Sun Catch Her (Book 1: Three Rivers Deep series) COMPLETE

Chapter Thirty-Six

"Hey Alex!" I called, rushing out onto the porch with his suit coat in my arms. As the cool of the evening hit my bare legs, I came to a halt before nearly crashing into him. "You forgot your coat on the chair in the study," I said, gazing up to see a quiet cleverness flash in his eyes.

"No, I didn't," he admitted, his voice soft. The light in the front room shone through the screen door to highlight his hands in the dimming day as he took the coat from me. "I sensed you wanted to ask me something after things broke up in there. I was hoping this would provide us with a private moment."

"O-oh? Um, well." I looked down at the porch, the floorboards dark in the twilight. It was true. I did have a question. But maybe it wasn't my place to ask. I wavered, taking a step back and staring off into the distance at the dark sky beyond the valley as it flashed—lightning without sound, or heat lightning to those who didn't know any better. Shortly after having ordered Indy to clean up the wreckage from their tussle, Micah left to burn off the excess power in his body.

Because he didn't want to touch me with a live charge going through him. A pang of angst twisted my middle.

"Your question?" Alex broke the quiet between us. "Eos?" he tried again, and I heard a porch board creak. Something fluttered in my stomach when he moved a step closer.

Swallowing down my nerves, I was finally able to say, "I don't understand her."

"Your former group alpha."

"My aunt. Or, at least, that is what she has been to me for as long as I can remember."

He took another step forward. The light coming from the house made blocks of bright patchwork across his figure, while his face remained in darkness, hidden above the light. His shadowed expression was open, listening.

"Indy's a non-feeling type. Well, limited feeling," I reworked my phrasing. "She's the head of the company she and Mom started, and she governs it with a strict, no nonsense approach. Always in control." Unless something happened to set her off, and then all that control flew out the window. Taking a breath to settle myself, I admitted, "Back in there, just now, I have never seen her like that. I've never—sensed that from her. She was...highly emotional."

"Because it was a battle of passion. Quite unusual for their kind, really." He turned while saying this, until I was viewing his profile. He glanced at me sideways, his expression going neutral when he added, "In all honesty, he shouldn't care as much as he does."

"What do you mean?" An anxious hiccup fluttered in my chest.

Alex shifted to gaze into the distance where the night continued to flash. "Theirs is a culture much unlike what you know from a human perspective. In fact, it is distinct from all other elemental societies."

"What's so different about them?" I asked, watching as he lifted his chin to a gust of wind, the forceful air thrusting his damp hair up and back.

"The lightning culture has no defined institution of family. No mothers, no fathers. The young are taken to be raised according to their gender and pedigree. Males are raised in a monastery setting of sorts to be warriors and guardians. Non-genders, being born without electrical charge, can assimilate into human society the best. Many of these are assigned mentors to be educated. Your aunt would have been placed as such. She grew up with individuals whose only job was to care for her basic needs as they trained her for physical plane fieldwork. She would have been conditioned to regard humans with indifference, spurning all attachment."

"That's—a lot I didn't know." Indy was taught to regard me without emotion?

An image of Mom's time-hazy face, brown eyes framed by short, black hair, floated through my thoughts, and I swallowed at a pang of bitter sadness. Lightning devvis didn't have a mother or a father? To never have had such a relationship, no, I couldn't imagine how an entire society could be like that.