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Acacia/Ciarán - Age 8

"Acacia, just give me your hand!" The wisps of spiderwebs fade to black, almost as if I'm awake from a dream, however, it's Ciarán's voice that begins to ground me back to reality. I can feel him right behind me, his hand tapping my side while I clutch onto the branch for dear life.

"Daddy...daddy...daddy," I mutter to myself over and over again, my eyes have met him, a chilling feeling spreading through my entire being. The bark is rough against my cheek while I continue to press against the branch, trying to understand why he was just as surprised as I was. Deep down, I can't separate my fears right now, and all I want is for my daddy.

Tears trail from the corners of my eyes, feeling the warmth as the salt streams stain against my cheeks. I can hear my brother getting frustrated because I'm frozen, just hardly opening my eyes and seeing the height we're at causing me to turtle inside myself with fear.

Ciarán shifts and I only realize what he's done when the branch moves, a cry leaving my lips. I hear him from a different angle as he must have stood to his feet before jumping over my body. He steadied himself while balancing, kneeling in front of me. He holds onto the branch with one hand, his voice shifting sharply he says, "Please...Acacia, you're going to get hurt."

Blinking my eyelids open gently, I tilt my head to the side until I look up and see him looming slightly over me. I whisper out, "I'm scared."

"I have you," Ciarán urges me to take his hand, looking from his side, to the boys playing in the water below, to the branch I am clinging on. Breathing in and out, I nod before slowly letting my grip slip with my right hand. Gradually, I lift it away from the branch, up and toward my brother until I feel my hand in his.

"Ciarán, the branch!" Mercury yells up; the time has seemed to come to a screeching halt as his words envelope and wrap around me like a hazy fog.

I hear the creaking, the slight snapping of bark, and in the matter of a split second, I feel my heart leap from my chest. My scream is much louder, my eyelids snapping shut and preparing to plunge toward the water's surface below. Instead, I feel the jarring of my body knocking against a hard surface, pulled tightly against Ciarán's chest.

My heart beats erratically, my breathing uneven as I hear Mercury call, "Ciarán, don't let go!"

When I take a chance and blink my eyelids open, my face is buried in Ciarán's chest, his arm around my waist and holding me steady. I glance up, and my eyes widen, my brother's other hand grasping a tiny jutting branch that pegs off the portion of the more substantial branch that is still intact. The piece of the branch we'd been on had broken away and crashed down toward the water below.

He grits his teeth and squints his eyes, trying to pull us both up. Typically, he has no trouble carrying me, but the situation we are in is nothing like any we'd been in prior. I grasp my arms around his neck, feeling my muscles giving out as I try and cling to my brother.

"Can you climb up?" He asks me, and I shake my head with a resounding no. It doesn't matter if he falls...

...I'm the one who'll get injured.

"Ciarán," I hear Mercury, much closer this time as I glance up and see him shifting out onto the sturdy portion of the branch. My brother glances up as well, both of us watching while Mercury sits on the branch before cradling it behind his knees and leaning backward. He hangs upside down, his arms reaching out and down to me, "hold on until I have Acacia, then drop."

Ciarán nods, seeing the slight slip of his hand on the branch peg making me more nervous, his grip faltering around me. Mercury calls for me, "Reach out to me."

I don't want to let go. I'm afraid of slipping, but if I don't, both my brother and I will fall.

Edging slowly away from my brother, Mercury helps me until he has me in his arms sideways. Unlike with Ciarán's age, Mercury's strength shows when he pulls himself and me up onto the branch. Just as he does so, Ciarán let's go of the peg and falls into the water below us.

My heart is beating wildly, pounding hard against my chest all the while, Mercury cradles me against his chest. Carefully, he gets to his feet and walks me across the branch and down the trunk of the tree. When we reach solid ground of the forest floor, his eyes meet with mine for a moment.

The way he shifts me in his arms causes me to furrow my brows, a second later lowering me to my feet just as Ciarán climbs back up from the lake. As he walks over, I see anger and relief all in one when he approaches.

