Chapter 13 – The Only Man I've Ever Loved (Part 2)

Michael watches the exchange with amusement and a bit of something—a lot, if he wasn't in such denial—he thinks will be his very own undoing. There was no need for him to be jealous. He doesn't have the right to be jealous, he doesn't have the right to…feel anything.

Well…can he be allowed to have one wish?

I wish I could make you smile like that too.

Even in his own head, it sounded desperate and pathetic. And Selene doesn't need desperate and pathetic right now.

He looks around the room and realizes at once that he wasn't the only one feeling like an idiot.

Varga was close to Selene.

Everyone can tell he was the only man she let through her icy barriers. David she trusts, but not entirely, thank god for that, and their whole relationship had a strain—another good thing Michael was happy about. Maybe because the vampire was too…too in love with her, and doesn't even make an effort to hide it.

Varga on the other hand...

As if on cue, David enters the training grounds, with a woman with bizarrely white hair. He nods politely to a few curtsies, mostly from the female Death Dealer populace. The commotion from Varga's last announcement dies down for a moment as everyone watches David approach Selene.

"I'm sorry I'm late. Lena—" he stops shortly.

Selene couldn't look him in the eye but she knows his are staring right at her now.

"You've been drinking." He says to her. He bends down to look at her closely and gives Varga across the room a look of appraisal and grits his teeth. "Again."

"David, look—"

"I leave him for a few minutes with you and—"

"I can take care of myself." That shut him up. "And Varga is not responsible of me nor any of my actions. You know what, " Selene says as she stands up from her seat and fully faces David, "I honestly find it absolutely pointless for you to regard me as a queen and yet I never get to have a say over anything that involves me."

"Selene. Please—"

"Save it for another day," she says firmly and walks down toward the center of the room. She removes her coat, and grabs a pair of leather gloves from one of the metallic round tables. She picks a gun at random after.

She looks up and notices Lena, nods her head toward her. The third of the new Elders smiles back.

"Change of mechanics," Selene addresses the room at large now, turning around the spot slowly. "Though it's as simple as before."

The room is dead silent, watching their queen with quiet fascination.

"Fight me, and defeat me. As a reward, the winner will train under my supervision."

That got them talking again a moment later.

"One on one?"

"How many sessions?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," David speaks loudly over the sudden commotion. "If you think you can defeat Selene easily, you're all wrong."

"He's right," Lena adds on too, mouth curling into a kind smile. "There's only one man who's ever defeated her highness in combat who still lives."

Everyone turns to Varga, who had his arms crossed, leaning on one of the pillars near the raised platform. It was his signature pose. His eyes were fixed on Selene. It was the first time he was this quiet, then: "I cheated."

"Yes, you did," Selene starts. "But before that, I was already on my arse anyway." There were a few nervous laughs from the crowd.

"That may be so, your grace, but—"

"Just accept it as your victory," Selene counters, insistent. "Because it won't happen again."

This time Varga smiled so widely at her, baring all his teeth as the sides of his mouth wrinkle with dimples.

God, Selene thought, feeling a sudden and unwelcome tug in her heart, why can't I just fall in love with this man instead?

She steals another glance at Michael.

Well, that is why.

He wasn't looking at her anymore though. His head was bent, fingers busy fiddling with the gun he held in his hand, almost looking like he was determinedly ignoring the rest of the world—determinedly ignoring her.

Selene has never hated a gun more than she did now.

"Before we start…Rules." No better time distract one's self than preparing for combat. "You can use any weapon. For our Lycan friends, you can transform. Actually, anyone can do anything. The only rule is there is no rule. Why, you ask? Because in the real battlefield, there are none. Be as ruthless and unforgiving as your enemies. Let's begin."

Selene had imagined a more challenging turn of events—fighting was her default state as it is—and was sourly let down not long after. In three's, five's and more, both Death Dealers and Lycans attacked her, and every single one of them she had easily overpowered.

These are the men and women bound to protect my daughter.

Another thought cuts through her unvoiced doubt.

You are the strongest immortal alive. You're just overestimating everyone else, Selene.

After taking a strong jab at her face, from a fully transformed Lycan-Sundal soldier, and feeling absolutely nothing, Selene ends the fight by easily sliding a leg down her opponent's ankle, casual the latter to fall on his back.

"Are you all absolutely sure this is the best you've got?" She thunders over the crowd. The alcohol in her body was still present, the dizziness lets itself known when she wasn't moving fast on her feet.

Almost everyone in the room, however, were now either down on their knees, too weak to fight anymore, or has retreated to the shadowed walls, afraid to try and fail again.

We're all seriously fucked up.

"Selene."

She had to admit she had forgotten all about Michael.

Turning on the spot to face him, her breath was caught in her throat for the very first time since the fighting began. Only he could ever take her breath away.

Steadily holding her gaze, he nods his head before slowly circling around her, all while curling his knuckles by his sides.

Selene couldn't help herself as she realizes what he was exactly trying to do. She shakes her head after a moment, smiling, then catches his eyes again.

Then she gives him a grin, almost playful.

