Forgotten Royalty (Escaping The Throne) (8 page)
Read Forgotten Royalty (Escaping The Throne) Online
Authors: Tiffany Wood
I’m dreaming. Damian and I are running through the woods. He’s chasing
me and I’m laughing.
“You can’t catch me.” I taunt.
“Oh really?” He runs faster.
I scream and take off. I reach the edge of a creek and he tackles me
in. We both emerge laughing.
“I thought you said I couldn’t catch you?” He laughs again.
“This water is freezing!” I shout as I splash him in the face.
“Oh you’re gonna get it now.” He splashes me back and dunks me under.
“That was cold.” I start to shake and he looks at me funny.
He’s talking but I can’t hear him. I’m being pulled away. I reach for
him but can’t touch his hands. He fades away into the background, just like my
parents do. I’m not alone but I can’t see who else is with me. They’re pulling
me away. I try to scream, but I can’t. It gets dark.
“Is someone there? Hello?” I hear a distant laughing.
“I will have her Damian, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.” I
feel someone kissing me down my neck. It’s not quite the same as when Damian had
done it. He snarls and starts to suck on my neck the same way that Damian had
before he bit me.
“DAMIAN!” I scream. This time I could hear myself.
I jump out of the chair and run to her side. “Sara? What’s wrong?”
She’s trying to breathe, but it’s like she isn’t getting enough oxygen. “Sara,
look at me!” I force my will on her through the mind link and she jerks her
eyes to my gaze. “We need to calm down. Breathe with me.”
I inhale and exhale and she begins to do the same in time with me. As
her breathing slows, I release her from my hold. She wraps her arms around me
as tight as she can and begins to cry. Now that I’ve calmed her down, I
remember the dream. I couldn’t get to her. I could only watch. He wanted to
bite her and she willed herself to scream and break the mental hold. She had
woken us both up. I can’t believe he would do anything so… She looked at me and
I realized she was scanning my thoughts for answers. I saw the fear in her eyes
as she had already heard the rest of my thought before I thought it. She knew
what had happened. I pulled her back to me and thought of my love for her. I
could feel her trying to do the same but she was too upset by what had just
happened. She wasn’t going back to sleep. I started to think of how much I just
wanted to be with her right now and I felt her heart jump in response. I
quickly thought of something else.
“You still don’t trust my feelings?” She pulled back from me and got
off of the bed. She grabbed her clothes from where she had left them laying on
the floor and ran to the bathroom. I did it again. I kept hurting her by
pushing her away.
As she came back into her room she began to shout, “Stop trying to
analyze everything I do and feel. My aunt does enough of that for the both of
you!” Her anger knocks me back and she looks at me in shock. “Did I just do
that?”
I smile a little. “Yeah, you kinda did.” I realized our bond was stronger
than it should have been. Did she really feel this way about me before I kissed
her? No, I can’t think about that right now.
“I think you need to call someone who actually knows what’s going on
instead of sitting here trying to decide for me whether I really feel like this
toward you. Yes, your father seems like a very good choice to me.”
I look up at her shocked. “I don’t think I’m ready for him to know
about all of this. I do have a friend I could call. She may know more about it
than me.”
As she turns away from me, I can feel her jealousy just below the
surface. Her blood begins to boil.
“You know what? I think we’ll hold off on that.” I realized only too
late that I had thought of my friend and visualized her at the same time. I
needed some coffee. I can’t think straight on what little sleep I have gotten.
“You mean…you have hardly slept the whole time you’ve known me? You
were in my room those two nights. I wasn’t dreaming that. You didn’t realize
that I had those dreams with you.” She had been connected to me since the day
we met. “You jumped in front of me on the school steps…and made me think you
were going to hit me with your car. I don’t care if it was an accident, you
sure didn’t apologize for it.” She was reading my mind back to thoughts before
I had even met her. She ran to the bathroom again.
