Page 41 of Hound

“What types?”

“Ones she used to read to us as children.”

I had made quick work of searching for them. Alek had interrupted me by asking the dreaded question I yearned to never visit.

“How did you know I could uncover it?”

The truth festered as my lips unveiled what had never been spoken in the past—only unconsciously agreed upon.“Because you were mother’s precious child, Alek.”

“No, I wasn’t. How could you say such a thing?”The defensiveness had obscured the pain in his tone.

“It’s true. Since our youth, Kaleb had been the destructive one, Noah the rambunctious child, and I the muted one. Jacque, Jacob, and Raphael were the vexatious children who had yet to uncover themselves. You, on the other hand, were the child our mother had always envisioned. The one she molded to her liking.”

“That’s not possible. I had continuously been the weak child, the sibling you three despised— you’ve all loathed my very existence since the day I could remember.”

My voice had thinned into a whisper as I confessed,“I never once felt that way toward you, Alek.”

“Then why. . .why did you allow Kaleb to do such abhorrent acts to me?”The manner such words had echoed then and now confirmed what I had overlooked: the pain in Alek’s gaze, the exhaustion in his words, the very one my bones suffered from.

“I don’t have an excuse. Nor do I have an explanati?—”

My reply had merely scratched the surface when Tristan’s sudden appearance and Alek’s retreat interrupted it. And swiftly after, I was pulled through that burrowing sixth sense within my body to Lorenzo, where I spent all night consoling him on Katerina—his missing cousin. Who then was reported to have been in the infirmary after rescuing my brother from the gaping lake.

Tristan was Alek’s right-hand man, the only guardian to build a relationship with a brother apart from the established symbiotic bond. In no possibility would he allow Alek to touch the very lake he despised, one Alek knew how to survive, as all my brothers were skilled at swimming.

Suspicion resurfaced when the thought emerged, yet it didn’t seize my regard. Instead, I studied the illustrated covers on my chamber’s desk, the children’s books appearing more like puzzle pieces I couldn’t decipher.

Nor was my attention called upon by the knock from the first floor until Alek came into view.

“Sit,” I muttered, my awareness sharpening to my softened tone of voice, one I harbored with Anabella. Alek took a seat with widened, dark eyes, his fangs hinting from his flushed lips. I removed my glasses, ice-cold fingers instinctively rubbing against the bridge of my nose as I shut the last book.

“What did you uncover? Is it about what mother left behind?”

“Yes,” I said through an exhale that scarcely released the tension in my chest. “It seems Mother had an obscure liking for puzzles and riddles.”

One by one, I collected pieces of paper from within the book's dust covers, each one penned in blue ink and scrawled in cursive, divulging a riddled text that shared a semblance to. . .

Why does it share similarities to Sylvester’s writing?

“Do you think Mother wrote this?”

I shook my head. “Her writing was sloppier and rarely this cohesive.”

His gaze fell on me. “Have you been able to decipher it?”

“No.”

“Then what’s with all the books?” He motioned at the vast works decorating my chamber in soaring towers.

“I read to escape from the bounds of continuous studies. What you see before you is what I relish in, not what I shackle myself to at times like these.”

“Then how can we know what the riddles refer to if you can’t even solve it?”

Suddenly, a gentle tap against my chamber door tugged our attention. It wasn’t an accustomed knock, but rather, a warning that I recognized.

What entailed Sonia to arrive ahead of time?

“It must wait.” I abruptly descended, Alek trailing behind me. Sunlight faded in the distance, the darkness in my chamber expanding as nightfall heeded. “It slipped my mind that Sonia required my presence to discuss the marriage proposal.”

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