One Broken Legacy

Chapter 8: Old Flames at Night

The walk back to the dorms was quiet and uneventful. Lights had long been turned off, leaving me to navigate by the feeble rays of moonlight and a half-baked memory of the land.

Once I got within sight of the building, I hurried to the brick wall and followed it to the dorms. My back hugged the wall, but I would not be caught by something as stupid as a video camera.

My room felt cold, and I closed the window fully to preserve the remaining heat. It was the first time I had left the grate slightly open, and it didn't surprise me that I had forgotten with Nick distracting me.

As I turned to switch on the lamp, a cold voice spoke from the shadows, sending chills up my back.

"Hello, Alexis."

I reached for the knife taped behind the mantle, fingers trembling like traitors, before turning on the light.

A tall woman sat in a chair in the far corner‑ Kiri. Her arms were crossed over her chest, long nails gleaming like an unspoken threat, and her pink painted lips pulled down in a scowl. She watched me with dark eyes rimmed with thin strands of black liquid. She'd been crying.

"I saw you at the club, and I knew you saw me by the way you ran out like a beaten dog." Kiri's tone was assertive. "Who was the girl? For that matter, who's the boy?"

"How did you find me?"

"Checked your uncle's GPS and found the town. Figured the club was my best bet for asking around and getting cash. You didn't answer my question."

"Nick, a werewolf I'm helping." I could hear the wheeze in my voice. "The girl is Anya, a part of his pack who agreed to help me. It's business."

"It's always business," Kiri scoffed.

I couldn't help the color that rushed to my cheeks. Kiri was a siren, and as much as I wanted to hide behind my hands, she knew me too well.

"I'm sorry." I didn't know exactly what to say in a situation like this, but an apology was usually a good place to start. "I didn't think you'd want to see me. You weren't supposed to be here." My voice wavered, and any training I had melted away to reveal a regular teenaged girl confronted by her ex.

"I wasn't? You disappeared and didn't expect me to look for you?" Kiri shrieked, her voice pitchy before she took a deep breath and started again. "I looked everywhere for you, and the only thing your family said is you had work."

"I didn't mean it that way. "I thought... What did I think?

"I was always accepting that you couldn't tell me everything because of your family's stupid job, that I would share your time, but for the love of god you couldn't have said you were leaving?" The remnants of her watery home leaked in through the shrillness of her tone. "I got a letter saying you were leaving me."

"I didn't know what to say."

"Anything would have better than that. You just left. You left me alone."

"I thought you would be alright while I was gone. Uncle assured me you were safer and happier than you would have been with me. It wasn't a pleasant experience."

That brought a series of long, humorless laughs from Kiri that dug into me over and over.

"You thought I would be safer with my family?"

I hadn't thought about her family. They lived and preyed along the cliffs a few kilometers from my family's land. It was a dangerous, gloomy area where fog hung over the water like an ominous prophecy of the creatures that lurked underneath.