Aviva
I wake with a start to bright, warm sunshine and the smell of salty air. I grope white sheets, blinking several times to clear my vision as an unfamiliar bedroom fades to life around me. Warm white walls. Pale wood finishes and sleek furniture in soft browns and creams. White curtains drift in a salty breeze coming through several open windows, and a glass door opens to a deck with a view of… a view of the ocean.
I’ve never seen the ocean before. From where I lie, I can hear the waves crashing on a white sand beach. Music I don’t recognize drifts toward me, carrying two voices with it, one male, and one female.
“Your parents worry about you endlessly, Misty.”
“They have nothing to worry about. It’s not like I’m ten anymore, Grandpa. I can make my own way in the world now. Plus, where was their worry when they shipped me here four years ago, huh?”
“You know full well that they did that for your own protection. They didn’t have much of a choice, given that you were a target.”
“I was sixteen, Grandpa. I’m twenty now. I’ve been living in Tarsian for two years, and now they’re asking me to come home, give up my degree program? I have a year left! They can’t… they can’t ask this of me. Not now.”
“Misty–”
“No.” A chair squeaks across the tile on the deck just out of view. “I’m fine in Tarsian. The university is perfectly safe. I’m nowhere near Oasia.”
“Your Uncle Ryatt is in talks with the Alpha King of Tarsian as we speak about the issue–”
“It’s none of my business, Grandpa. I don’t care about the politics between the Allied Kingdoms. I really don’t. I told Dad and Uncle Ryatt that a few weeks ago when they asked me to leave my internship and come to Moonrise for that big meeting about succession like they were going to carve out a piece of territory for me. For me. I’m not the heir to my dad’s kingdom. I’m just Misty, and I’m going back to school!”
“They’re not asking you to drop out of college.”
I hear a scoff. I realize, as my numb mind starts to unthaw, that I must be in Maatua, and this lifted, pissed off female voice belongs to Ryan’s little sister, the mysterious Misty, Princess of Crescent Falls.
“They are.”
“Wellington is an option. Hell, you could come back here and go to Maatua University.”
“And study what? Nursing? Tell me, do Wellington and MU have Protohistory Archeology courses that I’m unaware of?”
The older man sighs heavily. “Misty, you’re being unreasonable.”
“They’re being unreasonable.”
“You are a princess, in case you’ve forgotten.” His voice takes on an edge. “Even if you're far away from the conflict in Oasia, you’re still in Tarsian, and that’s too close for your parents’ comfort.”
“They’re going to have to chain me up and drag me home,” she says gruffly. I hear the chair squeak again like she had stood and is now seated again. “Grandpa, I’m fine there. Yeah, it sucks that my internship was cut short, and me and all the researchers were pulled off our dig site in the desert, but I have a year left. I’ll graduate next spring, and I already promised Mom and Dad that I’d come back to Crescent Falls for a while. Nate got offered a job in Celestoria after he graduates, and we’re talking about me going with him. Celestoria has such a rich history and I’m sure there’s going to be work for me there.”
“Nate? He’s still around?”
Another scoff. “Why is that so surprising? You met him last year!”
“He’s… a great man.”
“You don’t sound so convinced. Why? What have you heard? Is Dad trying to sell me to an Alpha? Oh, Goddess, does someone want me as a breeder? Like Grandma?” I can’t help but smile at the sarcastic edge to her voice.
“Misty, that mouth is going to get you in a lot of trouble one day.”
“I’ve been told that all my life, and so far, I’m unscathed.” Her voice drips with amusement, but her grandfather isn’t laughing.
“Trouble you can’t get out of.”
“I’ll be fine, Grandpa. Please? Can you just back me up on this? I gave them my word that I’d stay in Maatua, but only for this week, because Grandma needed my help. But I’m going back to Tarsian in two days, all right?”
“None of us like it, Misty. Not when things are the way they are now.”
“I’ll be fine. If anyone is going to trust my judgment, I want it to be you. So can you just trust me? Please?”
The old man grumbles something I can’t hear over the sound of the incoming tide, but the chair squeaks again, and light footsteps sound across the deck. A petite woman with sun kissed skin and hair the color of pure gold walks aimlessly through the open doors into my room, her eyes glued to what I remember being told is a cell phone. Large blue eyes fanned by dark brown lashes lift to meet mine, and she arches a perfectly manicured brow.
“Oh,” she says. “You’re awake.”
Something about this woman puts me on edge in a way I don’t think I’ve ever experienced. She is intimidating to the highest degree. She’s slightly taller than I am, I think. She’s probably the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, but she doesn’t look like either of her brothers. The furrowed brow and skepticism flaring behind her eyes is remarkably similar to the way Ryan occasionally looks at me, however.
“You should lie back down,” she says without an ounce of emotion then looks back at her phone with a sigh.
