The world is not what you think. Love isn't what it seems to be. Life is a cycle of magic. And Scarlet is the girl who has that magic. Once they called her a halfling, an aberration that shouldn't have existed but now others say she's special.
In a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Stripped from the lies, being forced to see, I sat in the company of my former friend, my mentor and a vampire who had so many secrets he kept it was a miracle he didn't burst from all the knowledge.
We all had our secrets it seemed. Sasha who had lived in both fear and misery for years, Oracle who knew things no ordinary person would, Michael who always played some kind of a game and had an agenda to follow and I, the girl who finally knew what laid in the path of her destiny but didn't know where she stood right this moment.
The spotlight had switched from Sasha to the vampire and he was the one who spoke now. Words that dug a steeper grave for my heart.
"He was a healer. Rumor was he could raise a man from the grave and bring him back to life and he could. I've seen him do it." The vampire was talking about my father, the one I never got to know because my mother's mate had acted out of jealousy and murdered him if what they'd said was to be believed.
Strangely though, I did believe it. Not because they managed to persuade me but because I'd seen my mom's look countless of times during the years she was alive. I'd seen the desperation in her eyes, the bleeding wounds and the madness in the end.
And I remembered what she'd told me once. Words that had come to mind from the depths of my childhood memories but now made so much sense my head hurt just thinking about it.
'I hope you never meet the kind of man Jaxon is,' she had said during one of her breakdowns and I had frowned at her declaration but blamed it on the momentary insanity. Now, I knew that my mom hadn't been crazy.
She just knew.
"Schuyler had to restore his strength, though. He'd need to feed for days just to restore his strength, the life he had given to others," Michael went on while I listened with half an ear.
I couldn't help but wonder how this man knew so much about my father. It almost sounded like my father was more to Michael than just a friend, like a family, and I told him that.
He smiled at me. "I knew you're going to figure it out eventually. Schuyler is family—my brother, and you are my—"
"Niece?" I gasped.
He nodded.
"You're really not the kind of family I expected to find," I commented.
"Yeah, I guess I'm much more prettier." He winked. I chuckled but didn't say anything. Indeed he was.
"Anyway, I was saying... Ah, there was a price your father had to pay to use his gift—"
"And she's paying a price too, Michael," Oracle joined in. "She's lost her strength and she must complete the bond with Regan so she can draw from his and his pack's life."
Draw from their life?
"Is that something you saw or is it just your speculation, Oracle?" Tilting his head sidewise, Michael gave her a peculiar look. "You're rarely wrong with your presumptions, but I think this time you are. We don't know much about Scarlet's ability and how it works so all we can do is to wait and see."
