“That’s how Preston got me to agree to go on a date with him so easily… One of my professors introduced me… And thought it was a good idea, with Preston being a Dweller.”
Severo grimaced. “We’ll keep looking into that…I know it may not be our priority right now, but you shouldn’t have been able to just disappear without anyone noticing. While there was nothing found the first time we looked, I’ll have a trusted colleague and friend of mine, Killian, look again.”
“I’m not sure if he will find anything different the second time. Preston can easily shut anyone he wants up.”
“It shouldn’t be that easy,” Severo hissed, almost looking like he was upset by the thought that no one looked… But why would he be? Seri was just a stranger…
“People disappear all the time without anyone noticing. It’s not really that special of a story. I’m not special.”
Severo rubbed his face and groaned. “You are definitely special, Seri. Your life is a big fat question mark.”
He frowned. “In what way?”
“Well, for one, the orphanage you were in. Baby Nymphs don’t just appear in the middle of nowhere over three hundred miles away from the nearest Nymph settlement. Which, by the way, wasn’t even a Water Nymph settlement. The closest one of those is even further.”
Seri wrapped his arms around Skya, who wiggled a bit fussily. “Maybe my parents weren’t part of a settlement? There are Nymphs outside them, you know. My parents didn’t want me, Severo, why make a mystery out of it?”
“Your species is insular. Do families live outside the settlements? Yes, they do. And that could just be it…yet…”
“Can we just drop this?”
“Don’t you see that you could have been taken? Cryptid trafficking is super prevalent.”
No, he didn’t want to see. Seri didn’t want to think of the possibilities. He didn’t want to think about it at all. “Or, the truth is, they just didn’t want me and took me as far away as possible so that I’d never find my way back.”
“But what if they did want you? What if they are out there somewhere looking for you?”
“Then they should have looked harder!” Seri snapped, surging up from the couch. Skya jerked in his arms and let out a startled cry. He ignored her and yelled, “Stop snooping into my life! Don’t I have enough people doing that already? The last six years of my life will be walked and trampled through. By the end of this, I’m sure the whole world will know, or think they know, more about me than even I do! So enough!” Spinning on his heel, he stormed away as quickly as he could to the semi safety of his new room.
Slamming the door, he stood there for a moment, tears pooling in his eyes as he tried to take a deep breath. Skya wiggled in her chest holder, crying. Wrapping his arms around her, he sank to the ground. “Shhh. I’m sorry, Skya. Daddy’s sorry for yelling.”
They weren’t looking…they weren’t. No one was. Just some psycho who wanted to own him…
“Shit…”Severo cursed. Listening to Skya’s faint cries, he rubbed his hands roughly through his hair and yanked out the tie with a sigh. He’d fucked up.
“What do you MEAN you don’t have anything on him?!” Preston roared. “He has to be connected to someone! He didn’t just appear and disappear on fucking Earth! Find his parents, his siblings, or his dog, whatever there is, and use them to drag him out into the open!”
Don audibly gulped, before clearing his throat and saying, “While, on the surface…he seems like an average Cryptid working for the Bureau, his life before hitting a hundred is just…gone. We haven’t found a single thing that would tell us who is helping him, or how he is able to even evade us. All we know is that he is a Shadow Dweller, and has a high success rate in his work for the Bureau…but…”
“BUT?!”
“He has no family connections, no criminal past, no debt… It’s like someone erased the first hundred years of his life. I can’t even find pictures of him online anywhere...”
“You know what, I don’t give a damn who he is. FIND HIM. FIND SERI. FIND MY CHILD!”
Seri sat curledup on the couch, chewing on his thumbnail as he eyed Severo. The man was sitting on the floor, attempting to put together an overly complicated playmat for Skya. The little girl was sitting next to him, shaking a bell that was part of the play mat, completely unaware how absolutely fucking awkward things were, or that Severo seemed to be struggling to make sense of the instructions.
“So, I…” He trailed off.
Severo glanced up. “Yes?”
“Uhh…” Seri muttered, face heating, before quickly saying something other than what he wanted to say. “I don’t think that piece goes there.”
The man’s brow rose, and he glanced down at the part in his hand. Severo eyed the blue connector attached to the purple pole thing for a moment before pulling the pieces apart. “You…may be right. That came off a bit too easily…”
He cleared his throat and tried again. “So, I…”
Severo stared.
