“Hey, Stone, look at me.”
I finally turned and made the stupid mistake of looking her in the eyes. They glowed a bright coral color. Her green hair seemed darker, turning an almost purple color.
“Can you go find Elijah for me?” Her voice was a song. A song that I would never be able to resist. There was something digging in my brain, trying to get me to focus, but all I could feel was the silky feel of her hand touching mine. I leaned closer. A song played in my head, all piano, starting out low moving to an easy beat. I closed my eyes to hear the song better, to let it wrap around me, and I started to move. I had no care in the world other than to find where the song originated.
When the song ended, I was at the doorway of Jacobs’s office, and I knew Nixie had used her siren song to get me here. She was too attached to what was mine. Wait. I meant she was just too attached to my charge. To the team’s charge. Nixie wasn’t a real fighter. She was a seductress, a torturer of the mind, body, and soul, but she was part of our team. Audrey was mine to protect, ours to protect.
I didn’t bother knocking on Jacobs’ door since I knew he caught my scent in the hall.
When I entered, Elijah, Dallas, and Marcus were already there. Marcus was draped over the couch, looking relaxed as always, but Dallas was pacing. Wolves could never seem to stay still for long. Even Jacobs looked like he wanted to join his son. Elijah remained motionless next to Jacobs’s desk. Instead of watching our team leader, he was watching my progress into the room. I felt unnerved by his attention. No one really wanted a wraith’s attention on them and that included me.
“We need to get her informed and quickly. If what Elijah tells me is true, then we have a bigger issue on our hands here.” All of us looked Elijah’s way. I wanted to know what Jacobs wasn’t telling us.
“Are ye going to elaborate there?” Marcus called casually from the couch. He looked at the walls with a blasé amusement.
“First all you need to know is that Elijah seems to believe that she can read emotions through your eyes. Not aura readings, something different. You need to be careful around her. We can’t trust her not to play on your emotions. When the whole team is here I will tell you the rest. I don’t like to repeat myself. Anane and Cole left late last night on a mission. They should be back in a couple hours. Until then, try to get her situated, make her feel comfortable amongst our clan. Marcus, you and Stone go. Dallas, stay here. I need to talk to you. Is Nixie still with her?” Jacobs watched us with eyes that slowly faded to yellow.
Apparently, whatever he had told Elijah was making him stressed. I didn’t care. I wanted to get back to Audrey, and I was pissed off that that Nixie had used her song on me.
“Come along, pal. Wouldn’t want tae leave the bonnie lasses unattended.” Marcus wasn’t looking at me. He glared at Dallas. Dallas growled. Apparently, more had happened before I arrived.
Honestly, I didn’t care. Shape-shifters tended to stick with our own; we tried not to get too involved. Many paranormals did in fact, even though we were in mixed clans we didn’t trust easily.
By the time we arrived back to the cafeteria, my skin itched. I felt restless like I needed to change forms, as if an animal had taken over. I didn’t realize that my pace increased until I noticed Marcus was no longer next to me.
In his glamour as a human, Marcus wasn’t short by any means, he was about six foot tall, a slightly broader build than most fey. They, as a race, tended to be slimmer in build and much taller. Marcus had a deep red head of hair with scruff lining his jaw, which annoyed all the other fey to no end; they were a classier group of paranormals. I had always felt they had their noses a little too high in the air for my taste. The fey acted as if they were better than other paranormals and lived in their veil. Marcus wasn’t like normal fey most of the time.
“Mate! The lassie isn’t leavin’. Nae need tae run to get to ‘er,” Marcus called out, laughing slightly. His darker mood had vanished.
“I wasn’t running,” I muttered as I tried to control my pace. That made Marcus laugh all the more. When I walked in, Charlie and some other shifters surrounded Audrey and Nixie, and one of the younger shifters touched Audrey’s arm. Shit. I saw red. I felt possessed, and I couldn’t control what happened next.
Chapter Seventeen
Audrey
Stone’s intense gaze made me shift uncomfortably. I couldn’t focus with him watching me. I couldn’t even think about eating.
