7. Suspicions

Ashton's P.O.V.

God, this dumb kid is doing something to me. With just one look into his eyes, I found myself spilling things that I hadn't thought of since that day. I still remember it in vivid detail...

I had just blown out the candles on my cake, and I heard the celebration commence around me. Even though we couldn't eat it, the simple dessert really meant something to our coven. It represented a new year, peace, unity. In the middle of my thoughts, the guards had busted into the hall and told everyone to get into their battle positions, that the wolves were coming. Of course I, only just turning eight, had no clue what was going on. Why were they dragging me to the dungeons with the rest of the young vampires? Why were my parents kissing like it was their last goodbye?

I looked up and saw one of the other children, a young girl in a baby pink dress that was lined with lace, crying her eyes out. I moved to comfort her, unaware that my parents were already dead. The werewolves were just too prepared. I heard them trying to crash down the door and told everyone to get up the emergency exit, to their deaths. The girl wasn't moving. She sat staring at the door while it was getting close to being hit off of its hinges.

I tried carrying her to the exit, but she refused to leave the room. She, unlike myself, understood that to go up that exit was death. There was no escape. My father had always told me that as the coven leader, I would always have to place them before me, so I stayed there with her. About an hour later, the door came off.

An older man came in with a small clone of himself that I assumed to be his son.

"There's a few, son," the disgusting man had told his son. He was teaching his five year old son how to fight vampires? 'Oh wait, I've seen this man. He's the Alpha, and this boy must be his son!' I stood bravely for this girl, the only member of my coven left alive at this point, as the son attacked us. I fought viciously, but he eventually got past my frantic defenses and killed her.

I was pissed, to say the least.

He turned to me, about to pick me off, but he accidentally made the mistake of being in his human form. I bit deeply into his shoulder, knowing that it would probably scar, and ran around the Alpha, up the stairs, and out onto the lawn. Thousands of wolves chased me, but I was faster than them as a young vampire with too much energy. I ran all the way into town and found a small side alley. There was a gap between the trashcan and the wall that I found myself curled up in.

I passed out crying, the last time I ever did, for my lost parents, my lost coven, my lost friends, my lost life.

I soon realized that I was standing idly next to my locker, the bell having rung fifteen minutes ago. I decided to just skip and stood behind the school smoking instead, left alone with the voices in my head.

I woke up the next morning, expecting to have been found since werewolves had such an amazing sense of smell, but finding that it had rained and covered my scent trail. I sighed in relief, but was suddenly hit with a huge wave of blood lust that I could hardly control. When I lived with my family, we would always have animal blood stored in the refrigerator, and I had not yet been taught how to hunt.

My legs carried me to a forest and went crazily after animals until I was satisfied, thus my nightly hunts begun. My wish went from having peace in my coven to simply having one in the first place in less then 24 hours. I enrolled into kindergarten even though I was eight years old because there was no hope for me in the human world if I didn't have a foundation. I couldn't read, I didn't know the alphabet, other things that a second grader should know.

My first day of school was rough, especially since we had to have a discussion about our lives. I didn't know what to say, so I just talked about my life before everything fell apart, leaving out the bloodsucking part of course.

My first mistake: being away from the forest when my nightly hunt time came.

My second mistake: settling too close to humans.

It was night time, I was trying to get through the night without going on a killing rampage. A human walked by the entrance to my alleyway and I couldn't stop my instinct. My coven's whole stick was being peaceful towards the humans, and I just killed an innocent one. That was the first, but definitely not the last, time I thought of myself as a monster.

I went to school, moved my home to the hollowed out log, and went on a rampage every night. Totally normal behavior for an eight year old.

I never really got a childhood. I was constantly trying to manage myself, my cravings, and my school work, and I never had time to do the things that humans considered normal for children my age. I couldn't sleepover with my friends, I couldn't watch television or play on a phone, heaven forbid I even thought about trying to relax.

I removed my cigarette from my lips at the final bell, standing by the back exits in case Alex was looking for me. Wait, why did I care again?

I walked to my home, simply sitting and waiting for the nightly slaughter to overtake me.

For some reason, though, it decided not to come. Maybe it came from when I hold in too many emotions. I mean, holding in my emotions made me thirst really hard for the thick, red liquid that runs my life, but opening up to Alex, even just a little bit, really helped me feel calmer and more self-centered.

I still didn't plan on opening up much more, but something about him made me want take down my walls. He made me feel whole. He made me feel confident that I was good enough, all I could be. Heck, maybe he is my soulmate, and I don't think that I would mind that. He kinda seemed like he knew that I wasn't entirely human. Now that I looked into it even closer, how did he not know what a burger was? Why do the bells effect his ears? Why was he so culture shook, even if he just came from another country? Something lead me to believe that this kid was more than he let on.