CHAPTER 8

LEUKAS

I hadn't slept a wink the previous night but I was too wired to care. I had spent the last four hours trying to familiarize myself with the new developments in my life, and looking for solutions to the new problems. I had made little progress. And now I was sitting in the car, waiting for Aleks to come back with her clothes so that we could all fly home, a home where I had to put out more fires and where I'd be living with her. I was so furious that I couldn't imagine such a scenario. I lost track of time as I searched for answers in the receding rain and the empty cottage veranda.

The knock on my window startled me because I wasn't expecting Aleks to be done so soon. She was packing for three people after all. I was not entirely shocked to see Lander on the other side of the window regardless. I ignored him though.

A lot of rumors always circulated about me and Lander at school. Some people thought we were brothers, others thought we were a couple and some thought we were secretly in love. We weren't, but he had my best friend and I had loved him likewise. When I left home, broken as I was, I had never foreseen myself having a friend like him. He got me. He complimented me. He touched my soul in ways I hadn't imagined. My mother had always said that the Hyades men, from all generations, never formed conventional relations. We bonded with people in a supernatural way. We were descendants of the gods so we would always be a little extra in our affections, because when we loved, we gave pieces of our souls away. She'd told it to my brother and I to protect ourselves. Because we might not be understood. Because we had to be extra careful in our affections. Because heartbreak could be the death of a Hyades. Maybe I hadn't believed her until I met Lander. Where I came from, people were very affectionate with each other regardless of gender. It was quite a shock to realize that a lot of things in my culture were considered abnormal. But Lander, like a being made for my very soul had become a companion for me in a world that was extremely new and strange.

Even when our careers took us different directions, we had managed to keep in touch. I had been shocked when he stopped responding to my messages. He had stopped taking my calls, completely cut off our other friends and completely ignored us when we ran into each other at events. I'd just lost Aleks then, and when I realized I'd somehow lost Lander too. It had been too much for my soul; I had just shut down. I grew better at protecting myself then.

To find out that the two of them have been playing happy families with my kids brought me so much rage I was positively shaking with it. So when Lander knocked on my window, it was perfectly plausible that I do not answer.

"Leukas, hear me out for a minute please." His voice was muffled and his knuckles were still rapping on the window. I ignore him to calm myself.

"Stop being immature and listen to me for a minute. I can explain. In fact, fuck this, I'm cashing in on that IOU you exchanged with me. "

I opened the door and exited the car." Don't bring up things from years ago. When we were still friends. That's over." I stood in front of him. Despite my words, my voice was calm and detached.

"The one of the deal where we get to cash in anytime. And I'm cashing in now. I demand you hear me out." He responded, the coolness in his voice matching mine. A challenge. A standoff between us.

I could fight this like a child, but I was tired. I was tired of the past hours. I was tired of these dramatic emotions which had no place in Leukas Hyades' life. I was not that kind of person. Not anymore. That person had died the day she left. "Okay. Speak."

"I won't give you an explanation of my actions, not until you ask for it. I know if I tell you now you won't listen to reason. So I'm going to say this quickly. Your father already told me that you are taking Aleks to an unknown place where she has no one to look out for her or anyone to back her. So I am placing her under your care in my mind. And I will say this once Leukas, if anything happens to her or her kids I will personally make sure that you become nothing."

I chuckled darkly but my voice was icy when I spoke. "No one threatens me, Lander Blake."

"Well then, it is long overdue. I won't threaten you again Leukas Hyades. Because I don't make threats twice." He said giving me a hard look, the fire and the darkness in his eyes burning bright. The darkness that had drawn me to him still beckons, like the call of a kindred spirit. A mirror to my own soul. A connection to him that I had never understood.

My mother had told me that according to Hyades history, everyone who entered our lives was meant to. Everyone we bonded with has been born to bond with us and we would always recognize them. Those people who were born to impact Hyades' lives. I had believed that story once, when I was still naïve, but not anymore. "Or maybe it will be because this threat you have made today is your last."

"Lander!" We both turned to Aleks and I made sure my face was blank as I took her in. She was looking between me and Lander with open curiosity and nervousness but I noticed nothing but her at that moment. There was a freshness to her that immediately saturated the air. I couldn't help but subtly breathe her in. Because of my sensitive sense of smell, I could smell every single product that has passed through her skin during the past minutes. A lemon and lime shower gel, wild blueberries shampoo, and a Wild Wind deodorant, no perfume. All of them were my brands. All of the products my first dips into their individual markets. All of them made in memory of her, before I'd broken. She had changed into a soft red baggy sweater and a denim mini skirt which showed off legs that went on forever. Legs which, despite everything, I wanted around my waist, my neck and my stomach. Her hair was longer than I had ever seen it before and its startlingly yet suiting white, soft length was tied into a messy bun at the top of her head, revealing a delicate neck. Her face was washed of her tears and some of the strains of the day but black bags of exhaustion remained under her eyes. She has no makeup on and she looked so… tragic.

Enthralling.

Absolutely gorgeous.

The darkness hidden deep within me liked the look in her eyes. It likes the fierceness and the potential which was currently drenched in hopelessness, all in her eyes. It wished the stronger and more dangerous expressions would shine more and wreck everything in its path. It wished to see just how bad she could get. I blinked my thoughts away and walk towards the car.

I started up the car, and despite my wishes, my eyes drifted towards Lander and Aleks and my jaw tensed on its own accord when I saw them hugging. I had seen them hugging before, they had been friends after all, but the hug was different. The familiarity of their bodies was obvious in how they just molded together. I was positively seething. I wondered if when I'd told her much she meant to me all those times, he too had wanted her. Maybe they had been fucking behind my back. Maybe I had been a fool all along. I had no explanations for all that had happened today and I had decided not to look for them. I would move on with the information I had. I had gotten closure from Lander. It had been an ongoing process ever since he ghosted me. It was done then; he was nothing to me. As for Aleks, I had worried, missed and changed for her over the years. I hadn't let myself think about her after some time. She was in limbo in my mind. That was also over. No matter what happened, I would break the hold she had on me.