I'm not the most powerful immortal alive.

"Good," she says. "I've been waiting for you." And unknowingly she really had.

"You—" Whatever he wanted to say she doesn't let him finish. She runs to him in a haze, stops mere inches from where he stood, as her hands push his chest with such strong force that he's thrown off his feet and slams straight into a wall, boring a huge hole right through its metal surface.

As everyone gasps Selene counts silently. Expectantly.

1, 2, 3…

A dark grey hand—shining a metallic sheen—with talons in place of normal fingers, reaches out and grips one curved side of the hole.

I'm not the most powerful immortal alive, she thinks again with another smile.

Michael Corvin is.

(Earlier in the day)

"How are your wounds, father?" Eve asks Michael as they make their way over to the kitchens.

"I don't feel them anymore, Eve. Thanks again." He doesn't tell her that her mother's blood did more than made him remember who he was—what he was—it had also healed the gashes on his back, the ones David's whip had marked deep into his skin. Selene's blood had them healed in seconds.

He had just fetched his daughter from her bedchambers and it struck him how bright and cheerful she was this early in the day. She was such a contrast to her mother, who was also walking with them at Eve's other side. She appeared to have followed Michael not long after he left her with a good morning kiss, a kiss that took all the nerve inside his body for him to do.

You've really pushed your luck with that one, Corvin. Slammed it hard to a wall.

"You're welcome," Eve's soft voice cuts through him. "How's your sleep, mom?" She now turns to Selene.

Michael braves a sidelong glance at her then, gauging if their recent 'encounter' affected her as much as it had affected him.

And as usual her face bore no expression to whatever she was thinking or feeling.

What else did he expect really?

"Fine, love," she says to their daughter, looking straight ahead, and not even turning to Eve when she adds: "What do you want to do later today?"

Michael looks down, feeling pathetic and quite…angry if he was honest with himself.

How he had managed to make her fall in love with him years ago was beyond him.

Had it been this difficult? Had it been like climbing an invisible mountain—one hell of an icy mountain—without really knowing what's waiting at the top? Do I even want to know what's at the top? Had it been this…impossible?

But then again...

She wants him.

She wants me, damn it, that much he has gathered. She also cared for him, yes. Undoubtedly. The gossip all over the castle about 'Selene's fury' and what she had done to David had reached him and eventually gave him a feeling of…something. No, wait…

It gave him power.

A power of knowing that he made her do that…That he—bloodied and hurting—had made her lose control…From that there was a shock of electric yearning—one he didn't know he could possibly feel—pressed into his very heart. If that act, if that undoing of Selene because of him didn't say "I love you," in all the manners language was concerned, in all the truth she's left unspoken to him, then he doesn't know shit about love.

Nor about her.

Except he really does know.

He knows it from the bruising first kiss she gave him, from her letting go just when they were in too deep, almost as if afraid of drowning with him—drowning from him. He knows it from that brief glimpse she let him have, the one where he got into her head and into her heart, seeing himself through her, and sharing her feeling of awe and wonder and…love mingled with painful guilt, as she gazed at him—at the monster she had created just to save his life.

She loves me.

And this he accepts as true.

Another thought follows the first, not necessarily challenging its validity so much as shaking its uneven foundation with a hard truth:

But she also doesn't want to be with me.

Harder still, a concluding realization hits him, knocking him off fantasy land once and for all.

Not then...and not now.

"…So really, mother, I won't be on your hair today. I'll be reading in the library."

He hears her daughter's voice from the end of a long tunnel.

"Have you seen the Grand Library, father?"

It takes him a while to realize she was talking to him again.

"No."

"Do you want me to take you?"

Taking a pause before answering, he looks down at her, solely at her—he couldn't look at Selene, couldn't bear to see the confirmation of his recently realized fear etched in her hard, impassive face.

"I'd love that very much, Eve."

"I'm done eating. May I be excused, mother?"

Michael doesn't mind his daughter asking for her mother's permission instead of his. It was habit he supposed, that, or because she was more than just her mother, she was the goddamned queen.

"Go on then."

Eve stands up, kisses Selene on the cheek, then turns to him briefly before leaving. "I'll see you later, father."

Michael and Selene were alone together again.

They were seated opposite each other—Eve was sat earlier at the end of the long table. He has long finished eating, not really having the stomach for another drink—he still hates the taste of blood on his tongue, no matter how his body craves it almost all the time.

Silence lingered around them save for the clicks and clatter of Selene's silver and her mouth chewing the raw meat of a deer.

"How old is she?" He asks her then, not being able to bear the deafening silence any longer.

"She's turning 16 next month." She says before taking a sip of her drink.

If he was drinking, he most certainly might have choked on his. "16?! Wow..."

"Yeah."

Jesus Christ.

He slumps on the backrest of his seat, deflated. He struggles for words to say. "16 years. And I…I wasn't even—"

Selene stops eating then. She looks up and holds his gaze, softening. Reaching out a hand over to him, she says, "Don't beat yourself up, Michael." Her thumb caresses his skin slowly. "We were both robbed off of the chance to be there for her and watch her grow. To be proper parents."

