Chapter 72 - Bonds

Mya fully opened the door to the room then walked in. She anticipated that Rae would be disorientated and upset when she woke up, so she tried to read the mood between Gabriel and Rae before she came in to the room. Gabriel gave Mya a tight smile to try and help put her at ease. Part of her worried that Rae would have instantly lashed out at her in both confusion and distrust, but it was clear to her that whatever conversation she had had with Gabriel beforehand had helped to relieve some of tension that might have originally been there.

As Mya walked fully in to the room, she glanced up and down her frame, taking in the now altered vision of the girl she raised. A look of both pride but also guilt was etched in to her face.

When she got close to Rae, she knelt down unsteadily on one knee. Gabriel stepped forward abruptly to try and assist her, but Mya outstretched her palm in his direction to halt him. "I'm okay," she said to him without averting her gaze from Rae. Mya lowered her eyes to the floor, then spoke softly.

"Forgive me, my Queen. I believe I have the answers that you seek."

Rae looked at Mya cautiously. Seeing her knelt in front of her felt wrong. This woman was like a mother to her and she loved her like one too, which made the feeling of betrayal hard for her to take. She was still angry and hurt at being lied to and having her memories stolen from her. From the little that Gabriel had told her, Mya had all of the answers and by her deductions was most likely responsible for her memory loss. She wanted to know the truth but if she was the one responsible, she felt the need to be cautious around her, to prevent her from having a chance at doing it again.

"Were you the one who made me forget? Did you steal my memories from me?" Rae asked with clenched fists, as she looked down at her.

"Yes," Mya responded, almost too quickly. Her gaze remained fixed to the ground.

Hearing her just admit to it, so casually, as though she was just asking her what the time was made her furious.

"Why?! I trusted you!" Rae roared at her.

The room was suddenly thick and heavy with dominant waves. Dominant alpha energy poured off of Raeliana, and the room almost started to tremble.

"Raeliana! Wait!" Gabriel countered as Rae's eyes turned black. Spurred on by Tara, her dominant energy pressed down on both Gabriel and Mya. Gabriel tried to approach her, but he could feel his kneels starting to buckle the closer he got.

"Raeliana, listen to her! Let her explain!" Gabriel pleaded again. He had now dropped to one knee from the weight of her dominance.

Rae briefly flicked her gaze to Gabriel. "Wait?! Wait for what? For her to feed me more lies?! For her to mess with my head again?!"

"No! She's not the villain you're making her out to be! Just give her a chance to explain! You have to try and remember everything that happened."

Rae shook her head. She didn't know what to believe anymore. She couldn't trust what little she did remember anymore than she could trust Mya.

"Please Raeliana, just give her a chance to explain! She's one of your subjects just as much as I am yours. She can't lie to you if you command it and use your alpha tone on her. She wouldn't lie to you now anyway. Please, if you don't fully remember, at least hear her out."

Rae looked back down at Mya. Her silence was unnerving, this was not the woman that she knew. She was the aunt who had comforted her when she was sad, had nursed her back to health when she was sick, had shown her all the love, kindness and affection that a child could ever hope for. Whilst she didn't have the best of everything growing up with her and Gabriel, Rae never wanted for anything. She couldn't believe that all of that could be a facade. She needed to know that the bonds that they shared were real and not false memories. If that were true, there had to be a reason, a really good reason behind all of this.

The dominant waves pouring off of Rae disappeared in an instant as she processed her thoughts and let go of the rage that was consuming her. Gabriel physically gasped as he felt heaviness in the air started to disperse.

Mya remained still in front of her. The silence in the room dragged on as both she and Gabriel waited to hear from Rae. As Mya continued to look down, she saw two droplets hit the wooden floor directly in front of her. The droplets spread and seeped in to the dry hardwood floor. Mya peered her head up to look at her.

The black in Rae's eyes had now receded, and in their place, tears filled her pained emerald green eyes. As she looked at Mya, Rae could see a big difference in her appearance. Her skin looked almost grey and the few small laughter lines that she had in her face were now more heavy set. Seeing her this way almost broke her heart. Whatever she had gone through, or was continuing to go through was clearly taking a toll on her.

Rae dropped down to her knees in front of her, surprising both Mya and Gabriel. Rae took Mya's hands in to hers.

"I just need to know the truth," she said with her voice starting to tremble.

