Two Weeks Ago

"WHAT?!" Alek dropped her jaw and widened her eyes to the maximum.

'The f was her aunt saying?! Two weeks?! That did not make sense!'

"Two weeks?! What are you talking about? I remember in ain when Novah was using her powers. I swear it was yesterday!" Alek screamed.

"Well, all that happened two weeks ago." Kai told his sister.

"How? Did somebody knock me unconscious again?" Alek said, remembering the first time she encountered a shapeshifter.

Iris flinched at what her cousin said. She still felt guilty even though Alek almost clawed at her brothers. But that wasn't Alek as it was Alek's beast.

"Yes. Kind of..." Kai spoke. Alek furrowed her eyebrows and looked at her sister.

"Wait, what happened to you? You have a cut." Alek then found a cut behind her sister's right ear, which was visible only to her.

"It's okay. It's going to heal soon." Bia shrugged her shoulders. The cut was bigger two weeks ago when Alek's claw got into her skin when she was holding her by the neck.

"Who did this to you?" Alek asked, still looking intently at the cut. She didn't like her sister being hurt.

Bia didn't answer.

Alek then looked at people in the room for the answer because she felt like they knew. But they also didn't say anything.

"Kai?" She then looked at her brother, who was not looking away from her.

"You." Kai answered shortly.

"Sorry?" Alek asked back.

"You did it. You are the one who hurt her." Kai answered with the same tone.

Alek widened her eyes again in shock. How was that possible? How could she hurt her sister? First of all, why did she hurt her sister? She had no memory of it. As long as her memory goes, she did not shift. Also, she didn't have any knives or sharp things that could cut the skin deeply.

Everyone was quiet, waiting for the future head to speak.

"Could you tell me what happened?" Alek quietly asked. She needed to know what she had done apart from hurting her own, dear sister.

"You shifted. Half, though. I think when you were taken over by your beast when the second pain rushed over." Kai started talking calmly. "You went berserk after shifting. You attacked dad first. Then almost mum if we didn't step in." He eyed Bia. "You still attacked the three of us, though. You almost attacked uncle Lake, who was protecting mum and dad. All of us shifted to fight you. Bia tried to stop with her venom, but you grabbed her by her neck and almost suffocated her. Then Jin and Rin tried to stop you with their venom when they saw you but, you used Bia as a shield. You threw her on the ground and knocked her unconscious. Then me and Iris stopped you in the end by wrapping you with her tentacles, because you almost clawed out Jin and Rin. You ripped Iris's tentacles once and she had to wrap you again. You became weak by the venom but still raging so I had to knock you out. Later, we put you in a cell because you were still a beast even when you weren't shifted. Your eyes were still the animals eyes and we couldn't risk of you going berserk again. Today is the first time we didn't find you beast anymore."

"What am I?" Alek asked after hearing the story. She was stronger than her sister and her cousin, who had venoms. Also, her parents she thought was stronger than her.

"We don't know." Panacea told her daughter while holding her hands in hers. She had taken the seat next to the bed, opposite the chair Bia was sitting in. "You didn't shift fully. We only saw half of you shifted."

"I'm sorry. I don't care if that wasn't me who hurt you. I had the thing in me and, I lost control over it. I am truly sorry." She looked at each one of them.

"It's okay, dear." Yukari answered. She smiled at Alek like a saint.

"I will do anything to make it up to you guys." Alek continued.

"We are good." Astraea answered.

"But-"

"No buts. It was your first shift. No one could have predicted it. As adults, we should have been more cautious and ready when Novah old us your form was ancient. We are also held accountable for what happened." Astraea told her.

"Thank you." Alek told her aunt. Her aunt made her feel better just a little.

"Alek, do YOU know what you are?" Panacea asked with a little hope. Most of the shifters knew what they were because their animal told them when they shifted.

"No." Alek's smile faded away in a second. "Do you think grandma knows?" She asked back.

