Villain (Starlight Book 2)

by D. N. Hoxa

  But he leaned in again and I lost count of what was emanating from his body the second his lips gave mine a whispering touch. All I could see were his ocean eyes and the way he was watching me sent me over the edge. All I had to do was lean in, just a tiny bit, and our lips would be sealed.

  But I couldn’t.

  Calling on every ounce of control that was still reasonable in my body, the parts that weren’t too much affected by his smooth lips, I very slowly stepped back, kept my head down and walked out of the training room with the longest steps I had ever taken, because I could feel his eyes on my back like they could touch me physically.

  I didn’t even know how I got back to my room. I just knew when I collapsed on my bed.

  ***

  My breathing was heavy and I was holding on tightly to someone. My heart was beating like it wanted nothing more than to break my ribcage and fly out of me. I couldn’t see anything until I realized my eyes were closed. So I opened them.

  I wished I didn’t.

  A cold grip closed around my insides, making me shiver. I knew her. I recognized her short curly hair and her very tall form immediately. Mom’s doctor. She was leaning in, looking at someone who was lying on the bed in front of her. My mother.

  Her eyes were closed, and the doctor was touching her bare stomach. She was looking for something with her tall fingers, before she covered my mother up and turned to face us. Only then I realized what day it was and my body started shaking. I was holding Ella on my lap. I didn’t see her because I only had eyes for the doctor, but I remembered. Dad was sitting next to me, and we were all waiting.

  But I didn’t want to wait. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I wanted to get up and scream and break something, and just get the doctor to tell us the truth! I wanted for that day to have never happened. I wanted my mom.

  Ella squeezed my wrists with her small hands as she looked at the doctor.

  “She’s okay. She’s just needs to rest, and she’ll be fine.” The doctor’s ice-cold voice pierced my ears. I wanted to get up and strangle her, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. That was exactly what she said that night. The exact same words on the exact same night. The last night my mother was alive.

  She was lying to us. I knew it, but I couldn’t do anything. My tears were falling and falling nonstop, and I couldn’t even stop them long enough to draw air into my lungs without gasping. I knew...

  A heartbeat later, I was in my knees in front of Mom. She looked so peaceful like that. Ella was right next to me, watching her, too. Dad was in the kitchen fixing us something to eat. The doctor said that mom was fine, that she just needed to rest. I smiled in relief. Everything would be fine. Miracles happened all the time! And if there was someone in the world who deserved a miracle, it was my mother. She would be okay. I smiled for the longest while, looking at her pale face...

  Then I remembered. I remembered, and my heart crashed and shattered. My mouth was open and my scream ready to take on the world until I felt Ella’s presence next to me. She was watching Mom with the same smile I had on just a moment ago. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that the doctor had lied. She had no idea that the next morning...the next morning Mom would...

  “Why won’t you stop it?” Ella whispered. She was looking at me now, fear and desperation clearly reflected in her eyes. I inhaled deeply and tried to find my voice.

  “I can’t stop it, Ella,” I whispered back. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her lips dry. She knew. I don’t know how, but she knew.

  She lowered her head slowly and wiped away a single tear on her cheek. “Yes, you can.”

  I held her more tightly, and I started to shake my head. But something hit me in the chest, hard enough to make me see stars in my vision.

  I can stop it! Of course I can stop it! I am an Elemental!

  I let go of Ella, and I reached for Mom’s hands. I was going to do to her what I did to Ella in Lyndor—suck the cancer out of her and into me—and I was never going to live the next morning again. Ever.

  But…my hands were frozen. I couldn’t move them. I tried to reach for her again, but it was like an invisible wall was standing in the middle of us. Something was wrong. My heartbeat tripled, and Ella was shaking on my lap. I tried to call out to Mom, to make her wake up and grab my hands, but my mouth was frozen shut, too. My vocal cords were cut. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak, and I needed to touch Mom. I needed to take her pain away.

  But before I could do that, I fell...

  5

  ——————————

  I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock the next morning, feeling a million times worse than the day before. I’d had another dream, a really bad one. I was thankful that I couldn’t remember it, but I could tell it was bad. I could tell from the wet pillow underneath me and from the way my whole body was still shaking.

  Before I let curiosity take over and I made myself try to figure out what the dream had been about, I jumped in the shower. The water felt so good on my skin, and I played with it like I was six and it was my favorite toy. I swirled it around my body and I let it inside, calming the very last nerve in my brain.

  Slowly, I let everything that had happened the day before in. Ella’s face, her weak whispers. Aaron’s face, his eyes and his words. Aaron’s closeness, the kiss he almost gave me. His energy.

  I inhaled deeply, and I let the water run down my face, desperately looking for an answer, for something that would tell me what to do. I had no idea. I hadn’t had to deal with personal matters for four years. Maybe that’s why it was so hard for me. I didn’t have time to think about my personal relationships because chaos was getting closer every day. But no matter how much I tried to avoid it, I kept crashing back into it. I had no idea how to act, and the fact that I was letting someone else tell me that I was wrong sucked ass. Even more so when that someone was Aaron.

