I was settling in to a routine; a very unhealthy one. I glared at my own reflection. It was a stark reminder that I was no longer human, and that I couldn’t even try to act like one now because of it. I also noticed that I had the same glow that the Light Fae had—was I half Blood Fae and half Light, or was it just the dye Alden had injected into me at the Guild that had somehow jumped to the brands I’d inherited since Transition? These types of little things would lead my mind down the path about my origins that I did not want to go down. And then there was Ryder. He was on my mind twenty-four seven, or so it seemed, and I knew that wouldn’t change anytime soon. I was actually missing the overbearing caveman!
I could have been an ad for drugs; only not so much for the drugs…and more for Fairies. This was your brain before Fairies…and I could then play the part of the brain after Fairies had played with it. I was moving through the motions of living, but Ryder had been right—I hadn’t been living. I’d been doing what I thought I was meant to do. I’d been damn good at pretending to be happy, and, if I was honest about it, I really hadn’t been.
I couldn’t complain too much. I’d had amazing friends. I’d been loved. Even though Larissa had been hard on me and had kept things to herself, in the end, I knew it had been to help me. I couldn’t go back to what I had known my entire life. I had no idea where I fit in now if not with Ryder. I was pathetic, and I missed him.
I was needy, and it pissed me off to no end. I should hate him. Hell, I had plenty of reasons to hate him. Yet I felt pathetically alone. I’d been to the cemetery twice now to dance with the dead. Where it used to comfort me, now it was a reminder of how alone I really was.
I was in the kitchen when Alden arrived. He’d been calling non-stop trying to figure out why I was home alone, as if I wasn’t supposed to be here anymore. I smiled as I set down the coffee mug and lifted a brow. “Come to make sure I was still alive?” I asked as I stood to move over and pour him a mug.
“You stopped answering my calls,” he said by way of explanation.
“I did, but only because ‘are you eating humans’ was bound to come up in the conversation sooner or later. The answer is no, I have not started to demolish the human food chain yet.”
He snorted and shook his head. “Ryder said—”
“Zip it!” I shouted and slammed the mug down onto the counter. “We do not say his name in this house. And don’t look at me like that! Don’t look at me like I’m a cup short of crazy,” I barked when his eyes narrowed. “If it gets that bad, I can shoot myself in the head and just wake up tomorrow.”
“You sure you could do it?” he asked as he looked at me carefully.
“Alden, I’d have to. I won’t feed from humans. Kinda hard to when I’ve spent my entire life learning to protect them from monsters like…me.” I scrunched my face up distastefully as if the words tasted dirty on my tongue, and I laughed, even though I found nothing funny about it.
“You’re not a monster, Synthia. I need to talk to you about something, and I need for you not to explode when I tell you this.”
“You knew Ryder had given the order for Adrian to be changed, and you also knew he was still alive,” I said, hoping he’d say that I had it all wrong. I knew he wouldn’t though. Over the past several days I’d started putting the pieces together. The problem with pieces was, when they lined up right, you had to find more to finish the puzzle.
“I suspected it. I told your team to report to me after that happened to keep you three safe. I knew someone was trailing you, but it didn’t make sense why someone would be only trailing you and not the other teams. You were just an Enforcer, and you held no real power inside the Guild. Those who seek revenge come looking for me, or someone higher up in command. They don’t go after the ones who only take orders; they come after the ones issuing them. I had another team whose job was to tail your team to see who it was. After a while, I had to pull them off or take the chance of someone above me questioning my intentions.”
I blinked at him. How bad—ass was I? I hadn’t even noticed I had two tails chasing me! I shook my head and took the seat across from him. “Why? Why chance another team for me, Alden? The Guild states that in our contracts, if we are compromised, we go away quietly. If I was compromised, and someone was tailing me, I should have been on my own with it.”
“Because I raised you. Hell, you were the only family I had left. You are like a daughter to me, believe it or not, and I wasn’t going to lose you. I was doing my job protecting you from harm, as anyone who had a raised a child would have. Never thought it would become this big of mess though. I knew you were different, and Marie’s actions confirmed it. Marie kept you and Adam close to her at all times. Never thought anything of it, until Adrian was killed. We had known your coven was being tailed before that, but whoever it was, well, they were smart and impossible to find. It wasn’t until Marie was killed that I started to get really worried.”
“By a radical,” I replied as my eyes took him in. He looked tired and disheveled. It was out of character for him, and I knew there was more he was going to tell me, and I wasn’t going to like it.