Loving Ashlynn (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 53 - Robert Delaney (Ansel Conrad POV)Pt.1

"She plays outside with Lyanna," he says slowly, "but, never after like seven or eight at night. She doesn't leave the house when it's dark. She's up before anyone else in the house, making coffee, she'll bake if there are supplies."

"But she never leaves the property." I finished, knowing most of what he was saying. "And you know I set up the gates for Lewis," Angela says softer, "anyone tries to disarm it from the outside, they'll be warned and can make a run for it. The best way to get anyone on the property is by being invited-"

"So it was all some elaborate game or – or ruse?" Peter spits angrily.

It's one of those types of asked and answered, rhetorical questions that at the time, no one really needs to answer.

Sighing, Naomi nods though.

"Many years ago, I was helping a c – a friend," she glanced around stumbling, unsure of Peter I suppose. "She was on the run. You see when she went to university in Japan, at Sophia University, she met a man. An American man he was a teaching assistant and she was accepted earlier for her abilities in the sciences," she says slowly and I wonder how much of this story was being filed away because Peter was here.

If she did not trust him to an extent, she would have already said something, a larger part of my thinks, listening.

"At the time she was just starting a relationship with someone else, she explained and then he went missing. Then one terrible event after another occurred until, she found herself with only this American man. He had become everything to her, her biggest supporter, always pushing her to achieve the best."

"She was very goal orientated and he saw nothing wrong with that. She wanted a family but wanted to do well in her field, one where women were not thought highly of. He still pushed her further and further, and she explained to me that she felt as though she had won a lottery because everyone thought that her place was to be at home. Not him. When others around thought her as less and less because she was twenty six without children, he said they'd have time, that she was doing important work."

"She was offered a job in Iceland, they had moved for work three times already, and each time, he encouraged her," Naomi continued, her soft spoken manner laced with sadness, despite the actual words she was saying.

Taking in the room, I sneak a few glances at Peter, who has the most perplexed expression on his face, the more details that Naomi reveals. Especially when she gives this woman an age.

"They lived a wonderful life together, and then, when she was twenty-nine, she was going through documents at home and found something that did not fit with what this man had told her. She said that she did not immediately question him; she had just been offered this once in a lifetime opportunity. It was her dream job."

Naomi clears her throat, swallowing thickly.

"I met her after she accepted that job. There should have been many red flags," she says even softer, "she never had a chance."

I frown, when a few questions pop up, the most important was, she said that this woman was her Charge. That all Charges were Fae. This woman was Fae.

"She spent nearly five years working on a top secret biological weapon, and when she finally pieced the parts together. Questioning everything from the death of the man she had just met and was dating, to the death of her entire family that had been made to look like a random incident, the man she met when she was just seventeen years old, he was twenty-one at that time, he is the one that took her life."

I hear someone gasp, though I cannot look away from Naomi to see from whom it came.

"Your Elders, they have something in the works, and they plan to take down anyone in their way."

"My friend..." she pauses, closing her eyes, as though in pain. "That man, she was his job. Encouraging her along on a path that had he not been in her life she said she would not have taken. When I finally crossed her path, ready to help, she had the truth in piles. She had become suspicious, slowly looking into everything and when she learned enough, she ran. I met her and before I had time to even truly help her, this man murdered her," Naomi finishes, hanging her head in the silence that follows.

"That's dedication," Angela finally whispers, her tone awed.

Naomi lifts her head, gazing at my sister. "And those that prove complete dedication to your Elders, they are the ones gifted with a name that is an anagram for 'Betray No Elder.' Men like Berty, it could very well be your mother he was after. Or it might be this Cheryl woman," Naomi addresses Peter directly with a tone that only carried cool hardness. "They love who they are assigned to and they will kill, lie, cheat, harm a child if they have to, to get the job done."

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