Bound Book 2

Chapter 32 - The Box

Dmitri

It has only been about two weeks since Sky and I started properly interacting with each other again, and already I can't get enough of her. I never stopped loving her after The Incident or the six months thereafter when she avoided me like the plague. As we spend more time together, I am reminded of those feelings we had when we first met. The intensity of being in each other's company. The attraction and the connection we have outside of the whole mate bond are phenomenal. Even if we weren't mates, I would feel for Sky the way I do. She is an amazing woman.

After last night's tryst at the pool, Sky woke up from a nap, her wriggling in my arms leading to a session of slow lovemaking that thinking about now has me smiling to myself. After that we stayed up for hours while she asked me about my past, things I like and things I don't. Similar to the nights we had spent together in my old house in the pack before she lost her memories.

While she had not expressed the same feelings of love towards me as I did towards her, for her it must be like falling in love with me for the first time. I wanted her to pick me again. I wanted her to want me not because she has to because we are mates and technically still engaged, but because she once again feels the feelings she felt back then.

"So, let's get this over with," Sky says quietly, her hand holding a knife poised above the package lying in front of her on the table.

We were seated at the large table just inside the sliding door downstairs leading onto the deck. The morning sun is slowly rising above the trees, the light silhouetting Sky's frame as I sit opposite her makes her look like an angel.

She gently slices open the tape holding the cardboard flaps in place on the top, her anxiety evident by her increased heart rate.

"I feel nervous," she says with a small laugh, her hand clutching her chest briefly before she pries open the flaps, the tape at the ends ripping the outer box layer as she pulls them open.

She pushes the box flaps open, folding them over as she peers inside. I wait quietly, giving her time to do what she needs to do.

Her small hand disappears into the box, pulling a large brown manilla envelope out which she places on the table next to the box. Next, she pulls out a medium-sized object covered in a piece of colorful material, hessian rope wrapped around it to keep it in place. She rests this on the table beside the manilla envelope before she reaches in, bringing out the last of the items in the box as she sets the empty box aside on the floor.

The last item is a small hand-carved wooden box, about the size of the palm of my hand and about four inches tall. It has small runes carved into the wood which in turn have been intricately painted with various colors, the detail a work of art in itself.

She places it down on the table eyeing everything as her hand lies limply on the table. She looks at everything deciding what to tackle first.

She takes the manilla envelope, unwinding the small string that keeps the opening sealed. She pulls out a couple of sheets of paper, a handwritten letter by the looks of it.

"Some coffee?" I ask her, getting up to give her some space.

"Yes please," she says, not even looking at me as I walk away.

Ten minutes later, I return, two coffees in hand. Sky is staring at the letter in her hands, her glassy eyes indicating she is on the verge of tears.

Putting the coffee down on the table I sit down next to her, placing a comforting hand on her arm as she looks at me. Two tears escape her lids, running slowly down her freckled cheeks as they fall on the dining table.

"It's from my parents. They wrote me a letter. It's like they knew something bad was going to happen, Dmitri," she says, as she sobs, tears running freely down her cheeks now.

"T-They said that...that someone was following them. They saw men outside the house a couple of times, guys dressed in combat boots and with a symbol on their pockets. What if whoever was following them caused their accident?" She asks, in between tears, her hand swiping her cheeks.

"Did they describe the symbol?" I ask her, suspicion forming in my mind and confirmed with her next words.

"It's like an inverted triangle with wings overlapping it." The Guardians symbol. Hunters.

"Hunters." That one word has her eyes going large, her face distraught.

"What if they were killed because the hunters wanted me? Oh my word, what if I'm the reason for that accident and their deaths," she says, standing up abruptly, her legs pushing the chair back so quickly it topples over.

"Okay, you're panicking, and we don't know anything for sure." I stand up, grabbing her shoulders to pull her close to me. Her shoulders shake as she starts crying harder, her sobs breaking my heart.

We stand like that for at least five minutes, her crying subsiding until she is just sniffing and hiccupping.

"Your shirt. I'm sorry Dmitri." She pulls away from me, her head ducked as she pats the wet patch on my shirt.

"My nose is running. I look like a wreck, give me a second." With that, she rushes off. I watch her retreat up the stairs and to our room.

Sitting back down I sip on my coffee, watching a hawk soaring high in the sky and then slowly dipping as it makes its way down, landing on the tip of a tree far off in the distance. Its wings flutter before settling by its side.

A hawk, a hunter of a different kind. My mind goes back to the hunters who seem to have been a part of Sky's life long before any of us knew what she was. Had they known she was different? Had they been looking for the key with long red hair and freckles even back then? Andreas' event tonight might be exactly the thing we needed to get answers.

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