Chapter 9

KIRA:
Slowly I turn around, mustering enough courage not to reveal my emotions. “Wh– What are you talking about?” I ask.
The distance between Bradley and me was a little much now due to walking out on him a few seconds ago. So what he does first is to cover up the distance a little.
“I only asked a simple question,” he says, his eyes seeming like they could see through me.
“That didn’t seem like a question to me,” I rebuff.
“Do you have anything to hide?”
Anxiously, I peel my eyes off him for a brief second before looking back at him. “Do I look like I do?”
Bradley folds his arms below his chest. “You tell me,”
“Well, I don’t. So stop questioning me like I’m doing something wrong,”
So I turn around once again to leave. I do not even bother to listen to note if he was on my tail but I am sure he is.
He proves he is directly behind me when his voice gets straight to my ears. “You could have just said ‘no’, you know? You didn’t have to be so dramatic about the whole thing,” was what he said.
“You should listen to yourself, Brad. How can you be asking a sixteen-year-old if she has a spirit wolf? Like what the hell?”
Maybe he stops following me, I do not know. But what I do know is that I didn’t get a response from him after that. Which means I kept on walking alone until I found myself out of the woods.
Since there was an apparent disappointment that came with my supposed first transformation, it was left for me to go home and brood over it.
But, first, how did Bradley get to think that I have a spirit wolf already? Did someone mention it to him? Or can he sense it in me?
However he made a guess, that was a close one. And it sure as hell did scare the shit out of me.
When I get back into the city of the pack, I stop to take a look around the scenery. The business of it all first got my attention and after that, I blink. Sometimes I tend to like how crowdy it all is, and other times I do not. Just like now, I found the scenery okay.
The feeling dwindles like a flash. I suddenly have an eerie feeling surrounding me from being around here. I cannot really explain it but it feels like a dark cloud has overwhelmed me.
I need to get that off my chest, I know. And that is why I proceed with the journey to my family quarters under the hot sun of the day.
My mind suddenly gets preoccupied with the failed transformation that occurred in the woods. I cannot get over the fact that I suffered disappointment after getting my hopes high about the whole thing. I believed that I would effectively go through my first shift but look what happened.
Don’t I think overreacted though about the whole thing? I mean, my outburst and all that, was it all necessary? I shouldn’t have allowed my emotions to cloud my thoughts, so much that I lashed out at Alexia.
Now I feel bad about what I did. The switch in emotions came so sudden but reflecting on it, I know I should have kept my feelings in check during the process. Little wonder my mother likes to complain a lot about my temperament.
“Alexia,” I whisper, hoping she would hear me speak. I’m still in public so I do not want to take the chance of talking out loud, knowing fully well that I would be taken as mentally unstable if I’m caught conversing with the unknown.
I wait for a few but no answer came from the wolf in my head. Maybe she didn’t hear me call, I presume. And so I call her the second time, “Alexia,” but still nothing.
Okay, now I’m a little worried that she was doing this intentionally. She probably hates me now for being such a jerk not too long ago and I totally wouldn’t blame her for being that way.
As I’m walking, a thought flows through my head. Perhaps I should try conversing with her through the mind-link in my head which I’m still unsure how to use. A trial wouldn’t hurt, would it?
The next thing is that I find myself shutting my mind off things happening around me despite being in motion. That doesn’t mean I do not have my mind on the road. Although with the way I am going, I won’t be surprised if I bump into someone or something.
When I finally become confident about what I intend to do, I proceed with it. ‘Alexia,’
‘You see that it was not hard to do,’ is the instant response I get from her, which only puts me in a pool of surprise.
“What the hell, Alexia!” I burst out at the act she just portrayed in my head. It was only after a few seconds did I realize that I just said that out loud which has attracted the attention of those around me.
Seeing all eyes fixed on me drowns me in embarrassment. And not being able to handle it, I pick up the pace so I could leave the location in no time. Alexia shouldn’t have put me in such a position in the first place.
When I am finally out of sight from where the thing happened, I whisper, hoping Alexia would hear me this time around. “Why did it take until I used the mind-link before you chose to respond?”
‘Because I wanted to take my time?’
“So you mean you heard me all along? Gosh, this is so annoying,”
‘I did hear you. I only wanted you to do what I have been asking of you. And now that you did it, you can see that it is easy. The mind-link is nothing hard to access,’
“Whatever,” I say in annoyance. Even the willingness to apologize to her has totally left me.
Until I get home, I do not find a reason to discuss with her. And I’m glad she doesn’t attempt to strike up a conversation with me. But lately, I noticed how less of a talker she is as it is mostly me who kick-starts a conversation. My inquisitiveness wouldn’t allow me to keep to myself, so.
“Woah...” I utter when I arrive in front of the apartment. It felt like a relief to know that I finally made it home after the whole hullabaloo of today which necessarily wasn’t chaotic. I know for sure that once I land my body on my bed, I would be drifting off to sleep.
“Hi, mom,” I say when I walk into the quarters to find her sitting in the parlor while relaxing her legs on a stool.
“You’re back early today,” she says when she looks at me. But I do not even bother to stop as I start to make my way to the room I share with my brother.
“Unfortunately,”
“What do you mean by that?” she asks, her tone laced with confusion.
“Nothing,” I say before finally finding myself inside the room. And as I pass by my brother’s bed, I can see that he is lying on it while glancing through a book.
“Hey, Kira,” I hear him say but instead of responding to him, I raise my hand to wave at him.
Arriving at my mattress, I collapse fax first into it, and at the same time, I feel my nerves relaxing from the long walk I made down here. Actually, I’m this sore because of the effect of trying to make my first shift.
Just when I thought I would successfully drift off to sleep, my brother’s voice gets to my hearing.
“Kira?”
At first, I want to ignore him. But when he calls my name the second time, I have to answer him. “What?” the word came out muffled through the sheets. And I also groan in frustration from knowing that he is about to disturb the nap I came home for.
“Did you hear about what happened in the pack today?”
Now that piqued my interest.
“Did the Night Blaze pack launch an attack on us?” for him to sound that excited to tell me something, the only guess I could make was to link it to our bitter rivals.
“No, not that.”
“Then what is it, Adam? I’m trying to take a nap here!”
“A mysterious disappearance of two guards occurred. They were both on duty when they supposedly were reported missing,”
I find myself sitting up immediately because the first thing that comes to mind is Bradley who is a guard as well. But nothing to worry about I guess because I just saw him not too long ago.
“And how would you know what?” I demand from the information supplier.
Adam looks excited to want to talk about this with me. And I decided it was best if I give him the privilege. “I overheard some guards saying it while I passed by them today. And they sounded distressed which makes me believe it is true,”
For a moment I think through the thing. Guards went missing? That doesn’t seem to make any sense because we are talking about highly trained warriors here.
“What other thing did you hear from them?” I ask.
“Let’s see,” Adam acts like he is thinking but then speaks in no time, “What I heard as well was that the weapons of the missing warriors were found around where they were guarding. And that their weapons were still sheathed,”
“But that doesn’t justify them missing. What if they ran off or something while on duty? Or they had a pressing need to attend to?”
“And leave behind their weapons in the process? I guess not."
I suddenly feel like I am not analyzing the information well. Because, indeed, why will they go attend to an urgent need while putting their weapons aside? Makes little to no sense.
I guess there is more to this than what I am being told. I just have to wait until the news gets out wide.