Sorry for the wait! :S Been MIA for a while1 Enjoy!
***
By eleven o’clock, the few things I owned had been packed up and loaded into the same car I’d arrived in. Cade was in that car now, going over plans with Damon, who wouldn't be coming along with us. Declan sat in the backseat, making sure we had everything we needed.
Athena and Kat were in the cabin with me. As we stood at the kitchen counter, preparing and packing food, I sighed for everything I was about to lose.
Although I’d only been on the reserve a few months, it had come to feel like home to me. The land, the people, my people, they were all a part of me. I’d also had the niggling sense that I couldn't leave yet, as if I was forgetting something, as if there was still something left to be done.
To my right, Athena seemed to sense my thoughts. “You’re not going to be gone forever, Ainsley.”
I put down the sandwich I’d been making and turned to face the woman. I explained to her my feelings of something here being incomplete, my sense that I was forgetting something.
“What could you possibly be leaving behind?” Kat asked in her usual blunt manner.
“You barely filled up two duffel bags.”
“Oh leave the girl alone,” laughed Athena, throwing a piece of cheese at Kat.
“Hey! I'm just saying!”
Once our laughter subsided, I elaborated on what I meant. “I don't feel like I'm leaving something material behind. It’s more like I'm forgetting to do something.”
Then it clicked. I was leaving behind the only family I had left, without even saying goodbye.
“I need to see Connie.” I dropped the sandwich and wiped my hands on a napkin. In seconds I was out the door and heading the path.
“Ainsley!” Damon’s voice called after me in the dark, cool air.
“I have to go see Connie!” I yelled back, never stopping. How had I not realized this before? I would have left behind the one person who’d been completely honest with me about my parents’ death. That was just wrong.
“Ainsley, we’re leaving in ten minutes!”
I picked up my pace until I was running, the night air caressing my face as I ran along the roads. I ran, not stopping or slowing to catch my breath. Finally, my feet stopped on Connie’s porch.
Just as I was about to knock, the door swung open, releasing the scent of vanilla on a soft breeze.
“I’m in the back, dear.”
I didn’t bother asking myself how she’d known it was me. I would probably never figure it out and it wasn’t all that important.
I found Connie in what was supposed to be a second bedroom. However, instead of a bed, dresser and closet was a lone easel surrounded by shelves and shelves of painting supplies. On the walls were completed paintings. There were landscapes and abstracts, but mostly portraits.
One in particular caught my eye. It was a painting of a young woman and a young man standing in a barren field consumed by weeds, holding a single, blooming sunflower between their bodies. I knew instinctively who the young couple was.
“Your parents were like that flower.” Connie sat at the easel, a paintbrush in her hand, a single slash of black paint across the easel. “The single living thing surrounded by dull things. She brightened up everyone’s day. There wasn’t a person alive who didn’t love your them.”
“It’s beautiful.” The words came out a bit choked as my eyes welled up with tears. My mother looked perfectly peaceful, her eyes closed, a tiny smile flitting around her lips as my father looked upon her, complete adoration reflected in his expression.
I made a promise to myself in that moment: no matter what, I would come back for this painting. All hell could rain down but I would come back for this painting. It was all I had of my parents.
I walked to Connie’s side. “I can’t stay long. I’m leaving tonight and I don't know what’s going to happen to me or when I’m coming back. I just couldn't leave without seeing you and telling you goodbye.”
Connie set down her paintbrush and looked at me with an expression of complete understanding. She stood and wrapped me in a hug, her vanilla scent hanging over me in a fog. This is what I’d missed my entire life. Someone to understand me, hold on, let me know I wasn’t alone and that I was loved. My aunt had never given me that.
“We will meet again, Ainsley.” Her hand cupped my cheek as she smiled reassuringly.
When we stepped away, I felt a sense of completion. Now I was ready to go.
I was just out the door when Connie called my name. I poked my head back inside. “Yes?”
Connie’s figure appeared in her art room doorway. “I’ll save you that painting.”
I grinned at her. “Thanks.”
When I got back to my own shared cabin, my friends were outside, waiting for me.
“Sorry,” I said, mostly to Damon. “I couldn’t leave without telling her goodbye.”
“I know, but you guys need to get going. Kat and Declan will be going with you and Cade, for safety purposes.”
Cade opened the back door for me. “Kat called shotgun,” he told me with a mischievous smile.
“Damn,” I said, smiling back at my mate. His eyes locked with my own and deeper than that, with my soul.
Declan slid into the car on the other side of me and slung an arm across my shoulders, pulling me towards him.
“We,” he started. “are going to have the best time back here.”
I smacked a wet kiss on his cheek, laughing when Cade growled from the driver’s seat. Seeing Kat’s frown, however, made me pull away. The woman could easily kill me, I reminded myself. By why would she, when it comes to Declan? I suspected Kat had feelings for Declan she wasn’t admitting. No matters though, I would just have to get her to confess it. A little booze, maybe...
I smiled to myself at thought as we set off into the dark and ultimately, the upcoming storm.
***
It was a very long flight to the airport and an even longer flight to the island where the Council was located. By the time we arrived, I felt as though we’d journeyed to the center of the earth, rather than a small island outside of Greece.