When Stone left, I felt only slightly more relaxed. That unsettled feeling in my stomach didn’t really go away. It just morphed into something else. Something I couldn’t really identify. I didn’t try to for very long because Nixie started encouraging me to eat again. Nixie was nice enough about it, but I could tell that she was worried. Instead of looking into her strange coral eyes, I looked at the plate. Eight grapes. Three pieces of broccoli…The food looked good, but I was scared. At any moment, it could be taken from me. Did they really want to feed me? I wasn’t sure anymore.
My eyes finally roamed over the meat. Meat…meat filled the fridge in my father’s kitchen. With the blood. With the scars. With the tiles stained. With…
“Calm down. Breathe sweetie, breathe.” Nixie’s voice was soothing, it much different than her normal, bubbly voice.
I didn’t like the unnatural feeling of calm that filled me. I started to fidget, feeling worse than before, trying to escape the calm.
“Hey…easy.” A new song started to fill my head.
“You’re okay, here. I promise nothing will hurt you here. You’re safe.” Nixie was rubbing her hand up and down my arm. The need to shove it away - to shy away from her touch - was there, but muted. My body had been taken over by the calm.
Nixie and I sat together that way for a while. She coaxed me into eating some more. After a little while, more people filtered into the cafeteria. Nixie said hello to one named Charlie. His eyes shifted colors much like Stone’s did. It unnerved me. The eyes of the people with him, shifted colors as well, but theirs were much more limited to one or two other colors.
They talked, while I shrank away. I didn’t like the crowd forming around us. The calm that overpowered me before, had faded to a light dull feeling. One of the men who had joined us put his hand on my arm. I flinched away, then suddenly Stone stood between us, growing bigger with each breath. His eyes were a horrible red color. He shifted so all I saw was his back. His voice was a deep rumble, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
“Right, lads, time tae head off! Charlie, ye probably could stay.” Marcus came over by Nixie and I. His hand rested on Nixie, but he made no move to touch me. I released a relieved sigh.
The crowd left. The one that had touched me looked scared and practically ran for the doors. When Stone turned back around, I hid as much as I could. I didn’t want his anger pointed at me; I didn’t want to see the punishment that would follow. Father got possessive when others touched me. He wasn’t as bad as Stone was now, and that could only mean the punishment would be that much worse.
I shut my eyes tightly, held them closed and put a lock on my vocal cords. If I screamed, it would only be worse. He would only think I wasn’t accepting that I did something wrong. I couldn’t upset him like that. I didn’t want to have more scars. My breath was hitched and I hoped he would do something soon.
Instead of a punch, which I could endure, I felt the lightest of touches on my scars. I opened my eyes.
Stone stared at my scars. There wasn’t revulsion, and there was none of that murky brown in his rapidly shifting eye color. Of anger, obsessive possessiveness, and disgust, there was none of that. Instead, there was worry, a hint of fear, and many colors I couldn’t decipher, as well as something I wasn’t sure if I wanted to recognize.
“Hey, are you all right?” Stone moved to cup his hand around my face, but I turned away from his gentle touch. A punch, I could handle. This, I had no idea what to do with. I couldn’t answer him, so I just nodded my head. He looked slightly hur
t with his eyebrows pinched and his lips tight across his face, but he took the seat next to me.
After a few more moments of silence, Marcus cleared his throat.
“Lassie, there are some things we need tae be discussin'.”
I turned toward him but his unusual yellow eyes scared me to no end so I looked away. He sat close to Nixie. I saw how he caressed her arm. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even look bothered. In fact, she looked like she enjoyed it. She turned to Marcus and smiled faintly before grabbing his other hand and squeezing it lightly. I glanced again at Marcus, who smiled weakly. Marcus’ whole body sort of looked out of sorts, like there was something underneath his skin wanting to break free.
“There are things we need tae tell ye, Audrey.”
I looked back to Stone who suddenly looked completely different. Moments before, he was sitting tall and seemed like a mountain, unmovable and impenetrable. Now, he slumped, his shoulders sagging, his hair messy as if he had just run his hand through it. He looked twitchier than I felt.
