Awoken: COMPLETED

Chapter Seven: Welcome to Refuge

Serenity Jones

I've dealt with all sorts of weird situations before. Befriending a dragon afraid of flight? Sure. Getting roped into a challenge involving vodka, mustard, and a bloodthirsty cult? Been there, done that. And I'd been in dangerous situations too – all part of the daily routine of an alpha team six-member, a squad of five of the most powerful teenagers in all of Refuge, tasked with winning the war through special ops. No pressure.

But, this seeking mission presented a lot of firsts for me. And one thing was apparent as I talked trash with Amelia Blood – I didn't have my friends to back me up. Electress, I was going to kill our stupid-ass government for thinking disbanding our team was a good idea. I even miss Aiden. God, what's happening to me?

But this – staring into the face of the girl who looked almost exactly like one of my best friends – this was some weird shit. The Warden was an idiot if he thought I was going to follow the script in this whole mission - then again, he was always mistaken. I would never insult the head of the government to his face, as much as it pained me to admit it. I wasn't completely stupid, whatever the stories Mia could tell about proved to the contrary.

The file that the Warden gave me of this area felt like it was burning a hole in my backpack. In it were the names of suspected people with a dominant Akin gene. Amanda Abbot and James Smith were on that list. But Cassandra Winters was not.

I knew our seeking - the magic-based system we used to find others like us - wasn't always completely accurate from long distances. That was why I had been sent, to determine who belonged in Refuge, using the seeking orb that always told us what we needed to know.

But still, it was pretty weird that her name hadn't shown up on that list. As the biological sister of Lark Lang, the most renowned Akin of our generation, she had been thoroughly vetted. When the tests of all of Lark's siblings had come up negative, she had begged the government to try again. Cassandra had been reported completely human five times.

When I had handed the orb to her, I don't know what I had been expecting. Logic said she was powerless, but she looked so much like how Lark had done when she was younger that I couldn't help expecting something more from her – something great. I knew it was unfair to expect a young girl to live up to her sister's shining legacy, but they were the same blood, and that had to have counted for something, right?

I coughed loudly, shaking my head slightly as if to clear it from the thoughts swirling around. The battlefield wasn't the best place for some self-therapy. I hated the school mandated sessions for me and the rest of the alpha squad so much that I had dreamed of tearing the old guy who ran them to threads with my sonic scream. Of course, if I told him that, he'd say it was because of "my traumatic past". He thought that my family – or lack thereof – was the root of all my insecurities. As if I care about some good for nothing people who dumped me on the doorsteps of an orphanage in Refuge's most backwards province.

Lark's sister still had the orb clutched in her hand, which was tinted a light blue hue. I groaned inwardly. Who would have thought that the sister of our world's most famous hero would be a windweaver? Wind-based powers tended to consistently be the weakest of the elements in our world, and if she only had that single element, she would be considered as good as powerless. Seeking orbs could only detect one element, and more often than not a person could more than one. I hoped that was the case with this girl.

She jumped when she noticed my arm outstretched, waiting to take the orb. "Sorry," she muttered, passing the ball back to me as if it was made of acid.