Novel Excerpt ~ Forbidden Love

I raced down to Faroaks forest hoping to catch Jonas before he left for home – wherever that may have been. I was lucky, as I ran I could see him walking at a relatively slow pace in the distance.

“Jonas,” I cried breathless as I pushed my speed to the limit. There was no one around so hopefully there was no one to see me dart through the forest leaving only a blur between the trees. “Jonas, please wait up!”

He turned around briefly, and then continued walking. I slowed down as I reached his side, grabbing his arm spinning him around.

“Rosella, I can’t do this, we can’t do this, you know we can’t, it’s just too hard,” he said to me, not able to meet my eyes.
I wanted to hold him so tight and tell him that everything was going to be ok, but in theory it wasn’t. We were effectively from two completely different worlds.

“Jonas, I love you,” I cried in earnest. “I have never met anyone like you before. You can’t leave me!”

“Rosella, I have killed people. I am sure your father has filled you in on all of the details.”

As if on cue the sky turned dark and slowly, the much anticipated rain descended upon us. I shivered as the rain soaked my clothes, raindrops balanced on my eyes lids as I blinked them away several times. “Jonas, I don’t care,” I almost gargled, as rain poured into my mouth as I spoke. “If you could just try and speak to Ricardo...”

Jonas laughed and flicked his head back running his hand through his hair. Rain sprayed all around as he did so. “Were you not in the kitchen just?” he cried exasperated. “You saw what he was going to do to me if I hadn’t of left when I did.” He yanked his arm away from me in frustration and turned to walk away.

Again I ran to his side. “Jonas you can’t go.” I lifted up my arms and tried to wrap them around his neck to show him just how much I needed him. “Meeting you was like finding a missing piece of my life.”

With one swift move, Jonas grabbed both of my wrist and held them up in front of him. His grip was painful, I was suddenly frightened of him, something I never thought would happen. The expression on his face scared me. It was almost clear how much of an Avelonian he was. His eyes darkened and he clenched his jaw tight. His grey skin faded several shades and I could see the anger of the situation taking over him. As I tried to wriggle out of his grip, he held my wrists tighter.

“Jonas, you are hurting me,” I cried, unable to understand why he was doing this to me – deliberately trying to cause me pain.

“See what I mean,” Jonas growled at me. “Don’t you see Rosella? If I stay, I will only hurt you in more ways than I dare to even think about.”

My eyes flickered involuntary from the rain that was now falling harder. It was almost complete darkness as the clouds gathered together in the thunderous gloomy sky. “But if you go, I might as well be dead.”

He ignored the harshness of my words. Obviously he didn’t quite understand that I surely couldn’t go on without him. I had been waiting so long for someone to come along and change my world. I wasn’t about to let him go without a fight. “Don’t you realise how long I have waited for you?” I cried.

He screwed his face up in a painful scowl. I wasn’t sure if it was the pain of having to leave me or the pain that he had just realised that he had been leading me on all along.
He took a deep breath. “Rosella, I have to go,” he said, finally releasing me from his grasp. He walked away.

“Jonas, please don’t do this,” I wept, chasing him through the forest. I made another attempt to grab his arm and try to make him see sense. Within seconds he threw me to the ground with such force, I skidded backwards through the gravel sending a cloud of dust into the murky air.

“Rosella, are you OK?” shouted a voice, somewhere beyond the trees.

I jerked my head up, trying to see where it was coming from. Jonas stopped also. Out of the shadows I could make out a figure racing towards me. It was Adrian Torres.

“Hey!” he shouted. I assumed it was directed at Jonas. Adrian ran over to me and helped me to my feet, all the while glowering at Jonas. “Is that any way to treat your girlfriend?”

Jonas turned and began walking towards us. As he approached I could see the differences in size and height between the two of them and urged Adrian to back off. “Addy, please just leave him, he isn’t my boyfriend anymore.”

It was no use. Adrian had already taken a step towards Jonas. With his shoulders square, he puffed out his chest, ready to take whatever Jonas had to throw at him, hopeful he could get in a few of his own.

Jonas smirked. “You think that you can take on me little man?” he said with a hint of sarcasm in his low gruff voice. “Well, bring it on friend.”

“You’re no friend of mine, and I think Rosella would be better off if you just went back to wherever you came from,” said Adrian, trying to make his words sound strong and bold. I could see in his stance just how scared he was of Jonas, but I guess he thought that by standing up to Jonas, it would somehow win points with me.

That wasn’t how I saw it.

He was crazy if he thought squaring up to a vampire was clever, although he didn’t know that. He soon would though.

With one quick swoop he had his hand tightly compressed around Adrian’s throat. “You wana’ take me on now friend?” sneered Jonas, lifting Adrian into the air until his eyes were level with his own. Adrian’s feet thrashed about, around two feet from the ground. I could hear the compressed chokes escaping from Adrian’s mouth and the loud grunts being forced from his nose.

“Jonas, put him down. Now!” I screamed at him. “He has done nothing wrong.”

Jonas glanced at me and then looked back at Adrian. “Are you in love with Rosella?” he asked, still with a look of malevolence etched across his face. “Well, do you?” He shook Adrian high in the air.
“Let him go Jonas!”

Without taking his eyes off me, he threw Adrian to the ground. Adrian gasped for breath, choking as he tried to stand. I ran over to him. “Addy are you ok, has he hurt you?” A bit of a superfluous question, I thought as the words left my mouth. All he could do was nod, gasping for air.

I whipped my head up and glared at Jonas, my blood pulsating, anger overtaking any feelings of love that I had for him.

“See what I mean?” was all that he could say before he ran and disappeared into the darkness.

My heart swelled quickly and the feelings of worship came flooding back now he had gone. He had only done this to Adrian to show me what he was capable of doing if he got too close and stayed amongst humans. But how could I go on without him? I had to figure something out. I couldn’t just let him walk into my life and then walk straight back out of it like this. I had to find a way for us to be together without hurting anybody.