eyes still closed making her jerk back in confusion. Was he awake? Did he know that she’d been staring at him for the past five minutes with stars in her eyes? How could he know such things without opening his eyes?

“Vampires don’t sleep,” he murmured easily, making Aaliyah sigh resignedly. He was reading her mind again and she hated the fact that she didn’t have any privacy from him. There were some thoughts which were personal and which he had no rights invading.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” he apologized, opening his eyes at the same time, and her heart lurched again when the full force of his topaz eyes fell on him. There was a calm intensity that flashed back at her, which announced that a storm was brewing. “I won’t read your mind again.”

“Thank you,” she mumbled exasperatedly not certain she believed him.

“Tell me, what you want to know,” he asked in such a gentle tone that she felt the rumble of his voice echo through her whole body. “I know you have many questions, and I haven’t been very responsive.”

He seemed in a good mood after s*x, and she kept a mental note of that fact to be used in future time with Emir. Given his positive disposition right now, she decided to start from the beginning.

“How did we meet?” she asked absent-mindedly, already thinking of the next questions.

His gaze intensified with that fiery amber liquid color which she suggested a deep amalgam of emotions going through him. “We met in T.R Labs. I owned the laboratories and you worked there as a scientist. Well, undercover scientist more likely.”

She gasped. “I am a scientist?”

He nodded. “Let’s say you have multiple careers because you are after all three centuries old. But when I met you, you were working as a chemical scientist in my lab. The Royal Laboratories.”

“You said undercover? Was I a cop?”

He frowned. “No. You were a vampire working as a chemist along with that friend of yours. You were looking for ways to create medicines for the evolution of vampires like I told you. You were a very dedicated vampire who was always on the lookout for improvements and revolutionary cures for your breed.”

It was her turn to speculate. “How long ago was this?”

He shifted his weight and she realized that her legs had been wrapped around him in a proprietorial manner. Flustered, she was about to take some distance, but he merely changed his position but kept her legs firmly in place around his. A shiver of electricity sizzled through her when he rubbed his hairy skin against her soft smooth ones.

“About one century ago,” he said pensively. So, he was a much younger vampire than she was. Maybe that was the reason why he seemed to resent the fact that she was such a committed vampire.

She c****d her head towards him in serious stupefaction. “Who turned you then?”

The corner of his lips lifted into a derisive smirk, and she couldn’t pin down the emotion on the spot. It was so cryptic that she had trouble deciphering him. “You did. At your father’s insistence. When he learnt that we fell in love. Nothing less than a vampire would do for his little girl.”

She was shocked. He’d turned into a vampire because of her?

“Why didn’t he turn you himself?” she asked curiously.

There was another brief moment of pause. “Well, he was insisting that a human could not be part of his dynasty. You weren’t too keen on turning me into an immortal. But, eventually, we accepted that this was the only option for us to be together, and it was a personal decision. Nobody interfered when we went for it.”

It sounded so romantic – him giving up on his soul for her. But Aaliyah was having certain doubts that maybe it was the reason why he seemed to bear so much animosity towards her. Maybe one hundred years later, he regretted the fact that he’d become a vampire.

“Do you regret turning for me?” she asked with a heaviness around her heart that she didn’t recognize.

“Never,” he replied so assertively that there was no doubt over the sincerity of his answer. There was something else then, something responsible for the occasional disdain she would catch in the topaz depths. “I’ve never regretted following you in your quest.”

She longed to ask what happened between them which made things turn sour, but she was so afraid that he would retreat back in his shell. It would take some time, but she will eventually find out.

“So, my father’s still alive?” she redirected the conversation to a safer ground. “What’s he like? Do you think we can trust him? Maybe call him to inform about my ermmm…resurrection?”

Was he going to be angry again? Like the last time she’d asked him for a phone. But he simply sighed so loudly that his shoulders dropped.

“The night you died.” He stopped, as if revising his opinion of whether to speak the truth. Then he sighed again. “You went to the Stoneheart castle for an emergency. I’m not really sure what happened, but I know that your sister Sloane called you for a family crisis. You never came back.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “That does not mean that someone from my family killed me. I am sure I must have many enemies.”

“There was someone who witnessed a serious fight with your family members. They were not letting you go because you once again breached one of their vampire laws. You were rebelling. I wouldn’t put it past that Caspian to have sent you to your execution.”

“Caspian? I don’t remember him.”

“He is your first-line cousin. Your uncle’s eldest son. Your father’s brother. He thinks that since he’s the eldest male, he’s supposed to be the proclaimed king.”

“You told me my mother made me the queen, right? Was she the original queen? How is it possible that I am the queen when my father’s still alive?”

“No, your mother didn’t make you queen, she didn’t have the authority. In fact, nobody has. You’re the original vampire. From what I know, you were kidnapped, and nobody knew who turned you. You were only twenty-two. Nobody’s sure what happened to you, but your father managed to rescue you.”

“I was kidnapped by whom? Did they find out?”

He shook his head. “No, but when you returned home, Clegane said you had bloodshot eyes. And you were craving for blood. When you drank blood for the first time from an animal, you were cured for some while. Your family being loaded managed to keep your condition down for the longest time.”

“That happened three hundred years ago?” she asked dumbfounded. She’d managed to outlive her secret for so many years?

“Yes. Your family made you swear that when they died, you would turn them. So, that was what you did. You made every member of your family immortal like you. Everyone survived except your mother who was beaten by a clever witch. That was when you decided that you would create certain rules and took over the vampire kingdom. You sired all of us anyway.”

“Who comes next to me in the hierarchy of power?” she bit her lips in concern at the intricate situation.

His body shifted again, and his naked thigh brushed against hers causing her doused fire to stir back to life again. Was it always like that between them? Did it take only one mere touch to ignite sparkles of fire inside her?

“Anyone who’s been sired by you. Which means most of your family members, me included. That’s why we decided that you would turn me. To make me your successor if anything happened.”

Aaliyah sighed as she twisted her neck on the pillow to stare at him directly in the eye. “Why would I think that something would happen to me? Did I have a lot of enemies? I figure I must have. Yet, you doubt only my family members. Why?”

Emir’s amber eyes shone with an intense light. “I have someone on the inside who told me things. Things that I can’t tell you right now. All I’m asking you to do is trust me. Just give me some more time until I figure things out.”

There was a moment of silence during which she channeled her inner guts to question whether she should put her faith in that man. So far, he was the only one in her life, and whatever story he’d concocted was only a one-sided version. What if he was not a good person? What if she was putting her trust in the completely wrong man?

Her heart kicked in right at that moment, and there was an intense butterfly feeling deep inside. There was no loophole in his story though, and it was believable. More importantly, there was no reason for him to lie to her, was there?

Then, a thought struck her. “How come we never had any children?”

The change in him was instantaneous. His shoulders went rigid, and his eyes switched off to an anguish which made her want to take back her words. She realized her gaffe but there was nothing she could do aside from digging her grave deeper.

“Vampires cannot procreate,” he announced in such a cold voice that her whole body shivered despite the warm room.