Pieces (Patchwork #1)

by T. Aleo

  My father’s voice reminds me I have to act as if nothing is down there, though it’s so hard. I’m riddled with worry. Will Ryland be okay? Swallowing hard, I look toward my father’s lab. The guards who before were paying no attention whatsoever are now alert, watching everything. I almost want to call them out on it. Almost, but really, I don’t care. I’m completely sick with fear for Ryland.

  “What did you do with Cyrus while I was gone?”

  I look to my father, trying to push my anxiety aside. Though, it doesn’t work well. I draw in a breath as I take in his features. If it’s possible, I think he looks older, or maybe he’s stressed. It could be a combination of both, but I can tell a lot is on his shoulders. I almost feel bad for him, but then I remember he brings a lot of this stress on himself.

  He’s a dictator.

  “Just hung out, ate a lot, worked, and sparred around. The product of that being my jacked-up eye.”

  “Yes, we shall fix that,” he says slowly, folding his arms. “Nothing out of the ordinary happen?”

  Well, I found out that the guy you guys locked away in the bastille is actually my dead boyfriend, who is very much alive and whom I just admitted I love. Because of that, I’m going to free him. Though, I’d probably free him no matter what.

  But I’m more driven because I love him.

  I love Ryland Kelley.

  Well, then.

  “Nope, nothing.”

  “Oh, good,” he says, letting out a breath.

  I hold up my hand. “Well, Christiana Kelley did come into the Clandestine looking for Killian.”

  Father’s head snaps toward me, his gaze meeting mine in inquisition. “And?”

  “And I told her he wasn’t there. I haven’t seen him since you guys took him. Cyrus told me he was dead, which I didn’t think I should tell anyone. So, yeah, I told her he wasn’t there,” I say in a whoosh. Shit, am I convincing?

  My father’s eyes don’t change as he nods. “Yes, good idea.”

  “I wonder why she came in, though?” I ask, hoping he’ll be honest, but he just shakes his head.

  “No clue,” he says, opening the door to the lab and letting me in first. “I found nothing out while we were gone.”

  “Oh?”

  “Nope, nothing, except your brother is in love with some girl in New Orleans and refuses to come home,” he says, the disappointment high in his voice.

  “I heard.” My voice sounds sadder than I mean for it to. I’m actually ecstatic for Jonas; I want him to be happy. I don’t want him to grow to hate our father because he isn’t allowed to love whom he wants.

  Like Oceanus.

  Or me.

  Hopping up on the table, I look to my father as he puts on a pair of gloves and then opens a briefcase. “Yes, well, the only good thing about going to New Orleans was I was able to get a new formula from my cousin Fredrick.”

  That perks my interest. “A new formula? For my immortal state?”

  “Yes,” he says, and my heart kicks into overdrive. “He had something close to your case happen to one of his people. He didn’t respond to the first formula, and so Fredrick came up with this one, which worked on the man right away.” Father turns from his briefcase, holding up a little vial. “He’s had seven cases since then, and all have responded to the new formula. So, of course, I wanted the formula. He asked a lot of questions, but I never gave the real reason why I so desperately needed it. Thankfully, after some negotiations, he mixed me up a batch, and we’re going to try it on you. But first, I have to fix that eye.”

  “Do you think it will work?” I ask, and I’m surprised by how excited I sound.

  “I do. His research and the outcomes are outstanding. It’s almost better than my formula, and we’ve considered using the new one first for our new citizens. We are to speak of it more in a couple months. I want to see if it works.”

  Holy crap. This could be it. I could be immortal. “And then I can be free of the lockdown?”

  My father scoffs. “Rebekah, you are hardly on lockdown.” I give him a deadpan look and he laughs. “Okay, maybe just a bit. But we’ll see when the time comes. Let’s get it to work first.”

  I have to hide my smile as my father prepares his tools. If it works, then I can go find Ryland before he leaves, and maybe we can go together somewhere far away. We could go anywhere, everywhere, and just be happy. He’ll love taking me places, and I’ll love discovering everything with him. But then I realize I’ll never be able to tell anyone about us.