“Sara, wait. What did you see? You’re reading thoughts I’m not even
having right now. Sara?” I’m standing outside the bathroom door. I could easily
go in if I wanted to, but I wouldn’t unless she invited me this time. Her bond
with me was growing every second and I was losing control of it. My father had
never told me about this happening to anyone.
She must have looked deeper into my memories because she opened the
door and asked, “Have you really wanted me since the moment you first saw me?”
She scanned my eyes.
“Yes, you are the only girl I have ever wanted like this” I whisper it
so faintly. I look back into her eyes and see images from the day we met. “You
felt drawn to me when I was sitting in the shadows. That’s why you looked my way.”
I shake my head. We needed to change the subject or I would lose my self
control. “Sara, I don’t understand why, but you’re changing. You should have
been able to choose, but your mind won’t stop it. As scary as it seems now, I
can help you know what’s going to happen before it does. I can’t explain how
your body will time it, but I can show you what to expect. You will be able to
feel my pain from past transformations so that you know what to expect. Do you
want me to show you?”
Without hesitation, I feel her scanning my thoughts again. She is
searching for the worst transformation I can remember. “You should start with
one a little more recent. I don’t want you to feel all of that suddenly.”
My warning came too late. She dropped to the floor holding her head.
She was whimpering with pain, my pain. I try to stop the memory but it takes me
over and we’re both on the floor now. I reach out to her and pull her close.
“Sara, I’m here. We’re going through this together.” I was taking the
pain from her a little at a time. It wasn’t long before she realized what I was
doing.
She gave me a mental shove. “I have to feel this. I have to be prepared.”
The memory ends and we lay there for another moment before she pulls
away from me. I pull her back toward me and kiss her forehead. She pushes on my
chest with all of her might and actually manages to pull herself an inch away
from my chest. She was getting stronger.
“We shouldn’t do that again for awhile, your aunt will be home soon and
I really don’t think that you want her walking in on this.”
I let her go. I got up and offered her my hand. She tried to hit it
away but I caught hers and pulled her up. I was starting to be able to
anticipate her movements. She yanked her hand from mine.
She was angry, but she understood. “Yes, I understand. That doesn’t
mean I have to like it. You should get out of here. Aunt Lynn will be home in
about ten minutes and I don’t think you want to be here when she arrives.” She
didn’t want me to leave, but she didn’t want me to be here right now. She had
mixed feelings that were probably my fault.
“Do you want me to come back tonight?” I felt her heart jump as she
heard the innuendo in the suggestion. “Maybe we should wait till tomorrow. My
aunt may think that I was just skipping school if you show up to see me
tonight.”
I didn’t want to leave her alone. She may start to change again and I
didn’t want her to go through that alone.
“I’m a big girl Damian. You don’t need to be here.” She went to her
room and shut the door. She was giving me my chance to leave before anything
else happened. I walked out the door and hoped I could return.
I went to my home on the outskirts of town. I lived in a large manor that
was transformed into a boarding house. It had been owned by my family for
centuries. I decided that the first thing I should do was check the archives to
see if I could find anything about Sara’s family.
I pull the ‘P’ archives from the shelf. This may take a while.
“Payano,” I flip through to the last Payano in the book. There were at least
fifty pages on them. I figure it may help for me to start at the last page and
work backwards. The problem was that the last entry was started thirty-five
years ago.
The entry says that two children were born to Prince Ezequiel Payano of
the Taurs Hawks Clan. The twins were named Robert and Zachaeus. Two years
later, Zachaeus was abducted by the Borne Bloods. When the council refused to
search for him, the family fled. The last communication recorded was that they
weren’t losing their other son. The hunters tracked them for three years before
they lost them completely. They found Ezequiel seventeen years ago in a nursing
home. They tried to find out where his son had gone, but he wouldn’t cooperate.
He said that they had brought enough grief to his house and he wouldn’t let
them have his son or his newborn. They tried to force a link between his mind
and the pack. He was too weak. He passed away two hours later. They watched the
home for months and listened in on every phone call. They found nothing. They
had lost the last link to his family because of the council’s decision. That
was the end of the entry. I had to call my father.
