Page 11 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

She remembered Tristan, frantic, furious, frozen in fear of losing her. She remembered Xander hugging her with tight affection that clogged her throat when she saw him again.

She rubbed her left shoulder, feeling the raised flesh and the scar of the gunshot, feeling the pain that had been peaking a lot more frequently than she wanted to admit. Though she had been through physical therapy and everything possible to restore herself to her former physical self, the fact was that she wasn't the same. There were repercussions of her injury, as much as she didn't want to accept it, and they seemed to be more permanent than temporary. The bullet that had hit her shoulder, thankfully missing her heart, had still done some severe nerve damage. It had injured one of the main nerves that went down to her hand, and though the doctors had repaired it well enough that her hand was still functional, it had become quite useless. She couldn't do anything with it for more than ten minutes without it going numb and losing all sensation. It was jarring, trying to use it and suddenly realizing she couldn't. It probably wasn't a big deal to most people. In fact, everyone told her she was lucky to be alive and in good health, and she agreed. But a part of her mourned herself because they didn't understand what her hands had been. They had always been the extensions of her brain to her, keeping up as she typed away without a second thought or drove into the night without worry. And though she still had her right hand, she was scared that her left was done. She couldn't type with it the way she had before, she couldn't lift anything heavy the way she had before, she couldn't drive the way she had before. She couldn't be the way she'd been before.

Morana hadn't really said much about it to anyone. She knew she should. But everyone had so much on their plate already, and it didn't seem like a big deal right then. She was taking medication—Tristan was so disciplined with making sure she did it on time. She was taking physical therapy, and Xander always accompanied her to her sessions. And except Amara, because her friend was too astute when it came to people's brains, no one really suspected much. And to be honest, she didn't want to say it out loud. She was scared that if she did, it would become more real, and she wasn't ready to accept that yet.

Shaking herself out of the thoughts to focus on the task at hand, she moved on to the second picture, one she had already seen before. The old picture of the three toddlers—herself, Zenith, and Luna—before they were gone.

She clicked the next picture. It was an old, scanned digital copy of a physical photograph of two young girls, one brunette and one redhead. The brunette she recognized as a younger version of the Zenith she had met. But the redhead? Her heart began to pound as she analyzed the image for any special details. The background of the photo was simple, just a generic wall that could be anywhere. The girls were young, not older than eight, from her guess, and both looked scared.

Slightly shaky, she went to the next photograph, her heart skipping a beat as she took in the sight. A lone girl this time. A red-haired teen, the same girl in the previous photo but older, against another wall, this one more beige, contrasting with the long red hair.

The frantic beats of her heart drummed in her ears, terrified of what she was going to discover, knowing this was going to change everything forever whichever way it went.

There was just one more photograph, and taking a deep breath in for courage, Morana clicked on it.

It was the photograph of the same redhead, now a grown-up, mature adult with much shorter hair. The same girl without the baby fat in her cheeks, a slender curve to her features, now a fully grown woman, looking off in the distance, holding a mug in her hands, her face in profile.

There was no way…

It couldn't be.

It had to be!

He couldn't just be sending the photos and dropping this on them so casually, could he?

Yeah, he could.

Fuck.

Fuck.

It was her.

She was alive.

Luna was alive.

Tears welled in her eyes. Tristan's baby sister was alive.

Fuck.

Pausing, Morana caught herself before getting swept up in the emotion. She needed to stay on track. There was a reason she had been sent this file, sent it now, and a timer she could feel ticking with each second passing.

Focus.

Morana inhaled, and squinted at the image, scanning the most recent picture carefully, trying to find some clues in the background. It looked like a balcony or deck of some kind; it was hard to tell precisely. The light was gray, as though it was cloudy or early morning somewhere with fog and mountains silhouetted in a sliver of a view before going out of frame. A dark gray wall behind the girl was rough, clearly a stone of some kind, bringing her short, jagged red hair in stark contrast. The hair was clearly chopped by someone who didn't know how to cut it. The mug in her hands was plain black, nothing remarkableabout it. What was remarkable, however, was what she was wearing—a man's t-shirt too big for her. Just the t-shirt, nothing else from the way her breasts were silhouetted against the fabric, and her thighs were visible, going out of the frame.

It was an intimate picture, the kind one would take after spending a night together. A lover's picture.

'I'll change my mind'.

Morana felt her jaw drop, her brain computing. The personal tone hit her all of a sudden, the picture becoming clear for what it was.

It wasn't just an image. It was a statement.

The Shadow Man.

Luna.

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