Blue Blood and Belgium Chocolate

|17| The Big Bad Intruder

A much needed update. To all my American readers, please stay safe and vigilant at this time. It's 2020, racism shouldn't exist and I hope that all the Blacks that have been affected will be treated with fairness and a lack of prejudice. No race is superior. We are all human and our blood bleeds red.

PRINCE ADALIZ

Looking for a heart of Gold

THE LIGHT OF dawn lands on my face. Daegan and I are resting in his room. He sits upright on his bed. When, I came here, I'd noticed that the bed had been bare and his duvet and pillows on the floor. 

I want to think he didn't sleep there, but it's hard convincing myself that he didn't.

 The light falls on Daegan's face, familiar yet also unfamiliar to me.

My brother hadn't slept on the floor when he left, he used to only be able to sleep on the bed. 

We were alone at last. The whole night had flown by in a mess of checks with Daegan, Murielle, and just woken up Captain Nathaniél. Our parents and siblings had been shipped off to the bunker.

I would have gone under with Daegan if not for the small problem that the assassin was Daegan's former friend. 

As though sensing my thoughts, Daegan says "Dylan doesn't just do something half-hearted, if he wanted to kill your fiancé, she would be dead."

We hadn't found any other intruders, everyone in the guard had been with us for longer than a year, no one that stood out. The rest of the Palace staff would have to be examined. 

"Then who's he after?" I ask.

"He said it was a warning," Daegan says again. "What could he be warning me about?" He rose up from his seat, pacing, his voice almost in a growl. "How could this have happened to him?"

"Have you contacted anyone else in Quadrant 4?" I ask.

"I tried, unreachable." 

I feel his stress, his agitation but I don't feel his urgency. He's pacing the room. He wasn't like this before. Then again, the situation is now personal. The situation warranted a gun. The situation nearly murdered my fiancé. 

But the man has left, the guards are vigilant and my Fiancé is safe. Everything was fine for the night. He wouldn't strike back so quickly. I want to have some rest. But, I can't. Not unless, Daegan and I were in the bunker together. 

"Could he be sent to kill you?" I voice out. I don't like the thought, it makes me dizzy with worry. 

Daegan shakes his head, "I'm dangerous when I'm alert, I'm alert now." He takes a pen and throws it across the room, "we were friends!" It's a shout, a plea. 

I don't like to think about Daegan's days in the military. I hate remembering what life is like without him. It's always been Daegan and I together. Seeing him now is an acute piercing memory that in that decade there's been other people he's cared about. Other brothers. 

Enough to make him shake and rage. 

He takes another pen from his desk, throwing it, until he's taken the container of stationary and throwing it across the room. The sound reverberates in the silence. I don't move from where I sat on his desk. I watch.

 He pulls his hair, and crouches on the ground. "I think," he says softly "I need to be alone."

It's been a long night, I try to rationalize. Even, I'm tired. My feet were throbbing. As hard as I try to rationalize it.