“Thank you, Sage,” Kota smiled. “Not just for the crystals but for the information. It answered a lot of questions.”
“This place is your connection with the spirits,” she nodded. “When you enter the circle, you will be hidden from the rest of Medova. Only those who are welcome will be able to find this place. The spirits are on your side.”
“So, we can come back here?” Luna asked, looking hopeful at the possibility.
“Whenever you feel the need,” Sage smiled. “Now, I believe your fathers are waiting inside the cave. The girls can show you to their rooms.”
She winked at the girls and I before bringing her hands together above her head, shooting up into the sky. She was gone just as quickly as she arrived. Just when I thought there was enough for all of us to process, Sage goes and gives us some more. I had no idea where to go from here. Obviously, we were going down to the cave so that we could bring our fathers home, but there was so much more to do than just that and I had no idea where to begin. I had to beat it into my head that Malachi was the mission because if I didn’t, I could easily lose sight of it the moment I laid eyes on my father.
I felt the dangling piece on my wrist and I quickly changed my glance, trying to get a better view at what Sage had created. The vines were intertwined with each other as they met in the middle where the yellow crystal sat. It was a smaller version of the one on the stone pillar. I was tempted to access the power of the spirits, just to see what it felt like, but there was no time for that. I needed to focus. I was distracted and maybe I was even procrastinating. Why was I so nervous? It was just my father that we were seeing, it’s not like we were meeting a bunch of other high-ranking spirits, too. Meeting one spirit was more than enough. I still felt anxious just thinking about Sage being a spirit. She was one of the ones who created the Alphas. Never did I think I would meet someone that powerful. I always figured I would be dead if I ever met a spirit.
“Are we ready to go?” Juno asked, looking at Jona and I, glancing over at Hudson, including him in the family decisions.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to see him,” I blurted, not meaning to say it out loud.
“What are you talking about?” Jona questioned. “How can you not want to see him?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I tried to back track. “I just mean, it’s been over a month. We’ve done a lot of things during that month. We made decisions based on the information we had.”
“Juda, you’re rambling,” Hudson spoke quietly into my ear.
“What if we disappoint him?” I finally said the words that had been haunting me the second Sage told me my father was alive. It didn’t cross my mind before that and maybe it’s because I had no actual proof that he was still here. He wasn’t real to me yet but now he was. It’s not like Sage was lying. “What if he’s not proud of us?”
“You’re overthinking it, Juda,” Juno assured me. “Dad knows we’ve been on our own. He will know that we’ve done the best we could with what we had. You know it doesn’t take much to make him proud.”
“That is true, Juda,” Hudson added. “Remember that time he told he was proud of you because you didn’t pick your booger out of your nose.”
“You would remember that,” I squealed. “Of all the things to remember about me when I was five, you remember that? Seriously, Hudson?”
“I’m just trying to prove a point,” he defended himself looking to Juno and Jona for help.
“And you thought I’d be the reason your five hundred years would turn out to be hell,” Juno laughed.
“Really? You’re going to bring that up now?” Hudson glared.
“The point is, Juda,” Jona interrupted our eldest brother and my soon to be husband. Children is what they sounded like. “Dad’s just going to be happy to see you. He’s not going to care about all the other shit.”
“I really hope you’re right,” I shied away.
The others looked like they were ready to leave, heading back for the vines. Sage used most of them to make the bracelets and rings, so the sorcerers felt it was okay to magically help us all down. How nice of them to sacrifice the energy.
I remembered as soon as we hit the ground that the cave was much bigger than we all anticipated and unless we ran, it would be a little bit before we got back to the entrance. Oddly, I wasn’t the only one not in a rush to get to the men we had been searching for ever since we left the castle. I think a part of me was waiting for it to all be a dream. I would wake up at the camp site and everyone else would still be asleep. It really did feel like a dream or too good to be true. Knowing that our fathers were keeping tabs on us was what made me worry the most. Even though my brothers and Hudson assured me that our father wouldn’t care about anything other than being back in our lives, I can’t help but think I didn’t do anything that would make him proud.
“You think too loud,” Hudson chuckled softly as he walked beside me.
“I’m just nervous,” I told him.
“Don’t be,” he said. “Your father loves you more than anything else in this world. Maybe even more than Juno.”
“Hey!” Jona yelled. “What about me?”
“He loves you, too,” Jona patted our brother on the back but he couldn’t do it without smiling.
“Assholes,” Jona mumbled.
“What do you think mom will do when we bring him home?” I asked, changing the subject so that Jona wouldn’t get his feelings hurt again.
“Fuck, I forgot about mom,” Juno admitted.
“Well, it’s not like she’s been very present lately,” I said, hoping it would make him feel better about forgetting.