The weather was warm and breezy and I felt like all my troubles had eased away, carted off on the tropical winds.
“Damon said that someone was to meet us here to take us to our safe house.” Cade told us. We stood just outside the airport. “But he didn’t know who.”
“So how do we know we’ve got the right guy?” Kat asked. She had a great point. Seeing as my life was in danger, I sure would have liked to know I wasn’t leaving with a deranged killer.
“There’s a code sentence” said Cade. I couldn't help but laugh.
“Code sentence? What was this, some spy movie?”
“I know it sounds silly, but sometimes the best way is the old-fashioned way.”
“So we just walk up to a random man and whisper a random sentence?” I rolled my eyes. This was ridiculous. These were Weres we were dealing with, and they couldn't have come up with something better than a code sentence. I just wanted to get somewhere safe and sleep for three years. I was tired from the drive and the flight over and I was getting tired of standing outside, waiting.
Declan arrived at that moment with our luggage. “What are we waiting for?”
“A message written in invisible ink,” I said, both sarcastically and unhappily.
“Don’t be such a grump,” Cade said, pulling me into his side and dropping a kiss into my hair. “We’ll be out of here soon enough.” My only answer was to harrumph as I rested my head against his strong, warm chest.
“Wait...” Cade turned and stared at a man just behind who had dropped his phone. At the same, Kat, Declan and I turned to stare at the man. “Not all at once,” he sighed. Cade’s whisper-order sent our heads snapping back. “If this was a spy movie, you guys wouldn't make it past the first twenty minutes.”
One by one we each took a look at the man who was now checking over his phone.
“He’s definitely Were,” Kat said. “I can sense it.”
“Okay, you guys stay here,” said Cade, before striding off towards the man. Minutes later, Cade gestured for us to join him.
As we approached the two men, I got a better look at the mystery man. He had golden red hair that was cropped close to his head. His brows were a touch lighter as were his lashes, so they were barely visible against his tanned skin. His eyes were bright blue with flecks of gold and were hard, betraying no thoughts or feelings. A gold hoop glinted in his left ear, suggesting a slightly wild side. His lips were on the thin side, pursed into a tight line.
In fact, his whole whole looked as though it was made up of hard, tight lines and angles. His jaw flexed every now and then and under his shirt I could tell his chest and arm muscles were bunched tight. He stood ramrod straight, long limbs laced with tension. This was a man on high alert, ready to strike at any given moment. His eyes missed nothing and never rested, always scanning the area for possible threats.
“This is our guy,” Cade said, once we stood with him and the man,
“Who is he?” I asked Cade. Yeah, sure it was rude to ask when the man was standing there in the flesh, but this guy was scary as hell and when he fixed his penetrating eyes on me, even I had troubles forming words.
“No questions.” The man snapped. Wow. Someone was taking bitchy pills regularly.
Apparently Cade didn’t appreciate the way the man talked to me either. The air grew tight with male fury and testosterone. Cade’s eyes turned gunpowder gray as he took a threatening step towards The Man. The look in his eyes said very clearly he was not happy with The Man’s hospitality so far.
I placed a gentle hand on Cade’s arm, not wanting things to turn sour before we even left the airport. He didnt so much as glance at me, but I felt the tension in his body slightly easy, though his gaze never left The Man.
The Man looked Cade over. Though they would be evenly matched in a fight, The Man decided not to respond to Cade’s challenge.
“Not now,” The Man amended. Then he turned sharply on his heel and lead us towards what was beginning to look like the standard car in the Were world: an SUV, big, black, very suspicious but also very formidable. I had no doubt that nothing short of a nuclear bomb would hurt me riding in this car.
The Man walked in brisk, long strides, eating up the asphalt. My legs were fairly long, but I still had trouble keeping up his all-business, no-nonsense pace.
When we finally reached the car, me, slightly out of breath from my demi-jog there, Kat and I stopped at the trunk to load in our luggage. The Man, however, wasn’t having it.
“Get in the car.” He barked. Kat opened her mouth to protest, but The Man’s glare snatched the words from her mouth and shut her lips with a snap. If he could shut Kat up without even a word, he was definitely intimidating.
But Kat didn’t go down very easily. She dropped her bags to the ground and when a heavier one accidentally fell on The Man’s foot, she hid a smirk at his snarl. I flashed her a grin as we climbed into the mammoth vehicle. That was Kat for you.
The car ride was a long, quiet one. In the back, Kat had fallen asleep on Declan’s shoulder and Declan peered quietly out the window, one hand absently stroking her hair. I sat the back, eyes closed, but not asleep. No, sleep was impossible. My head was jammed with thoughts about how my arrival would be received. Cade had said we would be making a stop at the Council headquarters, a fact which didn’t sit well with my gut feeling.
Millions of possible situations played out in my head. In some, nobody knew who I was and everything went fairly well. In others, I was charged at and tackled like a feral dog. That one made me shudder. My pessimistic side, however, seemed to enjoy replaying the second situation, simply to increase my anxiety about the whole thing.
What I didn’t realize then, was that in 24 hours, the idea of being tackled like a rabid dog would seem like the perfect reception.