Chapter Eighteen
Stone
I didn’t know how to tell her that supernatural creatures were real, that she might be one herself. Just looking at her, the way she looked at me when I turned back around, I had never felt lower in my long life than I had right then. She had looked at me like I was going to punish her, like I was the enemy. I didn’t even know what I had done wrong. Yet when she turned her face a fraction to the right, eyes closed tight and lips, those perfect lips, tightened. She had been preparing for someone to hit her. I could never do that. Instead, my hand had moved and touched her scars. Those beautiful scars. Gods, I had wanted to kiss them so badly. Marcus had said something, but I couldn’t take my focus off of Audrey. His words finally broke through.
“There are things we need tae tell ye, Audrey,” Marcus announced, while looking at me pointedly.
I felt the weight of the world fall on my shoulders as she looked up at me with her eyes wide. While the one was milky and would be considered ugly, I knew that she was seeing all my emotions, even the ones I wanted to hide. No sorcerer or witch I knew could do that. There was no supernatural out that there that I knew of that could do that actually. When Jacobs had told me about her power, I didn’t believe him. The other was a bright blue that unnerved me. What could I tell her? How could I tell her?
“There is more in this world than humans,” I started off lightly. I watched her face waiting for her to shut down, waiting for her to break. “Normal isn’t really all that normal. There are creatures that you probably only thought existed in your nightmares.” She flinched at that and I realized I picked a horrible choice of words. “Shit…” I rubbed my hand through my long hair. “Okay, there are creatures. Creatures such as vampires, werewolves, fey, and so many more.” She looked at the table. Her brow scrunched as if she was remembered something. I wanted to give her time, so I looked over at Nixie who looked like she was ready to kill me. Shit, as if I wasn’t ready to do that myself. Not only did I make a complete ass out of myself, but I had to bring up her memories. Smooth, real, smooth.
“I know,” she whispered, so quietly that I was sure she didn’t say it and I had imagined it. Then she looked up at me. She looked like a different type of scared than when I first saw her, but it was still an all-consuming fear that shook me. I wanted to pull her into my arms, and never let go. She was too fragile. She didn’t need to be in the center of all this.
“What?” Nixie asked, moving toward Audrey. Audrey was still hunched over in her seat, but I saw how her eyes shifted to Nixie, accusing. I started to admire that she felt comfortable enough around Nixie that she would show some type of reaction. I was also pissed off, because I wanted to know what exactly had Audrey looking like that.
She swallowed so hard that I thought perhaps she had something stuck in her throat. “I believe you. Tell me more.” she paused and looked at me. I relaxed and Audrey’s eyes swept over me. Gods I loved it when she looked at me like that. Right now, in this moment she wasn’t afraid of me. She was calm, stable, safe. When she looked into my eyes, though, I saw her move back just a bit, and I knew my eyes gave me away. I said too much without saying anything at all.
“All right lassie. Weel, I’m what ye would call a fey. I don’t hae wings so don't ask. I can shed mah glamour if ye want.” Without waiting for permission, Marcus’s glamour melted away. It unnerved me. His short hair grew in length, going well past his shoulders. His body shape remained about the same, but he grew about four inches. Watching him I knew why humans fell for a fey’s trap, his eyes before were an odd shade of yellow, but now they were a deeper yellow resembling summer flowers. Audrey’s eyes widened and I heard her suck in a breath.
“I miss your human form already,” Nixie whispered, sighing loudly. Sirens and fey usually could get along pretty well, but once fey started to take over the spotlight, sirens got a tad jealous.
Audrey didn’t say anything, so Marcus continued to explain how the fey worked. They had their own realm. Most of them stayed within their world, but some, like Marcus, enjoyed the human world much more. He told her that fey couldn’t technically lie, but they could spin a person around with avoiding telling the truth so much that the person forgot what they were asking in the first place. He kept some of their darker secrets to himself, and for some reason, I felt thankful for that.