  I knew I wasn’t always going to be there. As much as it pained me, I wanted Ella to learn how to fight should the occasion arise. As much as it was everything I stood against, she might be facing danger. There was going to be a war, and one could never know what would happen in a war.

  The decision had already been made the night before, it seemed. I’d just needed to come to terms with it and figure out a way to get Ella to not take no for an answer. I wasn’t going to just tell her that she could train. She was going to have to make me teach her.

  It was Sunday, so the hallways were filled more than usual. I turned my senses off, but I had learned to ignore the pull in my stomach, too, which strangely had begun to lessen in the past couple days. I kept my eyes on the empty space in front of me, knowing that everybody was watching me. They made way for me when I walked, too. The urge to turn around and tell them that they didn’t need to be afraid of me was overwhelming, but I held myself in for their sake. No matter my personal issues, they needed me to be strong and feared. They needed me to be the Raven. Because if they feared me, they’d think that our enemy would fear me, too. So, in a way, their fear of me was also their reassurance. I couldn’t take that away from them. I was just going to have to live with that.

  I stepped into a kitchen filled with supernaturals—a very strange view—glad that I had turned off my senses. Too many different kinds of sups were in there, and I wasn’t too eager to start feeling each one of them any time soon. I spotted Ella’s honey blond hair at the very end of the table that went along the whole right wall of the room. She was eating by herself, her headphones on, while girls and boys, no older than her were sitting just a couple of chairs away.

  I went for the fridge first, but someone called me.

  “Star?”

  I turned to see where that sweet, smooth voice was coming from. It was a woman with a white apron on, light brown hair and smiling eyes. She was smiling so I turned around to look, but there was nobody else but me. Huh.

  When she waved me over, I had no doubt that she’d been smiling at me. I made my way to her with a dum
bfounded smile on my face. She was standing in front of the oven and waiting for me with a white plate in her hands.

  That didn’t seem right. People there didn’t talk to me. They either ignored me, pretended I wasn’t there, or watched me with fearful/hate-filled eyes. When I was two feet away from her, I stopped. She was a little shorter than me, and her round face was so sweet and inviting, but it still wasn’t right.

  “Here,” she said, offering the plate she was holding to me. On it was the most delicious looking omelette I’d ever seen.

  I shook my head. “I’m just going to make a sandwich.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, dismissing my words with a wave of her hand. “You can’t keep living on sandwiches. I made this for you, and you’re going to eat it.” Her voice was so sweet that I had to turn my senses on again, just to see what she was.

  As soon as I let them in, every kind of energy in the room crashed into me. It never got any easier to breath in a room so full of supernaturals. But I concentrated on the woman in front of me, tuning out everybody else. Werewolf. She was a werewolf. Not too strong but still, a werewolf. I turned my senses off again. It still didn’t make sense that she would bother to prepare something to eat for me.

  “Why?” I asked, as I slowly reached for the plate. She reminded me of someone from a long time ago, but I couldn’t place who.

  “Because it’s my job. I’m the cook around here, and you can call me Marie. Go on now. I have others to feed as well.” With that warm smile that never left her face, she winked at me and turned back to her cooking.

  With an open mouth, I watched the back of her head for another couple of seconds before I got it together. A Red Rebel who gave me a genuine smile. Food, too. I guessed stranger things had happened.

  I made my way back to where Ella was sitting. I put my plate right next to her and took a seat. She looked up startled and took her earpieces off.

  “Hey, Ells.” I was trying to sound cheerful, but my tone was off.

  “Hey.” Her voice was dull, and she didn’t even look up at me.

  “What’s up?” I asked with my mouth half full. I knew exactly what was up, but I just wanted to make her talk to me.

  She turned to look at me with an ice-cold stare, and I fought to keep a smile off my face. That was more like it. “You know what’s up.”

  “What, you mean the training thing?” I said, half mocking her. I was being an asshole, yeah, but who cared? The plan was to get her mad, and it had already begun to work.

  She dropped a small piece of bread on her plate and turned to look at me again. “Yes, Star. It’s the training thing.”

  “You really want to train?”

  “Of course I really want to!” she hissed. “That’s why I asked.”

  “I was pretty sure you were kidding.”

  Ella rolled her eyes. “Well, I wasn’t.”

  I shrugged. “Could have fooled me. Didn’t look like you really wanted it.”

  She looked furious, and I couldn’t have been happier. I was going to push her even more, but then a plate was placed in front of me and Aaron in all his glory sat right across from me.

  My heart skipped a beat at the sight of him, my mind immediately going to the night before. To the feeling inside me when he touched his lips to mine—even if it was only barely. I clamped shut my slightly open mouth and forced myself to take control. He was looking at me with those ocean eyes like they held thousands of secrets, waiting to be discovered. By me.

  Do something, do something, do something…introductions. Of course.

  “Ella, this is Aaron, Aaron, this is my sister Ella,” I said, not bothering to look at either one of them. Instead I kept my eyes on my plate, as if the thing was so goddamn interesting. I wanted to scream at Aaron for interrupting me, but I also wanted him to take the seat next to me. He was too far.

  “So, this is the famous Ella.” Aaron said to my sister, smiling.

  She just nodded and offered him a weak smile, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t know I was famous.”