  Him.

  Ryland.

  He’s supposed to be dead.

  Well, that sure does suck.

  When my father turns to me, he takes my face in his hands gently and examines my eye closer. “He really did a number on you, that son of mine.”

  I chuckle. “Yeah, never saw it coming.”

  As he moves my eyelid up, I can’t see his whole face, only his profile as his brows pull together. Opening my eye fully, he inspects some more as JJ’s voice fills the room. “No change.”

  My father nods, coming in closer to my face. “Ah, good. Was anything said?”

  “No, sir, nothing.”

  “Figures. We’ll talk more after I’m done,” he adds, and I can’t help but think they are talking about Ryland. That JJ went down and, thankfully, Ryland stayed as Killian and isn’t talking. Or at least that’s what I’m assuming and praying is what happened. Holding my breath, I wait for JJ to answer as my father looks over my shoulder at him.

  “Sounds good. Are we keeping it there?”

  “Yes, for now.”

  “Okay,” JJ says, and then I see Father’s hand move, and I feel a pinching in my left eye. Cringing, I try not to move, but I cry out a bit as my eye gets hot and then cold and hot again, before a blur slowly takes over. Blinking over and over again, I notice each time is clearer until I can see my father fully, with both eyes.

  “I can see.”

  “Good,” he says, nodding while still inspecting my eye. “I don’t know for how long, though, my love. I think the eye is dying. We’ll need to replace it as soon as possible.”

  My stomach drops. I don’t want a new eye. “Can we at least getting a matching one, and one from someone who is already dead?”

  He waves me off. “We’ll see what I can come up with, but this should last for a while until I decide what to do. But the person will be alive, sweetheart. I need the eye alive.”

  I moan out in protest, though I know it’s pointless. “Ugh, okay,” I say as he backs away, laying his tools down. When he starts to take his gloves off, I kick my legs back and forth, waiting, but then he is washing his hands and drying them. “Wait, aren’t you going to inject the formula?”

  He looks back at me. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I want to fix your eye completely first. With this formula, it doesn’t heal you, it freezes your body in the state it’s in at the time of injection. I want you in tip-top shape before I do that.”

  “Oh,” I say sadly. How long will that take?

  “I might get some new arms, add in another liver, some other upgrades.”

  I cringe. “Or just an eye, Father. Let’s not get crazy,” I suggest and he smiles.

  “We’ll see, okay? Anything else bothering you?”

  He looks back at me as I shrug. I don’t know if he means physically, but I figure since he’s asking… “I’m achier than I usually am. Like I hurt everywhere, and it’s never like that.”

  It’s as if I’m watching the gears in his head turn before he moves to his vials. I watch as he mixes a few before he reaches into the fridge for a bag of blood. Taking a syringe full, he mixes it with the concoction he’s just made before drawing all of the mixture into another syringe and turning to me. “This should do the trick.”

  He comes to me, stabbing me in the meaty part of my arm and shooting me with the whole syringe. Pain runs down my arm, but then it turns cold, before I don’t feel anything at all. Slowly my aches
go away, and I feel like me within seconds.

  “Better?” he asks and I nod.

  “Way better.”

  “Good. I want you to take another night off, get some more rest, and then meet me tomorrow in my office so I can check you out,” Father says as I hop off the table in front of him.

  “Okay,” I say, though I really don’t want to skip work. I’d rather go, but I am really tired. Maybe sometime during the night, I can sneak in to my father’s office.

  “We have a meeting in the morning that I want you to attend.”

  I look up. “For?”

  “To go over our trip, and then Cyrus wants to discuss some matters with me, so we’ll see what that is about,” he says, laughter in his voice. “Now, off you go. Get some rest. Let me know if anything changes.”

  “Will do,” I say with a quick smile before turning toward the door. Before I can reach the doorway, though, Oceanus fills it. “Osh!”

