"Wh-what?" My voice seems to wobble and I can't seem to say the words properly. My mind goes into a fuse, erasing any coherent thoughts I'd been forming.

"Didn't that little brain of yours understand what I said?" Lily hisses with a chilly tone, "I. Won't. Repeat. Myself." She spits and turns on her heels, before disappearing through the door. Drake sighs and casts a nervous glance towards me, before taking the same direction as his beloved. It was supposed to be an apologetic glance, but I should have been the one to apologise.

What have you done Emma?

Alice remains the only one in the room with me. Unable to hold it back, I feel my knees weaken and fall to the ground, only caught seconds before by Alice's firm arms. She whispers soothing words to me and caresses my blonde hair, but none of those words that are supposed to be comforting reach me properly, and I end up enclosing into myself further and further.

Oh no, what have I done, what have I done...?

"Chase!" Alice yells, and something deep inside of me seems to break. My brain can't function, my lungs don't fill with air, my skin is burning with something so much worse than fire. Almost unintentionally, I bring my fingers and brush them across the mark left by his teeth on the side of my neck, the imprint he put there to claim me. His declaration of undying love for me. But I rejected that love. I scream at the top of my lungs as my body shakes with excruciating torture and I hear Alice's distant voice calling for help.

"Yo Chase! Get your sorry ass over here!" Caleb yells back and brings in a half-dazed Chase who looks around with difficulty. When his eyes land on Alice and my twitching figure, they darken and he crouches down besides us. He looks like he's so, so tired.

"Chase? What's happening with her?" Alice looks at him with pleading eyes and he shakes his head, looking to the ground. I don't know how I manage to see all of this, but my senses seem to capture everything. Maybe it's the end, maybe I'm using up everything inside of me and using it for a last purpose. I scream again and again and feel Alice flattening down my hair as she whispers soft words to me, but I can hear her every word overcome by a gulp and I imagine her biting back the tears.

"Jay is her other half Alice. She rejected him, she rejected his love, so she rejected the second part of herself. She's lost herself and she's lost him with it. Alice look at me..." He takes hold of her chin and forces her head up to his, starring into her tear-filled blue eyes.

"We need to stop it, we need to... There has to be something that we can do! Please! There has to be-"

-Alice..." Chase cuts her off, "He needs to accept her back. It's only happened rarely but it's not impossible. You can only hope for that to happen..."

-But it's Jay! He loves her! He would do that to save her... wouldn't he?" She ads, uncertainty coating her trembling voice.

"He tried to kill himself Al. Do you have any idea of how painful it is to be rejected by ones beloved? Ones soulmate, ones other half? I've heard about it, and no vampire hardly ever survives that rejection. You wouldn't understand."

A new scream fills the air as something inside of me twists and my insides break into a million pieces. It's my own voices, filling the room with bloodcurdling sounds as something shatters inside of me.

"Chase! Look at her eye! God her eye! What's happening!?" Alice exclaims with wild panic. I can feel something pulsing deep inside of my brain, like wires being cut and replaced with different ones, leaving one half of brain feeling disoriented. Her plea for answers is met with a painfully long silence, only broken with my powerful thrashing around in my sister's shaking arms and incoherent words escaping my lips.

"I -I don't know..." Chase whispers finally, seemingly confused. Then some clarity seems to take a hold of him and out of the corner of my darkening peripheral vision I watch as he straightens. "Hunter!" He then shouts loudly, too loud for my throbbing head to cope with. Another ear-splitting scream escapes me as the pain intensifies, and Alice sobs harder.

"What's going-" The familiarly cold voice booms around the room, but suddenly stops at the sight of me, lying in an awkward angle in my sister's lap, still shaking from currents of uncontrollable electricity-seeming shots coursing through me painfully.

'She rejected Jay..." Chase fills in, and I can see Caleb's worried expression as he joins Hunter's side, the room feeling smaller and smaller as more and more people crowd around me. I feel the air pressing down on my chest as I struggle to breathe, watching in a dizzy trance as faces swarm before my half-closed eyes.

"Damn... what's wrong with her ey-" Caleb's cut off by another agonizing scream coming deep from inside of me and his mouth falls open. "Well... I don't kn-" Another one resonates around the room. "Damn woman! You got some serious vocals going on there!" I would have laughed if my condition hadn't been so critical.

"Caleb, enough." Hunter snaps, and Caleb immediately straightens, looking at me with compassionate worry.

"Hunter? Jay nearly died..." Chase adds suddenly, and a horrible silence filled the room, only broken by Alice's uncontrollable sobs. Even I try to control my own incomprehensible sounds and words. I can hear Chase rubbing Alice's back carefully and whispering carefully thought reassuring words in her ear as the tears continue to fall silently from her eyes.

"What?" Hunter says with a scary calmness, focusing burning eyes on me. Through my blurry vision on the ground I can see all of his boiling hatred slowly beginning to form in near-crimson coloured eyes.