They were silent for a while. But he was all too aware of her hand not yet leaving from his. It was a gentle hold, unassuming, but he appreciates it—coming from her—all the same.

"You never asked me why I'm here." He tells her after a while.

"You don't even know why you're here."

He wasn't expecting that.

"What?"

She lets go of his hand then.

"You were given orders to surrender, am I right?"

"I…Yes."

"And you were told to gain my trust."

"Yes, but I never planned on—"

"Don't worry. I know, and they know you won't hurt me nor Eve."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a faint click...but he was still very much confused. "What?"

"They know who you are," Selene says patiently, now leaning forward. "—who you were—before they made you their soldier, Michael."

They were staring at each other now. He was silent as he lets her continue. "What I want to know is why they'd let you go. Why did they let you come back to m—us."

Michael still couldn't speak. It wasn't because he had nothing to say, it was because a dozen questions were suddenly popping into his head right now and if he asks her..even just one…

She needs to let this all out.

"But they are operating on a false assumption."

"What do you mean?" He asks patiently.

"Do you know how old I am, Michael?"

She turns a hundred years older right before his eyes then, the moment she asks him that question.

She didn't really, but the weight of what that certain question meant hung in the air around them, settling on Selene's beautifully youthful face, making her look older. Making her look her real age.

"I'm old enough to have fought fire with fire," she says, voice taking on a lower tone. "Fought revenge with the avenger's own blood, and foolishness with steel that burns more than the sun."

He realizes that she was talking about her past life. Her life as a Death Dealer.

"They're after Eve."

For quite possibly the first time since he came, he was seeing her in a new light. Right now, Selene, the Death Dealer, the most powerful of the Vampire Elders, was, right now...

A mother.

"And for that I will give them exactly what they want. If they want war then I'll give them war. They just won't see me coming."

Silence again followed her open threat. Not to him, but everything he knew these past years he wasn't with her.

Does she see me as an enemy?

"Michael."

He starts. "Selene."

"Can I trust you?"

They both know whatever he says now wouldn't mean much, wouldn't amount to anything but an empty promise.

I don't even trust myself, he contemplates in secret. Not when I'm with you.

He does know—even if Selene still has her doubts—that he will do anything to keep their daughter safe. And so he tries his luck by telling her this.

"We have a daughter, Selene. And if…If deep down, somewhere in your heart, you still…care…for the old Michael, then yes. You can trust that man. You can trust me."

"I…" She trails off for a second. "I'll do that, Michael."

A beat.

"But…I cannot trust the others who came with you."

Of course.

Everyone expected nothing else.

"I understand."

"I don't want you to just understand. I want you to do something for me."

This time he looks at her, holds her gaze for a few seconds, willing her to understand that by God, if she told him to die for her then, he would.

This truth scared him.

"Anything," he says, meaning it.

One of her hands reaches out to him again. "I want you to forget your love for me."

A sudden coldness washes over him as soon as she said those words.

"I—"

"Listen, Michael—" She lets go of his hands then, stands up and walks around the table towards him.

Cupping his face now, she says to him both very gently and very firmly: "What you're feeling right now is…confusion. We have a child together and I…I kissed you and made you hope that there was something in our past that somehow connected us and…"

He could only look up at her. His hands didn't even have the strength to hold her sides. The numbness in his heart has spread all over his body.

"But believe me, Michael," Selene continues. "As much as I've come to love our daughter, we didn't ever plan on having her. We were hunted, years ago and...until now."

He closes his eyes.

"We owe it to Eve to give her a life without some army hunting her down."

In silence, he lets go of her.

"Forget about me—about us—and focus on what really matters, and that is protecting Eve.

He lets go of the hope of being with her.

"...Can you do that for me, Michael?"

The sight that greets his eyes as he open them again were not what he had expected.

This was breaking her as much as it was breaking me.

"Can I ask you something?"

Her hands let go of him as she says very softly, "Of course."

"Did you love me?"

He can't decide if he wanted to hear a lie or the truth. But before he could make up his mind and say anything, Selene gives him her answer.

"You were the only man I've ever loved."

He knows then that she was telling the truth. He knows it from the pause she takes in between letting out a deep breath and giving him the saddest of smiles.

She was telling the truth, alright.

But Michael now instead finds himself wanting a lie.

No Sundal yet again, I'm sorry! And I'm not gonna say they'll be in the next chapter. This story has been fighting for control ever since the 4th chapter and I've long given up trying to take the reigns again. I'm just letting the characters guide me into whatever the hell they want to do. Don't worry though. I removed one scene (yes, it involved a certain Sundal) from this chapter because well, it just didn't fit right into it. So certainly it will be in the next one.

As you can tell (hopefully), I want this scene to centrally be all about Michael. The Michael from the past, the present, and the Michael Selene wants in the future. (And what she wants is stupid I KNOW but hey, she needs a soldier right now, not a lover.) I hope I was able to show all of that in this chapter.

Finally, please review! I apologize again for such a long delay.