CHAPTER TWO

A Lost Soul

 Sehun silently slipped back into his room, feeling the contours of the timber under his bare feet so that he could move along them to prevent it from squeaking under his weight. From the door he could make out her sleeping figure – Soojung was sleeping on her side. He sighed and mentally made a note to tell her not to come into his room without his permission.

Even so, he was careful not to wake her, returning to his side of the bed with a strained walk before he slipped beneath the greying sheets. He cast a glance at Soojung and remembered how they had crossed paths with her sister, Sooyoung – the chambermaid. He wondered if he should have turned Soojung; if he should have saved her in return for Sooyoung’s services.

Soojung was indeed beautiful and the fact that she was a vampire made them all the more compatible but there was more beyond beauty that he sought after. Sehun didn't wish for another relationship when the scars from his last still had not yet healed. What troubled him though, was that he felt Soojung's feelings grow for him – they could all see it but he never made an attempt to confront her about it. He didn't see the need to hurt the girl's feelings and he knew his own limits very well. 

He stared up at the ceiling, casting his thoughts of Soojung away, feeling the world around him fade into black… until there was just her. Song Jaehwa. 

There were many things that Sehun often regretted in his three hundred years of living but he had never been afraid of failure. He was a firm believer in taking risks and perhaps, that’s how he came to earn the title of prodigal son alongside his brothers. Yet nowadays, he felt himself morph into a more conservative man because he had come to realise how afraid he was of the world – how afraid he was of loss. He had weaknesses too but he had never really known them before she left.

Outwardly, he’d act like he was too preoccupied with their current situation to care about her – that he was a cold and uncaring person but inside, it was all he could think about. The mistakes he had made; the pain he endured; how much he despised her and yet simultaneously missed her; the extent he mourned her departure – those were all the things that haunted him. He would shudder, frightened to admit that he had been in love with her.

It was only then, as he travelled through his memories of her, that he realised how little time he had spent with her, how limited his memories were of her and how much he had neglected her. He regretted it all – he regretted how he had let her slip right through his fingers and now that they finally had a lead to her, he didn’t know how to react. He had spent fifty years conjuring up an apology but nothing seemed sufficient and he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do anymore. He just wanted her.

When they had first met, everything had been an act. Every smile, every kiss, every embrace he offered her was nothing but good acting to appease his people, his kingdom and his parents. He never knew if she had been completely truthful since day one but he surely hadn’t been. He had only been a young Vampire then, newly crowned as the prodigal son and all he knew was that he was not fatally attracted to this human. There had been no spark, no fireworks and when he had first seen her petite figure drowning in a pale yellow summer dress; he had certainly felt no lust. She was just a product of exchange – the key to his freedom.

For the longest time, he hadn’t known why his father had chosen the youngest son to be wed first but something told him that the soft glimmer in his old man’s eyes when he had set eyes on Jaehwa meant this marriage was not going to end well for him. Something about the royal family’s unconditional acceptance of her made him nervous but he made nothing of it – he was always too proud to believe that he would ever fall for someone like her.

He