chapter 74

ARIELLA.

"Who are you?" he asked me before getting up. He even has the same voice as David, only his was kind of tentative and more youthful-sounding. "I have never seen you before."

I was speechless because if I remember correctly, this vampire had been sleeping for the last twenty years straight. And now he just woke up. "Ah..."

"Speak, woman. Or else I will kill you..." His warning sounded half-baked though. I could sense that he was scared by how he looked at me, so I took the opportunity and turned the tables to my advantage.

"My name is Ariella. I am a werewolf and I have the powers of the Moon Goddess. Kill me and you will have to face your twin brother."

He gave me a stunned expression. "Y-You have the powers of the Moon Goddess?" he repeated, looking at me now with more interest. "Then you must be related to her. Celeste, I mean."

"You know about my mother?"

"Know? I not only know her, but I spent my life looking for her. I was the one who found her years ago, living simply among humans. We were close. But she chose to be with that werewolf, Jonathan."

I gasped. "Oh my God. So you even know my father?"

"Father? That explains it. You look like him a bit. So I wondered..." Darius then walked towards me while I remained at the spot where I was standing. I was prepared to fight this guy, but I didn't sense any bad intentions from him. "So you are her daughter. Oh, how the time flies..."

He walked and circled me like an inspector looking at my body for anything suspicious. And then he sniffed me, something that gave me goosebumps. I wanted to tell him that what he was doing was inappropriate, but he was doing this innocently so I let it pass.

"If you are her daughter, and you are here at our old northern castle, then you must have been captured by my brother. Is that it? Because you could never leave this place if you're not a vampire. This is the best place to keep someone."

"Yes. Your brother kidnapped me again and brought me here," I replied coldly. "We have been at war for some time now. Your kind and mine. Both our sides have lost a lot of people already. And this is all because of your brother's greed, wanting to marry me so that we could produce an offspring that would destroy this world, basically."

"Ah. I see. My family is still all about that prophecy, huh? I'm sorry if that is the case. I do not share the same goal with them though so you can't put the blame on me, Ariella. One of the reasons I slept for the longest time is because I didn't want to join them in their mission to bring the Heir to this world."

"I can’t believe that. You are one of them. Your family wants to bring that creature to life so all of your enemies would get wiped out. It's hard to believe that you're not on board with your family's agenda."

"Not everyone thinks the same, Ariella. I was always different from the rest of my family. Aurora was the beautiful role model. Julian was the muscular heartthrob and David was the intellectual. My younger brothers are the lovable kids while me, I guess you could say that I am the black sheep of the family."

"And? What does it mean? That you're against their ideologies, is that it?"

"You could put it that way," he replied. "For instance, I don't agree that we have to wipe out all of our enemies and reclaim our lost glory. Times have changed and our dwindling numbers might be the best thing that has ever happened to this world."

Hearing him say that gave me a little bit of hope. Maybe I could befriend this one and help me escape from here? Maybe he's in conflict with his family? Who knows. All I knew was that he could become my second Blaire where I could ask for help. "Darius... If you really think that way, then you should stop your brother from what he is doing."

"Why? My brother is his own person. I can't control what he does."

I looked at him suspiciously. "Really? If you don't think like the rest of your family, then show it to me. Help me. Set me free."

Darius went back to his bed, scratching his head, then sat on the edge of his four-poster bed and looked at me with a lopsided grin. "Why would I do that? My brother will get mad at me. You said that he intends to marry you, so if that's the case, then my hands are tied, Ariella. I don't want to fight my twin brother."

"But you said that you're not like him!" I said angrily, frustrated that this David copycat had no intention of setting me free after all the things that he said. "Or was that just a lie? Are all vampires really evil then? Look, I already have a mate! What your brother is doing is unforgivable! He's out there probably hunting my mate so he could finally marry me without any problems, and I'm stuck in here like a sitting duck doing nothing!"

"Relax, Ariella. You don't have to get mad at me. I am not your enemy."

"You're not? But you are siding with your twin brother!"

"I am not siding with him," he told me. "And you're asking too much of someone who just woke up after so many years. I need to see the whole picture first before I decide on what to do."

“You are just making excuses. Don’t say you are different if you choose to ignore what they are doing to me.”

That seemed to have gotten into him. "Fine. I'll talk to him once he returns. But don't expect anything, Ariella. My brother is hard-headed. We have been arguing for years over our differences and nothing good has ever come out of it."

That disappointed me. "Fine. I won't expect anything from you, then. But at least try to convince your evil brother to change his mind."

"You just said that he is evil. So it might be futile to change his mind now."

"Then I don't need to talk to you anymore," I said and then turned around. I started walking back to the hole that I punched just to get in here. But Darius still talked to me and his next words made me stop.

"Do you want to know the real reason why I chose to hibernate all these years? It was because of your mother."

"What? And what has my mother got to do with you, sleeping beauty?"

He laughed. "I was in love with her. But she wasn't mine. She was in love with your father. My brother would have taken her by force if that happened to him. But like I told you, we were different even though we were twins. I couldn't hurt your mother. I wanted her to be happy, even if it meant that I had to set her free."

"Good for you," I replied. "But my mother is already dead, didn't you know? She died trying to protect me from your family."

"I hibernated when she was still alive, and intended to wake up after a century when she's no longer around. But it's just how many years still, right? Eighteen? Nineteen? Twenty? Seeing that you're still young."

I turned back to him and was caught off guard to see that Darius was crying. It just occurred to me that this was maybe the first time that he found out that my mother was already dead. "Darius?"

"She gave me this necklace as a sign of our friendship," he added, tugging at the emerald pendant of his necklace. "I didn't want to wake up this early and I’m sure that I shouldn't have woken up yet. But somehow, I woke up. This is interesting, Ariella. Was it because of you that I woke up?"