Forget Me Not (Forgotten Series Companion Chapters)

Darkest Secrets

Tim

I looked at Nexus, watching as his eyebrows pull low over his eyes, giving him that severe edge that he always seemed to have. I could count the number of times he genuinely smiled on one hand. He just... I didn't know how to explain it properly other than he was broken. Nexus had a hard life, much harder than my own, and unlike me he had only been in Altia for less than a year. It wasn't long enough to put himself back together after everyone had done their best to tear him apart.

"Was what she said true?" Tara asked it slowly as she sat down at the rickety table with us, setting her beer down in front of her.

Nexus' frown deepened and he rubbed at the back of his neck. "Pretty much." I scowled at the words and at the reminder of that crazy female who had wandered into the bar. She had started talking and refused to stop, every little secret we seemed to want to keep she had put out into the open without a care in the world.

"Does it matter, Tara?" I narrowed my eyes at her and she shrugged slightly, taking a deep swig of her beer before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Don't see why it doesn't." At the words there was the ever familiar sounds of Tulip thunking her whiskey glass down along with her bottle of whiskey and the clattering of her glass ash tray tossed it down beside them both. The scent of acrid tobacco smoke slowly entered my nose and I looked at the ragged looking female as she took a heavy drag of her cigarette and plunked herself down in the chair, no grace to her movements, just a brutal and blunt motion that was so much like her. She pulled her cigarette from her mouth and wiped her nose as the smoke from her inhale exited her mouth through her scarred lip. "Female was right, crazy as she is, Mene decided to speak to her and she said what she did for a reason." She jabbed the hand with the cigarette in my direction before she took a swig of her whiskey.

"She's crazy. Doubt anything she says matters." I scoffed lightly and grasped my own drink, pulling it closer. The female was insane, driven that way by a male if Ambris was to be believed and that female rarely stated an untruth.

Tulip's hand connected with the back of my head with a crack, jolting me forward and when I glowered at her in response she pointed her cigarette in my direction, the cherry glowing in the dim light of the bar. "We don't speak like that, Tim. That female is important, mark my words." Even her blind eye seemed to glower at me before she took another heavy drink of her whiskey. "The reason people come to Altia isn't to hide from what they have done but to acknowledge it and heal as best as they can underneath the gaze of the goddess." She scowled at me before pointing at Nexus.

"You allowed the brutalization of a female, a priestess at that, because you saw her as a means to an end and nothing more. No matter how far you run from your pack, no matter how often you talk to your brother and pretend that what you did was for the best, that action and that mindset will haunt you until you acknowledge what you did to that female." Tulip's voice lowered to a heavy and almost gravelly tone, I winced along side Nexus at her reprimanding words.

"Lay off him, Tulip." I curled my lip up at her, flashing her my teeth to show my dislike of her reprimanding him and she slowly tapped her ash from her cigarette, those cold eyes meeting mine.

"My bar, my rules, Tim. It needs to be said, it's why that female said it." The words were icy as she said them and her eyes narrowed further. "He allowed and encouraged the destruction of an innocent life for his own gain. That act needs to be acknowledged and he needs to realize and understand what he allowed to be taken from the world with what he did." She took another heavy drag of the cigarette and burned it down to the filter before she stubbed it out into the ashtray. She turned to Nexus and blew the smoke out, encasing him in a cloud of the acrid smelling poison she used non-stop.