“It doesn’t matter,” Juno said harshly. “I should’ve been thinking about her, too. Even if we didn’t get a hint about dad being alive, I should’ve been trying to find ways to get her out of that damn room.”
“That’s not your responsibility, Juno,” Jona added. “You had enough on your plate after becoming the Alpha. You could deal with mom’s shit at the same time.”
“She did lose her husband,” Hudson attempted to defend her because it did sound like we were bashing her. I think I would feel bad when this is all over but her absence while we thought our dad was dead was really hurtful. She told me a few days after we got back at the farm that she was going to do better to be there for my brothers and I but that never happened.
“And we lost our father,” Jona countered.
“We at least tried to move on,” I tried to explain to Hudson. “Our mother just continued to lock herself away. At first, she would only see us but then, eventually, even we weren’t allowed to see her. We were all grieving, but she acted like it was just her.”
“We’ll see what dad wants to do,” Juno decided. “We’ll let him decide whether we bring mom in on this or not.”
“Mom’s not going to like that,” Jona muttered.
“Well, then she should’ve been present,” I snapped, Hudson squeezing my hand slightly as my sassiness moved up a level.
I thought it would take longer to get to the entrance of the cave, but a lot sooner than I wanted, we arrived. The Alphas took a minute to examine the carvings on the outside wall. The sun was starting to come up, which meant we were talking to Sage a lot longer than I thought. We had only been asleep for a few hours once the sun went down and I wasn’t even asleep for as long as the others. The early morning sun was trying to peak through the treetops, but it just hadn’t risen high enough to get there yet. When we walked into the cave, Hudson and Gavin grabbed the torches that we left behind, only, they were in a different spot than last time. They were far away from where we left them, but they were a little bit deeper into the cave. Our fathers must’ve used them. Now that we know they’re alive, that actually makes sense.
The Alphas and the boys took some time looking at the stories on the wall. I showed them the one that we were all confused about the last time we were here and then Dion lit the firepit in the middle of the cave so that we wou
ldn’t have to hold onto the torches anymore. We would need them when we went down the hallway, but I was going to let him figure that out on his own.
“I wonder who wrote these stories on the wall?” Levi asked.
“I thought it might’ve been the original Alphas but now I’m wondering if it was the spirits,” I told him as I walked up next to him. “What if Sage was one of the ones who put these here?”
“I guess we’ll never know,” Kory muttered as he stood on the other side of me.
“We could just ask her the next time we see her,” Luna stepped in, pointing out the obvious. She had a point, which was the only reason I think Levi didn’t snap at her for her attitude. It was still hard to comprehend that we basically had an open line to the spirits whenever we were in that circle on top of the cave. My little brain was having a lot of trouble processing anything right now.
Dion lit the torches again, Deni and Gavin laughing as he made the realization. We pointed them down the hallway that led to the five separate bedrooms, trying to explain to them where each room was ahead of time so that it wasn’t a big mess once we got back there. I still wondered how big this cave was on the inside after seeing how big it was on the outside.
Juno and Jona were right behind me. The second in commands decided they should stay behind and let us catch up with our fathers before they said hello. Apparently, they were going to stand guard for anything out of the ordinary. I’m pretty sure this place was protected by the spirits. Nothing was going to happen. We reached that area were the hallway split off into five different hallways, all of us going our separate ways once again. My heart was racing so fast that I was struggling to get it under control. Juno and Jona had the same problem. I could feel the anxiety on them as we all realized only a door separated us from our father. This was the moment we had been waiting for. Not everyone gets the opportunity to get there father back after they’ve died but we were lucky. We had the spirits to thank completely but I wasn’t in the right mindset to be thanking anyone properly.
I kept telling myself that this was all a dream again. My mind just couldn’t wrap itself around the idea that my dad was alive. It was almost like I was still trying to protect myself for the moment when the carpet was ripped out from underneath me, and my father was still buried six feet under. I tried to shake it out of my head because Sage said he was alive. She wouldn’t say that and then point us in his direction. If she were lying, she would tell us that he was alive, but we couldn’t see him until we killed Malachi, only to reveal that she lied. My theories weren’t adding up but the wall that I built was doing its best to protect me from any disappointment I might have to face on the other side of that door.
We reached the end of the hallway. I stopped to look back at Juno and Jona before I reached out for the doorknob. They nodded for me to continue and when I pushed open the stone door I was met with a fully lit room unlike the darkness Hudson and I walked into last time we were here. I took a few steps in, Juno and Jona right behind me still. Movement came from a door on the other side of the room, which I don’t remember being there last time. It opened and the tears that had been building up finally fell.
Table of Contents
Deprived
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Deprived (Daughter of an Alpha Book 2) Page 26