‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ 𝓐 ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
I sighed heavily and sat against the stone at my mother's burial.
"I don't know what to do mum. The pack is falling apart. Kieran left and half of the pack blames me." I said. "We need him back.. I need him back but I don't know where he is.."
I sat there in painful silence. I would have given anything for her to be sitting here talking to me.
"I miss you so much." I said and let a tear fall.
"I thought we talked about the crying thing kiddo." A voice from behind me made me jump nearly out of my skin. I stood up and spun around and blinked a couple of times making sure I was actually seeing things right.
"...Trinket?" I asked.
The blonde nodded and gave me a half smile.
"It's...me." She said and stepped closer to me but I backed up and put my hand out. I shook my head.
"This… isn't real… And if it is, I don't want anything to do with you."
"It is real, Amara. I'm real and I'm sorry for leaving like I did and letting your father make you think you were crazy. It's just... If he saw me..." She sighed. "It wouldn't have been good. For either of us."
"Why come back after all these years?" I asked.
"I never truly left. I've always been there watching. Looking out for you." Trinket said
"But why?"
"Because it's what your mother wanted." Trinket said.
"Are you.. Really a pixie or did I dream that up?" I asked. Trinket smiled and all of a sudden her wings sprouted from her back and she appeared to be glowing.
"This is insane." I said and shook my head. "How exactly did you know my mother?"
"Like I told you before, We come from the same place." Trinket shrugged.
"And what place is that?" I asked.
"Eiravale." Trinket replied.
I laughed. It was the only thing I could think to do at the moment.
"I'm dreaming. That's it. I'm just dreaming." I said and turned and started walking away from Trinket.
Trinket groaned and followed behind me. She walked ahead of me and stopped in front of me with her hands on her hips. I stopped and sighed.
"Please move."
She reached out and pinched my arm.
"Ow! What the hell was that for?" I asked.
"To prove you aren't dreaming." Trinket said.
"This is crazy! Eiravale is a storybook!"
"You are a wolf. I'm a pixie, but it's so hard to believe that Eiravale is a real place?" Trinket asked. "This was much easier when you were small.. You've gone and grown up." She frowned.
"Yeah, that happens." I scoffed.
"You haven't finished the book have you? It's all right there Amara. I'm in it. Your mother is in it. YOU are in it."
"I am not."
"Well… I guess you aren't. But you are mentioned at the very end." She said
I rolled my eyes.
"I suppose I am a pixie too then." I said.
"Well no, you're a fairy. Half fairy actually." Trinket specified.
I blinked at her and then shook my head.
"I'm going home." I said and walked around her
"Well good, read the book!" Trinket said as she kept following me.
"I'm not reading the stupid book!" I grumbled. "I have more important things to worry about. My pack is falling to pieces. My mate and Alpha is Gods only know where. So if you'll excuse me.." I paused and turned around but Trinket had disappeared.
"Trinket?" I asked and looked around but there was no sign of her. "Well thats typical…" I sighed and turned back around to keep walking and picked up on a scent in the breeze.
Kenneth?
I followed the scent to the river and saw Kenneth standing on one side, talking to a man on the side I was on. Steele He's talking to Steele..
I quickly got as far away as I could to where Kenneth hopefully wouldn't pick up my scent but I could still hear them.
"We had a deal!" Kenneth spat. "I give you her location. You shoot her, You give Kieran the Antidote and He leaves, and she's mine!"
My stomach twisted at his words. He was behind this..and he thought with Kieran out of the way I would be his.
"I did my part of the deal. Kieran is gone, I can't help that the she-wolf is not attracted to you." Steele sneered.
"He's gone? Then why did she see him in the city the other night?"
"I wasn't aware of that." Steele shrugged. "Tread carefully wolf. I kill your kind, remember that."
Kenneth growled.
"I know you have ways to get things... Things not from around here. I need something to make her mine."
"A love potion?" Steele chuckled. "You want a love potion? Have you tried, just giving the woman flowers or chocolates?"
"Is this a joke to you?" Kenneth asked. "She was meant to be with me. Not him. I wanted her first!"
I couldn't listen to this anymore. I stormed over to the river.
"You traitorous bastard!" I screamed. He looked at me wide eyed and Steele just laughed.
"Good luck with that." He told Kenneth and walked away.
"Amara I can explain-"
I reared back and punched him in the jaw
"I heard EVERYTHING. How could you betray Kieran like that?"
"You don't understand what it was like to see you.. To know that I wanted you only to watch you fall for him!" Kenneth said.
"I fell for him because He loves me. You only wanted me for your own creepy desires! You honestly think I would ever want you? Especially after finding out what you did? You plotted against Kieran with the man who murdered his first mate! The man who leads those who kill our kind! You... disgust me and when I tell Connor what you did-" I was cut off as he put his hand around my throat and pinned me against a tree.
I gagged and clawed at his hand trying to get him to release me.
"Connor isn't going to find out. I made the alpha of the pack disappear. Who else would you like to see disappear? Roxy? One of the pups perhaps?" He sneered. "You mention one bloody word to Connor about this and everyone you care about will disappear. One. By. One. Understood?"
