The Genesis of Evangeline (The Lost Royals Saga Book 1)

by Rachel Jonas

  The only thing he hid beneath the blank expression was sadness.

  It would have been so easy to push him into giving me more information, but it didn’t feel right. He’d been cooperative, so I’d give it a rest for now.

  When I was quiet for longer than expected, Liam broke the silence.

  “Done already?” he asked, his eyes seeming to gaze at me from the mirror again.

  I thought about asking just one more, but decided against it. “I am.”

  He nodded, a hint of a smile lingering in his expression. The sadness had all but washed away, leaving behind that devious look that came over him once or twice tonight.

  “Since I cooperated,” he began. “Does that mean I’m allowed a question of my own?”

  I breathed deeply, feeling anxious for where this might lead, but then granted him the permission he sought. It seemed fair. “I’ll agree to that.”

  He stared through me in the reflection again when he asked, “When will I see you again?”

  I was silent, not sure I should answer him at all. “I, um… I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  Liam snickered softly. “Why? Scared your boyfriend won’t approve?”

  My heart beat double time. “I don’t… he… how’d you know I was seeing someone?”

  He blinked those hazel eyes at me and I knew he smiled big even though I couldn’t see his mouth. “I didn’t,” he said. “But I do now.”

  I felt violated, but probably nowhere near as much as he did, considering I took up space inside his head on a very regular basis.

  “I think we should say goodnight now,” I concluded. “Can you do that thing where you wake me up?”

  His smile dimmed and his gaze shifted down for a moment, but then I had his eyes again when he agreed.

  “Sure. See you when I see you,” he said in parting.

  And then, it was me again.

  Just… me.

  —

  Chapter Sixteen —

  Nick

  The sound of a heavy fist slamming against my headboard was my wakeup call this morning—and I use the term ‘morning’ very loosely, considering that the sun still hadn’t come up.

  Lifting my head, I found three blurry figures slowly coming into focus. My siblings stared down at me, each one with arms folded across his chest, wearing different expressions. Richie was intense and stoic as usual. Ben seemed concerned.

  And then, there was Kyle.

  “Rise and shine, pup.” A huge grin spread across his face.

  “Dude! What the…?” I squinted at the light beaming from the fixture on the ceiling, but winced as I tried to turn away from it. My torso killed. It felt like I’d been run over by a bull. Every muscle throbbed. Every bone ached like it’d been broken and then violently shoved back into place.

  My head dropped back again and I rested my eyes a few seconds longer, trying to remember if I’d dreamed everything from the night before—seeing Richie turn and then enduring the same pain of shifting myself.

  Reaching over to the other side of the mattress where I kept a second pillow, I used it to cover my face. “Just twenty more minutes,” I mumbled, grabbing for my blanket next. However, one of the three snatched it away before doing the same to the pillow I’d just taken, leaving me exposed to the light again.

  “You mean twenty more minutes on top of the twenty-eight hours you just slept?”

  Ben’s question made my eyes pop open. “What the heck are you talking about?”

  He shook his head. “It’s Monday, Nick. Meaning, you slept straight through half the weekend.”

  “And we can’t hold Mom off you forever. She’s been threatening to come in here with a bar of soap and a hose,” Kyle added. “Because, if I’m being honest, you smell, dude.”

  “Understatement,” was Richie’s contribution, followed by a laugh. “Kid smells like a kennel.”

  Ignoring them, I went back to what Ben said. There was no way an entire day had passed and I slept through it.

  No way.

  A pack of gum and an empty Pepsi can fell to the floor when I felt around the nightstand for my phone. With it finally in hand, I stared at the date and day of the week.

  Monday.

  “It was like that for all of us.” I looked up when Richie spoke again, nodding his head toward the screen of my phone as I lie there, questioning whether this was all some big joke my brothers decided to play on me.

  Wasn’t like they hadn’t done worse in the past.

