The Year of the Tiger (Book 3 of The Almair Series) (Completed)

Chapter 55

The following couple of days had been busy preparing for something that was coming, and I didn't know what. All I knew that it would be soon, and I still felt as unprepared as I had the months before leading up to this.

It took Hermes a while to complete one of the two things, finishing the two pastes first, which I was grateful for because all I wanted to do was bring Marcus peace, at least for a little while. Before he placed them in my bag, he had sent me a letter to tell me that I should visit him because he had news for me, and that was exactly what I had done, making sure that my door was locked and both Brody and Matt knew better than to try and get into contact with me until I was finished with him.

Of course, this left them confused, but they decided instead to have a "boys" day where they both went somewhere to do something they wouldn't tell me. They had been sneaky for that past couple of days, and I had a feeling that they were planning a surprise in which I would either get mad at them or be happy or both.

I huffed and shook my head, annoyed that I lost concentration and closed my eyes again. I took a deep breath and started to focus on my breathing, breathing in and out, and letting my body relax until nothing bothered me inside and out of my body. All that I was focused on was my breathing, which I needed to control if I wanted to meditate correctly.

And, I seemed to have done it correctly because the next thing I knew, my body started to tingle all over, and there was this shift that I couldn't describe. It felt as if my soul left my body, or something left somewhere, and I was now in a spot I wasn't in before.

"I see that it took you a couple of tries, but you got it," a male's voice said, amusement filling his voice. Hermes smiled at me when I opened my eyes, his eyes filled with worry and relief. He studied me, looking up and down before he furrowed his brows and looked at me with a cocked head. "Can you talk?"

I blinked and shook my head, clearing the fogginess out of my head before I raised an eyebrow, studying the male before me. "Can you?" I asked, earning a relieved smile from him.

Hermes nodded his head and moved to his work station, his body relaxing. "Good," he said. "Sometimes, it takes a while for first-timers to talk and do stuff after they complete their first Shift."

I furrowed my brows and cocked my head. "Shift? What do you mean by Shift?"

Hermes smiled and shook his head sadly. "I can't say," he said, apologetically, glancing at me before he went back to whatever he had done. "You'll learn about it later."

I frowned but nodded. "Ok," I said. I shifted in my seat and cleared my throat. "What did you want to talk to me about?" I asked.

"First here, drink this," he said, turning around and handing me a cup. "It'll help any... effects that you might not know about."

I took the cup from him and muttered my thanks before I took a sip.

The sweet drink caused me to close my eyes as it flowed me, and I felt refreshed like the other times that I drank it. It was still as smooth as honey, and there was a little tang to it, something that I hadn't noticed before.

"Is it different?" I asked, looking at the cup before I looked at him. "There's a little tang to it that I hadn't noticed before."

Hermes nodded. "It is," he confirmed, walking to his workstation. "I have run the tests on the stuff you had given me," he said, changing the subject, and all I did was roll my eyes and take a sip of my drink because I knew that he wouldn't talk about it anymore. "And, I concluded as to where the stuff came from and what the shirt was before it had been ripped to pieces."

"Did you find a scent?" I asked. "Or at least made it that I could find a scent?"

Hermes sighed, and his shoulders sagged. He knew something, I could tell, but he did not want me to know. "I think so," he replied, and I raised an eyebrow, shocked that he had actually given me an honest answer. The older male turned to look at me and furrowed his brows when he saw me looking at him in shock. "What?" he asked, cocking his head and raising an eyebrow.

"You said that, truthfully." I looked at the cup and cleared my throat, a blush forming on my cheeks. "I thought you were going to lie."

Hermes chuckled and shook his head, even though I couldn't see it. "I wouldn't do that to you," he promised. "If I thought it was dangerous, then I wouldn't have said anything. I wouldn't lie to you. You don't need that, not this close."

I didn't reply and grazed my finger across the rim of the cup, not looking up. I had no idea what he was doing, studying the cup and the contents it held. I watched as the cup's content swirl around until it showed the symbol that I had seen multiple times before.

The symbol was inside a circle with two diagonal lines crossing each other to make 'x' while there was a straight line going through the middle. The lines didn't touch the circle's edge, but it was close enough that they almost did. There was a smaller circle inside, and like the other larger circle, it didn't touch the three lines.

"Hmmm," Hermes said, startling me from staring at the symbol and moving the cup, and the symbol disappeared with a swish of my hand. He had a grave look on his face when I looked up at him, his eyes flickering across the cup that I had in my hands. His eyes were a darker gray while he looked up from the cup and met my eyes, looking older than he had before seeing the symbol.

In his hands, he held a piece of the shirt that I had given him, but he wasn't focused on that. No, he wasn't focused on that but on the cup that now held his attention. He wanted to say something, to tell me what it was, but both of us knew that he couldn't. He couldn't tell me what that symbol meant.

It wasn't time.