"Yes." I choked out.
He smirked.
"Good." He said and released my throat and then all of a sudden his lips were on mine. I thought I would be sick. I gagged and pushed him off of me.
"How Dare you?!" I demanded and didn't even have time to think before the back of his hand connected with my face.
"We need a story." He said. I held the side of my face which was throbbing now. I growled and swung my other fist but he caught my arm and flipped me to the ground.
"You were attacked by hunters." He said and then kicked me right in the stomach. I bellowed in pain and he kicked me again. I felt like my organs would explode.
"And I.. being the brave soul that I am, stepped into the rescue." He grinned and grabbed a fist full of my hair and pulled me off of the ground. I cried at the burning pain in my scalp and reached up for his hand.
"Think you can be convincing, love?" He asked.
I glared and spat a mixture of saliva and blood in his face.
He snarled and wiped his face.
"Guess I'll have to do the convincing for you." He said and reared back. I struggled, trying to free myself from his grasp but couldn't get away before his fist connected with the side of my head and everything went black.
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I blinked my eyes open and then shut them instantly, as the blinding light in the room hurt my head.
"About time you wake up." Jake said from beside me. "Are you ever going to learn not to play cat and mouse with hunters?"
"Hunters?" I grumbled and sat up rubbing the side of my head. I winced and wrapped my other arm around to my side where I was kicked the second time. I opened my eyes again and the room spun for a minute before everything went back to normal.
"You were ambushed by hunters. You're lucky Kenneth was out there or you wouldn't be here right now." Jake said.
"Kenneth..." I mumbled and shut my eyes tightly as his name brought painful flashes of what truly happened in the woods.
"Look who's awake."
Speak of the devil…
I opened my eyes to glare at him but my expression softened when I noticed he had Josephine, Nicholas, and Riley with him. His eyes bore into mine, warning me to stick with his story and his grip on Nicholas's shoulders tightened threateningly.
"Yeah... hunters I remember now." I said.
"Well, you did take a nasty strike to the head before I got there so your memory must have been foggy." Kenneth suggested. I tried my best to keep my temper in check but he was making it damn near impossible the more he stood there, and the more he spoke.
"How bad is it?" I asked Jake
"I think you'll be fine… You do somehow heal faster than the rest of us. Your ribs are bruised so you'll be a little tender for probably a couple days." He shrugged. "Just rest up." He added and then shook his head.
"I forget who I am talking to…try to keep yourself out of harm's way,yeah?"
"I make no promises." I said and stood up, testing my footing. My side hurt a bit when I stepped.
"I'll be in my room." I said and glared at Kenneth as I walked past him.
I made it to the stairs before I was stopped by Connor .
"Amara I-" he started.
"I don't want to hear about how I shouldn't be outside by myself. How I shouldn't play cat and mouse with hunters. Or any of that." I spat.
"I know you don't. Which is why I wasn't going to say any of that. I was going to ask if you were okay." He said.
I sighed. "Sorry Con, it's…been a day." I mumbled. "No. I am not okay. I haven't been and I likely won't be for a while and that is just something you, and Roxy, and all of the others are just going to have to accept for right now. Let me process things in my own way. I know he's not dead.. But he may as well be."
Connor sighed.
"I know that I am not handling the pack well. All of this responsibility was just shoved on me at the last minute and I know you are frustrated and I'm angry a lot but I'm not angry with you Amara I'm angry with him. I'm angry that he left and I'm angry that he took the best parts of you with him."
"Just give me time Connor." I said.
He nodded.
"All the time you need. No more interruptions from me."
"Thank you." I sighed and started back up the stairs.
"Wait." Connor said. I turned around
"Yes?"
"There is something that you aren't telling me." he said.
"No...there isn't." I lied.
"Yes, there is. You have that look in your eyes. It's the same look you had when you tried to hide things as a kid. What happened out there Amara?"
I glanced over his shoulder at Kenneth watching me. Daring me to say something and God I wanted to just to see Connor turn around and tear his head from his shoulders and punt it like a football, but at the off chance that Connor just let him go, I couldn't risk him hurting anyone else, especially not the pups like he threatened he would do.
"Just what Kenneth said. I was ambushed..he saved me." I said, turning my attention back to Connor . "I'm going to actually listen to Jake and go rest now." I said and turned around again and went up the stairs without hesitating leaving no more room for questions.
I shut my bedroom door and locked it and walked over to my bed and flopped backwards and let out a sigh.
Read the book.
I heard Trinket's voice in my head like she was someone sitting next to me. I sat up curiously and looked around.
Read. the. Book. I heard again. I glanced at the old storybook sitting on the dresser in the room. I hadn't touched it since that night I was poisoned. There was a part of me that was afraid of it because that same part of me actually believed Trinket. I know what I saw in the book the last time I read it. My mother was clearly there. But if..this book if it was real, and Eiravale was a real place.. No. I sighed and shook it from my head. I was a wolf. There was no way I was half fairy. Surely the others would be able to tell if I wasn't full-blood.
However, just then it occurred to me. That when I was little and my mother was still alive. She never came on pack runs. In fact I couldn't remember ever seeing my mother shift.