  He took a step closer. “The first shift takes a heck of a lot outta ya. I was pretty much comatose for eighteen hours,” he added.

  “Sixteen,” Ben said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  “And, before you, I held the record,” Kyle said next. “Twenty-one hours.”

  I breathed deep. There was so much I didn’t know, so much I didn’t understand.

  Forcing myself to sit upright, I eyed the jeans I’d slept in and the huge dirt smudges all over them. When I ran a hand through my hair, a few crunchy leaves fell to the sheet and the other night became a little more real. Apparently, I hadn’t dreamed it all.

  And I guessed they were right; a shower wouldn’t hurt.

  “Get dressed and meet us downstairs. We’ve got some things to go over with you.” Richie aimed a thumb over his shoulder toward the steps as he and the guys turned to leave my room. “Twenty minutes,” he called back from the hall.

  After that, I stood from the bed, headed straight for the shower. The sharp pains in my limbs relaxed a bit beneath the hot water, but didn’t go away completely. In fact, the second I stepped out, the throbbing came back. If this ever happened again—this… shifting—I could only hope it wouldn’t always hurt this bad.

  I dressed and hurried down the steps with drops of water falling from the tips of my hair to my shoulders. When I stopped in the kitchen to grab a bowl of cereal, I could hear my brothers talking in the dining room. Surprisingly, not about me. I took a minute before going in to join them, hoping to regain my sense of time. It was disorienting coming to terms with the fact that I’d slept an entire day away. And the bad thing is, I was still exhausted. I wasn’t sure if these were things I needed to get used to or if they’d eventually fade. I guessed those were some of the things my brothers wanted to talk about.

  I shuffled into the dining room and took Dad’s seat. He never got up before seven, so it was fine. The conversation I walked in on quieted and then ceased altogether. I didn’t have to look up to know they were all staring.

  “Well… do you want to just fire off questions or should we start?” Richie asked, his deep voice vibrating off the walls despite him speaking at normal volume.

  I continued to chew, only offering a shrug. What I wanted to say was ‘Can’t this wait until later,’ but I knew that wouldn’t go over well.

  My silence seemed to annoy Richie. I could tell by how sharply he exhaled.

  “All right, then. Rule number one: Until further notice, consider yourself a weapon of mass destruction. You are, I repeat, are a danger to yourself and others. For the next few months, you’ll have to relearn the measure of your own strength.”

  I scoffed, thinking he was being a bit dramatic.

  “Something funny?” It was insane how much he sounded like Dad when he got upset. He scrubbed the whiskers on his chin with his palm while waiting for an answer.

  “Sorry. Continue.” I shoved another heap of Cheerios into my mouth.

  “Rule number two,” he went on, “don’t discuss this with anyone. Yes, there are others, but you won’t know who they are unless they want you to know who they are,” he explained.

  “Until you learn to pick up on the scent, you won’t know a fellow lycan when you see one,” Ben added. However, I was still stuck on what Richie said.

  “So, wait… there are others like us?” I lowered my spoon.

  My brothers all looked at one another, taking a deep breath. It was Richie who nodded. “There are.”<
br />
  I was intrigued. “Like… a lot of them?”

  He nodded again. “All over the world. We have a pretty high concentration here in Seaton Falls, but have still been able to maintain our secret. So, I repeat, don’t open your trap about it.”

  Ignoring him, I asked a question. “How is any of this possible? How do beings like us even exist?”

  Kyle stepped in this time. “Our kind has existed here almost as long as anything else. Thousands of years.”

  My mind was reeling, trying to figure out how these things had been going on around me, all my life, and I didn’t notice until recently.

  “Are you in pain?” Ben asked. I shifted my gaze toward him when he pulled me from my thoughts.

  “Like never before.”

  They all laughed at my answer. “It won’t be like that every time,” Richie promised.