"And now she's dying as well because of the bond that's beginning to break." Chase finishes. Panic swarms through me as one part of my eyesight completely vanishes, incomprehensible forms and colours swimming around and that eye's crevasses. I can only see through one single eye now, and I watch Hunter's scar electrifying, as well as his black eyes drowning into a newfound gradual scarlet colour.

"Where is Jay now?" Hunter asks in a controlled by icy voice, nothing unusual for him. But this time there's layers and layers of rage and hatred boiling underneath that surface, hatred surely directed to me. After all, I'm the cause that Jay nearly died.

Jay.

My heart constricts again at the thought of who is seemingly my other half, and other half I rejected so stupidly. And now I'm suffering those agonising consequences. I don't know what's happening to me though, not physically, other than the words Chase spoke about me dying.

"Lily's with him. He's still unconscious." Chase fills in in a measured voice.

"What's happening to him then?" Hunter prods, and I can see him crossing his arms defiantly, muscles bulging underneath his shirt.

"Lily said that he isn't in the best condition he's ever been, but that he will recover. Hunter, we have to do someth-"

-Shut up." He snaps. I imagine myself laughing at his reaction but it wouldn't be proper. Is there something that I'm missing? Why doesn't he just kill me and get it over with for hurting Jay? He's Jay's Maker after all, wouldn't that make him like family to him? Why am I worth saving in his eyes? "Lily." Hunter then bellows, and I can feel his ice cold fingers brush over my face in seconds. That simple action warms my insides for some unknown reason, and I pull comfort from it. I hadn't even heard Lily entering the room, but now I can clearly feel her heavy loathing for me sizzling like a poisonous snake across to me. "Save her."

"Why?" Lilly hisses, and I know for sure then that she hates me more than anything for being the cause of the near-loss of her brother. A new emotion swirls inside of me at the thought of Jay's perfect features, his angelic but hidden personality that has me hypnotised since the first day. I don't want to lose him, but it's already done. What about my parents? They were killed by their kind. I should feel repugnated, Alice should, but instead I only feel love. So why did I reject my other half? Why did I act so blindly in that moment? What held me back?

There's an undistinguishable clatter of voices above me and suddenly a sharp one cuts through my ears. "I'm only doing it for Jay. Not for you and especially not her." Lilly whispers unfeelingly, and the room swirls before darkening around me.

...°...

Jay? Jay? "Jay...? Please..." My voice carries on but no one reaches for it, so I drown it back to my own thoughts.

"Don't." My mind stops. What was that? That beautiful voice that I've been dreaming about, the one that I've been thinking about but never remembering. I don't know how many hours, days even years have gone past after my black out but it doesn't sound well. I force one eye open because the other one seems stuck.

"Jay!" I try to sit up but he pushes me back down in the hard bed, wrapping me into another warm sheet. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know... I had no idea how to-"

"Sshh..." He places a cold finger on my dry lips but they couldn't have felt any warmer. Heat radiates from him and I want to hold him so badly, I want to feel that warmth sink into my own body and fill it with that rare feeling of protection. "I love you Em. Never forget that."

I'm lost for words. How can he say that? I've rejected him after all. I've destroyed that part that meant the most to him, the only thing keeping him alive and moving, but he still has the courage to tell me that.

"Why? I'm disgusting. I shouldn't deserve to be alive... I don't even know why I'm alive, I-"

-Emma." His voice hints a sense of warning and I close my mouth, afraid of what outburst might start from me speaking my mind. "I have to. I can't live without you. That's why I didn't die." I can't think of anything to say so I don't. My mind is buzzing with questions. "I didn't kill your parents, nor did any of us here." I look at him in surprise so he speaks on. "You will find out about their deaths more soon but it's not my place to tell that story. I'm sorry..."

I shake my head and cup his face in my frail hands that don't seem steady enough to do anything else but that, and bring him in, so that we are only inches apart. "I shouldn't have judged you. It's my fault, I still don't understand what happened to me right then." I lean in closer but suddenly he backs away, looking at me with an unknown emotion. Confusion swirls inside of me.

"Emma, you need to see something..." Jay takes my pale hands and lifts me up from the bed, guiding me over to a mirror by the dresser. I look at him in confusion but he gives me a slight smile before guiding my chin up towards it, so that I'm looking into my own reflection.

Blond hair that falls down above my waist, pale skin that has tightened over the days that I've been dying, dry lips, and a blue eye. One crystal sparkling blue eye. I reach up my shaking hand and pull back the bandage that covers my other one hesitantly. The bandage falls to the ground and I nearly join it, only catched by Jay at the last minute who sucks in his breath. Starring back at me is a perfect, glowing golden eye.

...°...

So how did you like that? I uploaded today to make up for the shortest chapter yesterday as promised :-) I'm finishing of the last things tomorrow before leaving for my second vacation so you may or may not see an update coming anytime soon. It will definitely be up before next Friday though! Love you so so much and thank you for the support!

-Sophia xoxo