Chapter 52

KIRA:
After taking a deep breath, at least enough to calm me down lest I vent my frustration on someone who doesn’t deserve my tantrum, I open the door to see Bradley standing outside the quarters.
Opening the door apparently caught his attention because he swiftly looks at me, giving an expression that tells he is sober. I am quick to notice that he is in a regular outfit other than his guard uniform. Gives him a completely different identity.
“Hey,” he says a little confidently and I nod a little to that.
My instinct was to usher him into the quarters but recalling that things between him and Adam might not be good yet, I change my mind on it and instead join him outside as I close the door behind me.
To make him know that I was serious this time about having a proper conversation with him, even though I still do not want to, I go to the first step on the balcony and sit while telling him, “What’s up?”
“I know you don’t want to see me but spare me a bit out of your time, will you,” was his response but I was not going to let him continue with that.
“Are you going to sit? Or would you rather stand there all through?” I ask him and he instantly gets the memo as he joins me where I am seated, with a little space left between us.
It’s funny how I can tolerate his presence now when about two minutes ago that I was informed of his presence I had reacted like I was going to burn someone down.
“So what brings you here?” I choose to ask for him to have the cue to start the conversation already. I’m eager to know what he has for me this time around.
Just like him, I am also staring ahead into space. I do this as I await what he has to say. And at the same time, I am trying my best to keep my mood in check because trust me I still have it in me to snap at someone. Hopefully, Bradley doesn’t get on the bad end of things today.
“Alpha Reid was here today,” Bradley starts to say, “and I happened to notice that felt strange to me.”
Perhaps I already have a clue what he is driving into because today’s happenings were certainly beyond my control.
“And what did you see that was strange?”
His gaze falls on me. And I notice that due to the piercing feeling that comes with it when he does so.
“You with him...”
I let out a brief cough as a result of that, and it was not because I choked on anything. “What are you talking about?” I decided to feign oblivion.
“You don’t need to act like you have no idea what I am talking about. If you care to know, I was among the warriors sent to mix with the crowd so we could see off Alpha Reid and his entourage without having pack members cause a tantrum around there. And it was during the whole thing that I saw you with him,” he states. “Trust me, I wasn’t the only one that observed that.”
I guess I have no choice but to look at him so I could at least show that I was not in denial any more. Because apparently, he got me.
“Did I do anything wrong by speaking to me? He saw me and wanted to talk and it would have been rude of me to say no to him,” I tell Bradley in my defense.
“I understand. But you doing that on pack territory would make others think something different about the situation. The first thing that would get to their head would be that you were discreetly working for a rival alpha. Or worse still, you were planning to betray the pack.”
“Well, I had none of that on my books when I met with him,”
“And I understand. At least, I have an idea of what is going on now since you have let me in on a few things in the past. But what about the others? They have no idea what is going on. They wouldn’t know that you supposedly chose to speak to him because you have both helped each other in the past. This is why I think that what you did today was careless. A very careless move from you there, Kira.”
I scoff, the words already starting to hammer into me the wrong way. “Who are you to judge me about what I do? I might have allowed you to speak to me but I did not give you the chance to criticize me. So why would you tell me that I am careless? Oh because I am naive, is that it? That is what you want to rub on my face again, right?”
“You are taking it the wrong way, Kira,” he backs himself up with that. “I am not here to ridicule you. And neither am I here to repeat my past mistake. I am just here to offer you advice for you to be careful in what you do. The last thing you need now is all eyes being on you, trust me. It’s not going to end up well for you.”
He does not waste time standing up to his feet. I look up at him first and then take my gaze off him because I have nothing to say to him. Nothing at all. Instead of being annoyed that he had said some words to me that I never acknowledged, I feel like I might have been harsh toward him.
The realization of what I have done dawns on me when he starts to walk away from here without even saying goodbye. It instantly makes me feel miserable and before I knew it, I have reached out to him.
“Bradley, wait!”
Fortunately, he stops in his tracks. However he does not bother to turn around despite knowing I just called his name. I would say that he is doing it on purpose because of the way I spoke to him about a minute ago.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” I say out loud to his hearing. “Can you come back, please? There is something I want to talk to you about.”
I watch him stand there for a while longer. Seems to me that he is hesitating on whether or not he should come back to meet me. I wouldn’t blame him, though. Because what I did to him was uncalled for, and I know it now.
He turns around eventually with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. And a few seconds later, after staring in my direction like he is staring right into my soul, he starts to head back toward me. I feel a little glee in me because of that. To be honest, I thought he was going to totally ignore me and walk away from here.
He sits beside me again and that is when I start to muster the courage to tell him what he needs to know about why I had him come back.
“You remember what I told you that I saw in the school? You know, the thing that Kelvin showed me?” I start with that, asking him so he could get what I am trying to talk about.
From the side of my eye, I notice him nod in agreement. Then he says, “What about that?”
“Well, I think I should not have seen it in the first place. Because after that day, something unexplainable happened. And as I am thinking about it now, I feel the chills in me.”
Looking down at my skin, I quickly notice how goosebumps have appeared on it from recalling that shitty hallucination I had about the giant substance. Gosh, it was freaking me out already.
“Tell me what happened,” Bradley urges me and I adhere to it in no time because that was the sole purpose of mentioning it to him.
“I saw the thing again. But this time it was different. It was not the little thing I found in the hallway. Instead, it was a giant size of it with an amount of pressure that was enough to choke me. And when I say that, I mean it because it felt like I was going to get suffocated by it. And you know why it feels crazier to say? Because all this happened in a hallucination.”
The look I get from Bradley when I stare at him is close to incomprehensible. Because it was a mixture of more than one emotion so I could not pinpoint what exactly he is trying to reflect on his face.
“You were hallucinating?” he quizzes.
“Yes,” I admit. “And it felt so real.”
“You sure you are not making this all up? I don’t mean it in the wrong way. What I am trying to get from it is if you were just dreaming,”
“It’s more than a hallucination, Bradley. Because I am not the only one that has experienced this sort of thing,” a pause, and I tell him after, “You want to know what Alpha Reid was discussing with me? Well, here it goes. He and some others in his pack have experienced it as well.”