  “Every time? How often will it happen?” I dreaded the answer before it even came, picturing all the horror movies I watched over the years, seeing men shift into beasts every full moon. The real horror, if you ask me, had nothing to do with people being eaten or torn to shreds.

  Nobody felt bad for the wolf? Based on what I knew now, they had it way worse. Slaves to the curse.

  Or… ‘gift’ as Kyle referred to it.

  “Okay, so here’s the deal,” Richie breathed. “In the beginning, we recommend you shift often. It gets your body used to it, yeah, but it also puts you more in control. Now, we can’t make you take our advice. I mean, technically, you never have to shift another day in your life if you don’t want to, but be aware; there are consequences to denying your nature.”

  I frowned. “Consequences?”

  He nodded, running a hand through his short hair when he leaned back. “Go long enough without shifting and the beast within will find its own way out… and sometimes, there’s no putting him back inside.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but the deadpan expression on his face said it all. “As in… I’d be stuck that way?”

  Richie nodded. “And, if that happens, the clan has no choice but to order the witches to put you down.”

  There was no doubt in my mind, he meant death.

  “Wait … witches?” This was the first I ever heard them mentioned; the first time I realized they existed.

  Richie nodded. “Each clan is allied with at least one coven and the last thing you ever want to do is cross paths with one. They’re terrible creatures and you’d be wise never trust them.” There was a grave look in his eyes I knew better than to question.

  “And for future reference, we…” Kyle said, gesturing around the table at me, himself, and both the others, “are not a clan. We’re a pack. The clan refers to those of us residing here in Seaton Falls. Collectively, we’re a clan, but there are several packs within it.”

  I nodded, trying to remember everything.

  “So, to avoid the possibility of ever morphing out,” Richie called it, “we go camping and—”

  “Let our freak flag fly,” Kyle said with a huge grin.

  We all stared.

  “Do you even know what that means?” Ben asked, wearing a look of disgust as he glared.

  “I do. I just… I thought it’d be funny,” Kyle trailed off.

  “Yeah, no,” was the only response Ben thought was warranted.

  Things were starting to come together now and I could have kicked myself for missing all the signs. The camping trips I was never invited on, feeling left out. It was because, technically, I was an outsider. Before this. Before the change.

  Richie sighed, ignoring our other two brothers, turning his attention to me again. “Don’t get the wrong idea about any of this. I know shifting was painful; I know this is all very, very confusing right now, but it won’t always be this way. None of us look at it as something we have to do,” he explained. “It’s… freeing,” was the word he settled on to explain it.

  It was hard to imagine I’d ever get to a place where I looked at things the way they did.

  “Questions?” Ben asked.

  A sharp breath left my mouth and I tried to slow my thoughts long enough to settle on where to start. “A ton. I, uh… The moon, I guess; does it affect us?”

  Ben didn’t answer right away, thinking first. “In the beginning, more so than once you get a handle on things, you’ll feel the urge to shift more when the moon is full versus any other phase. But, again, you’re never forced to shift if you resist it. And then, later, when you get to where we are, you’ll just notice it affects your strength. The fuller the moon, the stronger the wolf.”

  Wolf… hearing him refer to himself, to me, in that way made me uncomfortable. My hand went to the back of my neck and I squeezed. I kept repeating the same thing to myself inside my head, over and over again.

  It’s a gift… It’s a gift… It’s a gift…

  Maybe, one day, I’d start believing it.

  “What about special abilities… do we get anything other than the strength, the speed, the vision? I mean… is there more to this?” I asked, hoping it didn’t sound like I was saying those things weren’t enough.

  Kyle shook his head, deciding to be the one to answer this time. “No, there’s nothing more. So, when you think of it that way, you’re still you, just more powerful than before.”

  The next question that came to mind made me pause. I wasn’t sure if asking it would earn me the ‘you watch too much TV’ response or if they’d find it valid to ask, so I just went for it.

  “Can I turn someone if I bite them? Or… would it just kill them?”

