Infinite Love

Chapter 21

Erik

I feel the shift of the bed as she gets up and walks away from me before I can even open my eyes. A pang of loss resonates inside of me. I know she has not just walked away from me but pulled away yet again.

Anger bubbles inside of me once more like it did that day I finally found out she was alive still. It’s an almost alien emotion, not something that sits well with me and not one I had ever thought I would connect with her.

She had captured my heart the first moment I had found her. We had heard rumours of the hunters rampaging across the land, brutally slaughtering and torturing anyone they considered a witch or even suspected. We had been too late to reach her village.

The c*****e that had greeted us was enough to drive fear into the bravest heart and there she was this beautiful delicate soul amongst the devastation. Her amber eyes so full of pain had captured me in their power. She was too young at that time for me to recognise what I had really felt for her, I just knew I felt fiercely protective of her and would never let anything hurt her again.

I watched from a distance as my uncle had taken her as his own, taught her, loved her like the child he had so longed for before he was turned. She blossomed in his light and each day I admired how strong she was. Her heart was so special and every one that she encountered was affected by her. She captivated me.

Something I had never told her was the revenge I had wrought on her behalf. She only ever saw the light in me but I was so affected by her devastation at the loss of her family, I secretly waged my own personal war. I hunted the hunters.

Over the next few years as she grew and mended I would go on missions, eviscerating every hunter I could until I found the ones that had killed Amelia’s family and I sent a message so strong that the hunters disappeared for centuries. In honesty until this new bio weapon materialise recently I had honestly thought I had hunted them into extinction.

I never told Amelia what I did for her, I couldn’t risk her looking at me as a monster but I had been filled with an insatiable need to protect her and avenge those innocent lives taken. Enough was enough.

When she was seventeen I couldn’t help myself, she was like a magnet pulling me to her and I found every excuse I could to be near her, to get her to help me and I started to notice how her eyes would follow me. How she would blush if she caught me looking at her and I could not resist her pull any longer.

The first most perfect moment of my life fills my mind, that day in the water as we washed off hours of gruelling effort to save two deserving lives. The way the sunlight had played over her olive skin and the sparkle in her amber eyes. I felt like a foolish by again there with her so close to me.

When she voluntarily told me she loved me, I was undone, lost to her power over me. I remember how my heart had thundered as her body touched mine, skin to skin, so intimate, so special. Her soft lips as I pressed my own to them the most perfect feeling I could ever have imagined.

I hadn’t dared to use my tongue, to take the kiss to a place of pure passion as I would not have been able to resists more. I loved her with everything inside of me and I wanted to make her my wife. I wanted to worship her and do everything right. She was my soul, my forever, I knew there would never be another for me no matter how long I lived.

I hadn’t dared to let myself remember these things for centuries, the memories had nearly broken me when I thought she was dead. Holding her in my arms last night, making love to her, hearing those words come from her mouth. It has all flooded through me once more. I feel anger, I feel rage but I feel every ounce of love that I ever felt for her as well.

Jumping from the bed, I need to speak to her, to know what she is thinking, how could she have left me like she did if she still loves me?

I try the bathroom door but it is firmly locked, I can hear the shower running but everything else is silent. “Amelia” I call but she does not respond “Lia” I try again but I am still greeted with silence.

I can feel the anger rising to the surface again and I contemplate breaking down the door but that is not who I want to be. I rest my head on the door in frustration. I just need answers, her to talk to me.

The shower stops and I shout for her again but she still doesn’t respond. Yet I can feel her, hear the racing of her heart just on the other side of the door “Lia please” I try once more. I touch the door and I swear it feels like her hand is there on the other side touching the same place. Reaching for me but not quite connecting.

“I’m sorry Erik last night was a mistake, please I need you to leave” her voice is barely a whisper, choked with pain, even I can hear it. I’m lost, I need her, need to talk to her but I can’t force her. I won’t be that person, I am confused I know my Lia is still in there, she has shown her to me but when then does she pretend to be who she shows to the rest of the world? Why is she rejecting me?

With a heavy sigh I give in and walk away, pulling on my clothes I go to my own room to shower. She can’t hide from me forever I will get to the bottom of all of this.