31: Robin
1282 Words
“Come on,” Saga leaned over the balcony and looked down at the pool, seemingly unconcerned by the fact I was enjoying spending a quiet afternoon in the sun while Aurelia slept inside. “We’re going out.”
We.
She knew I would go with her, and there was no point pretending otherwise.
I grabbed my t-shirt and put it on as I went back into the house, meeting her at the foot of the stairs.
“I take it there’s a reason you’re dragging me out?”
She shrugged as she grabbed her designer handbag and threw it over her shoulder by its flimsy looking gold chain.
“I’m bored,” she shrugged. “It’s not as if I was disturbing you while you were in the middle of something important, is it? I want to go to the forest, and I would like some company.”
“You couldn’t have asked Caius to keep you company?”
I noticed her swallow nervously, but she rolled her eyes.
“I want to go out and explore for a couple of hours without having to watch out for someone else. Caius is…” she faltered, and glanced back up the stairs.
“Exhausting?” I offered, and she nodded.
“Yeah - he’s exhausting.”
I didn’t say anything else about him until we were close to the spot in the forest where Saga had found him, but she seemed uncomfortable enough that I couldn’t ignore it.
“You think we’ll find anybody else? Is that why you wanted to come back here again?”
She closed her eyes for a second and shook her head.
“Don’t be stupid.”
An insult - she was feeling insecure, then.
“It’s in my nature. But it isn’t exactly stupid when you found Caius here, is it? We still don’t know why he’s back - or how.”
“I don’t smell any other wolves around here, do you?” she asked, her voice thick with sarcasm.
I didn’t, but I hadn’t sensed Caius either, and Saga’s instincts were far more honed than mine.
“Why did you want to come here, then?”
“I guess I just woke up this morning and thought it would be fun to spend my day with you interrogating me about inane bullshit.”
“I was perfectly happy sunbathing by the pool, Saga. You’re the one who demanded I come out with you.”
She exhaled dramatically and sank down in the shade of a large tree, leaning with her back against the bark.
“I just needed to get away, alright? If you want to go back, I’m not stopping you.”
She fished in her bag for a moment, then held out her hand with the car keys balanced on her palm.
I raised one of my eyebrows at her and reached down to take the keys, fully aware that she wasn’t going to let me leave.
When she pulled her hand back, she scowled at me and narrowed her eyes.
“What?” I asked as I folded my arms. “I thought you didn’t care whether I stayed or not?”
“You know I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me if I didn’t want you here, so don’t make it needlessly difficult.”
“You’re the one making things needlessly difficult.” I crouched down, so I was at eye level with her. “I’ve got too much to think about right now, Saga. I need you to respect that and tell me what your issue is without blowing everything out of proportion. What is the matter?”
I expected her to argue with me or insist that she was being perfectly reasonable, but she looked down at her hands for a moment and sighed.
“Does Aurelia talk much about her past?”
The question was unexpected, and it made me a little uneasy.
“Kind of - I think she’s afraid things will change between us if she tells me too much. Why? Is there something you think I need to know about her? Or were you hoping I would have answers to questions you’re not willing to ask?”
“Caius doesn’t talk about Talia much.”
Of course, this was about Caius.
“Do you talk about your exes while you’re with him?”
“She’s still his Mate, Robin. I don’t know how I feel about that, and the fact I have been so conflicted lately is starting to make me question things.”
“Because you like him, but he’s not willing to commit?”
Saga laughed and shook her head.
“I haven’t asked him to, and I don’t think I want him to.”
“You just don't want her to have him?”
As if asking that was going to achieve anything when Saga genuinely didn’t seem to know what was going on herself.
“I like Caius. I know you think I’m playing with him, but I would have lost interest a long time ago if that’s all this was. He was powerful, once - we understand each other.”
“What exactly are you conflicted about, then?”
“It feels like my relationship with him is…” she trailed off, unable to find the right words.
“Fake?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“No…not exactly. It feels like we’re in a sandbox right now, though - it isn’t fake, but none of it is real either. I think he wants me to consider him a serious prospect, but he doesn’t understand the way things work and I don’t know if he ever will. Aurelia may be old, but she has lived through all those years and she isn’t overwhelmed by simple things.”
So, that was what was bothering her - she wasn’t playing games with Caius, and her analogy made everything perfectly clear; their relationship was only real within the confines of the Villa.
“Perhaps you should talk to Aurelia about this? I don’t exactly understand what it’s like to have the kind of power and influence you do and she -”
“-I’m screwing her dad. She’s not exactly going to be rooting for things to work out when there’s still a chance he’ll smooth things over with Talia if I am out of the picture, is she?”
Aurelia didn’t talk about her mother very often, but I got the impression Talia frustrated her a lot of the time, and she hadn’t expressed any regret about her parents’ difficult reunion.
“Listen,” I started to fumble with my nose-ring as I spoke, because I wanted to shift and I was clearly not going to give Saga any worthwhile advice, anyway. “If you actually like him, perhaps you should figure out how to introduce him to the real world - you can’t complain about your relationship feeling like a sandbox when you’re helping the guy make sandcastles instead of challenging him.”
“I don’t think you understood my metaphor,” she scowled; I ignored her and continued removing my clothes, before shifting to my wolf form for the first time in weeks.
Aurelia had never seen me as a wolf, and I hadn’t thought about that until Saga transformed - my younger sister was larger than me in her wolf form, and I felt unexpectedly insecure about that for the first time in many years. Aurelia would see me in Saga’s shadow one day; whenever that happened, she would finally understand why I never took her comments about my Alpha energy seriously.
- Writer
