Affinity

Chapter 7 - Aaralyn

Aaralyn stepped out of the coven home and paused to draw deep, centering breaths. After spending a long day with Lexander, running training exercises and reviewing the strategy for the upcoming raid, the cool evening air soothed her. She closed her eyes, pressed her palms to either side of her warm face, and willed her temper to subside.

If I can just make it through this mission, I'll...

But she couldn't finish the thought. She had no idea what she would do. Finally snapping on Lexander and putting him in his place was a welcome idea, but she couldn't do that.

At the thought of Lexander's high-handed comments and his presumed need to coach her on how to do her job, her hands balled into tight fists, and her jaw clenched. He had undermined every instruction she had given, and he had taken every opportunity to try to make her appear inadequate in front of the people she was meant to lead. How was she supposed to maintain their trust and respect when she was being made to look weak?

Nicholas wanted her to make more of an effort with her peers, and she knew that Lexander would not hesitate to go to Nicholas if she acted as anything less than a perfect commander. So she had tried to remain composed, but in the face of Lexander's vindictiveness, it had taken every ounce of her will. By the end of the day, she had begun to suspect that Lexander was testing her even more than usual in an effort to push her to her breaking point.

Nicholas wanted her to be diplomatic and kind, so she was. And Nicholas wanted her to be strong and decisive, so she was that, too. Nicholas wanted this. Nicholas wanted that.

"Nicholas wants too much," she whispered to herself, tears of frustration prickling her eyes. It was too hard, even without Lexander antagonizing her at every turn.

They're setting me up to fail.

She heard footsteps, and she hastened down the steps just as the door opened behind her. Whoever had exited called a farewell to her, which she acknowledged without slowing or turning around. She only relaxed when she rounded the curve in the road home and could hear nothing but the sound of her feet crunching on the gravel.

The walk from the coven home to her house wasn't terribly long, but it was long enough that, by the time she made it halfway home in the fading light, she had mostly re-centered herself. With each step, she grew calmer but far wearier. She had spent the day so tense from her efforts to keep it together that the respite left her exhausted.

With Lexander finally out of the way for an evening, she was left to war with herself about Nathaniel Madison, or Nathan, as he preferred. However, thinking about the vampire was only slightly less stressful than thinking about Lexander.

It had been two days since their last encounter. She hadn't been aware of his presence, nor had she detected any physical evidence of him; she had been looking. But she had done a great deal of thinking about him. When she set aside his teasing and his sarcasm, she was forced to give credit to his honesty. Instead of criticizing her wayward thoughts like Raj, who was her only other confidant, Nathan had practically slapped her in the face with the brutal truth of her situation and had encouraged her to keep up with her line of questioning.

She hadn't parted from him feeling misunderstood. She hadn't had to pretend to agree with him for the sake of avoiding an undesired circular argument. She hadn't felt judged or scrutinized when she was with him. Instead, she had felt like her thoughts and opinions and what she had had to say mattered. Everything they had discussed, good or bad or even guarded, had been real. And that much, in retrospect, felt good. But now that she had experienced a form of validation, she was afraid of the influence it may have on her life. She had found it more difficult than ever to go through the motions of coven life the past two days, and she was forced to face the fact that she couldn't stay and carry on like she had in the past.