Life With The Boy Next Door - Lissie (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

eyes away from hers. She grinned and then turned to leave the room. She paused when she heard her mother’s shaky voice.
“What are you?”
Cassi sighed and turned her head a fraction. Her eyes glowed violet for a flash and then changed back to bright blue. She shrugged.
“A Changeling. Now which of you gave me a feline gene?” she asked cheekily, widening her eyes at them to emphasise her slitted eyes.
Annabelle flinched and huddled closer to Jared.
Cassi frowned.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Not even after you let Cale take Alice away. Just because you’re scared of what’s inside her. You know it’ll be living near you for a long time, so you better get used to it pretty fast” she said coolly, her childish voice bordering on harsh tones.
Her mother blinked and Jared wrapped an arm around her shoulders. But even he looked as if he was sick of the whole scared debacle, sick of his wife’s silly behaviour, unfitting for an adult.
Cassi showed him a small smile and then turned and left the room, her glowing eyes leaving a luminescent trail of light in the air all around her. Annabelle turned her face into her husband’s chest and he hugged her closer.
“Both my children are evil creatures. Or, at least, one of them is going to give birth to one” she murmured to him.
Jared sighed, suddenly aggravated, and pushed her away from him. She looked up at him, surprised, but he just turned away and clambered over the side of the bed. He stood up and paced away from his wife.
“The girls are not evil, Anna. Give it up, would you” he said bluntly; it wasn’t a question.
Annabelle fell silent at once. Jared sighed in relief and walked out of their room.


Alice woke up about an hour later, lying in a damp pool of her own blood. She didn’t try to scream, there being no point. Cale was gone again, she still had no idea where he went in the middle of the night, never returning until the small hours of the morning.
She sat up and gazed down at her lower half, watching with morbid fascination as the baby inside her wriggled and tried to get itself out. She wasn’t sure if he could do it all by himself. There was no tugging in her abdomen, no signs that she needed to push down at all. The pain was barely there, pulled back into the dark, murky recesses of her shadowy mind. Alice simply looked on in mere surprise as the thing that had been growing so rapidly, and moving around within the confines of her body, struggled to drag itself out of her.
And then the pain truly arrived. Strong waves of it shocked her, spasming up her legs and ending deep inside her head, where she couldn’t escape it. She leaned back against her pillow and screamed as loudly as she could, completely unaware that the baby monster was screaming too, as it tried to claw its way into the outer.
Sweat poured down her face as the blood flowed out of her. But after a long while, she became calmer and instead watched as her stomach steadily got flatter and flatter, all of the pain disappearing as the reason for the pain emerged into the world.
Just as she was about to lean forward to view the newest member of the Decreed, Alice caught sight of a flash of bright colour in the doorway to the bedroom. She glanced up and saw Cassi, leaning round the door jamb and staring in at her. She wasn’t looking at the end of the bed, where Alice knew the baby was lying, struggling for breath and bloody as a crime scene.
“Cass, what are you doing over here? It’s too dangerous for you here. Go back home” she said, panting for breath, just like her baby.
She looked more closely at her little sister, and for the first time noticed the frightening glowing eyes. She didn’t flinch away, or scream in terror. She merely sighed and beckoned her near.
Cassi walked further into the room and Alice grabbed her chin gently in her right hand, turning her face up to the light from the sun.
“So, Cale’s not the only one around here. What are you, exactly, little sis?” she asked calmly.
Cassi backed up again, standing right back by the door.
“Changeling. I’m not bad like him, Al” she whispered, risking a swift glance at the baby.
Alice sighed again and nodded wearily.
“Yeah, I know what he is now, Cass. Now please go home. No matter what, stay away from Cale and from this baby. I have to go away; I can’t stay here any longer” she said quietly, eyeing her sister to make sure she knew and understood.
Cassi nodded, darted forward to kiss Alice on the forehead, and then ran out. They were never going to see each other again.
Now that there was nobody watching, Alice drew her knees up underneath her and crawled slightly down the bed to get a good look at the tired baby she’d just given life to. She sucked in her breath and blinked away the sudden onslaught of tears. One glance at him and she knew that she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill this child of hers, no matter what he might eventually turn out to be in his life after she left him forever.
Alice knew that the team from the Lost Society would be waiting for her out in the woods somewhere on the fringe, and she also knew she didn’t have much time left to her before Cale came back home.
She climbed down off the bed and limped over to the dresser, ripping open one of the drawers, in which she kept a stack of plain white writing paper and a bunch of pens tied together with a rubber band. She hurriedly extricated one from the bunch and write a name on a torn off bit of paper. Then she placed the one word note next to the tiny boy lying on his back on the bed. Her new mother instincts briefly kicking in, Alice stopped to clean him off and cover him with a small, warm blanket. She didn’t feed him; she couldn’t bear to do that for fear of becoming too attached and choosing the worst thing possible: staying behind. She bent to kiss his downy black hair and then went about dressing herself. She chose nondescript clothing items: a black long sleeved t-shirt, black jeans, a long black trench coat and plain black combat boots.
Alice took a deep breath in once more and turned around to face the open door. To her immense relief, there was no one standing within its frame. She risked one last glance at her son, and then she ran: downstairs, down the hall and out the front door. She caught a glimpse of a small group of women waiting for her to her left, where they said they’d be waiting for her.
They welcomed her and enveloped her into their circle of the Lost.
“We’ll hide you and keep you safe forever, don’t you worry, Alice V” the young Italian woman told her, smiling openly.
Alice smiled nervously back at her and managed to nod. They asked for no answers, she gave no questions.


