IMPORTANT NOTE, PLEASE READ: Hello lovely readers. Please be aware that if you're coming here from the published version of Belle Morte, then there will be some discrepancies in the early chapters of this book. That's because this is the original Wattpad version of Revelations, which follows on directly from the original Wattpad version of Belle Morte. The published version of Belle Morte has a slightly different ending, and all of the discrepancies in this version of Revelations will be cleared up when the published version is released on Wattpad and in bookstores next year :)

Renie

I drifted in darkness, blind and deaf to anything but the constant, gnawing ache in my stomach. Sometimes, something thick and sweet would slide down my throat and the hunger pangs would fade, but it was never for long. That terrible hunger always surged back, like fire.

Occasionally, there were odd snatches of awareness: the sensation of cool hands touching my face, the faint murmurs of a male voice. In some place at the back of my fevered brain, I was aware that I knew that voice, loved that voice. But then the hunger roared back, and everything was lost.

It could have been days, months, or even years before I finally cracked my eyes open. A corniced ceiling took shape above me, bright spots of light coalescing into a crystal chandelier.

Pieces of memory filtered back into my battered brain.

Belle Morte.

I was still in the mansion, though not in my own room. The bed was a huge four-poster affair, covered in black satin sheets and covers, and the walls were indigo-blue, much darker than the pale gold flocked wallpaper of the bedroom I shared with Roux. Light from the chandeliers winked off a pair of swords hanging on the wall.

Wait, I knew this room – this was Edmond's bedroom.

Slowly, I sat up. My stomach still clenched and knotted, but for now I was able to ignore it. How long had I been here?

"What happened?" I whispered. My lungs felt rusty and my lips were dry.

Movement flashed in the corner of my eye, and I turned to see Edmond standing by the side of the bed. He looked like a dark angel, his hair black as coal against the ivory perfection of his skin, his eyes glittering like diamonds. The breath would have caught in my lungs at the sheer beauty of him...but I no longer had breath.

I put a hand to my throat and then pressed my palm to my chest. No heartbeat. More memories rushed back, making me reel – June's escape, the mysterious attack on Belle Morte, my final attempt to help my sister that had ended with her plunging a knife into my chest. I lifted my eyes to Edmond's.

"You're in my room in the north wing," he said. There was something guarded in his voice, and he didn't make any attempt to get closer to me. Less than a foot separated us, but it felt like a chasm, like the two of us were standing miles apart and neither of us quite knew how to get closer to each other.

"Why am I here?" I whispered.

Why wasn't I back in my bedroom with Roux?

Edmond's expression didn't change, but his eyes gleamed with sadness. "Because you're a vampire, Renie. You can't live in the donors' wing anymore."

Because you're a vampire.

Because you're a vampire.

His words echoed through my head. When I remembered what June had done to me, I remembered what Edmond had done to save me – drained the blood from my body and fed me his own so that I would rise again as a vampire.

I was dead.

I had died out there in the snow.

All I had wanted when I came to Belle Morte was to find June and take her away from this world. Instead, we had both died and come back to a life that neither of us would ever have asked for.

I was a vampire now, and I could barely begin to comprehend what the future held. Any dreams I might have harboured were shattered. I would never grow older than my eighteen years. I would never forge a career. I would never have children.

The pain of all those lost maybes caught in my throat, making my eyes burn, but no tears fell.

Vampires couldn't cry – almost never, anyway.

I couldn't move my palm from my chest, vainly waiting to feel the thump of a heart that would never beat again. This would be my life for all eternity. I would hear the heartbeats of other people, but never my own. It would be many, many years before I built up enough UV resistance to spend any real time in the sun. All the things I had taken for granted as a human were lost to me.

Probing my teeth with my tongue, I recoiled from the sharp points of fangs. The first time I had opened my eyes as a vampire, back when I was still cradled in Edmond's arms in a snow-choked garden, I had been aware of the changes but it had been in an abstract sort of way.

Now the reality of the situation was hitting me over and over again, a hammer to the brain.

I had fangs.

I was a vampire.

For the rest of my life, I would have to rely on human blood to survive.

I had become the very thing I once feared.

"What have you done to me?" I whispered.

Edmond didn't say anything, but a shadow of pain winged across his perfect face.

I clutched my stomach, nausea curdling inside me. That sweet liquid I remembered drinking when I was lost in the darkness, the only thing that had quelled the hunger pangs – that had been blood. I had been drinking human blood.

Was it from someone I knew?

I felt sick.

"I'm a monster," I whispered.

I scooted away from Edmond, my feet tangling in the satin covers. Still he didn't move, didn't speak, but the look in his eyes was wretched, like something inside him was cracking in two.

Edmond had asked my permission and I had freely given it – I knew that – but my brain was struggling to assimilate the monumental change that had come over my body. I was scared and angry, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself. It wasn't fair to take it out on Edmond, but I didn't know what else to do. Maybe I was the one who had said yes, but he was the one who had taken away my old life and turned me into something I had only recently begun to trust.

I blamed him because, however horrible and unfair it was, in that moment I needed to blame someone.

An aching wave of hunger rolled over me, and I doubled over with a groan. My fangs pricked my lower lips and my gums throbbed with pain.

Ignoring my harsh words, Edmond climbed onto the bed behind me, holding my wrists and pulling me against his hard chest.

"Hush, mon ange," he murmured. "The hunger will pass. You are almost there."

