Fated Insurrection (Book 3)

Chapter 5

"The very worst events in life
have that effect on a family:
we always remember, more
sharply than anything else,
the last happy moments
before everything fell apart."

~~Fredrik Backman

****************

~Alana~

I lay in bed, curled on my side beneath my blanket as I watched the sky brighten through the window. Dominic shifted beside me, stirring as he woke and I closed my eyes, pretending to still be asleep. He didn't need to know I had been up all night, the tears dried and trapped in the back of my skull.

Worrying over me would only serve as a distraction and part of me knew he didn't need that. But it wasn't that simple. I didn't want to look into the eyes of the man that I loved and see the pain that my suffering caused him. Dominic was a dark yet beautiful soul that would burn the world for me or his children if the day called for it.

He was a warrior, strong and resilient, a steel cage against the harsh storms that life dealt. But knowing I hurt, witnessing the shards of my heart fracturing before his eyes, it would put him on his knees. We had been through so much, both of us nearly crippled the day we sent our baby girl away to safety, but we had held onto each other, sharing the burden of grief.

This wasn't the same. I had grieved a woman as close as a sibling but now maybe she wasn't dead. Only to be thrown into the vortex of sorrow when the news came moments later. I had fled my family in pursuit of having a life with Dominic, to love one another without tethers to keep us apart, but that didn't stop me from loving my parents.

They could be hard and cold at times, but they had loved me, that I had never doubted. I hadn't held their dislike for Dominic against them because it was simply a rock hard belief, welded into the chains of tradition and history. To have expected any other reaction would have made me a fool and that was something they had taught me to never be.

And my sister, oh gods, sweet and innocent Avrilia!, ripped away from the word in a last violent moment. So young, so many years between us but she had been my sister regardless and I had loved her. As my sole confidante those last few months, she had known me in a way my parents never had and now never would. The world would never be as bright again without her in it.

"I know you aren't sleeping," Dominic whispered, pressing his bare chest against my back as he pulled me against him. "Please, baby, talk to me. I love you and I hate feeling you like this."

His gently pleading voice tugged at my heart and I wanted so badly to fall into his arms, letting him take it all away. But I didn't, instead I swallowed past the lump forming in my throat and took a deep breath.

"I'll be alright, love." I promised, my voice cracking from disuse. "Check on the kids, whatever you need to do. I'll be down afterwhile."

"I don't want to leave you like this," Dominic replied quietly, his warm breath skating across my skin. Soft kisses trailed from my shoulder down my arm and back. "Please tell me what I can do, baby."

Tears pricked in the corners of my eyes at the clear distress in his voice, my chest aching tightly as the lump in my throat grew. There was nothing he, or anyone else, could do to ease the burning whole in my heart. My parents and baby sister were dead, snuffed from the world without a second thought, and they were never coming back. I had abandoned them years ago and no one was to blame but me, the rogue princess who wasn't there to protect her family.