Moon Bound - PART I & II - (Book 1 in the Original ROYAL HOWLERS Duology) ✔

T W E N T Y - T H R E E ~ His Secret

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Sebastian had emptied the entire pot of hot chocolate by the time Eleni got out of the shower. Not a drop was left, and when she stepped into the kitchen---having thought of grabbing just one more cup---Eleni frowned in disappointment. 

Scrunching her nose, Eleni looked over her shoulder to eye the man that was wandering around her living room with those silver eyes of his taking in the different photographs hung up on the wall. Her eyes glanced down at the coffee table where half of it was covered in mugs that, she assumed, Sebastian drank all the hot chocolate out of. 

She'd only been in there for ten minutes!

Frowning, she mentally noted that she did tell him to help himself. He seemed to have enjoyed the hot beverage for someone who didn't enjoy anything sweet very much. Perhaps it was a selective thing. 

Eleni sighed, grinning to herself as she walked into the living room and stood in the middle of it. Her arms were crossed under her chest, watching the way Sebastian scrunched his nose at the picture of Olivia and herself dressed in Halloween costumes from last year. With Olivia's costume of Edward Scissorhands and a bored expression on her face while standing beside a beaming Eleni dressed as a penguin, Eleni wondered if maybe Sebastian couldn't understand why. 

"It's for a human holiday," she finally spoke, biting her lip from a smile when she accidentally startled him. 

He turned to look at her, his brow raised as his eyes looked her up and down before meeting her gaze and frowned, "What holiday?" before staring at the picture again. 

Eleni walked up beside him, tilting her head as she smiled at her best friend's bored face from being hugged close to. 

"Halloween. It's the one day of the year that everyone---erm, humans at least---get to dress up like someone or something else for a whole night. There are lots of celebrations in the form of parties and trick-or-treating." 

She looked at him when he stared at her. 

"That's mainly for children to go to door-to-door and say 'Trick-or-Treat' in order to get a few pieces of candy." 

Sebastian nodded slowly, a small sign of understand she assumed, then he frowned, "We celebrate birthdays, and weddings, but that's about it, really." 

"Oh..." Her brows shot up, admitting that she thought he was completely unfamiliar to the human world. 

Sebastian shook his head, pursing his mouth to the side and revealing that dimple Eleni's eyes were drawn to. 

"Not entirely. We have community members who we call 'runners' who run through the forest and into this town to scan its surroundings. They are also responsible for some of the ways of the ways we live because they observed the humans and then brought back their ways to us." 

Sebastian shook his head, huffing, "Makes me so confused as to how my kind could live so similar to yours..." his eyes fell on hers. "And yet we remain isolated from one another." 

Eleni remained quiet, pondering his words, then she asked, "Do you no longer find humans untrustworthy...? Or... Or odd?"

"That's impossible now."

"Why?"

Sebastian's jaw tightened, tearing his eyes from hers to stare at the picture of her instead. He stared at the way the photograph of her captured her head tilting to the side and her free arm that wasn't wrapped around her friend's shoulders, was thrown up into the air in excitement.