Melvin froze as if he was glared at by Medusa and completely stopped what he was doing. The same went for Alexander, who was just as frozen, but at least his eyes were still blinking.
"Alek, no." Alexander said while nervously laughing and shaking his head.
"What?" The girl asked.
Melvin was also able to bring himself back together and continued giving her reassurance as he told her with kind eyes. "That is ridiculous.
Alek shook her head like a child trying to explain to her mother a problem. "It's not. I brought you here to confirm my theory and you guys are like me. Just a moment ago you said you believed me and now you can't? That's ridiculous." He even stood up from his chair and stared out the window.
The fae gestured for her to calm down. "Then where are the powers? Where is the spice? Where is the witchy-juju?" Melvin nodded at the side.
"It's all in here!" Alek put her finger straight to where their hearts were located at.
"Come on." Melvin shook his head and resumed caressing her hand again. "As I told you before. I don't feel any different from seeing your 'tattoo'."
"Me too." The other boy nodded his head.
Alek sighed before she said, "That's only because your powers are sealed." She continued to speak when her friends weren't giving her the unbelieving look. "Mel, your powers are blocked by a strong spell. Alex, since I'm not the one who examined you, I can not say why you are the way you are, but you are a faerie. The blood runs in you."
The moment, the girl said blood, the fae brought out his wrist and stared at the veins as if he was trying to see the components of the liquid flowing in him.
The pixie touched his heart, the playfulness from earlier was gone and was replaced by a serious atmosphere and deeply focused faces.
The girl spoke and gathered the attention of the other two. "Look, I know how it feels like to be suddenly told that and forced to believe that. My family did the same thing to me."
Melvin's head shot up. "Wait, are you telling me that your family has snake hands like you?!"
Alek nodded as she replied, "Bia is the snake. I'm a dragon, but yeah. My entire family, mum, dad, Bia, Kai, Aether, the twins and also my grandparents. Apparently, I was the only one unaware of my true identity and this side of the world."
"F*ck." Alexander cursed loudly.
"That's the same thing I said." Alek shrugged but turned in serious in a flash. "I brought you guys here to know if you were supernaturals and indeed you were. And here comes a decision that you have to make." This sentence was enough for her two best friends to really listen to her and believe her.
"Being a supernatural comes with a great risk of danger and responsibility. Because your powers are not activated, you can choose to stay this way and I'll have people erase this memory of this. You will forget that you have this part of yourself and continue being yourselves. But, if you decide to come to this side and awaken it, your life would never be the same." Alek calmly explained and took a big breath to prepare for the next words.
"You will out-live your family." She specifically told Melvin as she faced him. She then turned to Alexander. "And many people are going to want you dead because you are close to me."
Alek didn't dare to hear what her friends had to say, so she continued talking.
"In this world, there is a large population of shapeshifters and my family, Minazuki, is the leader of one of the twelve shape-shifting clans. And I'm the heir to the throne of the reptile shifters after my grandmother."
"This fact doesn't settle well with people who hate our clan because of the power we have. So when my grandmother announced that she was retiring and I was the next leader, there was a large commotion. I wasn't fitted to be the clan leader and that one of them should take the throne instead."
"My grandmother declined the offer. This made things worse. They took this as if we insulted their clans and were looking down on them. Of course, that wasn't the case but they didn't listen. Now they want war. They want to erase their enemy and destroy the peace we have."
The shifter looked up at her friends, listening to her in all seriousness. "Being friends with me and staying with me means that you are asking for death and this death isn't going to be easy and fast."
The room was so quiet as if someone shot through the window and everyone was cautious about it.
"Of course, I'm not going to force you into anything. Whichever you choose, I won't blame you. It is your life and you have the right to make this decision." Alek shut her mouth up for the day. She had already done enough talking and she didn't know if she could handle talking in more detail.
Melvin didn't have a voice but his words were clear, "Do we have to give the answer now?"
The girl shook her head immediately. "No. Take all the time you need... But the situation is getting worse each day."
The pixie just nodded and silently continued to caress the girl's hand.
Alek looked at her other best friend standing while looking down at his feet. She couldn't guess what was going on in his head. "Alex?..."
The brunette raised his eyes and held eye contact with her as he slowly brought his head back up. "You said us, staying with you is dangerous. Does that mean that if we choose to continue with our lives with erased memory of this moment, you'll be gone too?" His eyes held water more than usual.
"Probably... I don't want to lose you guys because of me, or because of the situation that I'm in right now." Alek also had tears in her eyes, but hers, spilt. Imagining losing the two of them in an attack like she and her family had from the werewolves was terrifying. If her cousins and siblings weren't there with her, she didn't know and wanted to find out what could have happened.
Melvin quickly brought out a handkerchief and wiped her tears like he was her mother. Alek just accepted the action.
The room was once again quiet apart from Alek's occasional sobbing and wiping her nose.
"Alek," Alexander called.
"Yes?" The girl answered.
The boy took a deep breath before he sat in his chair and looked at her in her eyes. "I want to know more about this." Melvin agreed, hearing that.
"If we are going to make this decision, we have to know about this. This isn't only about us but our families too." The blonde added.
"You are right." Alek nodded and held their hands together. Right hand for Melvin and left for Alexander. "I'll bring you to everyone."
With that, the girl led the two out of the room, and back to the training room, they did the ritual. But when they arrived there, the room was empty.
"This explains a lot of things." Melvin nodded to himself after re-examining the surroundings. The blood, the unused weapons on the wall along with sliced walls and broken tiles. He watched and read too many fantasy adventures for this.
While his boyfriend was busy checking inside the room, Alexander had gone back to the door with some 'unique' curves. If what his best friend said about the shapeshifters was true, that meant that the animals on the door weren't just a design or personal liking. It must have meant something but he couldn't figure out what. The animals on there had nothing in common between them. Snakes, octopuses, sting rays, birds, fishes...
Alek looked around for a moment before she tried to mind-link one of the cousins but failed successfully. So instead, she called out for her sister.
[Hey.]
[Hey.] Bia replied.
[Where are you? I'm back at the old training room but can't find you.] Alek complained.
Her sister sighed before answering, [Grandpa made us come outside to get some sunshine while we talked. He said we weren't getting vitamin D and that was why we have anger issues.]
[Grandpa has always been weird.]
[Yep.]
[Anyway, in which part of the outside are you?]
[South-east. The water fae you were with, she's still here but she'll leave soon so you better come fast.] Before Alek could ask how the heck she would know the direction and the way around the watchtower, Bia cut off the link.
"I guess I'll have to fin it myself. I was never good in geography..." Alek told herself and turned to her friends doing their own thing. "Let's go."
----
It took the three of them a good twenty minutes to find her family and the credit didn't go to any of them, but to Mago, who found them wandering around the tower, going left and right like stray kids and showed them the way.
In the first second, Bia examined her clumsy sister's body in a glance before she checked the other two briefly without much attention. Her sister was her priority. She never mixed them up.
"Hi." She greeted them, uninterested.
"Hi." The boys replied normally, knowing how the girl was sis-con over her older sister and looked over the entire family, now with a completely different point of view. Since everyone knew that, they kept eerie quietness.
The oldest among the children looked around in the quietness and asked, "Do you want to see a magic trick?"