Thirty minutes after Alice was gone, Cale arrived back at the house. He knew at once something was out of kilter with the way things were in his already too complicated existence. The house felt empty. He ran up the stairs two at a time and ended up in his bedroom, coming to realise that it was where the emptiness emanated from.
He walked slowly in, at first not noticing the bundle in the center of the double bed. Then he did, his eyes roaming all around the room. They finally lit on the blanket and the shred of paper lying beside the bundle. He came closer and picked up the note. He read it. Aron. Cale gazed around him again, and then removed the blanket from whatever lay beneath the covering. He closed his emerald eyes very briefly before forcing himself to open them once again.
This was his son. And Alice had named him Aron. So he was Aron Vreeland, missing a middle name. Cale knew right then and there that the boy would never own a middle name. He also knew for certain he would never see Alice Nichols, his best friend, ever again in his life. And it would be a long one.
He sighed heavily and picked up his child. Aron then suddenly opened his eyes, revealing a bold, unflinching grey gaze. Cale smiled very faintly down at the boy.
“You’ll do” he whispered softly. “You’re all I’ve got left of her.”
Aron appeared to frown and his eyes turned cold. Cale shivered and turned his face away. The boy would just have to do. There was nobody else to replace him. And she had gone.
Again. But this time, she wasn’t waiting for him to rescue her from the jaws of the wolf. Because he was the wolf.


7

Alice woke up in an unfamiliar place, her hand pressed to the small, perfectly circular hole in the side of her neck. She tried to remember what had happened. The women had drugged her so she wouldn’t know where she was going. They’d said it made it so much harder for anyone who wanted to, to follow them and track her down.
She struggled to a sitting position and appraised her surroundings. The bedroom walls were painted a stark white and there were blank photo frames hanging haphazardly a few feet away from each other on all four walls. What photos was she supposed to put into those frames? She had no photos left; she felt a sudden pang of regret for leaving behind her collection of photos of Cale she took back when they were just kids together, and bore no heavy responsibilities on their young shoulders.
Alice slid out of bed and immediately felt the lightness in her. There was no longer a dark thing inside her womb and her stomach was once again flat. There were no stretch marks in sight. Alice walked cautiously over to a mirror standing up against one of the white walls, and stood in front of it, twisting and turning her body to see each angle. Nothing. She sighed and took a few steps back again. She felt strangely regretful, the notion that she left something precious behind swelling up inside her chest. Then she forced it out of her. They had told her that this was bound to occur: an inner battle that she would never be able to win if she let it begin. So she didn’t.
Alice turned in a circle where she stood and silently surveyed the single bed with its narrow gilt frame, the blank photo frames, the plain wood door shut tight, the empty bedside cabinet and the large, towering chest of drawers. There was no wardrobe, but the Lost Society women had commissioned for her an entirely new range of clothes, all in fairly blasé colours so that she would not catch anyone’s particular notice.
She sighed and pulled open the top, left hand drawer. She began to dress, excuses for her recent behaviour forming in her head as she began a new life all on her own.


Cale tried to leave in the middle of the next night, but as soon as he set foot on the grass outside the house, he heard the baby’s cries. He sighed sorrowfully, stole one final glance at the still dark forest, and walked resignedly back inside.
Aron’s baby nursery was plainly painted in palest