The Art of Mending Memories
Chapter 37
Cool air swam in the air around us. I held my jacket tighter around me. Aaron’s hand was warming mine.
“I get that you have a fur coat even in this form, which is kind of weird, but you look cold right now. You can’t at least wear a sweatshirt?”
Aaron looked at me, a small smile pulling at his lips. “You want me to wear two coats?”
“You’re in just a t-shirt right now. It’s October. Just looking at you makes me cold.”
He laughed and pulled me toward him, wrapping his arms around me. Heat blasted all around me. “Warmer?”
I wrapped my arms around him. “Yes. Now are you going to tell me why everyone is avoiding me?”
Aaron sighed. “We had a pack meeting yesterday.” He paused. I decided not to prompt him, and to let him say it when he was ready.
After a moment he continued. “I didn’t go.” He paused again. “I’ve never not gone before. Not just because dad is the Alpha, but because I’m the Second.”
“You’ve never missed a meeting in your whole life?” I asked incredulously.
“Since I was 14. Meetings before then didn’t matter so much.”
“Why not?”
“When you’re 14, you officially become part of the pack.”
I looked up at Aaron from where I stood in his arms. “So why didn’t you go?”
Aaron shrugged and refused to look at me. “Didn’t feel like it.”
I frowned, knowing why he felt that way. “Are you deserting the pack now?”
“No,” he said quietly. “But that’s why everyone was avoiding you. They knew I was with you, and that’s exactly what they are afraid of.”
I paused, thinking. “Are they blaming me?”
I heard Aaron inhale deeply, his nose touching the top of my head. “Mmm, I don’t think so,” he mumbled. “But maybe. I’m not sure how much dad told them.”
“Why don’t you ask?”
“I haven’t been speaking with anyone from the pack.”
I pulled away from Aaron so I could look at him and make sure he could see the incredulous look on my face. “What? Why not.”
Aaron looked away and sighed. Then he shrugged and mumbled “no reason.”
“Aaron, there has to be a reason. What is it?”
Aaron turned back to me and met my eyes for a moment before looking down at his feet. “Can we not talk about this please?”
I exhaled. “Fine,” I said curtly, giving up on trying to get him to open up.
His aloofness was bothering me. A lot.
I saw Aaron inhale again, his eyes still looking down. His hand played with my fingers at my side. He inhaled again.
“Would you stop inhaling like that? You’re making me self-conscience because I feel like I smell bad.”
Aaron’s eyes met mine and I saw him smile weakly. “I don’t think it’s possible for you to smell bad,” he told me. “You have an amazing scent.”
“What do I smell like?” I asked him again, returning to that morning’s conversation.
Aaron regarded me with a steady expression. “Do you have work this afternoon?”
“I knew you were avoiding the topic!”
Aaron frowned at me. “It’s not something you need to know.”
I ogled him. “Why? It’s my smell!”
Aaron sighed. “Sometimes when someone finds out what they specifically smell like, their scent changes. No one really knows why. I think it has something to do with the conscious mind being aware of the smell and attempting to change it.”
“So you’re not telling me because you think I’m going to want to change the way I smell?” I paused. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” I said to myself.
“Well, yeah,” Aaron said. “I like the way you smell. It fits you.”
He took my wrist in his hand and brought it to his nose. He inhaled and smiled before kissing my wrist.
“I don’t remember Jared smelling Linda this often,” I noted.
Aaron frowned and I felt his grip on my wrist tighten slightly. “Who’s Jared? And Linda?”
My jaw fell open slowly. “I…I never told you about my sister?”
“I knew you had an older one, but she died a few years ago, along with your parents. But who is Jared?”
“Aaron,” I said hesitantly, “do you know why my family was tortured?”
Aaron shook his head. “I assumed it was a wrong-place-wrong-time sort of thing. I know Mortaziar was holding a meeting of some sort at the time. I figured your family was,” he gulped, “entertainment.”
“No,” I whispered. “We were tortured for revenge.”
Aaron’s eyes hardened. Lines of confusion etched across his forehead. His hand gripped mine with a tight force. “What do you mean?”
“The man who tortured me and my family wanted revenge for the death of his son.”
Aaron dropped my hand to grip my shoulders tightly. He shook his head. “That’s not possible. His son wasn’t dead when you were,” he stopped and looked at me with pain in his eyes. “Hurt,” he finished.
