We took another sip of the sparkling lemonade, our silence extending and acknowledging everything we’d been through inour lives… Part of me couldn’t help but think of everything that was still to come for me.
“After I escaped the human’s attack on our pack, I, too, was in shock,” Isis offered, breaking the silence. “I couldn't believe that the people we had spent our lives protecting had turned against us just because they learned of our true nature. One moment we lived happily among them, as their guardians, the next we were the monsters they feared and fought to eliminate.”
Her wavy hair bounced as she shook her head, looking into her glass while sadness clouded her gaze.
“The humans we loved turned against us, and we didn’t even fight back because we legit could never hurt them. Even after I barely escaped with my life, I couldn’t bring myself to blame them. For months on end, I roamed territory after territory, clinging to the hope that I’d find another shifter like me, desperately trying to prove that I wasn’t alone in the world. Meanwhile, I low-key made excuses for them—they were scared, they didn’t understand, they were just trying to defend their families from the unknown, they didn’t know what they were doing…”
Sighing, she looked up and took a long sip.
“It turns out that Denial is not just a river in Egypt,” she snorted.
We softly chuckled at that, and I was thankful I understood the reference thanks to the movies I’d been watching each night with André and Dante since we arrived.
“I made myself believe that the humans were somehow still innocent because the truth was too much to bear,” Isis continued. “That the same people we were born to protect and pledged our lives to had become our undoing… and now I was truly alone.”
“But you did find more shifters like you,” it was my turn to remind her, and I reached for her hand too.
“I did.” A small smile curved her lips, yet a sliver of pain from her past was still evident in her dimmed gaze. “And yet sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.”
Her attention went to the queen with the echoing of her statement, and they exchanged a knowing glance.
“Once I found Dresden, or once he found me, I lost the last shred of strength I had left and all the delusions I’d built in my mind to protect me. I crumbled before him, not just because of the crushing weight of loss that I carried, but because of the relief he gifted me… It took a long time for me to recover and be able to trust that I would not lose this new family I had found.”
Placing the glass on the table, Queen Luna knelt before Isis, pulling her into her arms. “You will never, ever, lose us, you hear me? You are my family for life.”
“Family for life…”
Watching them, the heaviness increased in my chest, the fog shifting and making me uncomfortable. I absentmindedly reached for it, trying to rub it out of me.
“I know that now,” Isis whispered, pulling back and wiping the tears that rolled down her cheek.
“We all have different ways of dealing with the hurt life gives us,” Queen Luna admitted, returning to her seat. “But one way or another, we have to deal with the pain, or the pain will deal with us.”
“At the worst possible moment,” Isis specified with a humorless chuckle.
As their caring gazes settled on me, I knew what this was—an intervention—but it was too late for me to fight it. The darkness and fog that had buried the emotions inside me, Nataha’s emotions, seemed to stir and expand with each breath, causing my heart to hurt.
I strained to hold it back. To push it as deep inside me as it would go. To smother it with my pure will until it died withinme. Unfortunately, the darkness stretched more and more each second, tensing like a rubber band that seemed ready to snap at any moment.
Was that Natasha trying to resurface? Was she finally ready to come back?
A new feeling captured me with the thought, fear. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to do this, why couldn’t they just leave me alone?
My stupid throat began to close up.
“We know that right now you are being your strongest self,” Queen Luna offered.
“Of course, I am. I am Natasha’s Vampiress. I am her warrior, it’s the only reason I’m here,” I argued.
“Yes, she needs you the most right now,” Isis agreed. “And we know you’ll do anything for her, which is why you are trying so hard to be unbreakable, but we’ve legit been there before, baby girl.”
“Being able to push our feelings aside and ignore them doesn’t make us strong,” the queen added, the gleam in her eyes telling me she knew it all too well. “What makes us strong is taking in that pain, accepting it as a part of us, feeling it ripping through our being like a storm but still getting up to fight.”
A knot formed in my throat, and I shook my head slowly, feeling my eyes begin to burn with incoming tears.
“I don’t want to fucking do this!”I screamed into my mind, fighting the feelings with the last string of will I had left.
“Let it be… We need this,”Star whispered, and I felt her agony already taking hold, spreading through me until it hurt to breathe.
