Inflexible | Fated Four: Book 1

Chapter Six

The next day, I got into Arrow's car and the two of us drove to my house so that I could grab my things.

As we rolled to a stop outside the house, I wondered what I would tell my adoptive Mom and Sarah.

"What am I supposed to say?" I asked, "'Hey Mom, I just came to grab my things since I'm living in a lake house with four guys. Oh and we're trying to stop an enraged Goddess from killing everyone.' Right, because that will go over so well."

"You don't have to go into explicit detail," Arrow told me.

"I know, but what am I going to say?" I asked.

"I don't know," Arrow told me.

"Will you be there with me?" I asked.

"Only if you want me to be," he replied.

"I do," I replied.

"Okay," Arrow replied.

We got out of the car and Arrow took a suitcase out of the trunk.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"I think so," I replied.

"After you," he told me.

I took a deep breath and walked up to the porch. I unlocked the door and entered.

"Sarah?" I heard my Mom call out, "Is that you?"

She came around the corner and gasped when she saw me.

"Clarissa, oh my god!" she cried, "Where have you been?! What happened to you?! Are you okay?!"

"I'm okay," I assured her.

"What happened to you?" she asked, "You look so different."

I swallowed hard. This would hard to explain. I was hoping that she wouldn't notice how I had changed physically. No such luck.

I took a deep breath and braced myself. Lie. I'd have to lie to the one person that had been there for me since day one. The one person that I knew would do almost anything for me. The one person I knew that would protect her family no matter what.

It wasn't that I wanted to lie to her. It was just that I knew that telling her the truth would mean revealing that the Greek myths were real and that there was currently an angry Goddess of Strife after me. And I knew that she wouldn't be able to handle that. Besides, the less she knew, the safer she was.

I needed to think fast, my adoptive Mom was waiting for an answer.

"I found my birth Mother," I said quickly.

"What does that have to do with anything?" she asked as she raised an eyebrow.

"She's wealthy and someone's after her," I replied, unsure of where I was going with my story, but trying to give her an answer, "She didn't want me caught in the crossfire, so she changed how I look in order to protect me."

"And who is this young man?" she asked.

"His name is Arrow," I stated, "He's a bodyguard that my birth Mother hired to protect me." The second part of that was only partially a lie. Arrow was protecting me from Eris, but not because Melinoe had asked him to.