Shaun’s POV
On getting back to the villa, I came across Seth and Scott, who immediately pulled me into a serious conversation.
I assessed the look on their faces. Something wasn’t right. “What’s going on?”
“We should be considered the biggest fools in this world,” said Seth, slapping his forehead before shaking it disdainfully.
“Can you stop speaking in parables and just tell me what happened? I don’t have patience for this.” I hated things that wasted my time.
Seth looked up, and I had never seen him look so forlorn since the day we lost our mother.
Briefly I was transported to that moment when our mother bravely attacked the assailant that had broken into our home brandishing a knife fashioned with Wolfsbane. She had told us that she loved us all and wouldn’t let anything happen to us, and she kept her promise. I still had nightmares about the tears that she started shedding when the assailant’s blade got buried deep in her abdomen, and then her neck. The slow way the life seeped out of her eyes and her body. The horrifying way she had been screaming in those final moments because the wolfsbane was burning so deeply into her system that she couldn’t keep still and go quietly.
“We have to find a way to apologise to her, Shaun. She never deserved it. None of it.”
–
I wasn’t sure why I was the one forced to go to her personally to give my apology-alright, maybe I did, but it wasn’t like I knew any better. Anyone in my shoes would have done the same, meeting a young woman who turned out to be your own stepmother and less than half the age of your father. There was no way she would have gotten to become his wife under normal circumstances.
But, it was stupid of me to have been so blockheaded. I had so many opportunities to do the right thing, and yet I was blinded by my own beliefs. I had been to angry that my father had taken a new wife, that I didn’t think to even dug deeper and know exactly who he had married.
He made her a slave at 18 years. He probably did unspeakable things to her when she barely knew anything about the world, and all we did waa make the wounds deeper my even insinuating that she was loose woman
I was such a fool.
By the time I reached her door, feeling of guilt had built up so much inside of me. What would I say, what would I do? Would she even be willing to listen to me, the worst of all my brothers? If she hadn’t accepted an apology from Seth, what good was my going to visit her going yo achieve?
Me, the one who had called her a whore multiple times. Me, the one who had treated her terribly. Quiet filled the hallway where her room resided, as though the walls themselves were holding their breath. Twice, I knocked, the sharp sound vibrating through the wood.
“Lucy?” I called out, imagining the door coming alive and swatting me away like an annoying fly.
No response.
I waited for a little while, and then knocked again-much harder. “Lucy, are you in there? You probably don’t want to see me, and I understand why, but a minute of your time will be enough.”
Nothing.
Either I was being ignored, or she wasn’t in. Then I remembered the little girl that stayed with her. If she wasn’t in as well, then where could they have both gone?
Gentle sunlight streamed in through the windows, illuminating the hallway with a soft glow, but it was still too early to be out for any reason asides recreation and work. And Seth had told. me. thatbshe had returned to her room. Coukd she have gone out shortly after that?
Out of ideas, I connected my ear to the door, straining to hear any sound-a creak, a shuffle, her voice telling me to stop being dramatic.
But again, there was nothing. Except the quiet so absolute that it was suffocating.
I pushed down my typical impatience rising within me and sighed. A little waiting wasn’t going to kill me. I just had to keep my cool, and everything would work out, I believed.
As I leaned against the door, my elbow slipped and pressed down the door handle, opening the door and nearly causing me to fall flat on my face.
I regained my balance and patted myself down, more to keep together my almost bruised ego, than to remove any dust. I looked around the room, hoping that maybe I had been right and she was simply ignoring me while being inside, but it turned out that I was wrong.
Even the scent of the room alone indicated that no one was inside at that time. Left and right and I lookd and searched, but I saw no one. The scent of Lucy still lingered in the air-she had been here earlier, but hadn’t been around for at least an hour.
A rock tumbled deep inmy gut. Something wasn’t right. I looked around the room, waiting for a sign that would indicate where she could have gone to. Her window was open, and a soft breeze blew through the room, filling the air with othee different scents to mask hers.
