Author's Note: Hello, everyone! I know-- you're getting two chapters pretty close together. That's good, right? Well, I hope so, because this chapter's a little different. I'm deviating slightly from canon, here. I just wanted to warn you. If you have problems with invented characters, you might not want to read this. Thanks!

15. Traitor

I was a sinner. It was as simple as that.

What else could explain my actions? How could anyone commit the travesty I was considering and not be called the most foul names on the planet? I would have welcomed the sound of one of my friends cursing me to high heaven; it would have relieved the tense silence in which I now sat, all alone in the wild. True, I was a nomad, and nomads weren't known for their compassion or humane acts, but--

Did she really deserve it?

Yes! My mind shouted. She deserves it! She's ruined our happiness!

But that small, insignificant thing deep inside me, that thing that I thought was my conscience, disagreed with my mind. How? It asked me. How could you do that to her? You can't, and you won't. She is your mate, Blaise. You love her more than life. Did I, though? Was I willing to go this far, to the point of defying one of the most time-honored and sensible rules of our kind? Or was I just too coward to stand with my mate, after what she'd done?

"How could she have done this to me?" I groaned, gripping my hair.

What has she been thinking? Oh, I reminded myself, that's right: she never thinks. That, supposedly, was why I loved her, because I always had to be the protective one, the one who planned out every eventuality before we ever made a move. My mate was carefree, exceptionally thoughtless for a vampire. She was stunning, and charming, and I had fallen for her.

"Adelaide!" I screamed, startling a pair of birds out of their nest. As they flew over me I snarled at them-- why should they be happy when my story could only end in tragedy?

I would go hunting. That would clear my mind, it always did. Any time I was angry at Adelaide, I went hunting. I lurched to my feet, growls ripping continually from my throat. That's exactly what I would do, I would hunt; I would make humans suffer, because they had made me hurt. They were the reason I was burning with fury at my only love, the joy of my existence. Stupid, unresponsive creatures, slow of mind and body, useless things. Humans were good for one thing, and that was food.

But even as I raced off to steal into the small village four miles from where I'd taken refuge, my feet slowed. I wasn't angry at humans, and, I winced, I didn't hate them. After all, I had been a human once. It wasn't their fault they were slower, and dumber, and more soft than I.

And, aparently, I wasn't as good as a human.

Adelaide had chosen a human over me.

I sank to my knees as a wave of pain hit me, gritting my teeth. Pull yourself together, I told my heart. Imagine if anyone saw you like this. They would think Blaise of Lorraine was becoming a sentimental fool. I was a sentimental fool, I admitted ruefully. If I had met Adelaide four hundred years back, there was no way she would have captured me as totally as she had now.

Ah, thinking of Adelaide was a bad idea. I squeezed me eyes shut, willing the pain to die out so I could continue on with my betrayal. I knew I had to do it, but how I wished I didn't. However, I couldn't allow Adelaide to destroy the reputations of myself and the coven in Ireland, not to mention the other various nomads that roamed the Emerald Isle.

Sometimes she was so selfish! No, she was constantly being selfish, and that was what had finally woken me up to the facts. Fact one: Adelaide cared nothing for me. All these years, these countless days, she had been toying with me, seeing how far she could lead me.

Fact Two: Adelaide was heartless, and cared for one person's needs: her own. She had a knack for breaking other people's hearts, while glutting her own on pride and self-esteem.

Fact Three: Adelaide had acted on facts One and Two, and had committed an atrocious crime, one that had to be reported immediately to the Volturi.

Fact Four: There was now a terror that had been unleashed on the Irish vampire community. That was to say nothing about the human population.

And, of course, Fact Five: I had to report Adelaide, my mate, and have both her and the creature she had created killed.

How I hated to do it; I felt like a traitor. I was a traitor. "I have no other choice," I said, and turned around, in the direction of Italy.

"Wait!"

The call was unexpected, and I turned around again to see a blur streaking towards me, one of my kind. I tensed, anticipating some kind of confrontation. What I didn't expect was a tiny girl with red curls, not at all the type I had any reason to fear. "Wait," she said once more, and came to a halt in front of me. "Are you Blaise?"

"Who are you?" I asked warily, but I think I already knew the answer. She came forward two steps, but I retreated, feeling my muscles clench more. "I said who are you?"

"I'm from the coven closer to the coast," said the little girl, smiling. Her smile was not at all menacing; it was more of a genuine smile. "Are you Blaise?" Her lilt was typically Irish, but it was as smooth and inuman as all our voices.

"Yes," I responded, my tone making it clear I didn't like her questions. Was she a diversion? Were her other coven members lurking somewhere nearby?

The little girl nodded, as if she approved of my answer. "Liam thought he saw you up here a couple nights ago. Are you the mate of that young one?"

"No," I said curtly, and tried to walk past her.

Her hand stopped me. I snarled lightly, letting her know I was not going to put up with anything today. "She says she knows you. She says you're her mate."

When had Adelaide ever talked to them? I had never conversed with that coven.

"She says you're the one who made the--" her face turned sour. "She says it was you."

"She lied," I spat, getting in her face. Being antagonistic usually made females back off. "She lied!"

How could Adelaide be so cruel? Was she going to make me pay for the thing she had done?

"I can't believe," I hissed, "that I've waited this long to turn her in."

"Before you do," said the little girl, "why don't you talk to us first? We would like to strike a truce with you."

"Truce?"

"You want a dictionary?" she laughed. "We know you didn't start it, she's an open book. But we need your help to finish it." By the time she said the last sentence, her face was dead serious, her eyes somber.

"We can't finish it," I sighed. "It'd take at least--"

"We have a plan," she interrupted me quietly, her voice changing oddly. "We have more help coming."

"Oh?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. What could possibly help me now?

"Yes. We'll get this resolved, but we need your aid."

I shrugged. "All right, but don't think I'm agreeing to anything."

"We don't. We're familiar with nomads." And she also said, under her breath, "It's a crime we're about to decimate a coven."

I had no inkling what that might mean, but I didn't truly care.