The anger wasn’t exactly new, but disappointment was an emotion he often saw on his parents’ faces. It honestly, at this point, felt like Vivian and Orion Grimm either disliked or possibly hated everything about him.
Stopping in her tracks, his mother suddenly spun towards him. “I just don’t understand where?—”
He cut her off. “It’s me who doesn’t understand! Why are you so against what our family believes in?!”
“They arenotour family!” his mother hissed.
“How can you even say that?! We literally have them over all the time!”
Cyrus held back what he really wanted to say. Which was that they were the only family they had, since his mother was human. Her side had died long before he’d been born. Vivian’s life was only extended through the life bond that his father had created between them.
Orion shook his head. “There is a difference between the younger generation and the older, that you refuse to see reason about!”
“You are just too young to understand how the world really works, Cyrus. But those people, your father’s older relatives, are not, and have never been, family to us. They are in fact, and always will be, a danger to our family!”
“I want to understand, but you two won’t explain it to me! Tell me the reason! WHY?! Why is it so wrong that I want to join the Bureau?! That I believe in the purpose the Fates follow, in the good that they do?! That I believe in the rules they follow?! I’m a Fate, it’s what I am! Why are you so angry that Iwant to be who I am meant to be? It’s what you are too, Father, isn’t it?!”
His father stepped closer. The man gripped both of his shoulders and crouched down until their faces were level. He winced when the Fate’s tired eyes met his.
“Cyrus, I’m begging you to realize that you are more than the species you were born as. We are more than their rules, and the paths they demand for us. You can’t trust them. We are both begging you to let this dream of yours die.”
His jaw clenched as anger twisted in his stomach. Cyrus held back his frustration, until he couldn’t any longer.
As tears of hurt pricked at the corner of his eyes, he jerked from his father’s hold, yelling, “Stop pretending as if you aren’t just as controlling, when the only path you want me to follow is the oneyouset out for me! This is MY life! You can’t live it for me!”
As the first tear dropped, despite seeing his mother reaching out for him, Cyrus ran.
“Cyrus!” she cried out.
But he ignored her, and just kept going. He ran through the halls, and out the nearest door. He kept running until he was gasping and crying too hard to breathe, to go further.
Shakily, Cyrus plopped down on the grass some feet away from the edge of the large lake on his family’s property. Sniffing hard, he angrily wiped at his face, while kicking a stone near his foot into the water. He began to scream out years of frustration, of arguments, of just years of the two people who should support him telling him he was wrong, while treating him as if he wasn’t worth explaining anything to.
When his throat started to hurt, his screams trailed off. Flopping back on the ground with a groan, Cyrus rubbed at his face again, feeling tired. He had tried so hard to understand them, to hear them out, yet he got nothing back. They neverseemed to want to even hear what he had to say. They never cared that the plans he had been trying so desperately to share with them felt right. That it felt like it was what he was meant to do. How could they so easily ask him to just let it go?! To do something else?!
He groaned again, before stiffening at the sound of water splashing, too loud for any of the small creatures that should have been in the lake. Swallowing nervously, Cyrus slowly sat up, his eyes widening as he peered at the lake and found a pair of beautiful glowing blue-jean-colored eyes staring back at him. Those eyes, and dark-teal hair were all he registered before the Cryptid disappeared underwater.
“WAIT!” Cyrus reached out, crawling to the water’s edge on his hands and knees, trying to peer into it.
When the head suddenly popped back out, he squeaked and tumbled back onto his ass, his eyes widening once again as the creature slowly rose higher in the water, and he found himself staring into the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. With pearlescent skin, and gray-ish light shimmery purple scales framing a delicate face, the teenager had a plush bottom lip, and a pert, slightly upturned nose.
The mystery Cryptid swam closer. The water’s edge had a steep drop all around the lake, making it something his parents had kept him away from when he was younger. As the teenager came to rest his arms on the shore, he revealed slim webbed hands, with pointed purple claws, and the scales framing his face trailed over his arms, the sides of his neck, and his bare upper collarbone.
When the Cryptid’s head tilted slightly and he smiled, Cyrus couldn’t hold back his gasp as his heart started to race. His brain barely registered the flick of a tail in the water behind the creature. So many questions came to mind, yet none stayed long enough for him to voice them before another took its place.
While the beautiful creature continued to smile at him, the expression was just a hair off, making it unclear as to exactly how friendly the teenager actually was. But with his heart racing, and his mouth becoming oddly dry, alongside him seeming to have lost all ability to do more than stare, Cyrus wasn’t sure if he cared about whether the Cryptid was there to drag him to his death or not, because he was pretty sure he’d go willingly.
Ender yawned, doing his best to pay attention to what his Interstellar Commander, Kore McKinley, was saying. The white-blond-haired Electric Elemental was in all black sweats that morning, his light-gray eyes sharp and fully awake.
Taking a sip of his coffee, Ender wrinkled his nose at the still too bitter taste, and added another sugar cube.
The ‘as many as they damn well needed in a week’ weekly Cryptid Means inner circle meeting was going about as it normally did. Which meant they were in his dining room, there were members missing, and a few assholes were trying to not fall asleep. Why the fuck did he schedule so many of these damn things in the early AM? Not that he was tired, more just bored.
Wait!Hedidn’t schedule anything! It was usually Kore or Soren who did. Like himself, the Harpy and Electric Elemental were morning people. He'd had too many years on a damn farm for him to be anything but. Soren likely was the same way. He wasn’t sure what Kore’s excuse was though, as he was a city boy.
Kore, with his tablet in hand, stated, “We are set to meet up with Calico Delgrim three days from now. The location will be the halfway point between where we will intercept Riker Amarant.”
Soren ran a hand over his feathery, flame-colored short hair, his hawk-like nose wrinkling slightly as he asked, “Celeste won’t be with Calico?”
