It was very late afternoon when everyone returned, Lilith and I were in the kitchen cooking dinner. Since we didn't know how much to make we just kept cooking which turned out interesting since we have about fifteen dishes full of food. I made salad and steaks, Lilith made hamburgers and chips and together we cooked some pork chops and potato bake. Just as we were placing all the food on the table, they all piled in. Adrian, Fang and Lisanna had come in from the living room and were already at the table.
As soon as Envy enters the house he comes straight to me with Dean right behind but he goes to Lilith. Both of us were in the kitchen just putting away the unused stuff, Envy wraps his arms around my waist and places his chin on my shoulder Lilith, however, turns around and hugs Dean.
"Hey Red." He whispers in my ear.
"Hey, yourself. How did today go?" I ask placing a kiss on his cheek.
"Bad, we got nothing. I'll talk to you later 'bout it."
"Alright, well then go sit and eat all the delicious food Lil and I made."
He laughs and does as I said, I follow after him once everything's away and sit in between Envy and Fang. Liam and Eve hold hands and eat in silence, Stag and Logan sit on the other side of Fang and they chat quietly to each other.
"You did a good job, Alex." Adrian pipes up, "Although with the way you act I didn't believe you knew how to cook."
Everyone gives a small laugh and Envy snorts. I wrinkle my nose at him and ignore his comment.
"For your information, I am a brilliant cook, I just choose not to sometimes," I say airily.
"I thought we were having tacos," Fang says looking down at his burger.
I snort as Envy asks me, "So what did you guys get up to, it felt like you had a lot of fun."
"I guess, I unpacked my room with Lisanna's help and then we all played monopoly, Fang won and Lilith flipped the board. After that, we watched Seventh Son and Lilith and I made dinner." I reply picking at my steak.
"Doesn't surprise me, anytime there is a board game it usually ends up flipped since Lilith never wins." Logan chimes in.
"Hey! Fuck you, I am the fucking boss at board games!" Lilith snaps turning away from Dean.
He leans back and smirks, "Babe you've won once out of like a hundred."
"That's a lie, you guys cheat." She turns back to him.
"Bullshit, you're the only one who cheats and you still never win." Adrian pipes up again laughing.
"Yeah if it wasn't for Alex helping you, you would've lost after five minutes," Lisanna smirks.
"That's not true Alex and I teamed up so we could pool our power and minds together." She crosses her arms.
"Without you, Alex and Fang would've simply dominated the game," Adrian says winking at me.
Envy choose to ignore the wink but does wrap an arm around the back of my chair making me snort, Envy being Envious.
"Yeah and besides Alex is way smarter than you and if she hadn't been watching, you would've tried to cheat," Lisanna says
"That's rich from someone who said she hexed the dice." Lilith snaps offended but not denying.
"For all you know I could've hexed them but I might have fucked it up." I shrug.
Everyone forgets their argument to laugh at me, I feel Envy shake lightly from beside me and I smile happy to be the peacekeeper.
"Well fine then, how'd the hunt go?" Lilith sulks.
Dean leans in and wraps his arm around the back of her chair, "We found a trail but it turned out to be a dead end."
"We split into five groups and went in different directions but we found fucking nothing," Logan says crossing his arms.
"Well we did find some animals drained but that was it and they were old," Liam mutters.
"It's annoyed everyone, plus a lot of parents are worried since we have nothing to go on. All we have is a threat looming over us." Eve mumbles.
I nod my head and continue to eat my food, I tune everyone out as they start talking about the hunt. It doesn't take long before everyone finishes their food and then most of them head home to get some sleep. Logan heads up into the lounge room and turns on a music station, Liam and Eve go upstairs to head to bed, I call out a goodnight as I begin to clean up the table. Fang helps me as Envy heads upstairs to shower, I hum as I pick up dishes and take them to Fang who washes them in the sink.
After all this time I've gotten used to hearing everyone's heartbeats so I know it when strangers are at the door. I place the plate I was holding down and I move to the door, I open it just as the doorbell sounds and when I open the door, I freeze. Standing on the doorstep smiling at me are two guys roughly my age. I know instantly who they are.
