Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Adeline
Getting out of the car, my mother’s voice reaches my ears. “She is gone. She did another runner. I rang the police station, and they said she left when someone bailed her out.”
The other rear door of the car opens, and my mother looks taken aback when she sees Taylor hop out of the car.
“Debbie, I need to speak to you, please,” Cyrus says, and she looks at him.
“About what? Taylor, you look—” She doesn’t finish, shaking her head.
Taylor rushes over to her and hugs her before scooping up Maya. Maya hugs her mother excitedly at having her attention, and I swallow the lump that has formed in my throat. Everyone walks inside, and I am overwhelmed, knowing this will soon no longer be home.
That I won’t see Maya every day or my mother.
That I won’t be the one she excitedly runs to anymore, and that thought hurts more than I thought it would.
I have had custody of Maya since just before her third birthday.
In a lot of ways, she feels like she is my daughter, and it upsets me a little how she will easily just accept her mother back into her life without giving me a second thought.
I feel Eli’s hand on my lower back, making me look at him.
Cyrus walks off with my mother toward the kitchen, and Taylor walks into the living room with Maya.
Maya shows her mother the painting she’s done.
“Can we stay at your place?” I whisper to Eli.
He seems a little shocked, but everything is moving too quickly, and I am finding it overwhelming watching my family finally coming back together while I am being pushed out.
“You okay?” he asks, kissing my cheek and pulling me to him.
I walk off, going to retrieve some clothes. When I come back downstairs, Eli is no longer talking to my mother, and Maya and Taylor are still playing in the living room. I walk over to the table and grab Eli’s keys off it before grabbing my bag.
“Addie, everything okay?” my mother asks.
“Yes, mom. I’m just not staying here tonight,” I tell her, kissing her cheek and walking down the hall.
I stop to look at my sister and Maya. Taylor looks up and smiles. I smile back before reaching into my handbag and retrieving my car keys.
“Here, you can keep it,” I tell her, and she takes the keys from my hand, looking at them.
“Don’t you need them?” she asks, looking up at me.
“No, you can have it. I won’t be here much longer,” I tell her, and she nods.
I realize Cyrus has already told her I am moving because she doesn’t seem shocked at my leaving. If only she knew the sacrifice I had just made for her; if she wasn’t my sister and Maya’s mother, I never would have agreed. But I know I’ve made the right decision by how happy Maya looks.
I get up, sending Maya a wink before turning to leave. Eli and Cyrus are watching from the hallway when Maya runs over, grabbing my legs and hugging me. I pick her up, give her a squeeze, and kiss her hair.
“Thanks, Ada,” she says, and I feel a tear slip down my cheek at her words.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Maya is mature beyond her years and understands her mother staying means I am leaving.
Placing her back on her feet, I kiss her head, and she runs back to her mother.
I walk outside, heading to Eli’s car, and I unlock it before hopping in.
They take a few minutes to come out, and I drop Eli’s keys on his seat before resting my head against the window, waiting for them to come out.
When they do, they hop in the car, and Cyrus starts driving toward their place.
The trip there is silent, and they leave me to my thoughts.
I am about to throw everything I have built here away for them and for my sister, and now with the days ticking down, it is starting to get to me.
Soya. I won’t know anybody and have no family to fall back on.
No friends, nothing familiar, and I will be heavily relying on them.
I don’t like someone having that sort of control.
I don’t like knowing that leaving here, I will be giving myself to them completely, that they will basically own me. That thought doesn’t sit well with me.
Will they really let me visit my family, or will I be shut off and forgotten about? It may sound selfish, but I am sick of being the only one to make sacrifices.
Pulling up on the driveway out the front, the lights are off, and darkness swallows the house.
Nothing is out here, and it is a little eerie walking to the house.
Cyrus opens the door before flicking the lights on as he walks through the house.
I follow him into the kitchen and sit on one of the stools at the island bench.
“Hungry?” Eli asks, and I shrug.
“A little,” I tell him, and he nods. I watch as he starts rummaging through the pantry.
“Where is your bathroom?” I ask, looking around the open room.
“There is one down the hall or one in the bedroom. The main one has a bath in it, or there is a shower-only in the bedroom,” Cyrus says, and I nod, walking to what I assume is the bedroom.