“Where could you be?” I muttered underneath my breath, taking a seat on her bed. “Something isn’t right about all this.”
A shuffling sound behind me drew my attention to the door, and I found Tessa standing there, looking as pale as a ghost. Her small body seemed overshadowed by the doorframe, and it filled me with a dull need to oull her under the cover of my arms and just . . . protect her.
Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face had traces of dried tears.
“Tessa,” I said.
With a small cry, she rushed forward and threw herself into my chest, sobbing so terribly that my heart split into two just hearing the sound alone. Instinctively, my arms went around this child that I knew nothing about, but simply just wanted to protect.
“Shes’s gone,” she said through her sobs. “She went away and I can’t find her.” She clutched me tight and burst into a new torrent of tears.
The words hit me like a punch right to the intestines, freezing my insides. “Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“A strange man took her away!” she said between sniffs, “I went out in the morning to look for her, and then someone told me t-that they knew where she-she was . . . that all I had to do was wait. So I waited, and when I finally saw her, a man covered her nose and dragged her away. And then-and then . . . she was gone, and I had no one to call for help.”
I gritted my teeth. “Shit.” Then I realised that I was beside a child. “I mean, that’s horrible.” I waited for her sobs to recede. “Okay, just take a deep breath, Tessa. Where was she taken? Can you show me?”
–
The crisp and cool air outside contrasted with the warm sunlight; the kind of morning that usually felt deeply invigorating. Today though, it felt thick and oppressive. The training grounds stood before us, looking more ominous than usual. Who would have thought that such a place would have been a location for such a bad occurrence?
I shut my eyes and inhaled deeply, searching for any trace of Lucy amongst the greenery. Faint but unmistakable, it was present, but just like the scent in her room, it was getting fainter and fainter with every passing moment.
I pointed to the spot where her scent lingered the most. “This was where she was taken wasn’t it?”.
The little girl nodded, rubbing her eyes. “Yes. That was where the man jumped on her and dragged her away inside a big car.”
I moved to the spot and dug my hand into the soil. I could feel the presence of more than one person, but while Lucy’s was bood and insistent because I had come across her more than once, the other was faint and almost indistinguishable from the surrounding environment.
Tessa came up to me, her footsteps quick and nimble as she tried to keep up with her little feet. “Are we going to find her?” she asked innocently.
I didn’t want to ruin the little girl’s hope, as well as mine, so I told her “Yes we will.”
The scent I picked up cut off suddenly after that spot towards the edge of the training field, and all that was left behind were tyre tracks. Whoever had taken her had planned out what they were going to do for a very long while.
How long had they been planning this? And why Lucy?
I looked up to the sky, watching the silver clouds slide across the blue sky. It was like the Moon Goddess was giving me a chance to make up for my mistakes, but under difficult conditions.
An image of Lucy crossed my mind, and I remembered that recent night that we were together. The way she had almost surrendered to us us in that moment and sheer beauty of it all. For. a moment, I wanted to go back in time to that very moment and just make things right. It had been dumb of me to say and do all those things to her in the first place, and because I was a fool I had kept cooking up reasons for my poor behaviour.
Was I even worthy of her forgiveness?
I shook my head. All that could wait until later. What mattered the most now was finding her and just getting her to safety. After then . . . then I could forge ahead with new different plans on how to win her trust-or at least her tolerance because trust was far-fetched at that point.
All four of us, bound together by the Moon Goddess by some unexpected twist of fate. I still couldn’t understand how it was possible for her to be mated to all three of us, but one thing was certain, I couldn’t let anything happen to her. If we had been more concerned about her in the first place, maybe something like this wouldn’t have happened underneath our noses.
I punched the ground, growling. My eyes had finally been opened to the error of my ways, and this just had to occur. What terrible luck.
So yes, I was going to do everything in my power to find her. Because that was the only way I could summon the strength to forgive myself for all the trouble I had put her through.