Page 6 of Those That Are Lost
My eyes find her behind the bar. She doesn’t look like herself at all, but I know it's her. It's like my body can recognise the soul that sits inside the glamour she’s wearing. I’ve never seen her look so different. Her skin tone is much darker, she’s a few inches taller. Her black hair cascades down over her shoulders in tight ringlets. The front pieces are clipped up on the top of her head in a twist. I can only see her waist upwards because of the bar top but she’s wearing a low-cut top with loose capped sleeves. It compliments this figure, the bodice section clinging to her smaller bust and showing the skin in between her breasts.
I can’t stop staring, my stomach twisting itself and knotting up. Even from here I can tell her only recognisable physical attribute is her eyes. They're the same vivid green, bright and dancing as she serves the customer.
She giggles at something they say, which I don’t catch, and I nearly stop breathing altogether. I cannot believe my eyes. Not only has she survived but she looks like she’s thriving. She looks happy. I continue to watch as she makes drinks for several customers and chats to the other barmaid serving alongside her. The light emanating from her is intoxicating. She rarely looked so free before.
I can feel Henry at my back but I don’t engage with him. I can’t. He must’ve figured out which person Red is. He must be waiting for either me to make a move, or to at least speak, but I do neither.
I’m reminded so much of the earlier days in our relationship. The ones where she didn’t even know I was watching her. Only then I was watching her grieve and heal. Now, I’m watching her full of life. If I walk over there am I simply going to be opening up all that trauma again? I definitely will be placing her in danger’s path once more. Athought crosses my mind, that maybe I could protect her happiness here and make sure the pack never finds her.
As I’m about to signal to Henry that we should leave, so I can think through my overloaded mind, she looks up.
Our eyes lock.
I see the moment it registers on her face who she’s looking at. How she can see through the shadows I don’t know, but she can. It's written on her face; she’s staring at a ghost. I try swallowing the lump in my throat that’s making breathing difficult.
I can’t do this. I can’t bring her back into our world.
I do the only thing I can think of and I bolt.
CHAPTER 6
AURORA
It’s not real. He’s not real.
My brain must be so tortured with locking down everything I don’t want to process that I’m hallucinating.He’s not here.
Still, I’m moving. As his figure disappears out the front door, my feet pull me round the bar. I duck under the hatch and pick up speed, the need I feel to run after him propelling me. Even if it's not real, I want one more second of the lie.
Hearing Sophia shout behind me, I wave her off and call something back. I don’t stop to see if she understands. I’m wrenching the door open, moving out into the cold night air. On instinct I inhale. Cinnamon and woodland hits my lungs like deadly smoke. It threatens to burn me from the inside out. I take another breath and confirm what my brain is refusing to believe.
Movement at my feet catches my attention. Looking down, my heart thumps so hard I think it’s going to break straight through my ribcage. The shadow caresses my black boot before streaking off into the alley across the road. I’m running after it without thinking.
It takes my eyes a second to adjust from the orangey glowof the lamp lit streets to the dark alley. It's not a pathway or cut through, this alley is storage for the waste bins for the two shops on either side. It's a dead end.
I make my way slowly, inhaling more of that warm scent that I never thought I’d have in my lungs again.
It's not real. It can’t be real.
I pause at the sound of someone scrambling in the pitch dark. No, it’s the shadows of a wielder darkening the alley to obsidian.
“Ty,” I dare to speak his name for the first time since that day.
Silence is the only answer I get. I feel it though, the caress of his black sentient companions against my skin. In what might be a reckless decision, I let my glamour drop. I don’t know how he recognised me in the bar, but I want him to see the real me now.
“Ty,” I repeat softly.
Seconds draw out like hours but then the moment I never thought, never even dared to hope for, unravels right in front of my eyes. The shadows sink back and standing a few feet away is a male with tanned skin, dark curls falling over his forehead, and deep crystal blue eyes that have haunted me for months.
Ty.
Alive.
“Aurora,” he breathes quietly. It’s like the answer to a prayer, the emotion filled tones of his rich voice hitting my ears like a miracle.
I don’t know who moves first, him or me, but a heartbeat later I’m in his arms, and mine are locked around his neck.
“Tell me it’s real, please, tell me you’re really alive,” I weep into his shoulder as he lifts me onto my tiptoes in the embrace.
