A Fate Foretold (formerly: A World Gone Mad)

A Fate Foretold 25

Dedication to SweetestHeart for enthusiastically supporting this story from the very beginning :)    

It's strange to think this is the final chapter... but enjoy!      

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           Christian knocked briefly on Ally’s door before opening the door and walking in. He froze when he saw her packing her belongings and stripping the bed of its dirty sheets.

            “What are you doing?” he breathed in horror.

            “I’m leaving,” Ally answered, evading Christian’s eyes.

            “No. Just - just stay here. With me. We could be together.” He sounded paralyzed with panic at the sight of her packing.

            Ally bit her lip. It was a tempting thought, put like that. But nothing was that easy. “I can’t have this conversation with you, Christian.”

            “Why not?” he demanded.

            “Think of the danger you’re putting me in, if someone were to overhear,” Ally argued back, grasping at anything that would make him leave her alone. “We can’t talk about this surrounded by others!”

            Christian stared at her for a moment before grabbing her elbow and pulling her along as he strode across the room, opened the door, and continued down the corridor.

           “Fine. You’re right.” He grabbed car keys that were lying around on a table. “We’ll go somewhere else. We’re going to the cabin down south!” Christian bellowed to the people in the kitchen and living room that they passed.

            “That’s crazy,” Ally protested.

            “Tough. We’re having this conversation,” Christian said uncompromisingly, ignoring the looks and sounds of confusion from the other members of the pack unit and wrenching open the front door.

            He firmly saw Ally into the passenger seat of the car before going around to the driver’s side and determinedly igniting the engine.

            “We don’t have supplies or clothes or anything,” Ally said.

            “All the cars have a supply of a few days’ worth of freeze dried food, we’ll be fine. And if you don’t have your clothes and things, that just means you won’t be able to run away and go back to Geneva all of a sudden.”

            Ally didn’t answer that, instead she stared out the window. She didn’t mention the fact that returning home without her material possessions would not faze her in the slightest; that she kept one of her forged passports from her spy days and a generous amount of money on her at all times, in case she ever needed to flee. These were things Christian didn’t need to know.

           They had seemed to come to an unspoken agreement to drive in silence to collect their thoughts until arriving at the cabin. Ally steeled herself for a difficult conversation; she knew what she had to do, but seeing at Christian so unhappy made her want to fix it somehow.

            When they arrived at the cabin, they didn’t bother going through the rigmarole of opening up the rooms, airing, and cleaning the place. Opening some of the windows that had been boarded up was as far as they were prepared to go, especially in the early evening time.

           Once they were both comfortable in the living room, Christian sitting far forward on the sofa with his forearms leaning on his knees and Ally standing leaning against the fireplace, Christian broke the silence with the question that had been eating away at him for days.