Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16094 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 80(@200wpm)___ 64(@250wpm)___ 54(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16094 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 80(@200wpm)___ 64(@250wpm)___ 54(@300wpm)
I wanted to explain that I wasn’t attracted to her. It was obvious that she belonged to Valen and he belonged to her. I could never come between mates, nor would I ever try. It would be impossible for either of them to allow it. But something inside of me shifted when I looked into her eyes and I knew that night that I had to leave.
Nothing has been the same since I left them, but if this is the way it has to be, then so be it. I’ve resigned myself to being stuck out in the middle of nowhere until I’m called to take another soul. My life isn’t like a vampire’s. I don’t have an end if I don’t find a mate. I’m going to walk this earth collecting souls until the end of time.
There’s something inside of me that knows when an immortal is close to death. It’s the reason I’m the Grim Reaper. I can feel it in my bones when one of our kind is dying and it’s time for me to collect. Right now my bones are cold and there’s nothing for me to do but wait.
As I stare into the flames of the fire, I try not to think about being alone or what it felt like when I stared into Ravana’s eyes. I think of nothing else except the blank space of eternity before me.
Chapter One
Ariella
Eighteen years later…
I stand in the sun, loving the warmth against my skin. My eyes close as I listen to the sounds around me knowing that I don’t have much longer. Death is coming. I can feel it slowly creeping in around me, and no matter how hard I try it’s stronger than me. I’m to the point where I’m not trying to stop it anymore.
How can I long for it and want to run from it at the same time? The image of my parents flashes in my mind and that’s the reason why. I’m their everything, and while I don’t think either could bear losing me, my mom would take it the hardest. It’s what scares me the most about dying. My family would carry the sorrow for an eternity and it would be a never-ending ache.
If it were just me, I’d be gone by now. I’d willingly let death take me and finally make the pain go away. I’ve been fighting it off for them, but the pain is almost unbearable now. My hand goes to my stomach where the ache began on my eighteenth birthday. It’s gotten worse by the second and I can’t take it anymore.
At first I thought it was hunger and I ate everything around me. With a mom like mine, that was easy to do. She loves to cook for Dad and me and my herd of cousins who are always coming in and out of the house. But no matter what I did the ache kept growing. When I told them about it, I saw the worry my mom tried to hide from me and felt it as if it was my own. They thought maybe I needed blood, but the idea made me gag.
I open my eyes and stare up at the sun. I’m not grossed out at the idea of drinking blood because it’s natural when you grow up in a coven of vampires. Family bonds together tightly and we’re all close to one another. My mated aunts and uncles drink blood because only the mated vampires do, but my hybrid cousins, who have turned eighteen, stopped eating altogether and became self-sustaining. They are all born from a human mother and a vampire father, but I’m the exception.
My mom, Ravana, tried to get me to drink some of her blood, but I was so repulsed by the idea I couldn’t do it. She didn’t believe me and began to push it, offering to find me someone else's. I know she’s desperate and would do anything, but I feel it inside me that blood isn’t what I need.
Everyone in my family has been anxious about what would happen to me when I turned eighteen. Bishop has always said I’m one of a kind to his knowledge. He couldn't find another like me in all his research and we don’t know why my mother, a female vampire, got pregnant to begin with. I eat human food and can enjoy being out in the sun. But I’m just as fast and strong as they are, and I have all the same heightened senses. I can also pick up on emotions better than others. I don’t get hurt as easily either and heal faster than them. We learned that from a few tumbles I’d taken with my cousins as a little girl. The only thing I haven’t been able to manage is the pain that isn’t going away. I’m dying.