“Yes,” Lucien answered her softly. His strong hand reached for her, and she could hear him telling her to stay calm, but the words didn’t sink in.
“And you killed my mother?” The table started shaking uncontrollably now.
“She has a lot of raw power,” Marion murmured in surprise. Caia could hear her telling her she needed to stay calm. Was that her? Was she making the table do that? Of course, why not? She’d made Alexa fly, burst water pipes!
A wave of nausea swept through her entire body, and with her lykan reflexes she ran from the room, out onto the porch, where she leaned over the railings to vomit the horrific truth into the bushes below. She couldn’t seem to stop, until eventually all she had left were dry heaves. It wasn’t until she came up for air she realized someone was holding her hair back. Lucien. She sighed, feeling his warmth at her back. Too exhausted to be angry at him right now, she couldn’t help but lean back into his comforting heat. “I’m OK,” she whispered, feeling the tension in his body.
She felt his lips in her hair, and then his strong arm came around her waist and she was pulled tightly against him. He hushed her, and she suddenly realized she was crying. “It’s going to be OK,” he whispered soothingly.
Caia shook her head. “How?” she heard the weakness in her voice and hated it.
“I’m sorry,” she could hear the sorrow in his words, “I’m sorry that I killed her, but I had to.”
Angry now, Caia pulled from his arms and spun to face him, batting furiously at her tears. “I’m not,” she growled loudly, the sound of the wolf distorting her voice like she had never heard before. “I’m not sorry you killed her! She was a monster, Lucien!”
Of a sudden Marion appeared on the porch, her hand reaching to Caia beseechingly. “Caia, you have to calm down. Your power is based in your emotions, you must calm down.”
She shook her head. “My parents... in my head… they were the one thing...” she couldn’t finish, the pain... it hurt all over. Splinters of wood started ripping up off the porch, one slicing her cheek. She didn’t even flinch. Her angry eyes bore into her Alpha. “And you didn’t tell me!”
“Caia.” Lucien tried to reach for her but the world suddenly grew very loud. All she could hear was this monstrous, soul-wrenching sound filling her ears, as if the world was falling apart. A wooden floorboard began jerking up from the porch.
“Caia, you have to pull it together.” she saw Marion mouth. No she was shouting she just couldn’t hear her voice. The woman stepped towards her, and she seemed to say something else but Caia couldn’t lip read those words.
And then she didn’t care about not knowing. She didn’t care about anything as the world turned black.
18 - Unraveling
Lucien was lost in his own thoughts, his eyes gazing at the ceiling, worrying about Caia knocked out on her bed. Her reaction to the truth was the worst he could have feared; it had bled all her usual strength from her, and obliterated the cool, tranquility of her character that he had come to find so soothing. He was oblivious to the others and their conversation until Magnus looked worriedly at Marion and asked, “Will she be alright?”
“Yes. It was a pretty powerful spell. She will be out for a while, but she’ll be fine.”
Lucien sighed heavily, his eyes sweeping his family. “I knew she would take it badly, but I wasn’t prepared for that reaction.”
To his annoyance Saffron snorted, shifting her weight on the arm of the chair she was perched upon. “Yeah.” She shook her head, her eyebrow raised sardonically. “Man, was that an overreaction. I mean, come on, it’s not as if she woke up one day in a dysfunctional pack of lykans, who, as far as she was aware, were keeping her from the inner circle of the pack like she wasn’t really one of them, and then they tell her that she’s only part wolfie because the rest of her is part evil witch, and, oh, that’s cos' her mommy and daddy didn’t die due to some weird hunter guy, but actually her mommy killed her daddy and then tried to kill her too. Oh, and that while all of you were going about your daily lives, she was frightened to cry in case the house flooded, scared, not knowing what the hell was happening to her, when right next door her Pack Leader had all the answers for her. Not to mention the icing on the cake... being prophecy girl an’ all...”
He was proud of his own restraint; rather than lunging at her he merely curled his lip back and growled. He wasn’t the only one.
The faerie wasn’t intimidated in the least. She just shrugged her elegant shoulder. “What?”
Ryder beat him to the punch. “Can you shut up for just one second, never mind a minute?”
“Why would I do that when you so obviously love the sound of my voice?”
“One day you’re going to turn into something real small, and I’m going to be there... to put a cup over you, and trap you... forever.”
“Look, don’t push your weird, sexual, ‘I dream of Jeannie’, fantasies onto me OK. I’m not interested.”
“Sexual f-,” he spluttered, his face growing dark red with anger.
Lucien raised an eyebrow. It really took a lot to get under Ryder’s skin but obviously this faerie had the knack.
“I despise you,” Ryder growled.
Saffron clutched her chest mockingly. “I’m wounded. Really. Ow. My heart is breaking.”
“Would you two quit it.” Lucien sighed. “We have things to sort out. Like another faerie in town.”
“Caia should know.” Magnus pierced him with a fierce stare.