Damian had been gone for a while. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to
feel right now. Aunt Lynn had decided chicken soup would be the best thing for
me to eat right now. As I sat at the table to eat, I regretted not choosing a
different shirt.
“Sara, where did you get that mark on your neck? Did you have a boy
here?”
Crap. I had to think fast. “No, when I was sick last night I was light
headed and fell. I must’ve hit my neck off of something. Is it bad?”
She gets closer to get a better look. “No, I guess it doesn’t look that
bad. Do you remember what you hit?” She was going to take my story.
“No, I don’t even remember if it was in the bathroom or my bedroom.” I
knew exactly where and how it happened. Damian must have sealed the bite marks
when he licked it but I never thought to check for marks. I was definitely
going to razz him for this. “Since I’m feeling better, I was wondering if you
would mind me meeting Damian tomorrow to rehearse for the play. He called after
school and said he could go over everything I missed today. He even picked up
my homework.” Hopefully I didn’t sound overly enthused by all of that. I don’t
want her to know that Damian and I have become more than just friends.
“I suppose that would be alright. Will Thai be driving you?”
That was easy. “No, Damian said he could pick me up. We were going to
go to the library but I don’t know how we would rehearse there. His parents
will be home though, so we were just going to rehearse at his place.”
She has that look in her eyes. “Really, I’d like to talk to them. Are
they home now? What’s their number?” Think fast Sara. “No, they won’t be home
till late tonight. They’re returning from a business trip. I’ll have them call
you during lunch at the office, okay?” She looked a little skeptical, but she
nodded in agreement.
“Dad, I know that I wasn’t supposed to make contact with the victim.
You can punish me when this is over. Will you just listen for a minute? Dad!
She’s a member of the royals!” I didn’t mean to shout it at him but he wasn’t
going to listen any other way.
“Alright Damian, I’m listening. Which royal family do you suspect this
girl is related to?”
“This girl is the granddaughter of the last heir of the Taurs Hawk
Clan. Their family went off the radar after her uncle was kidnapped and her
grandfather passed before the council could get their location. Her name is
Sara Payano. She has to be Ezequiel Payano’s granddaughter.”
My father is quiet for a moment. “I assume that you are reading about
the Payano family in the archives. Son give this up it is a lost cause. Even if
you can prove who her grandfather was without asking her parents, they will
never admit to it.”I had to make him see. “Dad, her parents died when she was
six. Ezequiel had two sons and the Borne Blood’s kidnapped one. The only family
she has left is her mortal aunt. We need to help her. She’s transforming
without making the choice. They’re after her. I need your help Dad, please?”
The room is filled with silence. “I’ll be there in the morning. Bring
her over and I’ll see what I can find. I’m not promising anything. If she truly
is the heir, we’ll approach that after we coach her transformation. I’ll bring
your mother with me. Don’t do anything stupid.”
With that my father hangs up the phone. He’s not happy with what I’ve
told him, but he knows we can’t bring this to the council’s attention yet. It
would be too dangerous for her. If she goes to council before she transforms
and inherits her family traits, they’ll eat her alive. I wouldn’t let that
happen.
The phone rings and Aunt Lynn answers it, “Hello? Just a second, Sara,
Damian is on the phone.”
I pick up the line in my bedroom, “I got it.” When my aunt hangs up, I
continue. “I miss you. I told my aunt that we’re going to your place to do
homework and rehearse for the play tomorrow. I had to tell her your parents
will be there and that they’ll call her during her lunch at work.”
He breaks in, “Slow down Sara. I miss you too. I hate to tell you this,
but my parents will be here tomorrow. They’re going to try to figure out why
you’re changing so quickly. If you have any information on your dad’s family,
like a journal or family pictures, that would help. Do you know what your
grandfather’s name was?”
Ask me a hard question. “Yeah, we visited him a lot before Dad died.
Now Aunt Lynn refuses to take me up there, but I still call him.”