I was correct. It is a bedroom, a huge king bed in the middle of the room with a gray duvet.
Mahogany furniture and a big fluffy white rug sit on the floor.
I also notice a fireplace in the corner along one wall and two doors on the other wall.
Walking past the first door, I notice one is a walk-in closet, and the other is the bathroom.
I push the door open; the bathroom is bigger than our main one at home.
All gray tile and black finishings; the shower has no screen, only a drain and two shower heads.
The shower takes up most of one wall. Cyrus walks in, handing me a fluffy white towel before walking out.
I turn the water on, letting it heat up while I strip my clothes off.
I hop in, wetting my hair, when I see the door open, and Cyrus walks in, pulling his shirt off over his head.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks, and I shrug, not really caring.
He strips off his shorts. He steps in behind me, turning the other shower-head on before putting his face under the steady stream, his hands braced on the tiles, the water cascading down his back.
I can’t help but admire the way the water moves over the lines on his body.
I marvel at the hard-toned muscles that humans spend thousands of dollars and hours in gyms to try to achieve, yet, I’ve never once heard them speak of gyms or see them do any form of exercise.
I envy that. I’d eat a Snickers bar and worry about gaining weight while they look like gods effortlessly.
“You’re gawking,” Cyrus says, snapping me out of my daze.
I can hear the smile in his tone.
“Do you work out, or is this a vampire trick?” I blurt out.
Cyrus laughs, his muscles flexing from the movement.
“No vampires are changed. So whatever form they were in before the change is the state they remain in.”
“So, you were like this before the change?”
“Yes, Addie, I was born in a different era when people actually did manual labor, not stare at their phones and computers all day.”
“What about Eli? Is he built the same as you?”
“Lycan genes, they got good genes with no effort.”
“Speak for yourself. I work,” Eli says, stepping into the bathroom.
I look over my shoulder at him and see his eyes trailing up the back of my body before looking over at Cyrus.
“I am yet to see you do anything that resembles work unless you count the hours spent watching the foyer cameras spying on Addie,” Cyrus says.
“What? There are cameras in the foyer?” I ask, horrified, wondering if I ever did anything embarrassing while he was watching. Shit, I hope they don’t have sound.
“Calm down, Addie. I can hear your heart pounding at the thought of me watching you. And I wasn’t always watching the cameras. Cyrus is just making me out to be a creep,” Eli says, glaring at Cyrus.
“I promise he isn’t a creep. That’s why he has a pair of your panties in the top drawer next to the bed because he isn’t one,” Cyrus says with a laugh.
“God, I hope they are clean. Did you try them on?” I ask, reaching around Cyrus and grabbing the soap.
Eli growls. “No, of course not. I don’t wear thongs.”
“So, you do have my panties?” I ask, and I see him blush, realizing what he has just admitted before he suddenly turns to walk out.
Cyrus chuckles at him, shaking his head.
“So, what sort of work did you do that made you look like that?”
“Why? Are you thinking of a career change?”
“No, just curious.”
“When I was human, mostly farm work. I was a blacksmith and stonemason for a bit and a bit of mining. Things were different then. Whatever work you scrounged up, you did. Work was work. We didn’t have the opportunities you do these days or cushy jobs.”
I nod, trying to imagine what it would have been like; it probably wouldn’t have been a nice time to be a woman back then.
“What about family?”
“What about them?”
“Did you have a family?”
“Everyone has a family. And yes, actually, I was married, had a wife. She was a scullery maid.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died from the plague just before I was changed.”
“How did you and Eli meet then?”
“In a saloon, actually. He was there with his pack, and I stumbled in looking for blood. His scent lured me there. He was not impressed with me being his mate. Chucked quite the hissy fit,” he says with a smile on his lips, like he is remembering something funny.
“Why wasn’t he happy?” I ask. They seem so in tune with each other.
“Because he was straight. Sexuality was never a thing with me. I like both genders, but Eli had only ever been with women. He had strong views of what mates should be.”
“So, what changed his mind?”
“The mate bond but also the fact that, like you, he couldn’t stay away. It made him curious,” Cyrus says.
“Did it upset you that he didn’t want you?”
“Nope, because he was mine. He just didn’t know it yet.”
“Whatever, you chased after me,” Eli says, returning, and Cyrus shuts off his shower.