"Don't you dare tell mama and our dads," he glares at me, the water dripping off his rose gold hair, his reddish orange irises boring into me.

"Why did you even do that, to begin with?" Mercury asks with curiosity.

I slowly look up at Mercury and say, "I-I thought Ciarán was in trouble."

"And you could save him?" An amused look crosses Mercury's features while he shakes his head at my stupidity. He pauses a moment and states, "Ciarán is a true born hybrid...it's going to take a lot to hurt him, you, however..." He eyes me, looking me over and making me feel like he's a vulture, "...are a meek and weak little human, practically almost getting yourself potentially killed."

The bridge of my nose burns, knowing the tears are slowly welling in my eyes. I just wanted to help my brother...I wasn't thinking...

A few of the older boys are now up on the forest landscape, walking closer. One of them stops and chuckles, "Awe...she's going to cry."

"I am not!" I glare at Mercury, my temper getting the best of me and lashing back out. Ciarán stands there and folds his arms against his chest. He has this disapproving look set on his face...like all of this is my fault in the first place.

The air is knocked from my lungs, feeling my butt and back hit the ground hard before I realize now what has happened. Mercury stands before me, having shoved me harder than I'd ever imagined; one of Ciarán's friends would have. My elbow hurts from hitting the side of a rock, edging onto the back of my forearms while tears fall freely down my cheeks.

"Weak," is all Mercury says, watching me as I try to compose myself.

Glaring at him I snap, "You must feel good...being able to push around a little girl almost half your age." I gradually get to my feet, the stains of the grass and dirt embedding into my clothes and skin, "look at how big and strong you are, your mother must be so proud of you."

I see anger flare in Mercury's eyes, the muscles tensing in his neck while his fingers flex in and out of fists. Instead of lashing out at me, the change in his demeanor is unnerving when he says, "No Acacia...it does not matter that you are a girl, nor that I am almost twice your age..." His voice trails off as he takes a few steps toward me, "...it's because you are a human. If you'd lived in the age of the Code of Conduct..." he eyes me once again, trailing his sight over every inch of my small frame, "...then you'd truly know your worth."

"Mercury..." Ciarán's voice is on edge, "...stop, just let her go home," he pauses only for a moment to instruct me, "just leave Acacia."

I ball my hands into fists and yell at my brother, "How can you let your friends treat me this way?!" The tears are warm as they slide down my cheeks and bead off my chin, "I am your sister! I am your twin!"

Ciarán briefly glances at his friends, and I see the way they are questioning how his presents himself. My heart falls into the pit of my stomach when he says, "You are my half sister..."

"Ciarán, I-"

I'm cut off by a different boy knocking me to the ground, a chorus of laughter filling my ears. One of the boys says, "She has a hybrid mother and a vampire father...and this is what they got for a child?"

Another chuckles, "I know, right? What did they do to deserve her?"

"Your dad would have made a great slave outta her, eh Mercury?" The boy who pushed me nudges Mercury, and I see the smirk that forms on his face when his eyes land on me, silently agreeing with his friend. I can't focus though, because I feel pain radiating down my arm.

When I look down, I see that my arm had collided with the sharp edge of the rock this time, a small jagged gash about two inches long runs down my forearm. My pain...the way they joke about the past...everything swirls around in my head, but my eyes focus on Ciarán.

Ciarán's expression faults from the once emotionless look to a flash of fear and concern when he smells the apparent blood that split. The gash isn't deep, just long but the blood trickles down my arm nonetheless.

"Crap..." his voice trails off and mutters, "...she can't hide that from our parents..."

Mama and daddy are going to know something happened now. I grasp my arm while staggering to my feet, glaring at them all while one boy says, "Give her blood, that'll heal her. No wound, no evidence."

"And the stained blood on her arm after the wound has healed genius?!" Mercury whirls around and glances from my brother, the feeling of hurt and betrayal setting in that he'd rather side and be cool in his friends' eyes makes me feel like I mean absolutely nothing to him.