  “You kidding? Your sister almost turned the sky upside down when she heard you were kidnapped.”

  What the hell?

  “Oh, really?” said Ella sarcastically. “I had no idea.”

  Aaron saved me from grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, telling her that of course I did, and of course I would have gone to hell and back for her.

  “She really did,” he said, and once again I was left wondering if he could read minds. Or he just knew me more than I liked to think he did. Or we just thought alike. The possibilities were endless, but none of them really explained why he was helping me. “So, I hear you want to train.”

  Shit. I wished he hadn’t gone there. I had been fine on my own!

  But then, Ella threw her fork on the plate and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I do, and if my sister really cared for me as much as you think she does, she’d let me.”

  Aaron nodded. “I agree.”

  I wanted to throw my plate in his face, and I thought he knew by the way my jaw was clenching. He had the courage to even smile to my face! I scorched him with my eyes until there was nothing left.

  “Like I said, she won’t let me,” Ella said again through gritted teeth.

  “Yeah, I know she said no,” Aaron said, nodding. Then, “So what time do you start?”

  Again, I was torn between throwing my chair at his head and hugging him, and trying to figure out why he was helping me. I wasn’t used to this. I did my shit on my own. Nobody helped me without wanting something in return, and chances were, I didn’t want to give them whatever they wanted. So that’s why I always stuck to riding solo.

  But no matter what I thought, this was happening and I couldn’t stop it.

  Ella looked at him like he was crazy for a second, but Aaron continued to speak. “I’d say it would be better at night. After all the others end their day. Say, after seven o’clock?”

  Ella turned to look at me as if to ask for permission.

  “No.” The word was at the tip of my tongue.

  She raised her brow. “You think you’re the only one who can train me? I can find someone else.” Oh, thank Heavens!

  …or Aaron.

  “If you think you’ll find someone who’ll agree to train you when I say no, then go right ahead.”

  “You’re being an asshole,” she said.

  Aaron chuckled. “Amen to that.”

  I almost flipped him off. “Shut up.” Yeah, real mature, Star.

  “See? There’s no talking to her,” Ella said to Aaron, and she grabbed her plate, ready to get up. My heart skipped a long beat.

  “So don’t. Tell her where and when you’ll meet her, and be done with the talking.”

  Ella froze. Aaron raised a brow in question. What’s it going to be, Ella? I barely breathed until she very slowly turned to me, half-afraid and half-excited. Her mouth opened and closed a few more times before she spoke.

  “You’re right. I’ll see you today at seven.”

  As if she’d caught fire, she was up and running towards the door before the last word had even properly left her mouth. Oh, God, I was sweating like a pig. Why were little sisters so hard to handle? Or maybe it was just me…

  I turned to Aaron reluctantly. The coming part was also something I wasn’t using to. At all. But I swallowed hard and made myself speak. “I don’t know why you did what you did there, but thank you, Aaron.” Ugh. Those words tasted like a hairy ass probably did. That was why I didn’t look at him or wait for his response. I chickened out and practically ran out of the kitchen instead.

  6

  ——————————

  The rusty taste of blood filled my mouth. Aaron hit me hard on the jaw and brought stars in front of my eyes. I couldn’t believe how fast he learned and how fast he improved. When I first met him, I could take him in two minutes without breaking a sweat. Now, those two minutes had become ten, and I had to work har
d to bring him down. It was not normal, that much I knew. Muscles don’t just stretch in a day. You don’t just learn and perform a perfect move in one, maybe two tries. It was definitely not normal, and I had no idea what to think of it.

  The training for the first group was almost over, and we had to take Christopher to Horatio because Mike dropped him on the ground unconscious. I could tell he wasn’t sorry, and I was glad he wasn’t. When dealing with the real enemy, if “sorry” even crossed your mind, you’d be finished. But he did look uncomfortable. I think he expected me to reproach him.

  “Okay, show’s over. Back to training,” I said, and I caught a little grin on Mike’s square face before I stepped in front of Aaron. He was sweating even more than I, and he was obviously tired as fuck. But it didn’t seem like he wanted to give up.

  As soon as my eyes landed on his, my stomach turned in knots but for a different reason. I had no idea how to behave around him now. It’d been too long since I was thankful toward someone. How do people act around people they are thankful to? I didn’t know if I should be kinder to him, or if I should just continue like nothing had happened. Confusion was a dark cloud constantly looming over my mind.

  In the end, I decided I was going to continue to behave the same way as always. I was afraid I would blow it if I tried to be nice or kind. It just wasn’t what I was used to. Not in four years. I was not a fan of making a fool out of myself. So I hit him the same, if not harder than before.

  He went for my thigh and then for my shoulder, and I jerked back, almost catching his gut with the tip of my foot. He fell back, then shot forward again as I went down and tried to kick his feet and drop him on the floor. He jumped at the last second and delivered a mother of a blow on my collarbone.

  I didn’t know what to expect from him. Was he my friend? No. Friends don’t tell friends they don’t trust them, and they definitely don’t tell them they want to kill them. But then again, friends do want to know what is bugging their friends, and they definitely try to help them when in need.