Growing up in chaos isn't simple for all. Not many could cope. They would struggle and kick, but ultimately drown. However, for Dakota, that was his normality. Torturing. Maiming. Killing. That was his life, the life of a hunter.
The Arizona line was elusive, written fame in the lore of hunters, and infamy for their prey. They were the best. No one could ever compare to their skills, their abilities, their ruthlessness. But Dakota was something else. His siblings might have learnt to enjoy the hunt, well most of them anyway, but Dakota didn't. There was always something missing for him, something he was waiting on. Silent and everlasting hope.
A promise had been made to him, the day his twin brother was stolen, taken by the enemy, plucked right from the very home the Arizonas had grown up in. A promise of something better, something that he might actually want in his life. Now, almost sixteen years later, something was coming. A change was begging to be found.
Maybe it would be for the best. Maybe Dakota would finally find that certain something that had been missing his whole life, something to fill the dark and fractured abyss that ached and wailed within. But nothing was ever that simple. Because, of course, the promise that had been made to Dakota would never be anything plausible for him, anything tangible to have and to hold.
He had been promised a new life, by the greatest enemy of them all. It wouldn't be easy. Not with his family still clinging to his heels, the teachings of blood and violence burnt into his mind. No, leaving them behind wouldn't ever be easy. Then again, staying with them would only bring his inevitable death. Why not take the chance to die happy? After all, out of the ashes, a phoenix will rise...
Book Two of the Haunted Lover's Duo.
"The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird." -Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War Two Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.
In the wake of Malcolm's death, Slate attempts a shot at normality. He tries to cope, and hopes staying close to Eden will aid him in retaining his sanity. However, there just doesn't seem to be anything going right, and the hole that Malcolm left in his chest just isn't helping. He's falling, and he knows soon he'll hit the ground. He'll crash.
During a raging storm, Slate finds the one light that might actually keep him going. The one light to guide him through the darkness of his life, to bring him back from the brink, and maybe even to finally forge some beauty worth living for. A nymph, half-dead in the middle of the road, so close to the end himself but somehow able to shift Slate's entire world into another dimension. A clearer one. One that he may just survive in.