"You're doing no such thing, young man!" Kingston exclaimed.
Ahara and Damien snapped their heads to face him, both glaring daggers at Kingston. He raised his hands in defense, "I'm just saying, he's still underage and weak."
"Underage and weak for what?" Damien asked, turning his attention back to his sister. "Where are you guys planning to go tonight?"
Ahara rubbed her temples, a heavy sigh leaving her lungs as she tried to think of a viable solution to this mess. She knew Damien had heard her talk about the gem, she had been too loud about it.
"Ahara?" Kingston stood next to her, holding her shoulders as if to assist her standing.
"I'm fine," she shrugged his hands off her, annoyed with him for not sending her some sort of signal. He could have used his aura damnit. That would have made her shut up in an instant since it was so suffocating.
"Don't disturb her whilst she's thinking."
"Damien!" Ahara hissed at her brother, making his body stiffen. "Kingston is way older than you, show him some respect."
"Sorry," Damien apologized in a low voice, his heart clenching inside his chest. Ahara rarely got mad at him, and even when she did, it was never because of someone else.
'She's hiding something,' Damien thought to himself, glancing at Kingston. To Damien's satisfaction, he had let go of his sister, and most importantly, he didn't try to provoke him. Instead, he seemed to recoil into himself, giving the siblings a chance to talk.
"So...are you gonna tell me what's going on or you'll just tell me you're fine and walk away like you've been doing since last night?" Damien questioned, his voice low so the passersby wouldn't eve's drop.
Ahara shot him a glance. Since this morning, Damien hadn't been acting like his usual self as if he had caught on to something. She hoped with all might that he was only worried about the scar on her back and hadn't noticed her slipping away at night for hunts because if it was the latter, then she had been too careless.
She had to tighten her security on him, effective immediately. Drawing in a sharp breath, she squared her shoulders and looked directly into her brother's eyes. "Go home and study."
Damien opened his mouth to speak, but one sharp glare from his sister immediately rendered him speechless.
"I said I'd support you no matter what, but that doesn't mean you have to slack off and get F's on all your grades. Go home now and revise, there's enough wifi for you to research what you can't understand. Once I'm back I'll assist you."
"But..."
"Now!"
Closing his mouth as he gripped the straps of his backpack with enough force to make the fabric protest, Damien turned on his heel and headed down Tinashe Street, towards the housing block where they lived a hundred meters away. He didn't even bother saying goodbye to Ahara for he was angry with her.
His anger didn't go unnoticed. Ahara gripped her hair, turning around to face Kingston whose eyes were glued on Damien's back. The boy was walking so fast he looked like he was jogging.
"Why don't you just tell him the truth? Won't it make both of your lives easier?" He asked, glancing down at Ahara, only to be met with a deadly glare from her gray hues.
"It won't. The moment I tell him I fight rogues to save humanity, he'll be on his knees begging me to stop, and if I don't agree he'll chase after me every time I leave the house."
Kingston sighed. "He's part of the squad then."
"What squad?" Ahara furrowed her brows in confusion making Kingston chuckle.
"You know, the protect Ahara at all costs squad?"
Finally, it made sense. When she had been a student at Gibforge eleven years ago, Ahara used to play with three boys of different tribes, a dragon named Song Kim, a Wizard named Dion, and the werewolf standing next to her watching her brother stomp his way back home.
The four of them used to be tight, but because Ahara had to leave for Damien's sake, she cut off most of her communication with them. Magic wasn't really a thing in the human world, it scared the weaklings. She feared Damien would find out about her identity one day leading to them falling apart.
Now that was a horror she couldn't imagine happening at all. It was too cruel—a situation akin to death if she could say so herself.
"He isn't part of the squad because it comes naturally to him. We're related by blood remember," she nodded in Damien's direction, watching as his figure disappeared down the block.
"Which is why you shouldn't hide your identity from him," Kingston pressed on. "I don't know about you, but if I found out the person I trust the most was lying to me my entire life, I'd be more angry than if they came clean and told me the truth beforehand."