"Stop the bleeding first...then wash the blood in the lake?" One of the boys suggests, and I glare at him in response.

Mercury turns to Ciarán and says, "What are you waiting for?"

"I'm not giving her my blood!" Ciarán snaps back furiously and growls, "you give her yours!"

Mercury's eyes pool with the same crimson blood I have already spilled, snatching the back of the neck of the boy closest to him and pushing him toward me. He orders, "Just give her yours."

While they continue to argue, I turn away and begin to run in the direction of the castle grounds. I'm so angry and hurt; I can't think of anything other than curling up in a ball on my bed while I read myself into new oblivion. What they have said runs through my head, how I should be something other than human...but I can't change what I am and I begin to feel sorry in what my parents received when I should have been someone stronger, someone, like them.

I scream when my feet come out from beneath of me, feeling myself flipped so that I'm laying on my back. My arms flail out in front of me, smacking Mercury in the chin and the nose before I realize that it's him. He pins me to the ground, his knees on either side of my ribs while his hands reach out and grasp my wrists.

"Let go of me!" I yell at him, unable to break out of his iron grip. I hear footsteps gaining in the distance, Mercury the fastest between them due to his age, and he was able to catch me first.

"Stop struggling," he glowers at me while trying to shift both of my wrists into one of his hands, attempting to bring his other wrists to his lips. He doesn't get the chance though because I continue to squirm beneath his grasp. When I return my knees up to try and push him off of me, I hear him growl lowly and groan in pain.

When his eyes shift to a crimson red, the anger spreading across his features, I cry out and try to make myself as small as possible. With a wrist in each of his hands, he pins them down hard against the ground on either side of my head.

Mercury's fangs elongate, and that's when I close my eyelids shut tight and attempt to turn away from him. My heart skips a beat when I unexpectedly feel his lips against my own, my lips parting in shock at the feeling. I taste his metallic blood when it drips between my teeth, touching my tongue and causing my senses to heighten briefly. As the blood slides down the back of my throat, he breathes out slowly, his lips moving against my own.

I inhale when I move my own against his, my tongue brushing his lower lip at the sensory adjustment from the blood that continues to fill my senses. His grip slackens around my wrists, and I breathe out shakily when I feel a steady rhythm of my heart beating fast, color filling my cheeks with the feeling.

Just as I feel something hard pressing against my inner hip, I hear Ciarán yelling, "What the hell are you doing?!"

Mercury's lips leave mine, my eyelids fluttering open at the foreign feeling that had washed over me. His irises meet with my own, blood lingering on his lips before the puncture marks seal shut. He speaks to Ciarán while keeping my gaze, "She wouldn't stop struggling long enough to take it from my wrist..."

Ciarán and Mercury slowly help me to my feet, the pain no longer radiating through my arm. The blood had healed my wound, but the dry residue would show something had happened. It's because of this that Mercury narrows his eyes and says, "What happened to you?"

I shakily whisper out, "I fell..."

"And we came to help you," Ciarán now catches on to what his friend is trying to cover up. The only problem is...

...daddy can tell if I'm lying.

I have to place myself in the mind of my daddy and deter him from figuring out what happened.

I nod, and my eyes glance down at the ground, wrapping my arms around myself. Mercury chuckles and says, "Good, now go home Acacia."

Ciarán agrees and turns away to his friends standing nearby, making sure I was taken care of before they all would have faced the wrath of the queen and her mates. I'm left standing there silently as the boys go the forest line, trying to ease my emotions back and away before I attempt to walk out of the forest and toward the castle grounds.

When I have enough courage built to step inside the castle, I start to head in the direction of my room, but I stop in my tracks as I pass near the library doors. I can hear my mama and daddies talking, Dante says, "We don't know anything..."

"Are you sure about that?" My daddy retorts and I can hear the edge in his voice at the way his response must feel.

My mama sighs and says, "Cormac...he has a point."

"She could still very well be dormant," my daddy doesn't want to listen to my mama.