The taller one has dark red hair that matches my own and shining green eyes, the one beside him has black hair and sparkling blue eyes. Their faces are similar with high cheekbones, deep-set eyes and long eyelashes, they also look very similar to the person I always see in the mirror. I stand frozen with shock, I hear Fang walking up behind me.
"Alex? Is someone at the door?" Logan shouts from the living room.
"Hello Alex, it's nice to see you again." The one with dark red hair says.
"Hey... Luc, Mika." I say quietly.
Fang peeks over my shoulder and smiles, "Hello! Nice to see you again, I'll be in my room."
With that he leaves and heads upstairs, Logan has gotten up from the couch and has walked over to the door.
"Alex, who are these guys?" He questions seeing the visitors on the steps.
"They're my... um, cousins." I say standing aside so that they can come in.
"Well, then would you like to sit in the living room while I go fetch my parents?" With that, he dashes upstairs.
They move into the living room and sit on the couches as asked, they wear normal clothes plain black shirts, jeans and combat boots. They sit quietly, I hear shouting from upstairs so I go into the kitchen and grab a few glasses of water and some cookies. However for myself, I grab the water bottle with my name on it, the black metal is cool to the touch. I walk back in and hand them the glasses and place the cookies on the coffee table, by now Eve and Liam have come back downstairs and Logan sits on the staircase eavesdropping.
"So I hear your Alex's cousins, can I ask how you knew she was here?" Eve crosses her arms.
I take a sip of rabbit's blood and sit on the arm of the couch next to Mika.
"Well I could tell you or even show you but I doubt you'd believe me." Lucifer smiles.
"I suggest you don't test us, you're on our land," Liam growls.
"I'm not doing anything but stating the truth," Luc replies calmly.
"How about you answer the question then, how do we know you're not here to hurt her?" Eve snaps at him.
I roll my eyes and lean down and whisper in Mika's ear, "This is boring."
He smiles and whispers back, "I agree, it's been a long trip but we figured this would happen."
"OK guys, let me clear this up." I say loudly, "My dead Father contacted them from the beyond, the place where like all these dead witches live and stuff saying I needed help. While going through my identity crisis I remember them from my childhood also my Grandmother wrote about them. So they're legit and please stop being mistrusting, they're not like Scalia, they're here to actually help."
They all stare at me and I shrug and take another sip of my blood.
Eve sighs, "Alright then, you can stay here as long as Alex says you can. We trust her judgment, Logan will show you to your rooms and we're going to bed."
They stand up and Mika follows he bows his body and says, "We apologise for entering your territory without permission but we are aware of the situation and wished to check and see if everything was alright. We haven't had any contact with her for many years and we thank you for allowing us to, once again be with her."
Eve blinks surprised at such a formal apology, "It's quite alright. I'm sure you'll be good for Alex."
"Thank you for your words, my name is Mikaela and this is my older brother Lucifer. I apologise for his behaviour but we mostly deal with large cat shifters and they have a superiority complex."
"My name is Eve, I'm the pack Luna and this is my mate Liam the Alpha. Please have a nice night."
With that Liam and Eve walk up the stairs a little less annoyed, I smile as Logan comes in his ears lightly pink. He smiles and shrugs before he comes over and outstretches his hand to Mika who accepts it.
"Nice to meet you, I'm glad Alex's got some family again," Logan says smiling before he sits back down on the couch.
I stare at the TV for a moment before I choose to leave the room and head for the back veranda. I sit in the spot that I sat in last time and sigh, the stars seem to shine the brightest tonight and I let the light of the night wash over me. It only takes a moment before I hear the back door open and have someone sitting beside me
"It's nice to meet you again after all these years," Luc says.
I don't look at him instead I keep my gaze to the stars, "I've been through a lot lately and all of it happened way too fast for me to truly wrap my head around it. I guess in some aspects I finally know who I am but I feel like there's something that's coming and I'm not sure on what it is."
"How do you mean?" He asks softly.
I frown, "Well I'm sure you were told about all the things that happened before you came here," at his nod I continue, "Well once I came back from my own fucking mind and from where the hell I was, yes I know who I am and yes I feel like myself and I've gotten used to all these different things about myself. But everything happened so quickly, I mean I haven't really used my powers at all and at the moment I haven't had a chance to practice anything while being a wolf."
