Into the Flames → Liam Dunbar [2]

Chapter Thirty-Three

"You're leaving?!" Addy shouted. The day her older brother was arriving, her friend was leaving. The excitement she held slowly diminished into disappointment and despair. Kira was going back to the desert, the same place they rescued her from a couple weeks ago. Last Addy saw, they were fully willing to kill her.

Scott was driving her there, and they were making their stops to say goodbye before school started that day. Kira didn't know how long she would be there, but she needed to be there to contain the fox inside her. It would be better for everyone when they were safe from her. She almost killed Brett's sister the night of the charity game, and she would have never been able to forgive herself if she did.

Addy was one of the last stops, and as soon as the words passed her lips, there was almost an instant well of tears. She didn't want Kira to leave, especially if it possibly ended up being years. For some kitsune, it took decades to control the fox. They all just hoped it wasn't going to be the same fate for their friend.

"I have to." Kira nodded sadly. "I promised them. Besides, it's for the best. I need to get this controlled."

Addison engulfed her into a hug and squeezed so tightly Kira wheezed from the lack of air. The tears flowed freely, and she tried wiping them away as soon as they appeared. It didn't work, and both of them noticed her red eyes and puffy cheeks.

"Don't cry. You're going to make me cry." Kira sniffled. She hated leaving again, but it needed to be done. It was time to take responsibility for herself and fix what potentially could break. "I'll miss you, too, Ads."

"You're going to stay safe, right?" Addy asked. She nodded her head dully, pushing the loose hairs back. "Good, good. I'd rather you coming back when I'm old and wrinkly rather than finding out you died."

"You too. Everyone here needs you," Kira told her. They all knew that Addy would risk herself to save those she loved. She'd done it before, and it had cost her life. No one needed a repeat of that again, especially not Liam.

It would break Kira's heart to come back and find out that she had lost another one of her friends to the supernatural world. She lost Allison; even if she wasn't close to her like the rest of the pack, they were still friends. There was already so much death in the town of Beacon Hills, and what she was doing could save even more.

"We need you, too."

)(               *               )(

After Kira left, Addy locked herself up in her room until school started and went right back there as soon as it finished. Her mom was home for once and had taken the next day off as well to see her son. The couple of hours she waited allowed her to think, and thinking was the last thing she wanted to do. Thinking required memories, and her memories weren't that pleasing.

Throughout her whole life, Addison had tried to live up to the expectations her mother wanted and the bar that Brayden set. However, she wasn't able to reach that accomplishment. She wasn't smart like he was, she didn't have a group of friends that her mother liked, and she didn't play lacrosse. That changed the second semester of freshman year.

Everything changed freshman year, and not because it was the first time she experienced high school. Around home, about the time that her grades went up and she began participating in extra-curricular activities, Mrs. Ryder seemed to ride Addy's ass a lot less. Although, to that day, she still believed that it was from not getting in detention.

There were several times that she and Liam scored themselves a front row seat in detention, but otherwise, she stayed off the radar of teacher's watchful eyes. And their second year, she missed so much school that they didn't even get the chance to give her detention. Addy wanted to use the rest of the year, or at least the rest of the semester, to bring her grades back up. If she did make it out of the supernatural life alive, then she wanted to go to college like Brayden.