  My brother’s face brightens as a grin takes over, and he reaches for me, pulling me into a big hug. Stepping back, his face twists in worry as he takes in my face. “Jesus, Cyrus got you good. You slacking?”

  I laugh as we walk out together. “No, he caught me as I was trying to get up.”

  “Sister, you know better.”

  “I know. I was thinking about something else.”

  “Again, you know better,” he laughs and I smile.

  “I know, I know,” I say, waving him off. “Did you have a nice trip?”

  He shrugs. “If you think standing around as Father interrogates everyone is nice…I guess so.”

  “Did you guys go to each faction?”

  After we enter the family room, we both sit as he nods. “Yeah, and I’m telling you, the Kelleys are up to something.”

  I already know this, but he doesn’t know that. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what, though.”

  Looking down, I pick at my nails. Oceanus is basically my best friend and I know I can talk to him, but I don’t think I can tell him about Ryland. It isn’t that I don’t trust him; I just know how much our family means to him. How much I mean to him. He’ll see this as a threat, not as a blessing. “I heard Christiana was shifting into guards to get in here.”

  He looks up then, his eyes widening. “What? Who told you that?”

  “Some drunk shifter the other night.”

  “Really? When?”

  “I don’t know. She apparently shifted into Samuel too, trying to get to me.”

  “What the hell? And you’re just now saying something?” he asks incredulously, and I shrug.

  “I can handle myself. I wasn’t scared.”

  “You drive me crazy, sister,” he complains, and I smile as he takes out his phone, feverishly typing away. “Next time you hear something like this, you tell me. You got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, saluting him just to be a brat.

  Rolling his eyes, he finishes typing before looking back up at me. “I told Hank to get bracelets made for our guards. I may get some extras for us that are made of silver. If she tries to shift into a guard again, we’ll hear the sizzle of her wrist.

  “Yum,” I say and he laughs.

  “Anything to keep you safe.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m fine.”

  “Whatever. Don’t fight me on this.”

  I shake my head. “Fine, I won’t,” I tease and he grins. “So did you go see the Conners?”

  When his body goes taut, his grin disappearing, I know he did. “We did.”

  “Did you see Taegan?”

  He lets out a long breath as he nods. “I did.”

  “How did that go?”

  He laughs. “It was like walking through the fiery depths of hell. It was horrible.”

  Sorrow covers my face as I look away. “Are you still going to the wedding?”

  “I am,” he says, meeting my gaze. “No matter how much I don’t want to.”

  I bite the inside of my lip. “I’ll go for you. Hopefully, I won’t be on lockdown soon. Father found a formula.”

  “I know,” he says, leaning forward on his knees. “And I’d love for you to go, but I need to go, too. I told her she should marry the guy, that I understand.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “When you love someone, you do what’s best for them. She’ll be happier than waiting for me to get my head out of my ass and follow my heart,” he confesses, and when he meets my gaze, I know he sees that I’m a little taken aback by his admission. Oceanus isn’t an open book, but I can tell that seeing her really sliced him to the core. As he looks away quickly, shaking his head, obviously embarrassed, I hurt inside. I just want my family to be happy, but everyone is so damn power hungry they won’t allow themselves to.

  Leaning toward him, I cover his hands with mine. He looks up slowly, his sad eyes locking with mine. “I vote follow your heart.”

  “Says the young girl with no worries and zero love experience. You don’t even know what love is.”

  I protest. “I do.”

  “Who, then? Who did you ever love?”

  “Ryland,” I say and his eyes widen.

  Looking away, he shakes his head. “I haven’t heard his name in a long time.”

  “I know,” I whisper and he looks up.

  “And I’m sorry, sister. I know how much he meant to you, but you don’t understand what would happen if I followed my heart.”

  “You’d be happy.”

  He sighs, nodding his head. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t have my family. Did you see how fast Father turned on Jonas? I can’t let that happen, I can’t not see my baby sister,” he says, squeezing my hand, and I smile.

  “You’ll always see me, Osh. Always.”

