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Chapter 11 - The Past, Loved Twice, New Start (Kaden POV)

A/N: NOT EDITED.

Chapter 11 - The Past, Loved Twice, New Start (Kaden POV)

Four children. Mine. The hurt Etta has had to put up with, the decisions she's made on her own, and all I see is strength. "I named them, Reese and Morgan, their last names are Romano," she tells me and the part of me that wants to get angry that for the time I've come to her, from when she started calling out to me, that she's kept them a secret that part is shut down by the glare John shoots me and the simple fact that she did what she had to do.

I had done so much; we had loved each other twice. I can't remember it, but I can feel it. That ease and comfort, it's as though my body - my heart - remembers what my mind cannot. The Elders, they have done this to me. The research, the changed that they forced upon my body.

"How did I end up back in North Carolina?" I ask John and Etta. Information overload be damned, I'd reach my limit. "Why didn't you just bring me back?" I asked John specifically. "You're supposed to be looking out for Etta-"

"Oh no, he didn't know that we were seeing each other, I met you in London, I was - you played me." Etta stands right up to me, cutting off the verbal ass kicking I was going to unleash onto John.

"I didn't know it was you Kaden, until after I had given birth to Reese and Morgan," I frowned, "I - I didn't tell you?" I asked of John that gap in my memory more frustrating.

"Etta, I didn't know at first, but I had my suspicions, so I confronted Kaden." John speaks.

"As far as he knew, Etta, he - his plan-" John stammers too much and there is a flicker of pain in his eyes.

"The first time you saw Etta when you were Reese, you remembered her Kaden, you told me that seeing her brought back all those memories. You - your plan was to hurt her, that's why you approached her as Reese. You remembered that you two went to the Florida Summer program, but Kaden, what you remembered was Etta just ignoring you until she went missing... you had no idea that the reason you lost her was because of what you told her, and the things she overheard you telling some of the guys you roomed with."

Shame envelopes my whole being, I stare at the ground, wishing it would swallow me whole at this precise moment, but when I look up finally at Etta, I expect to see hate, but I can't find a trace of it.

"When you were a few months into your relationship and I told you what happened, why Etta had vanished and broke off your friendship, you told me that you would come clean, you would tell her that you were in fact Kaden." I nodded.

"So when I was twenty - two?"

"We were together for two years."

"The second two years I can't remember?"

Etta and John nodded in agreement.

"So you've lost me twice." It's a statement, a fact.

"We are mates, but with my Fae side, like I said, it didn't full develop until you were already gone, John and I, we knew that if we overloaded you, that you could end up shocked into being Feral, remaining that way... so I started calling out to you when I gained the ability to do so," Etta explained.

There was more, so much more I wanted to know, had to say things I wanted to apologize for because despite knowing I had these qualities inside of me, that I had hurt her more times than I ever should, Etta still wanted me. The monster inside that the experiments created and the boy she fell in love for when we didn't know any better.

John lifts a brow at my silence, his head cocks to the side. I know that face. He has a theory about something... before Etta can turn to him and read his face as well; a blank mask is put in place.