Disclaimer: I do not own the Dark Series. I claim no ownership of any cultural references or historical people that may or may not be mentioned. I only own my OC. With an iron grip.
He hummed a song he had long ago lost feeling for, the sound of it an echo of the passionate ferocity it used to be. It was now a mere thread, like him, holding on to the last fibers of his honor. 200 years after his birth, color and emotion had bled dry from him, left him a husk of his former self; once a dreamer poet with stars in his entrancing green eyes. If he could feel anything he mused he would feel much like the dead bodies that always surrounded the lair of his people's enemy, the vampire. They lay motionless, still, and pale as the moon...colorless and dreadful. Indeed, there were too many likenesses between himself, the dead, and the vampire he hunted by royal decree.
Some of those vampires had been friends. His friends. The first time he had run across Cedrik it had stung, for he was young when he had first begun to hunt the vampire. That initiatory battle had torn his heart apart more than the severe flesh wounds he suffered or the near fatal crater in his chest. These wounds would pass in time underneath the Earth that welcomed him. Now that heartache was but a memory as he faced down his partners, friends, and kinsman. After 200 years, he had lost his capacity feel much of anything besides the instinctual urge to carry out a duty that's true meaning was starting to cloud as the decades marched on. What was he fighting for?
As he craddled a farm worker in his arms, barely restraining the urge to kill this enthralled human, the concept of his Lifemate bubbled up in his mind. He calmed, letting go of the man and letting him slump to the moist forest floor. He had compelled him here so that he may feed. This grove he had chosen was not far from the nearest village so when the farmer woke up, he would be able to find his way home thinking himself shamefully hung over when that was the farthest thing from the truth. In the form of mist he put distance between himself and the mortal, eventually coming to hover over the dramatic, ice capped mountain range of the Carpathians. He felt as cold and solitary as they were.
Again, the word "lifemate" hovered in his thoughts. He was ancient, far past the time of redemption. After centuries of blood and destruction, he didn't feel himself worthy of a light. A lifemate, in his people's sacred ways, was their only way of regaining their colors, their feelings...their soul. Through bonding with a lady of light, the darkest seductions to kill and the vicious beast every male Carpathian housed within him, would be tamed and leashed. Through a lifemate, a Carpathian male's life would return to vibrancy and warmth. But here he was, on the edge of a knife, so close to turning into the undead. How could he ever be worthy of a precious female? He was far to cold. He should've greated the dawn a long time ago and ended his existence with honor. He didn't know why he hadn't already.
Was the hope of a Lifemate that strong in him that he had continued far past the conscious thought process of it, wandering around here and there clueless as to why he journied so? If that was the case, he wondered where this hope came from as he had not felt any such emotion for centuries.
Thinking on it too long was causing too many unlikable senarios and much paranoia. This could be the trick of the darkness luring me into it's grasp, he thought stubbornly. The darkness, the true beast inside him, had always taken different guises like a shitzophrenic shadow torture of the soul. He shook his head, closing his green eyes, and floated in the icy mist and clouds that wreathed the Carpathian Mountain Range. Silence greeted him for awhile as he tried to calm the violence that beat inside his brain to do the most evilest of deeds. He surrendered himself to floating, half tangible, half mist, thousands of feet up in the air with his arms spread wide open to the full, glowing moon. Moonlight poured down upon him, his only solace in this cruel and intolerable existence he lived.
Aurrik Dreamweaver would greet the dawn in the morning. He floated there in complete acceptence of his final choice. He let out a furious roar like it was his final plea for help.
But mysterious Destiny and tricky Fate had other plans.