A/N: GIVEAWAY! And writing/wattpad tips!
What am I talking about?
My post for the Wattpad Block Party is up with advice on writing and wattpad. Also, I'm currently hosting a giveaway. The links to both are in the first comment.
*****
"To be honest... To be honest I wanted to show you off."
My hands halted and I took a deep breath as I looked up at him.
"Does that sound bad?"
I tried to read the expression on my mate's face, but all I saw were reddened cheeks, pretty lips forming the letter o and my reflection in a pair of large, brown eyes.
"I don't see you as a prize or an expensive item," I hurried to add, hoping to reduce the possessive feel of my previous words. "I'm just happy to have finally met you."
"There's not much to show off," he muttered, looking away from me.
I dropped the fork and knife on the table and snuggled his right hand between both of mine.
"You are a wonderful person, Riley Rivers. You are kind and compassioned, and a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. You make me happy," I whispered.
How could he not see the wonder that he was?
I had to find a way to make him understand what an incredible person he was, to make him see himself as I saw him.
"Besides," I added with a more playful inflection, "I wanted to show off my talented coffee artist boy."
My attempt to lighten the mood was rewarded with a string of sincere giggles streaming through those beautiful, kissable lips; lips that Riley put in an adorable mock pout once he stopped laughing.
I wanted to give those perky lips a peck, but he parted them to speak:
"The coffee artist boy? Is that how you describe me to your friends?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm promoting you so you can get a few more clients." I kept the jesting tone, smiling.
His face contorted in a funny fashion as he tried to keep the pout and avoid smiling as well.
"Come on." I nodded to the food. "Breakfast is getting cold."
He grabbed an egg and began to peel it.
"This only answered part of my question though. Why did you want me to meet Kelly and Steve?"
"I want you to eventually meet all of the Bullets." I also grabbed an egg and cracked its shell. "Naturally, I want to introduce you to my closest ones first. Like her cousin, Kelly is a very good childhood friend. We've known Steve for only about six years..."
"Wait. Isn't he one of the Bullets?"
"He is considered one now, but he's not from here. The community he was born in - one like ours - is in another state. Didn't you notice his accent?"
Riley shook his head.
"Well, it's a slight one. Anyway, he was on a trip with some friends and went camping at the same grounds as Kelly and a few others of us did, the two met, fell in love and he moved here," I quickly narrated their story. "It was difficult for him to leave his family behind, but he did it to start a new one. It's only natural that one of them had to move. If each community kept to themselves, we'd all be related."
"I've never thought about that," he admitted. "I've always seen the Silver Bullets as one."
"Lisa's also not born as one of us. Her community lives closer to us than Steve's though, about a day's trip with a car."
I'd already peeled my egg so I reached for the one that Riley had dropped once I'd surprised him with the news that Steve hadn't always been a Bullet.
"I got it," he insisted and got back to removing the shell.
"After the mishap with Alec's mother, Everett's spirit was pretty low."
I frowned.
This wasn't a pleasant topic, but I wanted Riley to eventually learn everything about us.
Might as well start with the family drama.
"He thought that putting some distance between them would help him," I went on whilst cutting my egg, "so he travelled for a while although he didn't stray very far. That's how he met Lisa. She... She really healed him. When he came back and told us he's met the woman, he was glowing. He kept smiling, he couldn't stop talking about her... He brought her the next weekend to visit us and then the weekend after that, and the one after that, and in a couple of months they were married so she moved here."
I placed my yolk in Riley's plate.
"They fell in love that quickly?"
"We are big on the idea of love at first sight." I said, looking down at my plate.
"How did..." I heard his knife scrape against his plate. "How did Steve end up in a wheelchair?"
My hand froze mid-air before it could bring a toasted bread slice to my mouth. I put the bread back on my plate and cleared my throat.
"By being a hero, that's how."
I took a deep breath to compose myself.