Terror cut through the hunger as the events that had led to this point flashed in front of my eyes. June had become a rabid, a terrifying, blood-maddened monster that had been kept chained in the west wing until someone had let her loose upon the inhabitants of Belle Morte. A lot of people – both vampire and human – had lost their lives.

What if that's what I became?

There was no way to know or predict why some people became rabids when they were turned. Something about the process that turned them into a vampire didn't gel with their physiology – it broke something inside them as it changed them. The bloodlust that all vampires carried inside them became overwhelming, the worst kind of addiction.

I hadn't immediately turned into a rabid, but that didn't mean I still couldn't. It didn't mean that the next time I woke up, it wouldn't be with the unbelievable urge to butcher anything close to me. It could take years for some vampires to lose themselves to the bloodlust and become rabid.

I'd rather have stayed dead than become what June was.

The room dimmed around me as the hunger took hold, and I sank back into blackness. My last thought was that, despite what I'd said to Edmond, I was glad he was here, holding me.

Edmond

This was never what he would have chosen for Renie. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching her toss and turn in a restless sleep, and wished there could have been some other way to save her.

Renie had once asked him that if he could go back in time, knowing all the terrible times that he would go through as a vampire, would he still choose this life, and he had told her that he would. But that didn't mean he would choose it for her.

The bitter irony of it was that, from one point of view, this turn of events had given him what he desperately wanted – Renie to stay with him.

As a vampire, she would never be able to return to a normal life. She would never grow old and die while he was helpless to do anything but watch. There was a chance that they could actually be together.

But none of that meant anything if Renie wasn't happy with the choice she had made. Edmond had chosen to become a vampire because it offered him a way out of the hell his short life had been up until that point. Renie's life hadn't been like that. Her future, unlike his, had shimmered with possibilities. And Edmond had taken them away.

He stroked the tangled mess of her hair. She looked different now she was a vampire; her skin was paler and smoother, the ivory complexion bringing out the rich auburn colour of her hair. In some ways this made her more beautiful than she had been in life, but she no longer glowed the same way she had when she was human. From the moment he'd first seen her, there had been something about the girl that drew Edmond's eye, as if she literally shone with life. She would never shine like that again.

Not that that mattered to Edmond. He could see the way her heart and soul shone, and that was more important than the way she looked. She would always glow to him.

The door opened and Ysanne swept in, Ludovic tentatively following. The Lady of Belle Morte swept an eye over Renie's sleeping form, but her expression didn't change.

"How is she doing?" she asked.

"Better," Edmond replied, withdrawing his hand from Renie's hair.

Ysanne knew about his feelings for Renie now, but he had lied to her about it and Ysanne wouldn't forget that. Theirs was a friendship forged through the ages, bonds of love and loss irrevocably binding them together. Edmond had hated to lie to the person who had known him longer than any other, but his priority had been to protect Renie.

Vampires and donors were not allowed to have relationships with each other – that was one of Belle Morte's most prominent rules – but the sparks Edmond and Renie had felt for each other had burned too brightly for either of them to ignore. To save them both from punishment, Edmond had lied to his oldest friend. Ysanne may act like she was made of marble, and even now her face remained totally expressionless, but Edmond knew that his betrayal had cut her.

Overtly showing his feelings for Renie felt like he was flaunting his lies in Ysanne's face.

"There are no signs of her turning rabid?" Ysanne questioned.

"Non." He looked back at Renie as she shifted and murmured in sleep. "She will be alright."

"You believe she is through the worst of it?"

Edmond hesitated. Turning a human without permission from the Council – the collective Lords and Ladies of the British and Irish vampire Houses – was a serious crime, one that nobody had committed during the entire ten years since vampires had revealed themselves to the world. He had already been punished once for springing to Renie's defence against another vampire. He couldn't imagine what would happen to him now.

Ysanne should have punished him immediately, but she had stayed her hand so he could help Renie through the turn. It was not a reprieve that anyone else would have granted. But even Ysanne could not hold off his punishment forever.

Belle Morte had been attacked and no one knew why.

June had been killed, turned, and released.

Edmond's illegal turning of Renie was not the only shadow hanging over the mansion.

He could tell Ysanne that he needed more time with Renie, but it would be a lie. Renie was through the worst of the turn. The next time she awoke, it would be as a true vampire. Edmond had played his part by helping her through the transition, and he would not disrespect the time Ysanne had allowed him by trying to take more. He would not lie to her again.

With a heavy heart, he replied, "I do."

Ysanne slowly nodded. "Then it is time."

"I know."

Her icy mask slipped for a fraction of a second. "Vieil ami, you know I do not have any choice in this matter."

Edmond climbed off the bed and approached her – the woman who had first opened his eyes to the vampire world, the woman he had loved as both friend and partner. "I would never blame you," he said. "The choice was mine and I made it. I would make it again, regardless of the consequences."

Ysanne kissed his cheek, a soft brush of her lips, and then the mask was back in place, the pressures of being leader of Belle Morte superseding the friendship that had bound her and Edmond together for so long.

"It is time to go," she said.

Edmond looked back at Renie, memorising every line of her face, every strand of her hair. He remembered the way her lips curved when she smiled at him, the way her eyes could flash with anger or glitter with laughter. He committed every part of her to memory because he did not know when he would see her again.

Ysanne left the room and Edmond followed her, stopped only when Ludovic put his hand on Edmond's shoulder.

"I will take care of her," he said.

Edmond laid his hand on Ludovic's. "Thank you."

With one last look back at the girl who had stolen his ancient heart, Edmond left to pay the price for saving her.

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