Alias: The Doyen Series book 1

EPILOGUE (3 months later)

PICTURE: The entrance to the courtyard. 

The sounds of struggle drag me out of my concentration.

I am in my room at the Whitlen home painting a picture of a yellow honeysuckle flower Kayde gave me yesterday to calm my nerves.

Every day for the last 3 months has been hell. Grayson has been using me to conduct "experiments," as he calls them.

These "experiments" include him killing—or almost killing—someone and making me heal them.

Heal this,

heal that.

That is all I have heard for 3 months.

I remember when he first started his little science project. It was right after Aiden and I discovered my ability. We raced home the second we found out. Adeline and Henry did not believe us at first. They thought we had lost our minds.

And then we showed them our proof—Genevieve's diary.

"Where did you get this?" Adeline had asked, her mind still spinning from the earth-shattering information we had just unleashed. Henry only watched over her shoulder in silence.

"It was in Grayson's library upstairs," I answered uneasily. Was I not supposed to know about this diary?

Adeline only seemed more confused. "I...I didn't know we had this."

That was when Grayson decided to make an appearance. "Didn't know we had what, my love?" he asked as he planted a soft, loving kiss on her right cheek. She smiled in response and handed him the diary.

He took it questionably and instantly stopped when he read the name on the front cover. Grayson quickly flipped through the pages

and Adeline instructed him to go to the last page that Genevieve ever wrote. He made a comment about how he was unaware that we had this book, too. I expected him to react the same way Adeline, Henry and Aiden did. To be shocked, to be in disbelief, to not know what to do.

I should have known better.

Grayson took 1 look at Adeline and focused the rest of his attention on me. Smiled his meticulous smile. "Well, love, it looks like we have work to do."

It was 2 days later that he brought the first body to me.

It was a young man—18 or so—with red hair and freckles. Grayson had his friend/companion/minion—whatever he was—bring him in and throw him on the floor in front of me.

Red was beat up: bruises lined his arms, cuts overtook his face, his nose was broken in 2 different places. He was still alive, though barely.

I looked up at Grayson in question. "What the hell?" I almost shrieked. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

Grayson, and who I later learned is a werewolf named Kenny, stared at me like I was incompetent and dumb. I instantly stifled. "Cure him," Grayson ordered simply.

My eyes bulged out of my head like 1 of those squeezable animal keychains. "Are you crazy? I don't know how to cure him! I don't even know how I cured Kai!" I yelled at the 2 of them.

"This is how we are going to find out," my father stated simply.

"By killing everyone we come across?" I argued incredulously.