"I don't know. I have told her that you had your first shift. I have described what you looked like and, she sounded like she had an idea but said she didn't know. Maybe your form is related to hers..." Panacea now realised this and asked herself.

"What is grandma?" Alek asked.

"Her original modern form is comodo dragon and, her ancient form is dragon." Robin answered his daughter when Panacea was too absorbed in her own thought. "She doesn't breathe out fire, though."

"Wow..." She thought dragons were myths but, when she thought about it, she had met her family, who were a bunch of reptile shifters and her cousin family, who were venom-shifters, harpies, a mermaid, even a fish-man. She should have thought about it. She promised herself to ask her family if there is any myth out there that is not true when she reaches home.

"You didn't describe what I looked like, Kai. What did I look like?" Alek asked. She was excited and scared to know what she was or even what she looked like.

"Yellow." Kai told her.

"Excuse me?" Alek asked back. Was her brother serious?

"I said yellow. You were very yellow." Kai told him what he saw.

"More detail please?"

"Umm, you had horns." Kai teased his sister.

"Come on." Alek didn't believe her brother.

"He is telling the truth." Rin told her and sat on the foot of the bed. "You did have horns. Huge ones on your head. It was milky yellow and it was about the size of your arm."

Alek touched her head immediately and found no horns. Good. She then stretched out her arm in front of her to see how long her horns were.

"Oh my." She whispered when she saw how long her arm was.

"Yep." Rin wiggled his eyebrows. "It looked big and heavy on you."

"Is that why my neck feels tired?" Alek touched the back of her neck.

"Probably." Rin smiled hearing it. "Also, you were scaly. You had golden-yellow scales and had big claws."

She then brought her hand close to her and crouched and uncrouched.

"Where is my ring?" Alek asked. Her fingers weren't covered in bandages, unlike her wrist and, she could see that her fingers had no trace of her ring.

"Is this the ring you are talking about?" Bia brought out a sunflower curved ring from her pocket.

"Yes. Thank you." Alek received the ring and put it on where it was supposed to be. "Why did you have it?"

"When you were on the ground, groaning in pain, it accidentally removed and rolled to me. So I grabbed it up and put it in my pocket." Bia just saw a ring on her foot when Alek was groaning in pain. She didn't know it was her sister's but kept it in her pocket because she saw some carvings inside. She had asked whose was this when she regained consciousness after the battle but, no one claimed it. So she decided to wait for Alek to come back and ask if this was hers.

"Thank you. Alex gave it to me for my birthday." Alek smiled at the ring. She didn't know what she would do if she had lost it.

"Alec gave you a ring?" Bia asked. She knew he was gay, but it was weird giving her a ring on her birthday.

"It's a friendship ring between me, Alex and Mel." Alek answered.

"Oh." Bia diminished her thoughts soon.

"Sorry to break the mood but, Alek, did you have a contact with your animal?" Minaki asked awkwardly. He was standing close to the bed with his wife next to him.

"No." Alek answered.

"So it was all beast's talking..." Minaki mumbled before he turned around to sit on a sofa nearby.

"What do you mean?" Alek asked.

"Ahh," Minaki looked at her parents before he continued talking. "The beast in you kept on saying you knew to your parents. And 'never forgive you.' It repeated those over and over the whole time. When they came into the cell, you growled at them."

"I did?" Alek asked. She didn't know why her inner animal would say nonsense and growl at her parents.

"The beast." Jin corrected.

"I don't know where it learnt those words and why it kept on repeating." Minaki told her. "You and animals in you share memories. Maybe there was something you had in the past that traumatised you. You buried the incident but, the beast remembers it. That could be one theory."

Alek looked down in shame. Why would her animal do that to the two people who brought her into this world, raised her through tough times and loved her when she had almost killed them? Didn't the stupid beast in her know that was one of the people she loved and cared deeply, or it doesn't care? One way or another, she was going to give a piece of her mind when she met it.