“I know,” Austin smirks, offering no explanation before he walks out of the room, the door slamming shut behind him.
Chapter Fourteen
“Where the fuck do you think you are going?” Maxx asks Landon who opens the closed door and glares over his shoulder at him. Maxx and Landon seem to have forgotten I’m here as they stare at each other, clearly exchanging some kind of conversation that I don’t understand. I’m still trying to process all the new information, and not having a clue how to deal with it. I actually don’t understand most of it, and that scares me. I feel like I’ve dropped into another world since I walked in here.
“Out. You need to explain everything to Ura because this is ridiculous now. I need to get ready to make a promise I don’t want to keep,” Landon snaps, sounding beyond stressed as he rubs his hands over his face.
“Land, we will figure it out,” Maxx says quietly, but it doesn’t sound like he believes himself. “You know being promised means nothing more than protection if you don’t want it to be more.”
“No, we won’t figure it out, but one of us has a chance to be happy here. Don’t mess it up, brother,” Landon says and flashes me a kind, sad smile before walking out. The door shutting seems to echo in the room as I awkwardly look back to Maxx, who runs his hand through his hair as he watches me.
“Landon said you needed me, and I came, despite how much of a dick you are…now explain to me what the hell is going on here because you owe me,” I tell him firmly. Nothing he could tell me would make me more shocked than the fact they are aliens. I knew something was up with them, but this wasn’t what I was expecting.
“I don’t owe you. I could have made the deal without you. Landon was interfering as usual,” Maxx replies, his asshole self coming back in full force.
“Are you going to explain this to me or not?” I ask with a sigh. “Or I’m going to leave, and I won’t be coming back.”
“Sit down,” Maxx demands, and his tone, the way he expects me to do what he asks, annoys me enough to hold my ground, so I cross my arms.
“No, why don’t you sit down?” I reply.
“Do you have to argue with everything I ask you to do?” he asks, crossing his arms like mine and looking close to picking me up and throwing me on the sofa. I ignore the fact that the idea of him doing that is actually kind of hot.
“Well, you have never tried asking me something nicely before...so what do you expect?” I reply with a little smirk that makes his lips tilt up a bit.
“Fine,” he grumbles. “Will you please sit your pretty ass on the sofa?”
“See, that wasn’t too hard to do,” I mutter, and he narrows his eyes on me as I walk around the sofa and sit on the end. Maxx sits on the sofa opposite me, with a small coffee table in the middle of them. Maxx spreads his legs and rests his hands on his knees before sighing.
“This is a long story, one I don’t have a clue how to really explain to someone like you, Freckles,” he says.
“I’ll try to keep up,” I dryly reply, waiting for him to start.
“Okay, so I told you that we are aliens, well that’s only what humans would call us. We are actually a race from another planet, and I can’t tell you our name because you would not be able to understand it or the language, so it’s pointless. We speak through light, only you can’t do that, I don’t think. Our planet was made of true light, like I am as well,” he says rather quickly, and he doesn’t give me much time to process it all.
“Another planet?” I ask, because I don’t even know what to ask about what the true light is or talking through light.
“A lost, very advanced planet…it was destroyed over a hundred years ago after a war broke out, and my race ended up destroying not only our enemy’s world, but our own as well, by accident. The planets were meant to share the true light, but in the end, that is not what happened,” he states, a flash of blue light shimmers across his skin.
“Wait, how old are you then?” I ask.
“Eighteen, Freckles,” he chuckles. “But I will live a lot longer than humans do.”
“So…you weren’t born on this other planet?” I enquire.
“No, my mother was, and she escaped here with my father after the war. I was born, and not long after, my father was killed here,” he says, and I can see it’s a struggle to tell that.
“By who?” I whisper.
“It wasn’t only the light that escaped to the nearest habitable planet, the dark that we fought did as well,” he tells me.
“Like Austin and Cameron?” I ask, and he looks surprised that I picked up on who they are.
“Yes, and like many others,” he states. “There are far more dark than light on Earth. We are outnumbered by your kind.”
“You think I am one of them? Is that why they think they are going to train me?” I ask, waiting for him to say it’s a mistake, and that I’m nothing like them.
“You are half of them. Light and dark both come from the true light, the same power source, but our ancestors have always fought each other. I do not know why your mother didn’t tell you your history, but it is true that you are a half-alien,” he tells me.
“My mums an alien? I’m half alien?” I ask and then laugh until I have to stop, and there is dead silence in the room as Maxx waits for me to process all this. I think back to the last time I saw my mother, my normal mum, in the kitchen. Her long, very light blonde hair was kept up in a bun, her usual suit was all perfectly ironed as she drank her coffee before going to work. Everything about my mum was normal until the day she walked out.
“You’re lying. You have to be,” I say, going with denial as a response.
“Believe what you want, but those guys only made a deal with me because of Landon and you,” Maxx says, shrugging his shoulders before leaning back on the sofa, and stretching his long arms across the back cushions.
“Why Landon? Why would they want a light promised to a dark?” I ask, figuring some of the crazy out and trying to leave the subject of who I am, and who my mother might be, behind.
“Landon is not my biological brother. My mother adopted him, and he is dark, like you. That’s why he was so insistent on being your friend; he has never met one of his own people before, so even a half was a shock for him. Landon doesn’t use his powers, so he couldn’t be sure of who you are,” he states, shocking me a little bit. I know Landon and Maxx look nothing alike, so it shouldn’t be a shock to learn that, but it is.
“Why did you make a deal with them?” I ask.
“For you, for peace and to keep everyone safe. They moved into town last week—and made it clear they were staying. Those dark are running from the same people we are, therefore it makes sense to work together rather than make a big fight that could expose us all,” he says, like it is simple and not scary to think of them all fighting each other.
“I don’t get why you would do anything for me…you hate me,” I state, being selfish and focusing on the only part of that sentence that really hit home.
“You’re part of my soul, whether I like it or not, and that makes you my responsibility to protect,” he replies, his tone suggesting that he really didn’t want to tell me that.