"Hmm, yeah you've definitely gotten the short end of the stick most of your life. But looking on this it seems that there are people who truly care about you here and regardless of all the things that have happened, your still standing, for a lot of people about a tenth of what you've had to go through would've broken them. So I think you're probably one of the strongest people I know, kind of like Uncle Karma."
"My Dad?" I whisper.
"Yeah. You wouldn't know but when he was young he was in a fight with a rival coven and his witch nerve snapped. It wasn't pretty, he went deathly pale and still, he kind of just retreated into his mind leaving a single piece of himself to keep his body alive. But where you left the part of yourself that wanted to please others the part he left behind was the part that wished pain and destruction upon others. The thing was he was the strongest of our coven, for a few hundred years so none of us could really stand up to him and take him down, he killed all of the people that lived in the town beside the coven."
I stop breathing at that and I shiver thinking about the type of pain you'd feel when you come out of your mind only to find you've killed so many. It'd probably want to make you go back and never come out again.
"Yeah it was pretty bad and that wasn't even the worst of it but eventually someone stood up to him. The only person in that state that he probably couldn't have hurt other than his mate."
"Your mother?" I question.
"Yeah, they're twins after all and even in the state that he was in he couldn't bring himself to hurt her. So she did what she thought was right and she went into his mind and shattered the wall he built around himself, I don't know the exact details but apparently, it was extremely painful. But it did bring him back to himself, at first he kind of just locked himself away racked with guilt and full of pain of all the things that happened since he retained all of the memories."
He fell silent for a moment and I asked, "What happened after that?"
"He trained, harder than anyone else he was determined to make up for his mistakes even though he believed he never could. But he practised and when he was older took over as coven leader. There are lots of stories of all the things he did and the things that he wanted to accomplish, which I can tell you about another time but it all came crashing down." I feel the anger behind his last words.
"Because of my Mother." I murmured.
"Yeah..." He admits reluctantly, "He fell in love with her nearly straight away and everyone else became blinded to her true self as well. So I'm sure you know what happened," I nod, "I can't really remember it but when he died a lot more people than our coven mourned it and when we found out that he was a time-walker, the coven was in shock. Time-walking is one of the rarest forms of magic, because you don't need to construct a complicated magic circle or know an even more complicated spell and then it's only ever in astral form. But Time walkers can literally walk through time and change things, falling into the wrong hands it's one of the worst things that our coven ever thinks about."
I choose to say nothing, it sounds similar to what Laine told me about time lapsing. It also reminds me of the dream I had where I saw my Dad being thrown off the cliff and he touched me. Was he Time-walking or was I?
"While it's a powerful and sacred power, we all fear it but it is much respected among all warlocks and witches. I don't truly understand how it works but from what my Mother told me he started doing it as a child while he slept."
I feel a chill run down my spine, doesn't that sound a little familiar. I swallow hard and clench my fist beside me.
"What would happen if I could do it?" I ask quietly.
"Time-walk?" I nod, "I guess if it got out, there'd be trouble but if you got trained to control it I don't think there'd be a problem. Why do you ask? Do you think you can?"
"I don't know. Laine said I can Time-lapse which sounds pretty much the same."
"They're similar but usually with Time-lapsing you can't ever do it on control or choose the event you witness."
"Does the event ever relate to the person?"
"No almost never." He shakes his head.
"Well, then I have my answer then."
I feel him look at me but when I don't continue he lets it drop but I can tell he wants to know. But I need time before I trust him fully no matter what.
'Alex? Is everything alright?'
I jump in shock and look around before I realise that the voice was inside my head, Lucifer has already gone back inside. I sigh and realise it must be Envy through the Link.
'Yes, everything's fine; just learning another annoying thing about myself.'
Even in my own mind I sound like I'm pouting, I feel Envy laugh and his amusement flows into me and I smile.
'Sounds like you're having fun.'
I frown at that for some reason, I feel uncertainty and almost instantly Envy is speaking again.
'Red? What's wrong?'
'Somethings been bothering me, it just seems like you know more than you should, especially about me. After all, you said that the bond was very weak before it snapped altogether.'
There's a long pause and I feel worry and annoyance set in, which only deepens when I feel Envy block himself off from me.
'I think we should have this conversation in person, I'll be down in a minute.'
'No. Tell me now.'
He pauses before, 'I felt the bond fully before we had even met properly.'