"Look," Dante is now showing his frustration, "it's something we all have to accept...Acacia already has."

There is a long pause, and my mama then says, "Cormac, you knew I was a hybrid by my scent...you knew because you are my beloved. Even Dante knew I was a dormant hybrid due to himself not only being my hybrid mate...but a hybrid himself."

"But a vampire-"

My daddy is cut off my Dante, "...if she was a dormant half-breed vampire, Rose and yourself might be able to sense it as you're her parents," Dante pauses a moment to exhale a deep breath before he concludes, "I don't sense she is a dormant hybrid."

"Taft didn't know when he saw Rochelle," my daddy states with confidence.

"Cormac..." Dante's voice trails off, "...I know, but it just seems unlikely..."

My mama agrees and reaffirms Dante, "I don't sense it either...neither do I feel or catch a scent of her being a dormant half-breed either..."

My daddy is very quiet for a long while, my heart beating fast in my chest at the pain they must all be feeling.

They're disappointed in what I am.

What I'll only ever amount to by being a human...

"Rose is half wolf..." my daddy tries a new approach, "...could she have taken on a half-breed werewolf gene?"

Dante is quick to demolish those dreams when he states, "Rose and I would be able to sense even a small glimmer of her wolf slowly growing with Acacia's connection within her. We'd know."

"But wolves don't shift until they're close to thirteen?" My daddy questions.

"True," Dante pauses a moment, "and if she were a dormant half-breed, it would show later in her teens," he replies shortly and leaves it at that, somehow wanting my daddy to believe that there's something supernatural about me. There's a long pause before Dante says, "You might as well stop acting like a fly on the wall...Acacia."

My heart stops in my chest, knowing I must have been kidding myself to think my presence would go unnoticed by my parents. After a few moments, Dante continues, "Come in."

My hand raises as I shakily push the door open the rest of the way, my eyes landing on my parents sitting in their chairs while they debate about my existence. While I edge carefully into the room, my eyes flicker away from their gazes and avert to the ground.

When I am close enough, my daddy's expression changes and he asks, "What happened?"

"Nothing," I draw my arms behind my back and walk toward my mama. When I am near the edge of her chair, she reaches out and pulls me up onto her lap. Once I'm sitting on her lap, she brings my arms out in front of me, observing the bloody residue left on my skin.

Dante stands to his feet and nears the edge of the seat, asking, "Are you okay?"

"Yes," I reply, gazing down at my hands.

"Acacia, what happened?" My daddy is out of his chair and kneels down before me, his eyes finding mine when he grasps my chin gently in his fingers.

"I fell," I quickly reply, but my daddy's fingers tighten on my chin, forcing me to look into his eyes as darkness clouds his vision.

"Who kissed you?" My body flinches at the way his voice surrounds me, my mama's muscles tensing as she holds me tightly against her. When I draw my lips into a thin line, I taste the residue of Mercury's blood lingering on my lips.

All of their eyes are on me...

...but I react the only way I can to keep them on the defensive and not reverting into my inner shell...

"If you had helped me..." my voice trails off, "...none of this would have happened!" I glare at daddy, remembering the way he had looked so surprised to see me back in the forest.

Why didn't he help me?

My daddy furrows his brows in confusion; even Dante appears perplexed by my accusation. My daddy finally asks, "What are you talking about?"

"I saw you!" I feel like now I'm going crazy because I know what I saw, "You were in the forest! The spiderwebs! I know what I saw, why didn't you help me?!"

The room goes silent instantly, Dante glancing from my mama and then to my daddy. After a few moments of silence, my daddy's features soften and he says calmly, "Baby girl...I wasn't in the forest."

My blood runs cold, feeling like a pressure weight is pulling me down, dragging me into a pit of despair. The coldness melds with my skin, taking root in my soul as I hazily see out of the corner of my eye...

...spiderwebs, a purplish hue changing before my eyes like a projector shifting from white to color, my eyes widening in terror.

💫--To Be Continued--💫

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