Nixie told Audrey a bit more about sirens and the differences between them and mermaids. She had explained that mermaids couldn’t leave water, and had different forms while in water. I wasn’t as well versed with mermaids. I had never lived close to the sea. Nixie explained the siren’s song and how it was used to persuade humans into doing anything really, but Nixie could also do it to paranormals as well. Siren’s had a tendency to form a sort of magic bond. It was an instinctual thing and breaking a bond was painful for the siren.
I watched Audrey the whole time. She remained quiet, her body as small as she could get it without completely disappearing. She would look up at Marcus, though, when he told her all about the fey, and she watched Nixie as she spoke, her eyes roaming over her hair and eyes. When Nixie finished telling Audrey about her race, Audrey looked at me.
“And what are you?” she asked hesitantly. She looked up at me, and I couldn’t help but wonder what she saw.
“I am a shape-shifter.” I said, having a hard time keeping eye contact with her. I looked down for a moment, not wanting to see the rejection in her eyes, but when I looked at her again, she only appeared curious with her head slightly tilted, her lovely lips parted in an unspoken question. “I can change my form, human or animal.” I showed her by changing my form to one that looked exactly like Marcus’s human form. I didn’t like to take fey form if I could help it. It was uncomfortable and drained a lot of energy. Audrey’s mouth popped open, along with her eyes. She looked frantically from Marcus back to me. I changed back to the skin that I usually lived in. “There are three different types of shifters. There are shape-shifters like me, the rarer of the three, who can change both our human and an animal forms. There are human-shifters that can only change into any human form, and animal-shifters that have one human form and can change into any animal. We don’t have the limitations of living by animal instincts. Well, besides the animal-shifters. They tend to have a more animalistic behavior, and human-shifters tend to be very charismatic but they don’t have strong loyalties, except to their own race.” Audrey was watching me even closer.
“Why does your eye color change?” It was probably the first time I had heard her ask a question without any fear. I was pleased. I sat a little taller, knowing that she was interested, that she wasn’t terrified about what she had learned about me.
“With shape or human-shifters we can automatically change our eye color, but a lot of the time, our eye color changes unconsciously to reflect our emotions. If I was in a human populated place, I would control it, but here, it’s safe to be myself.” I looked at her pointedly now.
�
�Were-creatures are different from shape-shifters though. Weres are people who had an animal spirit in them as well, like Dallas and Jacobs, they are both werewolves. They can only change into wolves, but they don’t just shift into wolves. Part of who they are, are wolves. They have the same instincts as their animal spirit.”
She didn’t look at me, though; instead, she was twisting her hands. I wanted to know what was going through her head right now.
Chapter Nineteen
Audrey
We stayed in the cafeteria until people started to filter in for dinner. Then, Nixie and Stone allowed me to take food back to Nixie’s room, who I would be staying with for the time being. Nixie told me that she had formed a bond with me, and since I was the only girl, other than someone named Anane, that she had formed a bond with, she’d rather keep me close so she could sleep easier. I thought over all the information I had learned.
The only reason I believed, besides the truth I read in their eyes, was because I knew of the paranormal world. Not as extensive as they made it, but I knew my father was not entirely human. He had shown me that. He had punished me for not being like him. He demanded many times when I was growing up to change into something. The something was lost deep within me somewhere; I knew that. I was too scared to say anything. If I were to remember what it was, would Nixie and Stone try to force me to be something that my father had been? Would they punish me as well for not doing as they asked?
Marcus had told me about wraiths after I had asked Stone to tell me, and his face turned angry. They all seemed cautious about telling me about wraiths. I kept remembering Elijah’s cold eyes when I had first met him. They had told me wraiths were a sort of mystery in heritage, and they kept mostly to themselves, so what people knew was from experience. Marcus told me in a very animated voice how it was rumored that wraiths came straight from hell. They were technically the regrets of hell. In their true forms, they were just spirits that could enter any body they wanted. If the wraith stayed long enough, it would slowly kill the person within. Marcus said it was rumored also to be the worst pain imaginable but no one really survived to tell the tale. That got Stone growling, and we all turned to look at him. The conversation about wraiths ended then.
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