Runaway Girl - The Secrets of Avelina Chronicles 1

Chapter 13

Damian didn't know what to do as the blonde Australian carried off the sweet girl who had told him something so troublesome. No one told him about the girls being kidnapped, and the fact that the council hadn't warned him meant that they probably didn't know about it, either. He hurried back into the club and grabbed his jacket, explaining to a confused Finlay that he had somewhere important to be. Then, he rushed through the sea of people on the dance floor, made his way out the front door and hailed a taxi with one loud whistle. It only took him a minute to give the cabby the address and fish his phone out of his pocket before realizing what Aaron was up to with kidnapping the girl and making a deal with Finlay. Could it really have been so easy? Could Aaron and this girl, Megan, really have been a part of the same world?

It didn't seem likely, but then again it didn't seem so unlikely either. Damian had no idea what that life or that place was like. Although he knew enough about it to lie about being a part of that world, there was only one person who could help him truly figure it out.

When he arrived at the hotel, he made his way up to suite 104. He knew he had a lot of explaining to do. He hadn't really planned on making any contact with Alexander. All he thought—thanks to Damian's hard work—was that Damian had been missing for years after leaving home at a young age. Knocking on the door, he tried to figure out what he wanted to say, but when the door opened to a guy lifting dumbbells in one hand, he knew that whatever he had to say wouldn't go down well.

"Put some damned clothes on, will you Alex?" Damian ordered, stepping into his room and shutting the door behind him. Alexander, his apparent "little brother" for all intents and purposes, backed over to the bed and dropped the dumbbell on the floor before slipping into the light blue t-shirt lying on the bed.

"What brought you out of hiding?" Alexander asked, convinced that he was Damian's younger brother and that there was complete animosity between them from years of sibling rivalry.

"I haven't been hiding anywhere," Damian corrected. "I just left home." Damian walked over to the side table and picked up a book of spells from it with a smirk. "You can't leave the old world behind, can you?" He walked a little further into his brother's room and gave it a look over, unimpressed with the expensive taste.

"Yeah, well maybe I didn't want to leave it behind," Alexander argued, folding his arms across his chest, standing his ground. He waited to see what his brother was going to say before he threw him out and told him never to come back. He had no right stopping by unannounced.

"Have you been guarding Kaitlin?" Damian asked with a cheeky smile, letting Alex know that his cover had been blown and that Damian knew how he felt about her, perhaps more than he should.

"What is it to you whether I'm guarding her or not?" Alex asked with a shrug, neither admitting or denying the fact.

"Nothing, except that I bumped into her at a club tonight," Damian explained casually, flicking through the book of spells with little interest, letting his "brother" know that he wasn't exactly doing as great a job of guarding her as he thought he was. "She was with some guy, some buff blonde Australian and she was drunk ... spouting off about initiates on the loose, kidnapping girls and what she was supposed to do about it."

Frustrated, Alex sank onto the bed and held his head in his hands, but said nothing.

"She saluted me, said she was just a princess, then asked what she was to do. She's a hot little thing, Alex. Why are you keeping her all to yourself?"

Alexander couldn't have disapproved more at the way Damian mentioned how beautiful Kaitlin was. It wasn't because he was in love with her or that he was commissioned to protect her, it was because Damian wanted her for an entirely different reason.