Why do you save me ?

"Seriously? That's what you decided to go with? Okay, then," she took two courageous steps near him, almost staring into his red eyes. He looked down at her with a hint of amusement, but his expression quickly turned serious as she spoke up.

"Kill me!" She challenged him in almost a whisper, which echoed in his ears. He stared back without blinking.

Elliott eyes grew dark, His pupils dilated, taking in the sight of the brave girl still standing staring at him.

The scent of human blood wafted towards him, causing his fangs to protrude and his mouth to water. He could feel the thirst raging within him.

Had Lauren forgotten that he was a vampire? Saying that will just make things more difficult than they already are. He will suck her alive till the last drop, and here she was openly inviting him. Didn't she know saying those words would just make his thirst for her blood worse than it was before?

The thirst, the bloodlust, the never-ending craving for fresh and warm human blood. Despite it all, he still managed to control himself. He knew better than to give into his primal instincts.

"You aren't taking it seriously, are you?" He replied, frustrated, like she had never seen him before.

He looked down and shook his head harder. Elliott wasn't used to being questioned, and it was usually he who asked the questions. The actions seemed to exhaust her.

"Why should I? When you are talking like some psychopath. Well, if I am in danger, then you are also in danger. What if I tell everyone that you are a vampire, then?" Lauren raised her eyebrows as she stared at him, amused at herself. 'I'm doing it great,' she thought. He stopped then, motionless for a moment.

Seconds seemed to pass by as Elliott took his very own sweet time to answer her. "A lowly human like you who can just threaten us with warnings like this and then obviously will not expose something that will result in their own life."

His words were sharp as knives. It was hard to know, if he was insulting her or warning her. As if saying, Take care of your tongue like the way you take care of gold & silver, but Elliott will not kill someone over such pointless matters. Would he?

The man considered himself to be a supreme person who was of high importance, and killing someone wasn't in his personality. But he will not let the person off the hook so easily, especially as Lauren was the first and last person who had been added to his likings or perhaps his bad sides. He will think later about what to do with his new pet.

Lauren was taken aback by the mild threat, and she wondered for a minute if Elliott was joking about killing. For a merely seconds, her eyes past between him and the open door.

When she turned to look at the him again. The vampire seemed to have stopped staring at her and had instead gone to go fetch himself a book, just turning the pages and reading the headings.

He placed it back in its place while Lauren kept staring at his back. Feeling angry and sad that she couldn't do anything related to this matter. Why he saved her in the first place ?

Elliott chuckled, and his eyes, which turned just dark red, stared into hers, where his were much darker than hers.

He noticed the fear, confusion, and ego that had been shaken now: "You don't know me." The words were low and rumbly, and they were so close that Lauren almost fell over.

Still, there was something more to him, something unusual, forceful, and overwhelming, that she wouldn't understand.

She was taken aback by his change of eye color, but they weren't scaring her anymore. She didn't know if she should be scared of him or his abilities.

He could kill her right now if he wanted, and no one would know what happened to the new girl. The voice will rise for a while, and then everything will settle down like it did before she arrived here.

He was, well, different from all others. He was handsome, not perhaps in the conventional sense, but he had that appearance which could make him stand out in the crowd. He was fair, almost pale white. His unfathomable, dark red eyes contrasted exceptionally with his light toned face.

'Was every vampire look this much beautiful,' thought Lauren. She hadn't seen him this close; he was just one step away from her and staring at her so deeply that she almost blushed and didn't know why.

"Yeah, I really don't know you," Lauren said, folding her arms on her chest and daring to raise a brow too. Completely acting different than what she was feeling because of him.

She said, "I don't know that you are a vampire. I don't know who saved me that day, and after that, my saviour just fled without saying anything yet! Now certain someone come here to order me to go back from where I came, and that certain someone think that I will listen to him?"

The words came out more strangled and sharp than she could intend because he may have taken a step back, but he was still standing too close.

So close that she could feel his breath on her cheek and the warmth radiating from his body. She knew she had overstepped her boundaries, but she could not hold anything back once her dam burst.

"And there's not much to be afraid of when you've already lost everything that matters." Lauren told him as flippantly as she could manage while keeping her voice calm.

At her words, he froze, his whole body tensing up so much that it felt like he might shatter.

Even his eyes were changed; the red wildness vanished between each blink until only stillness was left.

Elliott looked at her, not moving except for that inner stillness, but she could feel his indigo eyes watching her like the sun, warm and dry and bright.

Stillness and agony so deep, Lauren could barely see them behind the layers and layers of defences he had erected. But she could see it. More, she could feel it calling to her own pain.

Somehow, now she felt he was the same as human beings, and he also has his feelings, likes, nature, and secrets, which he may be hiding from everyone, including himself.

Lauren's face was lit up warmly where she looked away from him. Trying to concentrate on something else but him. Warning bells began to ring in her ears, and those walls that she had built around her heart so painstakingly with blood, sweat, and tears were already threatening to crumble.

Lauren didn't know where this confidence came from. A minute ago, she was shy and didn't know how to respond to this man. He was tall. Enough tall that Lauren would come merely near his shoulders.

She didn't know how long they stayed like that, staring into each other's eyes. They acknowledged each other's pain because they couldn't acknowledge their own.

Elliott cleared his throat. "I don't understand you," he told her suddenly, his black-magic voice so quiet that she had to strain to hear him.

She narrowed her eyes at him, not trusting herself to speak, and

She was still deciding the best course of action when he said

"Aren't you afraid? That demon will come for you," he observed her reaction and noticed how she gasped in what looked like a slight emotion of fear.

But she retracted her expression and showed her brave side, while he knew how her breathing was working.

"Why do you save me?"