I sink back against the cushions. She flicks her gaze to me again, looking me up and down with a slight smirk twitching the corners of her pink lips. “I’m Misty.”
“I know.”
She arches her other brow. “Do you know where you are?”
“Maatua.”
“Very good,” she smiles, suddenly relaxing her shoulders and dropping her phone on the foot of the bed. She sits on the corner, crossing her long, tan legs, and stares at me. I stare back, unsure what to say or do. She’s not kind and soft spoken like Kenna, I can already tell. She’s not cheerful and friendly like Sarah, who I hope is here as well, somewhere. Misty is different. I just can’t place how. “Do you feel any pain?”
I reach up on impulse and feel over my neck and chest where I’d been bleeding out what feels like only minutes ago and find my skin totally intact, not even a scar. “No, I don’t.”
“Great, that’s good news. Ryan will be happy.” A soft chime echoes between us. She looks down at her phone, rolls her eyes, and looks back at me. “So, Aviva. I heard you went feral and killed like, sixty rogues. That’s pretty cool.”
“Cool?”
“Yeah” she says, rolling her beautiful, glacier blue eyes again. They’re lighter than Ryan’s eyes. “Bad ass, actually. My Aunt said Uncle Ryatt has been talking incessantly about it. Have you ever heard of the Ghosts? I bet you’ll be their commander soon.” She holds my gaze like she’s trying to gauge my reaction to… something. I just can’t tell what it is. What a strange woman. She blinks, shrugging, and snatches her phone off the bed. “Anyway, welcome to Maatua.”
She rises, but I sit up, pulling the sheets up to my chest. I’m wearing new clothes. A black tank top and what I think are shorts, but I haven’t looked. “Where’s Ryan?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find him for you, though.”
“So he’s here?”
“Yeah, ‘course.” She gives me an odd look. “Where else would he be? You’re his mate.”
“And he’s okay?” Something shifts in my chest. My heart lurches as the memory of my out-of-body experience rushes toward the forefront of my mind. I try to shove back the image of Ryan screaming as he cradled my limp, lifeless body. It’s replaced by his trembling hands as he held that bloody piece of fabric to the gaping wound in my neck, unable to even look down at me as I slowly died again, that time in his arms.
Guilt washes over me like the waves crashing onto the nearby beach. My expression crumbles as tears start to singe my lower lashes.
Misty’s hand on my leg drags me back to reality. “Remember how I said you were a badass? I meant it. It’s probably the nicest thing I’ve ever said to anyone in my life, so you should be honored, and also, Ryan is so sensitive.” I gape at her. Now she’s grinning. “He’s been moping around for the last three days with that stupid bow in his hands acting like his world is ending because his mate, who just saved an entire territory from deformed, undead zombie-wolves, was taking a much deserved rest. So, I’ll go get him, and he can be your problem again.”
My jaw hangs open as she flutters out of the room, flipping her sheet of pure-gold hair over a dainty, freckled shoulder.
But an identical, albeit older, version of Misty passes her in the doorway leading to the rest of–well, wherever I am–and stops short of the bed holding a tray of vials. The woman turns to look after Misty, mumbling something to herself before righting her expression and giving me a dazzling smile.
“I’m sorry for whatever she said to you. I’m Isla.”
I look from Isla to the door where her twin, younger by fifty years at least, just disappeared. “Oh.”
She clicks her tongue apologetically. “You must be exhausted. It’s going to take a little while to get back into your body again. The amount of magic it took to heal you was extraordinary. You’re going to feel a little woozy for a while.” She walks over to me, setting the tray down on a bedside table, and proceeds to check my vitals. Her small hands warm my skin as she inspects my neck and chest. She checks my pulse, smiling to herself as she looks into my eyes with a light that makes me want to blink repeatedly. “Good as new. Ryan will be so happy–”
“Can I see him?”
“Of course. He’s on a walk with Sarah right now, but I let him know you were waking up, so he’s probably sprinting back to the house as we speak.”
As if on cue, a door slams somewhere in the depths of the house, followed by heavy, rapid footsteps. Ryan appears, bracing himself on the doorframe with his head lowered, his eyes on the ground.
He’s so tense. I can see his muscles straining under his white T-shirt. His hair is ruffled and skin flushed from the sun as his knuckles go white.
Why won’t he look at me?
“Ryan, honey, make sure she takes these,” Isla says as she gathers a few things off the tray. She looks down at me with a knowing smile, and into my mind her voice whispers, ‘He’s had a hard time with all of this.’
I watch her walk toward him. She extends a few vials of medicine, and he takes them but keeps his eyes on the floor while allowing her to pass him. He closes his eyes, whispering something under his breath, before stepping into the room and closing the door behind him.
His back to me, I hear him turning the vials against each other, the glass clicking together.
“Misty said you have my bow,” I say weakly, and he goes rigid.