CHAPTER 312: ANCIENT LOVE-I

"Meow"

A white cat walked around a young man’s foot as he stared at the sky mindlessly. On his hand was a dagger that gleamed under the moonlight while his eyes were in a slight daze, as if he wasn’t awake yet his body had been moving on its own.

"Meow," the cat Lala cried again beside the young man but it wasn’t out of distress, it sounded as if she had been talking to the young man even though he was in a daze and the young man, in return, whispered something underneath his breath, clearly muttering something or perhaps answering Lala’s cries.

Suddenly the door behind him opened and a woman stepped inside in a rush, "Noah? Noah!"

Noah, the young man, slowly turned his head over to the woman who had rushed in. His red eyes and his expression that had been in a daze slowly regained its composure, and he blinked, "Mother?"

The woman who had rushed in was Mrs. Folliner. A vampire from a noble household who was known to have a young son in his teenage year and a husband who would usually be away to foreign kingdoms.

Mrs Folliner brushed up her blonde hair to the back of her head and walked toward Noah, grabbing his hand in a rush and tugging him away from the balcony and toward the door of his room, "What have you been doing? Haven’t I been calling you all this time? All the servants have knocked on your door, hoping that you would answer and you-"

"I’m sorry mother, I didn’t hear it," answered Noah calmly with a polite smile.

Mrs Folliner sighed with a shake of her head, "A lot of people had told me that you began to appear calmer after going to the human hunt. Was it so traumatizing to you? What did you see, dear?"

Noah stared at the hands that had held him and the white cat that had came beside his feet with such ease. But Mrs Folliner didn’t care that her son had suddenly picked up a cat from the side of the street, at least that was what the story that Noah had told her. It was only that... ever since the human hunt, her son had been behaving quite strangely.

He was always a polite young man with little to no words but these days he always appeared in daze, staring at a far as if he was lost at his own thoughts, haunted by something he couldn’t truly explained.

His usual cheerful attitude toward going to parties and studying had also diminish and these days, he had been questioning about their family bloodline which Mrs Folliner didn’t quite understand as it’s something connected to her husband, not her.

"Noah," Mrs Folliner then said, "Do you know about your cousin...?"

"Cousin Calis?" Noah asked with a tilt of his head, "Didn’t she went to the neighboring kingdom and hadn’t came back for years?"

"That’s true," Mrs. Folliner murmured, her voice barely above a breath as they stopped before a door. Her hand hovered over the knob, hesitating. She hadn’t yet found the courage to turn it. Instead, she looked at Noah. "Noah... do you think the Crown Prince, Cassius, is someone we can trust?"

Noah studied his mother’s face for a moment, then shook his head. "He’s volatile. Like walking dynamite, he could explode at any moment."

A flicker of pain crossed Mrs. Folliner’s features. "So you feel it too..." she whispered. "I tried. I truly did. After what he did to your older cousin, punishing him, executing him... I despised him. But I told myself we had no choice. He’s the Crown Prince. What could we do?"

She bit her lip, drawing it between her teeth before letting out a quiet, bitter sigh. Her voice dropped even lower, though she knew the hallway was deserted and the servants had been sent away by her own orders.

"Our family has made a decision," she said.

Noah’s eyes didn’t leave her reddened ones as she reached out and held his hand.

"I want us, vampires, to survive," she whispered. "But we won’t if this kingdom remains under Cassius’s rule. Rumors say he’s been siding with humans in secret. And you know as well as I do... humans can’t be trusted."

"Indeed," he answered and his mother smiled.

"I’m glad that I have such a thoughtful young man as a son," and as she stepped away, she opened the dark room and whispered, "That is why Noah, I have decided to help Queen Morgana."

Noah who had a keen hearing could hear the soft cries coming from inside the door and as his mother lit all the candles in the room, he found a small wooden crib left alone in the cold room without anone to guard.

He didn’t have to come close to know that the little soul lying there was still a baby over a few days old, crying for someone to care for her, alone and perhaps lonely rather than uncomfortable.

He stepped closer, staring at the baby with a frown.

"This is...?"

"Queen Morgana’s daughter," Mrs Folliner answered and at that Noah turned his head around swiftly toward her.

"But how? Isn’t she supposed to be dead?" Noah asked his mother for an explanation, hoping for her to answer but the only thing she did in return was just stare at him for a long time.

"The baby has to die," answered Mrs Folliner, "But in the end, she is still a princess. The Queen told me to get rid of it but I couldn’t bring myself to rid of a baby. So now she will be an addition to our family and I hope you won’t tell anyone about this, Noah."

The cat Lala stared with its bright green eyes from under the baby’s crib. It was studying the two vampires, the young man who it could control and the mother who didn’t seem to be aware that all this time she wasn’t really talking to her son, rather to a person who resemble her son that it had controlled.

Then the cat turned to the baby and the smile on its lips turned wicked.

"Of course, I won’t mother."