The Number Of Six

Chapter 20

That night, I looked for Keenai, I could really use a friend to talk to. It wasn't hard to find him, Keenai was home playing games on his computer. I know I shouldn't have been surprised by the fact they even had computers here, but I kind of was. This place seemed so far away from the real world, from technology that it seemed misplaced.

''Hi, geek.'' I announced myself coming in. He gave me a quick glance over his shoulder and smiled before looking back to the screen. There was a gun in the middle, dead people lay on the floor and the screen moved constantly. I didn't know how he could follow everything moving that fast.

''Wait ten more minutes, I'm almost done.'' He said, his tongue between his teeth like he actually needed to make a physical effort. I sighed and laid down on his bed, looking to the ceiling with glow-in-the-dark stickers on it. These must've been put there when he was a kid, almost everyone once had them. Except for me, when I was little, there didn't exist such a thing. When I was afraid in the dark, Elijah or Rebekah used to take me outside, in the cold dark night, to point at the moon.
They used to say ''Look, see that big round thing? It's called the moon. It will always shine and give light so you're never truly in the dark''. We then sat down, me on one of their laps until I fell asleep and they brought me back to bed. I never dared waking up my mother when I was scared because my father slept in the same room and he'd get mad if he couldn't sleep the night through. 

I remember one time when I was little, I'd heard a wolf howl at the moon. I had no idea what the sound was back then, so I started to cry and crawled to my parents part of the wooden house. Right before I reached the blanket that was used as a door, Damon pulled me backward, told me to never go in there and be quiet. 

But I was only three years old, I wanted my mother so I cried harder and woke everyone in the house, probably the whole village. The rage on my father's face when he accused Damon, only ten years old, of making me cry which had woken him up, is something I've never forgotten. My dad loved me and for some reasons, he didn't like my other siblings. 

He hit Damon, kissed me goodnight and went back to sleep, my mother just waiting in the bed with tears forming in her eyes. She kept herself strong but I know now, she had trouble seeing her son being treated like that. A pillow was thrown on my face, and I jumped up, pulled out of my memories and gasped. 

''Don't you ever do that again!'' I yelled. My heart was racing and Keenai was just laughing his head off. I threw one back at him but missed. He tried to say ''I'm sorry'' but he couldn't stop laughing long enough to say the three words in a row.

''Ass.'' But seeing him laugh so hard, I started as well. After some small talk and catching up, I told him about Rogan and his 'rules'. I of course also had to tell him about Willow but I trusted Keenai. He looked a little worried though when I told him I had had contact with her but didn't really react to it. ''Rogan likes you.'' Keenai said, ''He is in love with you,'' he stretched the word 'love'. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head.

''C'mon, be serious with me! I have no clue what to do.'' All of a sudden, I confessed everything to him, all my feelings, all my longings, everything I had been holding up because I didn't have the feeling someone would listen to them, until now.

''I want to speak to Willow again, I want to see my siblings, I want to be here, with you and Jake but I don't want to be with Conchobar or Rogan for that matter, since he is acting extremely weird, I like Abby and I don't want to betray everyone but I just want..'' And I stopped because I had to confess, I didn't know what I wanted. To get out of here and get to my normal life, being a prisoner of five vampires? Stay here, never see my siblings again and be a prisoner of wolves? And then I knew what I wanted.

''I just want to be free, Keenai. I want to be my own boss. '' He raised an eyebrow, sat down next to me and sighed. ''That's a lot to want, seeing your situation.'' I gave him a look that said: are you kidding me? He shrugged and gave me a sly smile.