“He was. I saw the dead body.” I swallowed, chocking on the knot that was beginning to form in my throat. That’s what had started that terrible night.
It has been too long. Linda is always sad, and I don’t know what to do. I haven’t seen Jared in a while though. I know he will help me. Linda is happy when Jared is with her. She smiles a lot. Linda says it’s because she’s in love. I don’t understand love, but because Linda is smarter than me, she does.
Yes, I think Jared will help. That’s why I’m walking to his house. Mommy and daddy are mad at Jared. I don’t know why, because Jared is so nice. I asked them, but they told me to not worry about it.
I asked Linda about it, but she just started crying again. I don’t get it.
I tried going to Jared’s before—he lives in the same neighborhood as Sammy, which isn’t far. I know that because I bike to Sammy’s sometimes—but mommy stopped me. She screamed at me when I tried going outside.
I asked her why but she just shook her head and cried. Then she held me in her arms and wouldn’t let go. I don’t get it.
When I asked her, she told me it wasn’t safe. People have been dying a lot lately. We haven’t had school all week because of it. But I know I will be safe. Jared promised me he would never let harm come to me. I trust him. He’s like my brother, and he’s making Linda happy.
I want Linda happy. She’s so pretty when she’s happy.
I see Jared’s house. Why is there a hole in the window? It looks scary. And why are the curtains ripped? Has Jared stopped caring about his house because he’s as sad as Linda?
If that’s what it is, then all I have to do is tell him Linda loves him and wants him back. Then everyone will be happy.
“Jared?” I call out from the front steps. “Are you in there? Linda misses you.”
A breeze of hair passes through me, chilling me and covering me with goose bumps. The door sweeps open.
“Jared?” I ask again. It looks scary in his house. “Jared will you stop it. It’s scary out here.”
I hear something near the woods. I know it’s not safe outside. Jared will keep me safe inside. I walk through the door.
“Jared?” I call again. Why isn’t he answering? He usually runs out and yells my name, picking me up and spinning me in circles. I love when he does that because I feel like I can fly.
I walk over to where his room is. The door is open just a crack, and I can see it’s dark in there. Maybe he got sleepy and decided to take a nap before he ate dinner.
“Jared?” I say as I walk over to the door. I push it open, expecting to see him lying in his bed.
Something’s hanging by a thick rope from the ceiling. It’s really big. I think it’s a really pig piñata. It looks a lot like Jared. I look at the head of the piñata and scream, realizing why Jared never answered me.
His eyes are clawed out, and his ears are ripped off. His bone is sticking out where his nose should have be. His jaw is hanging at the wrong angle. His head is red with his blood.
My screams continue ringing in my ears. Jared is dead.
“Kaelyn?”
My head snapped back as I was lifted out of my memory. I felt a tear on my cheek. I looked at Aaron. I felt his warm hand wipe the tear away.
“What happened?” He asked me in a quiet voice.
I looked at Aaron, realizing how much I cared for him. I found myself wanting to tell him everything—even the parts I hadn’t told other people.
“I was the start of a new school year. Linda was eighteen. I was nine.” I smiled for a short moment. “She was so happy that it was her last year. She was so smart. She wanted to become a vet. Linda loved animals.” I gulped, fighting off the knot in my throat again. “She met a new boy. His name was Jared. She told me she loved him, even though she hadn’t known him long. I knew something had changed in her; she was always laughing and smiling and dancing around the house. When I first met Jared, I knew he was the reason. She held his hand, and the way she glowed…”
I paused again, realizing I had never explained to Aaron that I could see different shifters. I wanted to tell him, but a small part of me told me to wait. It wasn’t the moment. I opened my mouth to say the words, but no sound came out. I shook my head, unable to say it.
“What happened next?” Aaron asked in a small voice.
I cleared my throat, continuing with the story, my eyes boring into Aaron’s chest because I was unable to look him in the eyes.. “Things were great for a while. She loved him; he loved her. I remember when he showed me his wolf form. He was so big, and soft. We played tag, with him as a wolf, and me as a little girl. I wasn’t afraid of him, because I knew I was safe. He had promised to always make sure I wouldn’t be hurt. He was like an older brother that I had always wanted.
