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Chapter 1
I lay on my bed, hands behind my head resting on my pillow, kicking one knee back and forth, frowning all the while. I didn't see how this was fair. Give up my room? To someone I'd never met and knew pretty much nothing about? This sucked. Over the years, my parents had told me so damned little about my aunt that I wasn't even sure of her name.
I mulled over what I did know about her- she was my mother's younger sister. They'd never really talked about her because apparently my grandmother moved with my aunt to Europe after she'd been abused by my grandfather. Mom was already married to my dad, so it wasn't directly affecting her and to be honest, I'd assumed she didn't really care, since I was eighteen now and the matter had come up maybe once in my entire life before all this.
What was all this? Well, apparently my grandmother had died. That being said, my aunt was looking to return to 'the colonies' and make a new life here, with whatever inheritance she'd received. In a totally unexpected show of familial devotion, probably at the behest of my dad, mom had insisted that he sister come and live with us until she got herself established and found her own place.
Now this might have not bothered me so much, since I'm rather chill about being around people I don't know, but it was somehow decided, without my consent, that my aunt Allie would be commandeering my room. Me? Well, I was young and adaptable so I could make do in the rec room in our basement.
Saying I was pissed was a minor understatement and I made sure both my parents knew it. Hence, I was brooding in my room, even though we were scheduled to go pick her up from the airport less than an hour from now.
"Alex?" my dad called cheerfully from downstairs. "Time to go, get the head out!"
I said nothing, continuing to lay on my bed, scowling at the ceiling.
"ALEXANDER ORION DAYRAVEN!" my mother thundered from downstairs, clearly fed up with me being obstreperous about this issue. "Get your sorry behind down here or I'll drag you down by your uvula!"
I froze. Even for her she sounded pissed.
"Don't make me come up there!"
I got my generally chill nature from my dad, whereas I got my stubborn streak from mom. Problem was, most people assumed I blended those two traits into passive-aggressiveness. I could see at moments like this why people would think that, but I like to believe they're wrong.
Either way, pissing mom off was a bad idea. Guess I was stuck and just had to live with it.
I sighed and trudged downstairs, doing my best to look beshat upon, if no longer cantankerous. My dad chuckled and ruffled my hair, something he could do in spite of my imposing physique, because he was even bigger than me.
"Don't worry about it," he said as we headed out to the van. "For all you know, Allie'll only be here a week or so before you can reclaim your man cave. Is being that nice to a long-lost family member really all that horrific?"
"Maybe it wouldn't be if I'd been consulted and my opinion asked for," I groused as we pulled out of the driveway. "But, as you may have noticed, no one did. I got back from swimming practice and bam, you two tell me that I'm giving up my room to a relative you know nothing about."
"She's your aunt, what's there to know?" dad said as he drove.
"That's all I know about her," I replied in as restrained a voice as I could manage. "Her name is Allie. She's mom's younger sister. She's moving back here after living in Europe. That's what I know. You have to admit, it's pretty scant information."
"So what?" dad quipped. "What else do you need to know at this stage? A relative needs out help and we're helping. Not like she won't appreciate your sacrifice."
"Yeah, I notice you two weren't volunteering to give up your room and sleep in the Mines." I grumbled.
"That's because your father and I are adults and have paid our dues in society and have acquired dialectical wealth," my mother added, her tone matter-of-fact in her inescapable logic. "You, you've barely been alive long enough to learn how to use your opposable thumbs, knuckle-dragger. Your dad and I are noted scholars and rather wealthy. You, on the other hand, have nothing."
The problem here is that both my parents are indeed renowned scholars, with very high Intelligence Quotients. I did indeed inherit this trait from them but as yet lacked their unreal skill in wielding it as a lethal weapon. The logic train has no brakes once they get going. Both in their forties, they each held at least two doctorates in their field and were senior members of the local prestigious university. I'd graduated summa cum laude from high school a year early and began attending the same university on a full scholarship this past semester, majoring in my personal interests of poly-sci, history, and languages.
I knew my parents were proud of me, but they were still in charge. While I was under their roof, we did things their way. This was not a democracy, it was a dictatorship. I could deal with it or laughingly find my own way.
Alea iacta est.
It took an hour and change to reach the airport, so instead of squabbling with my parents, I simply retreated inside my head and went over historical events in my head, looking for threads about how they influenced even modern times.
"We're here, wake up."
"I'm awake," I muttered, aware that they knew full-well I'd been awake the whole time, just lost in my own thoughts. I came by it honestly enough. We went through the busy terminals and finally identified the gate at which my Aunt Allie would be arriving. We stood near the gate and waited, hearing the announcement that her flight had landed and the passengers would be off-loading.
We must have waited at least twenty minutes and my mind began to wander again. I was definitely lost in the Paris Uprisings of 1848 when my mother's voice intruded upon my ruminations.
"Allie! Oh my God, it's wonderful to see you!"
I blinked and came out of my reverie to turn and see who my mom was talking to. I couldn't see them, since my mother and father were both hugging the person I could only assume was my aunt. But then the huggie chain broke and my mom turned her head to beam at me before pulling away and introducing her sister.
"Alex? This is your aunt, Alexandra. You're named after her, you know..."
I didn't know what to say.
The woman looking at me was stunningly beautiful. Her hair was blonde, thick and lustrous gold. Her eyes were that unreal sapphire colour that men wrote poems about. Through her form-fitting shirt and hip-hugging European jeans I could tell she had a stunning body.
And she couldn't have been older than nineteen.
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