"I need to know that the last few years I spent with you were real. If the love you showed me was real. If you tell me that's true, I'll listen to everything you have to say. I'll trust that the reason why you locked my past memories from me were all good ones . I'll do all that, but I just need to hear that first."

Mya looked at Rae sat down in front of her. She had watched her blossom from a young child in to the strong beautiful woman that she had become. Seeing her so confused and upset, she realised that in this moment, what she needed wasn't one of her subjects dutifully responding to her questions, what she needed was her the love and compassion from her aunt.

Mya slipped her hands out from Rae's then wrapped them around her back. She pulled Rae in to her chest then squeezed her tightly. "My beautiful, sweet darling child. I have loved you like you were my own for so long. Don't ever think that my love for you, for all of these years was not real. Whilst you are my Queen, you are like a daughter to me. I have and will continue to love you like one, for as long as you'll allow it."

Hearing these words, Rae sagged in Mya's arm and wrapped her arms around her. Her body quaked with emotion and she sobbed in to Mya's shoulder. She felt relief in her words. In her heart she knew that what she was saying was true, she didn't need to force the truth out of her. She felt the comfort of her aunt as the pain of losing her parents and siblings rose back to the surface.

The tension in Gabriel's body relaxed as he remained knelt down on the floor. Seeing the two women he loved the most come together like this was more than he had hoped for since Adalyn awoke as Rae.

The minutes felt like hours as Rae continued to sob in to Mya's arms. After Rae's cries started to diminish, Mya pulled back to look at her.

"There is so much I need to tell you, and to explain to you, but we can't do this all here. We have to keep moving."

"Moving?" Rae asked, not understanding.

"Yes. The seal that was placed on you. That I placed on you, back when you were a child has broken. That is why you look as you do now and why your memories from back in Aldia are starting to return. Now that the seal has broken, Colton will know where you are."

"Wait?" Rae asked confused. "Colton? The King of Sirran?"

"Yes!" Mya replied hastily. "His father Nolan and now Colton have been looking for you for years, since the rest of your family were slaughtered. Since then, he's been capturing and interrogating some of the shifters that helped us flee in to Galas when you were younger, but without being able to track you, his efforts to locate you have been fruitless. Colton has a gifted shifter who is able to track other shifters across vast distances. When your seal broke, his tracker would then be able to pick you up again. I have no doubt that he'd go to great lengths to find you, so we need to keep moving and put as much space between you and Sirran as possible. We have to make it hard for him to locate you until we can find a way to keep you concealed again."

"Wait, I don't understand. Why would he want me so desperately?"

"My sweet girl, you are gifted. Unlike most shifters, who are typically born without any gifts, there are a few that are born with one. Out of those few, most of them will never even now that they have a gift and it will remain dormant inside of them. But you're different Raeliana, you not only have one gift, the power to take people to your dream world, inside your mind, you have a second gift. A gift that Colton desperately covets. You have the ability to awaken dormant gifts in other shifters."

Rae's eyes widen as she listened to what Mya said.

"Gabriel and I are both gifted. We both had dormant gifts that were woken up because of you. With an ability like that, Colton desperately wants you. With a power like that under his control, he's hoping that you'd be the final playing piece he needs to build an army of gifted shifters and take over the whole continent."

Rae rocked backwards. The King of Sirran was after her? And a second gift? She was still trying to comprehend the first one with it all being so new and yet Mya already seemed to know about it. The more she thought the more questions she had. She didn't know where to start.

"I know this is a lot to take in so quickly and you must have a million questions," Mya continued. "But we've already been here too long. Now you're awake, we should make preparations to move soon."

Mya slid her palms out along the floor and prostrated herself. She lowered her head to the ground in complete submission to Rae.

"Raeliana, my Queen, my child. I, Amora Dion, swore to your mother that I would do all in my power to keep you out of harm’s way, to protect you with all of the life I have in me. Please trust me, and I will tell you everything that you want to know and more whilst we travel."

*'Protect'* There was that word again. Everyone was constantly trying to protect her and keep her safe. She'd had enough of people going to extremes to do this. If all of this was to protect her, at the cost of the people she cared about, she was no longer going to stand for it. This time she would get strong enough to protect herself, this time she would get strong enough to protect them too.

Rae kept her little declaration to herself and pulled Mya up off the floor. "Okay, I'll trust you for now. Let's go."