  Surprisingly, Ben answered with a straight face, letting me know it was, in fact, a valid question. “Could go either way,” he explained. “But most people have a bad reaction to it. Kind of like they could have an allergic reaction to medication, but… worse. They become something somewhere in the middle of what we are and what they were before being bitten—human. In other words, don’t ever try it.”

  Humans were ‘they’ now.

  He was referring to them as if we were separate, as if we were no longer a part of the human race. Was that how it was, though? Were we so different? Was this skin just a costume? A ruse to help us blend in?

  “Seriously. Don’t… try it,” Richie repeated with a laugh, referring to the biting thing. “We’ve all been at this a few years and have never felt the need to test this theory.”

  “Never?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Despite what you think you know about what we are, we’re not violent. I mean, yeah, when we turn there’s this… inexplicable rage you’ll feel surging in the center of your chest, but that isn’t about violence,” he explained. “It’s about survival.”

  I recalled the rage he spoke of, how it felt like it suddenly became a part of me, a second life source coursing through my veins like blood.

  “Girls,” I blurted, causing Richie’s brow to quirk. “Is dating safe? And, um… you know… other stuff?” I had to ask. Especially seeing as how he mentioned me being a danger to myself and others until I got a handle on the increased strength.

  They all looked at each other, trying not to laugh as they decoded my question. “Uh… yeah,” Richie answered, scratching the side of his nose to keep from smiling. “It’s safe. You’d be wise to be gentle, though. Otherwise, you’ll be replacing a lot of bedframes,” he added. “Trust me.”

  The suppressed laughs the others held in slipped out now. I smiled a little, too. “Good to know.”

  I wasn’t expecting a follow-up question, so when Richie turned the flow of our conversation, it caught me off guard.

  “You asking for a reason?”

  My lips parted and I stammered a bit. “Well, I, uh… I… not necessarily. I just thought it was smart to ask now rather than later.”

  His brow quirked again. There was a look on his face, a suspicious half-smile that made me forget I was talking to him for a moment, imagining our father instead.

  “You and this girl… a
re things getting serious?” he asked next.

  I pictured Evie, remembered the feel of her fingers between mine as we sat beside the falls, the soft kiss she placed on my cheek when I dropped her off.

  I blinked. “It’s still kind of early, but… yeah,” I answered. “I like her. A lot.”

  Richie smiled a bit, nodding his head. “I was your age once. I get it.” He patted my arm before leaning back in his seat. “She seems like a nice girl.”

  I breathed deep, letting a thought escape my head as words. “Too bad Mom doesn’t see it that way.”

  They didn’t readily respond, so I guessed they knew more about it than I did.

  “Did she say anything about it to you guys?” I asked. “Did she maybe explain what it is about Evie that makes her disapprove?”

  Ben and Kyle both looked to Richie and I guessed that was their way of passing the responsibility of answering on to him. He sighed and scratched his scalp, seeming to search for the words.

  “She, uh… she’s just got herself worked up about the smoke… thing.”

  I frowned, remembering all the things my mother said during the argument I eavesdropped on. She implied that it wasn’t safe for me to be around Evie, but never said why.

  “Okayyy… I’ve smelled it, too, but I still don’t understand what that has to do with anything.” I tried not to get upset, but it wasn’t working. “I mean, I’ve noticed lately that everyone has their own, unique scent. Couldn’t it just be that? Couldn’t that just be her scent?”

  Richie shook his head. “I’m not disagreeing with you,” he replied. “You asked what was up with Mom and that’s what it comes down to.”

  Frustration rose in me quickly. “Okay, but why? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Again, Richie agreed with me. “Unfortunately, there are some things our elders keep to themselves, unlocking certain secrets later on in life.”

  That’s when it hit me how new this was to all of them, too. Yeah, they were older, but, in the big scheme of things, there weren’t that many years between us. I couldn’t expect them to have all the answers.