“Then things suddenly changed. A few of Jared’s friends came to the house one day. I remember because I was drawing Jared a picture of him as a wolf. His birthday was coming up, and it was going to be a present.
“The friends were werewolves. They told Linda something and she started crying. I’d never seen her cry so hard. I thought Jared had died, so I started to cry too.”
I shook my head and looked Aaron in the eye. “His friends said they had walked in on Jared and another girl in bed together.” A tear slipped down my cheek. Aaron wiped it away. I looked back at his chest before speaking again.
“Linda never smiled after that. She didn’t laugh, she didn’t eat. She hardly spoke a word. She was dead inside her body. One day, she came home and her—” I stopped myself, about to say her violet glow, the glow of a Find, had turned black. She had become Lost. I took a deep breath. “People started dying all around town. There was a monster in the woods, people said. A giant brown beast. I knew it was Jared, but I didn’t understand why. He was good. I knew he was.
“So after a week, I went to go see him, to tell him he needed to come home with me. Linda wasn’t going to last long, and she was so sad. I knew if they would just see each other again it would be okay. See, I didn’t believe Jared cheated on her. I thought his friends made it up. I never saw them again, though, so I never got to ask them.”
I felt another tear drip down my face. “That’s when I found him,” I said through a chocked voice. “He had hung himself after clawing out his eyes, ripping off his ears and nose, and breaking his jaw. It wasn’t until later that I figured out Linda had gone through the Losing Ritual.”
The Losing Ritual was a very serious ritual performed by witches. One who is a Find becomes a Lost. The shifter would never be able to feel his or her mate with any of the senses. The Lost is literally lost to the shifter. It a ticket to madness.
“He was driven mad and then killed himself,” Aaron whispered. “That’s not uncommon for a shifter whose chosen has been through the Losing Ritual.”
I nodded my head. “Then, as I was screaming, his father found me. Only I didn’t think it was his father, because he was too evil. See, I had met Jared’s father before, and he had been very nice. He even gave me candy when we met.” I shook my head. “This was a whole new side of the man. He told me he was going to kill me and my family for what was done to his son. I tried telling him I hadn’t killed his son. I didn’t understand what he meant.
“I was taken to the woods. That’s when I saw my mom, dad, and sister. They were already bleeding.” I looked up at Aaron, my vision blurring again. “The worst part,” I croaked, “was that Linda didn’t even care. She was empty. What they did to her…she didn’t even care, because she couldn’t feel anything anyway.”
I shook a bit. Aaron held me tighter in his arms. I let the tears fall from my eyes as I cried in silence. After a few minutes I opened my mouth to continue the tale.
“You know what happened that night. I eventually fainted—honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t faint sooner—and then I woke up in a hospital. They had found my parents and sister and reported them dead from an unknown animal attack, suspected bears. Aunt Jane became my guardian, and it’s been that way since. I did my best to avoid all shifters. If we were in the same area as a group of them, we would move.”
My lips curved to a weak smile. “I have to give Jane a lot of credit. If I told her I didn’t want to stay somewhere, she wouldn’t ask questions. We would just move. I didn’t even tell her what happened to me until two years after it happened.”
I stopped speaking, done with my story. Aaron didn’t need to know the details of that night. No one did.
I felt Aaron kiss the top of my head. His hands moved and cupped my cheeks. He lifted my head up so I was looking into his eyes.
“Thank you for telling me,” Aaron said. “Thank you for trusting me.”
I felt another tear slide down from the corner of my eye. It was quickly wiped away by Aaron’s thumb.
“I promise you’ll never be hurt like that again. I’ll make sure you are safe every moment, every day. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.”
I didn’t respond, just stared into Aaron’s beautiful grey eyes. There was such honesty, filling the depth of his orbs. Honesty and affection. I knew, somehow, that I could fully trust him. I would never be hurt again.
Aaron smiled at me, his lips curving to ensure me. “You’re safe,” he said. Then he leaned down and kissed me. His lips were soft and warm, giving me comfort in a way I couldn’t understand. I just knew it.
Although I felt comforted, I couldn’t stop what happened next: I broke down into tears.
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Here's the next chapter! I hope you enjoyed it. I had a bit of writers block with the beginning part. I feel like her story has been repeated a lot lately, so I hope it wasn't too boring. I don't think it was, but I may be a little biased in the area.
Anyway, thanks for reading.