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“Observant,” she muttered and spun around once again. “Keep an eye on her. It’s the smartest thing we can do. Her loyalty is obvious, but everything is shifting, and at the end of the day, power talks. Doesn’t matter how many years they’ve been friends for. If one’s own blood can betray their family, comrades, and child, what is friendship?”
I wasn’t grasping her last statement, but she wouldn’t help me decipher it because she was making her exit.
“Remember who’s the minority in this world, Loki,” she emphasized. “It’s only a matter of pushing a minority into the corner for them to rebel and wish for the entire system to crumble in the crossfire.”
That’s the truth.
"See you around. Take care of my sister.”
She snapped her fingers again and then vanished in a burst of flames. I was left alone once more, and I couldn’t help but stare at the tiny stream of smoke at the end of my cigarette.
“She’s grown into a remarkable woman,” I quietly voiced.
“Would you have changed our decisions in the past?”my wolf asked.
“No,” I answered without a hint of regret. “Even if it meant she hated me until this point, I wouldn’t have changed a single thing.”
“Why?”My wolf’s curiosity made me further relax as I closed my eyes.
“Her heart was never mine to taint. I’d ruin her with my duality.”
“What makes Willow Alundra Phoenix different?”
“Easy.” My voice was barely audible. “If she can handle the brutal darkness my brother carries within himself, she’ll be able to endure the light we hide so flawlessly.”
“You don’t fear her finding out what we truly are.”
“Nah.” I looked outward to the mountains while my free hand reached out to lightly touch my neck. “The moment she freed me…she knew exactly what we are.”
“Then?”He wanted to ask why she hadn’t brought it up. Even though she was recovering, she had every right to speak the truth.
To tell them what she potentially felt and surely saw when facing death.
"Something we’re going to find out the more we’re around Willow and the Forbidden Pack,” I began as I lifted my hand to look at the royal mark. “Our Sweets doesn’t kiss and tell.”
Maybe what Ruby was saying was true.
Maybe I’d once been lost and now it felt like I’d been found. It was intriguing to think about, and even more so try to connect the dots that led me to this moment of serenity, but it didn’t matter how many times I tried to put the pieces together or attempted to see the answer to this difficult equation.
The reality was, I changed everything the moment I decided to interfere and kidnap Willow from her real approaching doom. It could either become the biggest mistake of my existence or the best decision in my entire life.
Either way, there is one thing I know for sure.
Finishing my cigarette, I flicked the butt away before I rose up and allowed the first rays of the sunrise to taunt my flesh. With a slight movement to my right, my surroundings shifted entirely until I was standing in the sun’s rays that flared out from the space between the thick curtains of the window.
I couldn’t move or my façade would be broken and my presence would be noticed in the quiet room. My eyes landed on the bed, acknowledging my sleeping brother with his arms hugging Sweets from behind as she slept peacefully in his arms after a night of sexual reassurance.
My resolve was clear as stone, but as if the universe wanted to further prove my point, I noticed the slight squeeze of Willow’s eyes before they opened just slightly.
Not too small. Not too wide. Just enough for me to get a glimpse of her eyes that suddenly looked like her mother’s.
Suddenly twinkled with prism energy.
I didn’t move or say a word when her eyes locked onto me, waiting for her to dismiss my presence as a dream and return to the realms of slumber. Her eyes began to close, but not before her lips quirked up at the ends.
She recognized me.
And then something unexpected happened- my ears caught onto the words that were so low, I was sure my sleeping brother wouldn’t be able to catch their spoken tenderness if he were awake.
“Hi, Loki.”
Not Onyx or the plentiful list of degrading names used to label me.
Instead, she used my name, and that meant more to me than anything - confirming what I knew for sure.
Saving Willow Alundra Phoenix was my saving grace, and maybe…she really can walk through the darkness and discover the real me. The real me in the beam of light.
