The Rise of the Rejected Mate: The Scion Book 1

Chapter 1

Gia

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I found myself back in the frozen lands of my childhood. The simple architecture created the classic vision of small towns in the vastly underpopulated island of Greenland. The mountains in the background offered perspective, emphasizing the tiny houses perched at its feet.

The biting cold carried the sounds of the village clearly and simultaneously muted smells, creating crisp, clean air to breathe. The land was harsh, yet the people were warm and had built a welcoming community. Pristine ice laced everything rendering a bright scene that somehow, despite the extreme lack of color, was pleasing to the eye and comforting to the soul.

That was how I used to feel about my childhood home, unparalleled peace. But peace was far from what I felt now.

I knew this dream, intimately. I had had it nightly for years, from the day my grandmother died. It wasn’t so much a dream as a memory, seared into my brain and branded on my heart. The death of my grandmother.

It started as usual, with fifteen-year-old me racing down the road towards the house, laughing unrestrained. Dressed in my winter outdoor gear, I had successfully hunted a large seal with my bow and arrow for the first time. I rushed to tell my grandfather as I did with any successful hunt, always reveling in his praise. We would have to retrieve the carcass as it was too large for me to carry home.

I felt myself run to the door; by now, I knew what awaited me on the other side, but I was powerless to change my actions. I always willed myself not to open it, but could only watch with mounting horror as everything played out exactly as it had that day. I knew every microscopic detail by heart. The nightmares wouldn’t let me forget. My father was on the other side of the door, a burly man with pale blue eyes that mirrored my own, light blonde hair he always kept short, and a clean-shaven face that accentuated his high cheekbones and square jaw.

He had been acting strangely for a few days, muttering to himself and spending all his time in his shed outside. As soon as I opened the door, I knew he would turn and look at me, a weird expression in his eyes. It would be as if I was looking at a stranger and not the father I had adored all of my life.

My grandmother would enter the room, her warm smile lighting up her face as she walked towards me. She was small by village standards, with a complexion much darker than most. Her rare brown eyes already differentiated her from the typical people of the north. She was dressed plainly, as she usually did at home. I could almost smell her, a combination of freshly baked bread and cinnamon that had always been so comforting to me.

My father would unclip the holder of his hunting knife and rush toward me, swinging the blade wildly. His expression, a combination of madness and some kind of internal battle.  My grandmother would slip in front of me and take the blade straight in the heart. That was what waited for me on the other side of the door. My hand reached for the knob and turned it.

I stepped into the room and saw my father turn and look at me with his strange expression. The furniture was the same, simple and functional, not a single unnecessary thing in sight. A set of sofas, a combination of turned wood and fabric in the dull, old-fashioned brown, took up most of the space; the coffee table, a modest square, sat in front of it. The white walls were plain, with just a few family portraits on display. A fire crackled in the hearth, lending warmth to the room.

My grandmother walked in. Something about this particular dream felt different, weird. The atmosphere felt charged as if there was lots of static or electricity in the air. I could smell it, taste it on my tongue. The hair on my body stood on end as chills ran down my spine. She smiled at me, and a symbol flashed as if superimposed on the scene. The usual sounds came in waves with white noise in between. It was like looking at two different places at once. It stayed for three seconds then disappeared, but it was there long enough for me to see it clearly. It was a simple white circle with a cross in its center, cutting it cleanly into quarters. It had a glowing quality and seemed to pulse with power.

For the first time in any of these dreams, I felt a trickle of fear. The dreams usually came with pain, the excruciating pain of losing a loved one and being betrayed by one. I had gotten used to the dreams, but never the pain. Each time was equally as heartbreaking and soul-shattering as the first. Reliving the pain over and over was the real nightmare.

My father rushed forward, and my grandmother stepped in front of me. His face had the same expression as he sunk the blade into her heart. My heart clenched in agony as it happened, as if her physical and my emotional pain were linked. I caught her as she fell. His expression remained constant as he looked at her, then he turned and, without hesitation, ran from the room. I looked at my grandmother as tears streamed down my face. Her eyes were closed and her expression serene, as if she was satisfied with her actions. The knife was still lodged inside her as a red stain bloomed around it, its size increasing with every second. The scent of her blood was overwhelming. That was usually the end of the dream. I relaxed a little. I would surely wake up soon.

Instead, her eyes opened abruptly. The symbol I had seen earlier was now superimposed on each of her eyes. She opened her mouth.

“You must not kill the seer,” she said in a voice far deeper than her usual tone.

Finally, I sat up in my bed.  My heart raced; fear quickly overtook the usual pain of losing her. Cold sweat soaked my nightclothes, and my chest rose and fell laboriously as I tried to catch my breath. My hair still stood on end, and the metallic taste was still in my mouth. Most of all, I was shocked at the changes within the dream that had been precisely the same when it had haunted me for years.

I had had these dreams over and over from then until I officially started training at the RAD eighteen months ago, which would make it a total of five years. Never once had the dream changed in any way. I didn’t understand why they had stopped, but I wasn’t going to complain. I had been overjoyed when I had my first full night’s sleep without it. Now it was back and much weirder than before. I didn’t understand its return either, and the message was so cryptic. I didn’t know any seers. Was it coincidental that it happened on the day I completed my first successful mission for RAD? Had the professor been a seer?

Moonlight filtered into my room far from the icy village in Greenland, casting dark shadows all around. The breeze lifted the sheer curtains lightly as it sailed in from the open window. The furniture in my room was minimal, a preference I had retained from my earlier years. However, the pieces I favored were all characterized by clean lines and had a modern edge. The soft rustling of the trees calmed me a little, yet not enough to go back to sleep. I sighed loudly and lay back in bed, wondering what the hell was going on.  

The dream had always perplexed me; there were things I couldn’t explain or justify. The expressions on my father’s face. His actions in general. He had gone from a loving, doting father to a murderer within a matter of hours with no reasonable explanation. The serenity my grandmother exuded in her last moments as if she had fulfilled a great purpose, as if her own son hadn’t just murdered her.

I had often wondered if my grandfather had foreseen it. I was just five years old when he started training me in martial arts, weaponry, and poisons. He never told me why; he just insisted I learn and spent at least three hours a day giving me instruction, making sure I became proficient in everything he could possibly teach me. He was a kind man, but a hard master, and my childhood wasn’t idyllic because of it.

I wondered if he meant for me to use it that day. Instead, I froze, not expecting such actions from my beloved father. I had trusted him blindly, and it would have meant my end were it not for my grandmother. I had never managed to find answers to those questions.

My father had disappeared without a trace. A month later, Uncle Ted, my mother’s brother, had come from the US and convinced her to return to her hometown with me, to start afresh. She agreed, believing that it would help me deal with the trauma. I suspected she felt it would help her too. She had loved my father to a fault, so much so that she followed him to such an unforgiving landscape. He, in turn, had often called her the love of his life and demonstrated his love for her consistently. They made the perfect couple. It made it that much harder to fathom his actions that fateful day. I left Greenland behind and moved to New Haven, Connecticut.

My mind wandered back to the present. This dream was different. The energy, the symbols, and the message. What did it all mean?

The people of the north believed in the importance of dreams. They believed it held great power and provided a link to our ancestors, a way to commune with them. It wasn’t lost on me that my grandmother had been the one to deliver the message. I decided I had better take it seriously.

Thomas didn’t strike me as a seer. Would he not have known about my deception? No, from the little I knew, seers wouldn’t be able to see their own demise. I’d had a small niggle when I met him, a slight misgiving, but had trusted that RAD didn’t make mistakes. Had they? Or even worse, had they intentionally ordered the death of an innocent man? I had to find out.