The Protection

Nineteen

We drove in a heavy, awkward silence until he parked in front of my red brick apartment building. I grabbed for my phone, wallet, and house keys from their spot in his cup holder, ready to make a run for it, but Kyler was faster. In one swift movement, he shoved the truck into park and unbuckled his seatbelt, grabbing my face in his large hands, and leaned across the center console so our faces were only a few inches apart. I tried not to cower back my seat, startled by his intensity.

"You have to promise me something," he breathed, his eyes locking mine. "You have to promise me you won't let anyone know what you can see. What you can do. You have to be good and act like everyone else," he insisted with an intense fervor, so much so that moisture began to build in the corners of his eyes. I removed his hands from my face, peeling one finger at a time slowly away from my skin. I couldn't focus from the way his hands burned my cheeks with fire.

"Okay, I promise," I muttered, blowing him off.

"I mean it," he insisted. "I want you to have the right to choose. I don't want you to be forced to be what I am." I flashed back to the image of him wishing he could choose his own path at graduation, that his purpose was of his own volition. I didn't understand why he thought The Protection would want me. It was so painfully obvious I was normal. He had made that much clear to his mother in his living room. I was a human that had the luxury of making up my own mind.

"Okay. I promise," I answered with more emotion and placed my hand on the door handle. I hesitated before turning back to him. "Who is Alana?" I asked, gritting my teeth, unable to help myself. "Is she your girlfriend?" I prayed he would say she wasn't, but his hands gripped the steering wheel and his knuckles turned pale.

"No," he said and I exhaled, all of my worry for nothing. "She is my fiancée," he said plainly. It felt like he had kicked me square in my gut, knocking the wind right out of me.

"You're engaged?" I croaked, my voice coming out twisted.

"More like promised." His voice dripped with bitterness. "Alana is from a prominent line of Protectors as well. Of royal Russian lineage. Our families bred us to be married and carry on the blood lines before we were even born." I paused, absorbing the enormity of that expectation. The inability to choose who you loved was foreign to me. "Don't get me wrong, she's beautiful and wonderful and caring. She's a Seer like you," he said. My eyes snapped back to his.

"What do you mean I'm a 'Seer'?" I inquired, my eyebrows raised almost to my hairline. He moved his hand slowly, unsure, until it rested below my collarbone, above my heart.

"It's that feeling you get when your heart races and your stomach drops. When you know something is wrong. You can't explain it, but you're certain that life is about to get dark. With some training and as you advance in your abilities, the feeling morphs into predicting what will happen; into seeing visions before they happen. First in dreams and then in real time. The only exception is that we cannot see other Protectors' paths, only humans. It was the one loophole our ancient ancestors put into place with their seeing abilities to keep us from spying on one another and relaying our future actions to our enemies."

"Protectors can turn on their own?" I asked in disbelief.

"Occasionally," Kyler answered shortly, his lips turning downward. My eyes glazed over. This was so much information to take in, I felt at a loss of where to start. So my mind focused at the beginning, the night on the hill with Peter and the chill I felt. I had known something wasn't right, but I had never seen him try to rape me. If I had, I would never just stand there, allowing myself to become his victim. I pushed the large door open and jumped out of the truck, slamming the door shut without another word. Kyler was wrong. I wasn't a Seer, I wasn't special at all. I never had been. The sooner he realized that, the sooner Kyler would be gone. He would move on, back to his normal life, and to things that were most important. Like Protecting people and loving his beautiful, wonderful, gifted fiancée.