Chapter 383: Extraordinary Accident
"I suppose that is encouraging," August nodded to herself.
To think that one of her ancestors mated with a lycan or a fae before all of this and actually started her down this path was mind-boggling.
"You are the product of a thousand loves," Nedra smiled to herself. "I heard that somewhere and loved it. It is so true."
"I hate to be cynical, but that is not always the case," August muttered. "It is not always love."
"I suppose you are right," Nedra’s shoulders sagged a little while a small smile remained on her lips. "Still, it is romantic to imagine it was the case."
Her thoughts went to Seth who carried her heart with him wherever he went. He would always have it, and she didn’t regret giving it to him—even if they were in this impossible situation where they couldn’t be together—where he couldn’t even know his children existed. She shuddered thinking what his reaction would be... to realize that she had been keeping something so huge from him all these years. It wasn’t fair to him, was it? But his knowledge could only put their children’s lives in danger as well as his own. His ignorance was for the best for everyone.
"What is inner and outer containment?" August asked. "What is the difference?"
She remembered how Ry and his two friends mentioned alyko disappearing from outer containment. Was Nedra aware of it? And if she found out, would she try to put them back? Since Nedra helped Zagan, August wasn’t sure where she fell in that regard. But she didn’t seem to be bringing August back to Zagan, either. Perhaps that was only because her concern over Selah and Sage took precedence at the moment.
"There are alyko who are more powerful and less powerful. They don’t all require the same security precautions. Zagan doesn’t want their powers to breach the walls of containment and put everyone at risk here—or more specifically his precious island at risk—so I devised two separate levels. Outer containment is for those who pose less risk and therefore, they have more freedom," she explained.
"What is inner containment like?" August asked, imagining the biosafety levels at the Center for Disease Control and people entering inner containment here with yellow hazmat suits as if the alyko were some kind of disease or alien life form.
"Maybe I can show you," Nedra offered. "There are four wings to the facility. One each dedicated to earth, air, fire, water. That is outer containment. Inner containment is obscured from the outer area by a thick stone wall, but the rest of their rooms are made of glass so that the sun shines in. They are built around the atrium in the center of the facility where a great tree has grown. There is ivy and water falls... I tried my best to make it as lovely as I could given the constraints I had to work with."
"They have no privacy?" August asked, immediately noticing the issue.
Nedra sighed miserably. "No. I had no choice in that matter."
"Why do you help him, Nedra?" August asked. "What does he have on you? Why are you free out here like this when everyone else is kept... contained?"
"He knows I won’t leave. I am invested in making it better for the alyko here than it was before. It is nowhere near perfect, but it is so much better," she explained yet again to another person as well as to her guilty heart.
"Let’s just get them out of here. We can help each other," August insisted. "If you created this place, you can help me get them out."
"You have already done half of that yourself," Nedra chuckled. "I’m not sure you will need my help."
August stopped walking, and Nedra turned to see the confused look on the girl’s face.
"What do you mean?" August asked.
"The alyko who vanished right after you got here. That was you, wasn’t it?" she asked, surprised that August seemed unaware of it.
"You know about that?" August asked. "I heard some lycans talking about how they disappeared, but I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t do anything."
"Are you sure?" Nedra’s head cocked to the side. "I can’t imagine it could be anything else. That would be some coincidence. I don’t know what could have breached the outer containment like that. It has never happened in all the years we have been here. But then you and the Winter showed up and..." Nedra’s hands imitated a bomb exploding. "Poof."
August thought about everything that had happened while she had been there, and there was nothing that jumped out as being an obvious event where the alyko could have been freed...
"Could I have done it on accident?" she asked, looking at her hands and recalling how she had bloodied Penelope’s after throwing her against the windows of the infirmary.
"I can’t imagine that would be possible. That would be an extraordinary amount of power. And why would it manifest in that specific way without the user’s knowledge?" Nedra muttered, thinking it over. How in the world had it happened if not on purpose?
"The only thing I did was accidentally throw Penelope against a wall," August told her. "I didn’t even have to try. I was just thinking it, and it happened."
"Perhaps you are more powerful because you are mated to a lycan after all," Nedra thought aloud, considering what Penelope had said. "I still don’t understand it, but then no alyko I am aware of has ever been mated to a lycan so there is no precedent for comparison."
Her green eyes darted back to the twin suns sparkling in August’s. "You may just be fae after all, which may also explain that level of power. I wonder how you would do in the trials that determine what element you are bonded with."
"I am not taking any trials like some guinea pig of the vampire’s," August growled.
"Not even if it helps you learn more about yourself?"
"And that is something I require Zagan for?" August scoffed in response. "He can’t tell me who I am."
"What else were you thinking about when you threw Penelope?" Nedra asked, moving on from the suggestion. If she had thrown Penelope with a mere thought, perhaps her thoughts would give them a clue as to what happened.