Amara just read the damn book!
"Fine, I'll read the damn book!" I grumbled and stood up from the bed and walked to the dresser and plucked the book off of it before opening it to a random spot and looking down at the page.
There was a picture of an underwater palace and the chapter was titled:
The Merfolk of Eiravale
I flipped the page and on the next page was an illustration of a mermaid with Dark brown curls that cascaded all the way down to her iridescent scaled tail. and eyes that looked like chocolate buttons. She wore a crown of seashells on her head. Under the picture read:
"Nessa daughter of Asherah"
The picture made me feel something..I couldn't explain it but the hair on my arms stood up and then all of a sudden I was hit with a flashback.
I felt Kieran come up behind me and I tensed. I figured he was going to be angry and start yelling, but he gently moved my hair away from my ear and frowned at the little nick in my ear.
"I'm sorry." He said softly. I turned around and looked at him raising my eyebrow.
"My wolf side gets a little carried away and when I saw you in Arthur's territory I was angry, and then when you defied me, I just lost it and now I've hurt you." He said apologetically.
"Its really just a scratch Kieran.." I shrugged. Still confused, I fully expected a huge fight out of this. "It was my fault I should have stopped."
"Don't blame yourself. I could see that you were torn, It takes a lot for a wolf to defy their Alpha like that so I knew whatever it was must have been important but sometimes the wolf takes over. I was worried about you, when the pups came back by themselves. I was especially worried when I saw you across the river. After everything, I have no doubt that Arthur would kill you if he ever got the chance and I panicked. If you haven't noticed I tend to do that a lot." He sighed and scratched behind his ear, a gesture that I had come to recognize as an anxious tick. I reached out and held his hand.
"Kieran, really its okay. I was a little angry at first but I can see you are really upset over this, I'm sorry to have worried you but its just.." I stopped myself and bit my lip trying to think of how to tell him what I saw in the woods without sounding crazy.
"What is it?" Kieran asked.
"Honestly..I don't know." I said and hoisted myself up onto the dresser to sit on top of it. "I was watching the pups play in the water for a bit, and I noticed something watching us."
"Something?" Kieran questioned.
"Well, it looked like a person...but shiney.." I explained.
"Shiney?" Kieran raised his eyebrow.
"Maybe sparkly would be a better word." I replied. "She was sparkly."
"So it was a she?" Kieran asked.
"Yes." I nodded. "I don't think she meant any harm, she was leading me somewhere and I know where but I just don't know why, but I knew I had to find out which is why I tried to get around you." I frowned.
"Where was this sparkly woman leading you?" Kieran asked.
"To where my mum is buried." I said quietly and looked down. "I know it sounds crazy but I swear thats what I saw Kieran."
"Hey.. if you say thats what you saw then who am I to tell you, you didn't. Theres all sorts of things in these woods. Liam my brother, swore he once saw a mermaid when we were boys."
"A mermaid? In the river?" I asked figuring that would be an awfully difficult place for a mermaid to be the water wasn't very deep.
Kieran laughed. "No, I come from a pack that resided on the other side of the city in the wooded area near the ocean. Liam and I went to the beach all the time to collect seashells. He described her in such detail I couldn't help but believe him myself and I didn't even see her, so If you say you saw some sparkly woman in the woods then I believe you." Kieran smiled and rested his hands on my hips.
I let a tear slip down my cheek at the memory and the promises he made to take me to his childhood home to see the ocean. I shut the book and tossed it on the bed once again regretting ever picking it up.
Wait for it..
That nagging voice in my head spoke again. I groaned and raked my fingers through my hair
"Leave me alone." I begged and flopped backwards on the bed again and threw a pillow over my face.
And then… Something clicked. It hit me then like a sack of bricks and the gears in my mind started spinning.
There she goes.
I tossed the pillow aside.
"I'm an idiot!" I almost shrieked. Kieran's whereabouts had been right under my nose this entire time. Of course he went back to his childhood homeland.
See what happens when we listen?
"Okay Trinket..,you could have just told me you knew where he was!" I hissed at the voice. "How are you even doing this?"
I'm a pixie, I'm mischievous. It's what I do. It's much more fun when you come to conclusions on your own.
"Okay well get out of my head now I have some planning to do...and thank you."
Anytime Kiddo. Bring the book.
I rolled my eyes.
"Amara, who are you talking to?" I heard Marcus say on the other side of the door.
"Myself!" I shouted.
"Well...when you are… finished with your conversation, Sabine has dinner ready." He said with a chuckle.
"I'm not hungry." I groaned.
"She said, you'd say that. She also said if she has to come up here she will."
I sighed and rolled my eyes again because I knew she would. Nobody went hungry on Sabine's watch and I'd skipped dinner too many times for her liking as of late.
"Fine. I'll be down in a moment."
Maybe it was for the best. I had to act normal for the time being while I planned my trip. No one could know, Not Connor, not Roxy. because if it got out to Kenneth where I was going there was no telling what he would do in my absence.
I looked out the window at the moon and for the first time in a while I felt my lips curve into a smile that I actually meant. I knew now where Kieran was and come hell or high water I was bringing him home.