Pride, Mates, and Past Mistakes

I Give A Palm Reading Session

*Sierra*

After everyone had calmed down and gotten a little food in them (food that we sneaked from the kitchen of the hotel restaurant thanks to James’s worrying yet incredible thieving skills) and cleaned up, we’d all gone to bed. Everyone was dead exhausted. So was I, extremely so. It’d been a long day. My eyes burned every time I blinked, my brain was sluggish and I knew I needed sleep, but…

I couldn’t do it.

Not after last night, anyway. It seemed ages ago, but it had only been last night that Jacob’s nymph lady had hacked into my thoughts. She’d raided the memories that I was so sure were buried too deep to be dug up, and she nearly made me jump off a balcony and kill myself. Had it not been for Cody who’d found me just in the nick of time, I wouldn’t have been alive right now.

I knew it was stupid, to be afraid of sleeping—especially during a crucial time like this. I needed all the sleep I could get. Rowena would murder me if she found out that I was purposefully avoiding a crucial part of my body’s schedule, particularly because it could have a bad effect on my brain’s functioning tomorrow. But the thought of bringing up the memories I had tried so hard to put behind me during my time at the IPKA…it was too much.

I could feel my chest constricting, the way it did before I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry in frustration. Would my past—the depression, the bullying, the insecurity, the pain, the rejection— would they haunt me for the rest of my life? What good was running away if I hadn’t been able to bury the things that hurt me the most?

Doreen gave a little snort in her sleep next to me and turned onto her side, turning her back to me. She was completely and peacefully knocked out. It was stupid and wrong, but I envied her. And not just her ability to sleep blissfully, I realized. I envied nearly everything about her. Her free will to form a sweet and natural relationship with James, no mate complications included. Her ability to remain positive and not stress too much about anything. The fact that Rowena hadn’t made her the leader of this mission…

And as much as I tried to contain it, I felt a flare of anger rise up within me. How could Rowena assign me— a sixteen year old girl who hasn’t had her first kiss and wasn’t even out of high school—with such a huge task? And why did she have to make me the leader, of all people? Doreen and James were just as capable as me, if not more. Sure, I had lead missions before. But nothing this big, this threatening to the existence of humanity.

Moons, what if I failed?

Overwhelmed with the sudden negativity flooding my mind, I crawled out of bed—I needed to clear my head—but not on the balcony.  Last night’s experience had taught me not to go there again. I could watch some TV, or read the newspaper for clues, or even make myself a midnight snack: anything to keep me from flooding my mind with pessimism like that.

I slipped out of the door, careful not to wake Doreen, and shut it. I turned around, and nearly went right back into my room.

Cody was sitting on the couch.

He was sitting on the couch, his head tilted back and eyes closed in a grimace. The TV was on in front of him, but he wasn’t watching it. He had the volume turned off. Cody must have sensed me, because his eyes snapped open after a few moments.