  He grins, sucking in a breath and letting it out on a harsh sigh. “Oh, well. One day.”

  “Could be today if you wanted,” I remind him and he nods.

  “Yeah, it could be,” he agrees, shaking his head. “But it won’t.”

  As he stands, I look up at him and he cups my face. “I hope for more for you, though. That you’re loved to the fullest by a good man.”

  “A Patchwork man.”

  “Well, of course,” he laughs as if that’s so well known. But not to me. I don’t want a Patchwork man; I want Ryland.

  “Unless you change the laws,” I offer, and he looks away, his hand dropping. “You could tell Taegan to wait, change them, and then marry her.”

  He laughs. “That would cause an insurgence.”

  “Or it would cause peace.”

  His eyes search mine, and I almost think I have him convinced, but then he shakes his head. “I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  As he turns, heading for the exit, I know I should leave it be, that I should let this go. But when have I ever done that?

  “But what if I do want to be with someone else? A wolf, a shifter, a vampire, a one-eyed purple monster, will you stop me?”

  Pausing at the door, he looks back at me, his eyes full of such pain and longing. I don’t know how he does it. How he can be so loyal to a family that doesn’t want his happiness. Clearing his throat, he admits, “I wouldn’t want to.”

  “But you would.”

  “I would.”

  “No matter how much that breaks my heart?”

  “We have to do what is right, what is expected of this family, Rebekah, and that’s following the rules. Don’t forget that. Though, you do constantly.”

  Shrugging, I grin and he laughs. “I do.”

  Shaking his head, he turns, and my gaze meets his back. “Be good, Rebekah.”

  “Never,” I call to him, and his laughter answers me as I stand. Stretching my arms above my head, I guess I’ll go to bed, get a good night’s sleep. But then I wonder if I should eat, or even swing by my father’s office since I know he’ll be in there. I can act as if I am looking for a book, but then get into the cabinet when he isn’t looking. I could free Ryland tonight
.

  Why does that idea hurt so badly?

  But before I can even take a step, JJ’s voice stops me. “Rebekah, ready to go back to your room?”

  I groan loudly. “But I enjoyed our time apart,” I complain as I turn, looking over at him. “And no, I’m going to my father’s office. I need a book.”

  “Which one? I’ll get it. You go to your room.”

  I pause, and something is off. Is he still angry? What the hell? “No, I want to go.”

  “And I said, go to your room.”

  I eye him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  His eyes narrow as he takes a step toward me, his voice dropping an octave. “I know you are lying to me.”

  “Lying to you?” I ask, stepping back. “About what?”

  “About going down into the bastille. You were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing.”

  “Like what? There is nothing down there!”

  “So many lies. Your father may not have noticed, but I did, Rebekah, and I don’t appreciate it. I thought you cared for me, that we had a different relationship.”

  Whoa, what the hell? Holding my hands in front of me, I start to back up. “Whatever, I don’t even know where you get off. I’m not lying.”

  As I head out of the room, he follows, saying my name. I keep going toward my father’s office. But then his hand takes mine, yanking me to a halt before whipping me around. “Your father is in a meeting. You can’t go in there. I will take you to your room.”

  “I don’t want to go to my room!” I yell, trying to get my arm free, but he’s got a good grip on me. Fear settles in my chest at the wildness in his eyes. I don’t know who this man is, and for a second, I think it may be Christiana. “Let me go!”

  “Rebekah—”

  “Let her go!” Cyrus yells out of nowhere, with Oceanus right behind him.

  “What’s going on?” Oceanus says as JJ lets me go, and I rush to Cyrus’s side.

  “I’m taking her to her room,” he says, pointing at me. “But she’s resisting.”

  “Probably ’cause she’s been doing everything on her own time since you guys have been gone. She’s okay. She doesn’t need you,” Cyrus says, folding his arms over his chest, and JJ glares. Quickly, I try to make sure I see nothing out of the ordinary, anything that would make me think he isn’t who he claims to be.