The memory of that day - a teenager screaming, claws slashing, a mother with a tear-covered face... I would erase it from my memory, if I could.
But not what Steve had done.
He'd truly been a hero.
"Every now and then, someone or a group of people would leave the societies that are like ours. They may have done something the community disapproves of and gotten exiled as a result or maybe they don't share the same views as the majority of the community and they want to start their own group. The latter happened a few years back and the seceders began enlisting people from other communities to join them in the forming of a new one."
I reached for the toast again, but put it right back in my plate. It had been an instinctive movement, my body's attempt to distract me from the darkness of my thoughts.
If it hadn't been for the Red Wolves, if Lisa's father hadn't called...
"I think at first they were civil about it, visiting one society after the other and inviting people, but after a while - I guess they didn't get enough supporters - they changed their strategy. They actually began abducting children to raise them as a part of the newly-formed group."
"T-they... They took them from their parents?"
Riley's horrified shout startled one of my pack's young members and she stopped her bike to stare at us. I tried to smile and nod at her to assure her that everything was alright. She hopped back on, the air flinging her ponytail as she drove away.
"Yes, they did," I confirmed and went on: "We got a heads-up from Lisa's family - the seceders had passed by them - so we doubled the patrols, warned the parents to keep the children close at all times and the kids were instructed to stay inside. One boy managed to get out though. His father was at work and his mother was taking care of his younger siblings downstairs. He told her he was going to his room to study for a test then snuck out to meet with a girl from his school. At some point the mother noticed he was missing and called for help. A patrol usually consist of at least two members, but there was a lot of ground to cover so some split up. The seceders had almost dragged the boy to their car when Steve got a hold of them. He won the boy time to escape, but he was alone and there were three of them so by the time the rest of us joined the fight, he was already..." I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
I saw grass, stomped and covered in blood, the figure of my friend twisted at an odd angle... I could smell the metallic tint of the air, I could hear him wheezing as he tried to breathe...
I opened my eyes.
"The doctors are optimistic though. Steve's strong, he goes to therapy and exercises at home. A couple of years ago he couldn't even move his toes, now he can stand up for a minute without any support. Who knows? After a few more years he might be able to walk again."
"What happened to the seceders?" Riley's voice was barely audible.
"We informed the proper authorities and gave up the ones we'd caught. The rest of them were eventually captured."
The Sentinels had done a good job, tracking the perps nd rescuing the kidnapped children in under twenty-four hours. They were trialled, found guilty and securely locked in prison.
Given how recent this event was, we'd looked into their old pack and people they'd kept in touch with after they left as possible suspects in the current investigation.
We'd found nothing.
"Was the fight where Steve got the scars on his arm from?" Riley asked.
"Yeah. Those won't heal."
"Is that where you got yours from?"
I looked down at my plate and stabbed a piece of bacon with my fork.
Apparently today was a day for painful stories.
But I couldn't. Not yet. Not when I wanted to add something positive to our conversation or at least something casual; something that would make us forget for a little while what had happened in town last night.
"No, that's a story for another time, Riley. You should eat; the meal is getting really cold."
He nodded and slowly chewed on a yolk, his expression thoughtful as his brain no doubt created various scenarios for the origins of my scars.
Maybe I should tell him.
Just that I got them in a fight... Obviously not that the lines were permanently carved into my flash by another shifter's claws.
But I should tell Riley all of it - all about the Bullets - and soon.
*****
"I went to the last crime scene to check if we've missed something. Alec was there."
I groaned and rubbed my temples, wondering when was the last time I'd spent a day without receiving bad news.
*****
A/N: We are almost there, people - almost at THE CHAPTER when Rhys tells Riley what he is. But before that: what do you think of this chapter?
Please support it with a VOTE if you enjoyed it!
I couldn't help but end it with how I planned to start the next chapter.
What do you think Alec was doing at the crime scene?
And what's your opinion of Steve now that you got a little back story on him?