Page 10 of All That Has Flown Beyond
How dare this girl presume to step so near Ahmik? To look at him with those eyes? Didn’t she see that what she was hoping for couldn’t possibly happen?
Thea was Kaiyo’s best friend, but Ahmik washis.
He’d felt a perverse satisfaction at her upset face when Ahmik had turned her down. The older boy had come back to sit with him and Thea, looking embarrassed.
“What was she thinking? Idiot,” Kaiyo had bit out. Ahmik had looked at him sharply.
“Don’t do that. Don’t say that about her,” he’d defended. Instantly, Kaiyo’s indignation had flared up.
“Well, go kiss her then if you like her so much!” Kaiyo had said, hurt that Ahmik would take her side.
“I don’t want to kiss her, but that’s no reason to be mean to her.” Ahmik had frowned.
Kaiyo had pressed his lips together, feeling chastised and uncomfortable in a foreign, incomprehensible way.
“Whatever,” he had said. Thea had rolled her eyes at him.
“Chill out, Kai. I swear you’re more territorial than us, and you’re not even a werewolf…” she muttered. Kaiyo made a face at her before smiling.
He didn’t want anybody else to enter his world. He had everything he needed in his pack.
“Here,” Ahmik had said, offering him half of his Kit Kat. Kaiyo had taken it with a smile.
“Thanks.”
It had been the first shoots of a seed which had been planted long ago.
**********
The dorm room looked as foreign as the space inside Kaiyo. The walls were empty and white, the bedspread new and dull. He hadn’t had the energy to choose something he liked, picking up the first thing he had seen and stuffing it into the Ikea bag.
“It looks good, right?” Adeline said.
“Yeah,” Kaiyo lied. It looked like nothing to him.
His mom looked at Kaiyo. She looked almost as tired as he felt. She’d taken some time off her busy work schedule as a nurse to fly to the university with him. He was grateful, but part of him just wanted to be left alone.
He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be anywhere, except the one place which wasn’t welcoming anymore.
When most of his pack had died, the loss had been so great it had been difficult to process. With the loss suddenly came an amount of responsibility Ahmik, Thea, and Kaiyo could barely conceive. There was so much more to running a pack than they had imagined. Keeping the lands warded, being aware of those travelling in and out. They had to keep track of shifters, witches, seers, necromancers…all types of beings, each with their own agenda. The three of them had to figure out the intention of every creature and fight against those who would do them harm.
It was hard to mourn when you had to focus on life every second of the day.
Kaiyo’s awareness of Thea and Ahmik, the latter especially as his new Kephale, had multiplied tenfold. The land had seemed enormous around him. It had been overwhelming at a sensory level, even as the absence of the remainder of his pack was as stark as a phantom limb.
Kaiyo was only fourteen, but he threw himself into the study of Ousía. Anything which could help them once he manifested was sought and consumed. His schoolwork suffered in recompense, but his teachers chalked it up to the effects of loss.
In a way, he guessed, it was.
Adeline worked long hours, so it was easy for Kaiyo to spend the days outside of school in the cavernous pack house, hunched over old texts.
It was late at night, school just a few hours away, when Ahmik found Kaiyo straining his eyes on an ancient, handwritten tomb.
“Kaiyo.” His name pierced the fog of his concentration. Kaiyo looked up to see Ahmik standing next to the sofa Kaiyo had his back against. Kaiyo could tell just by looking at Ahmik’s face that it wasn’t the first time his name had been called.
“What?” Kaiyo asked blearily. His head was filled with a percussionist thrum.
“You need to go to bed. Come on.”
