Knights v Hunters: The Choice

Rafe felt Eden before he even saw her; felt her nervousness as she approached the old abandoned well at the edge of the Hunter compound. Please don’t do this, he silently begged. As he heard her finally stop, he turned around, the huge smile on his face masking his fear; he saw that her eyes were red, as if she had spent hours crying. Eden didn’t cry; she fought, she saved, she roared and she kicked ass, but she didn’t cry.

When she had asked him to meet her here, he knew that she had made a decision about their future. He hadn’t slept much last night either and had been distracted the whole day, such that Caleb had even told him to go for a walk. He hadn’t told Caleb that he would be meeting Eden at sunset in any case and he was trying very hard to block his brother from reading his mind once again. He needed to focus now, only on Eden, on them and their future together. If they still had one.

Eden looked directly into Rafe’s eyes and her heart seemed to skip several beats; once again, he had opened himself up to her such that she could almost look into his soul. For the first time in days and what would probably be the last time in years, she felt herself settle. Without a doubt, she loved him. She would love him for an eternity; no one would ever come close. They had shared something so pure, so innocent and yet so compelling, that she knew she would never experience that again in her entire life. As Rafe walked towards her, she felt herself stiffen.

Despite the reluctance he read off her body, Rafe gathered Eden in his arms and eventually, she wrapped her arms around him. A perfect fit. “So, you wanted to see me,” Rafe said after a moment.

Eden looked into his eyes, gently touched his face as if trying to imprint it on her mind and then withdrew from the protection of his arms. “Yes, I needed to see you. As you know, tomorrow is the day I have to give my father and the Council my decision. My year of the Choice ends at midnight and for the past few days I’ve been given the space to think carefully about it and I’ve eventually come to a decision.”

Rafe felt himself crumbling within. Eden, his love, was hurting and he had the feeling that she was struggling with what she was about to say. His reading abilities weren’t helping him now. She had deliberately blocked him out the past few days, which surprised him, since Knights couldn’t block Hunters.

“Please just listen to what I have to say, because I don’t think that I have the courage to continue if you interrupt me now. Promise me that,” she begged. Rafe silently nodded.

“Until I met you, I was cruising through the year of the Choice. I mean, what did I have to think about? I might have had some misgivings about the Normals we tried to rescue, but other than that, I had no reason to doubt that the Knights were following a righteous path. Until Harry Tyler that is. Until I met you and Caleb and the rest of the Hunter pack, I didn’t know any other life; didn’t know that I could logically make any other choice.”

Eden turned away from Rafe, her shoulders slumped, as her hair caught the last rays of the setting sun. “Until I met you, I didn’t even know that such great love could be possible for me; that I would be willing to risk everything to be with you; that I would go against Knight covenants when it came to how we dealt with condemned Normals. I didn’t know that I would yearn for the moments we could be together, all stolen; that I would wake up every morning, excited and glowing because I knew that you loved me.” She turned to Rafe again, her eyes brimming.

“You have no idea how much you mean to me, but I have to make an impossible choice. If I choose to stay with the Knights, then I lose the love of my life, my soul mate, the partner of my heart, the person I would like to spend an eternity with, raising our family and growing old together. I wouldn’t be able to see you again. If I choose you, I would have to live as a Normal, away from my family, my brothers and sister. I would have no memory of them or even you for that matter. I would never, ever see them again. And you, well, the Hunters don’t interact with most Normals so how would we ever be together?” Rafe made to interrupt her, but Eden held out her hand, stopping him.

“Rafe, either way, I lose. But if I choose you, I lose all of me, my entire identity. Will I still be the woman you fell in love with? We’re too young, Rafe. We haven’t lived enough yet to know what we would die for,” Eden continued. I would die for you, Rafe thought.

“This is the most difficult decision I have had to make, knowing full well what it means for me, for us. Rafe, I have to let you go,” Eden cried. Rafe stood there, his eyes now brimming, knowing that she didn’t want him to hold her, that she wanted to say what she came to say and then leave.

“I will never love anyone the way I love you. I will never let them see my soul the way I let you, but I can’t walk away from my family. I can’t live as a Normal, Rafe. My family means everything to me. My leaving would break them. My father will lose the respect of the Council and nothing would be the same again with the Knights. I have no choice but to choose them!”

“I never asked you to leave them, Eden. I asked you to stay with me. The Hunters would never banish us to live amongst the Normals. My parents would never do that to us!” Rafe exclaimed angrily.

“Don’t you understand that it is the same thing? I wouldn’t be allowed to leave Knight town and be with you unless I became a Normal! Those are the rules. Please, let me go Rafe. I don’t want to go with you being bitter.”

“I’m not bitter, just disappointed,” Rafe replied, allowing his tears to fall freely. “You chose your family, with their threat of banishment over a lifetime of lasting happiness. I would never have asked you to make that choice. Just remember, they did.” With those last words, Rafe walked away, an ache developing inside him that he knew would never go away. He could not fight for her; she didn’t want that. He felt her close herself off from him and knew that he had lost her. There was no going back, he thought, as his heart seemed to break into a million little pieces.

Eden watched her love walk away, his back stiffened in anger and maybe some pride. His final words wrung true, but she knew that in the end, she really hadn’t had a choice. It had already been made for her from the day that she was born. Rafe, with all his love and the promise of a lifetime of happiness, could not change that.

She walked away, taking one final look around her, knowing that a light had gone out inside her. She was a Knight and she would die as one. Alone.