Ahara considered his words for a second, but she still couldn't imagine herself telling Damien what she was, what he was. That would also mean she'd have to tell him the truth about his parent's death and how he lost his aura, blah, blah, blah...it was all too much.
Shaking her head, she turned herself around, heading in the opposite direction from Damien's route. "Let's go to the gym and plan out how we're going to track the gem today."
Kingston wanted to add some more points and convince her to tell Damien the truth, but he too knew better than to provoke Ahara. He wasn't afraid of her power for he was a rank higher than her—an X-ranked hero, one of the only eight X-rankers in the world; but he was afraid she would abandon him.
To him, that was way worse than watching Damien suffer, because he loved her. He loved her so much that in the 29 years they've known each other, he didn't have his eyes for any other girl than Ahara, and he made sure she knew it. Only, she couldn't be with him because she had to take care of Damien until he was ready to face the world, or at least that's what she kept telling him every time he confessed his love to her.
"Oh, and Kingston."
Ahara's voice snapped him back to reality. "Yes?"
"Tell Dion to pass by my house when he's done with his mission next week, I need him to clear a part of Damien's memory just in case."
So she wasn't going to tell him.
With a small sigh of resignation, Kingston nodded. "I'll talk with him tonight after we're done."
As a reward for his obedience, Ahara kissed him on the cheeks. "Do it now because once we return home safely tonight, you won't have the time to do anything else but me."
If his skin was lighter, Ahara would have noticed Kingston turned red from blushing just as she was when she winked at him before sprinting down the street.
*****
Damien unlocked the front door and kicked it open, throwing his backpack on the couch.
SLAM!
He punched the wall once he was inside, glaring at it.
"What the fuck? Do I look stupid to her?" He shouted at no one but himself.
SLAM!
Another fist hit the wall. There was no denying it now, Ahara was doing something shady every night. Be it killing humans or the beasts that ate them, she wasn't just going out for a jog, she was putting her life in danger.
And what did she mean by the territory and gem thing? Was she in the mafia by some chance?
'I'm gonna wait for her and tell her the truth tonight,' Damien thought, slamming another fist into the wall and placing his head there. 'I'm going to make her tell me the entire truth today, no matter what the consequences might be later.'
With that as his final thought, he picked up his backpack from the couch and headed into the kitchen to feed Silky before going into his room and taking out the stacks of textbooks resting on the bookshelf situated in the far right corner of the room.
"I'm gonna read and wait for you, Ahara. You better hurry up because I need answers."
*****
It took an entire twelve hours of waiting in his room before Damien finally heard the front door making a noise as someone tried to unlock it. Damien had locked it just for that reason—he wanted Ahara to knock and wake him in case he went to sleep before she arrived again.
Smiling smugly at his cleverness, he rose from his bed and headed for his bedroom door, but paused when he heard the front door opening and closing.
"Shhh, you'll wake my brother up," Ahara hushed whoever she was with, her voice low and shaky as if she was in pain.
"I'll be silent," came Kingston's familiar voice, "but try not to cry out when I put you down, okay?"
Damien couldn't hear Ahara's reply, but he did hear her muffled groans mixed with the sounds of the couch creaking. Not able to hold his curiosity in anymore, he peeked through his door and gasped.
"What was that?" Asked Ahara, her eyes turning to Damien's door.
Damien hid behind the wall in an instant, clasping his mouth with quivering hands as his legs threatened to melt into the floor.
"Let me go and check," came Kingston's voice, but Damien wasn't sure if it was him talking anymore.
Not about to be found out, he tiptoed back to his bed and was lucky enough to cover himself before a large hand with sharp claws held his door and slowly opened it, to reveal what Damien realized was Kingston, but covered in fur like a beast.
Closing his eyes, Damien further opened the small slit he was peeking from and noticed the fur sink inside Kingston's skin until he was back to normal and looking like himself again.
"It's probably Damien snoring," he called out to Ahara and exited the room, leaving a quivering pale Damien under the sheets.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Ahara is a man-eating beast, and she has an accomplice!