Blue Promises
~
Cadence
~
Trigger warning: Mentions of rape/assault.
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The knock that sounded from Cadence's door was the last thing she expected this early in the morning.

But she wasn't a fool as to who loomed on the other side of the door.

Grumbling to herself, Cadence forced her feet into her combat boots and stormed over to the door, throwing it open. "What?"

Rexton's raised fist flashed into a wave, his lips shaping into a boyish grin. "Good morning! I heard you wake up a few hours ago, I could tell by your heart rate. I didn't want to disturb you so early in the morning, I wanted to give you time to wake up."

Cadence didn't hide her bewildered puzzlement. "That's weird and creepy."

"It is?" Rexton's lips curved downward. "Of course, it is. I apologise."

Scanning him up and down, Cadence frowned at his sophisticated attire. It wasn't clothing she was used to seeing with a long sweater meeting his slender hands and black trousers. His tousled brown hair with toils of gold shone through, aligning finely with his amber eyes and a fresh face that reminded Cadence of spring.

That was what he reminded Cadence of. Baby deers full of life and energy, abloom flowers needing to be watered like his heart craved the blood of another and — Cadence wanted to be the blistering and bone-chilling winter that iced her surroundings, freezing him out.

"You're lanky," Cadence observed.

Bewildered, Rexton looked down at himself and then back at Cadence, lip quirking. "I'm—"

"Like me." Cadence finished.

She immediately regretted that.

Rexton's eyes enriched with an emotion Cadence wouldn't feed into and she slammed the door in his face.

After making the call to Erisa, requesting for her to come to the pack without a mention as to why, Cadence promised she would explain everything to her in person. Cadence left Accalia to her mate to tell the news.

All that was left to do was for Erisa to come, which would be sometime this morning.

After the call, Cadence slept all through the day and night until she rolled out of bed this morning — forgetting for a moment about the hybrid.

She wasn't about to accept this fate, so forgetting and fighting against it would have to do.

The doorknob rattled and Rexton popped his head in, scanning the room. "We were talking." He mumbled to her and slipped inside.

Cadence rounded on him with a sneer. "Now we're not."

"You aren't wearing the plaster anymore, when did you take it off?" Rexton questioned softly.

Cadence's hand instinctively cupped her neck and her nostrils flared. Of all questions, he could let slip. "As soon as the bite mark wasn't on my neck like a brand mark."

Rexton flinched his head to the side and nervously bunched his hands into his pockets. "Why do you sound angry with me?"

Cadence stood straighter than before. "Because I can be, that a good excuse?"

Rexton looked as if he had been slapped painfully hard. "An excuse, but not a good one. I said I was sorry and I will tell you that every day because I feel it every single minute of every day. I want to be your friend and you said we could be."

Cadence drowned out his words of conviction, traced with guilt and emotion — she couldn't bear it. "Well, I lied."

"You can't do that," Rexton said sharply and pointed to her then at his chest as if he had a heart beating beneath the skin and bones. "To anyone else, but not me."

"I don't know you!" Cadence remarked fiercely.

All Cadence knew was his lineage to the lycans and the deadness he had from vampires. His brothers, his true nature and nothing more. She wanted it kept that way, not strings to connect or ties to bind to each other.

"But you're angry at me," Rexton said.

A brush of metal stained against Cadence's skin and she didn't care for the repercussions.

"BECAUSE I HATE YOU! FOR WHAT YOU DID AND WHAT YOU WILL DO!"Cadence grabbed her knife from her boot and hurled it at his head.

Rexton caught the knife at the blade, his eyes widening in shock and clasped the metal so tightly it snapped in two.

"But you said—" Rexton stammered out, letting the snapped knife clatter to the ground and met her eyes once more.

Cadence raked a hand through her tied-up hair, realising she would need another weapon after that. "I lied."

What kind of creature was this? One that was stronger than lycans, stronger than his brothers but so riddled in himself he couldn't handle a meaningless lie?

A set of feet surged across the hall and Accalia nearly flew into the room, her mane of hair whirling around her. "Cadence—"

She looked between the two, eyes widening in a whirlwind of accusations and assumptions. All that pitted to the boy across from Cadence.

Accalia's brows knitted together as she bit back a biting snap. "Erisa just arrived with her uncle. Rexton ... I think you should leave Cadence alone for the time being."

Rexton nodded and stumbled away from Cadence.

He had nothing else to say and Cadence was glad he left without another meek, pathetic apology.

~

The remaining Jaeger family could almost pass as father and daughter with their ink-black hair and arctic eyes. They weren't much for slaying, but knowledge of weaponry and the history of the supernatural was their field of interest.

Cadence despised reading, she found it to be a waste of time, but not Accalia, not Erisa and most definitely not Frankie.

They soaked everything in like a sponge, drinking in the words from a page and storing it in their minds for safekeeping.

From what Cadence observed in her best friend's room, Erisa liked to read the classics: Pride & Prejudice, Anna Karenina and Dracula.

She assumed Erisa's love for reading derived from her guardian, Frankie, because that was all he ever did.

Erisa smoothed down her black leather jacket as if she was cold, but she wasn't. She pulled it over her pale wrists and balanced on the heels of her boots, watching her uncle take in the old manor with his glasses hanging lowly on his nose.

Erisa always wore eyeliner beneath the rim of her eyes, the black ink aligning the blueness of her orbs and when she met Cadence from at the top of the stairs, they looked bitter.

"Well, I'm glad you're alive, Larren," Erisa said sarcastically. "You didn't visit."

Cadence forced a smile, feeling it in her chest and faked a cough as she came downstairs. "Barely. And I know, I'm sorry."

"We were worried sick about you, kid. Need to stop being in danger all the damn time." Frankie complained and wrapped an arm around Cadence's shoulders briefly before pulling away. "This is the place, huh? Rather old, isn't it? How long has the manor been around?"

"Just over one hundred years," Lycus explained smoothly, appearing from the hall and Accalia beckoning at his side. "It was left to me."

Accalia shifted away from Lycus's incoming arm and Cadence knew exactly why. Her cousin was still seeing the bloody Alpha and not the man who had grown to care for her. The sides of him couldn't merge because Accalia couldn't differentiate the two without comparing the other.

Frankie's pale face remained neutral, peering at the Alpha and then at Accalia, lip-twitching. "I see, you must be Lycus Fenris, I haven't met you but have heard a lot about you."

Frankie stretched out his hand and waited for Lycus to take it, one second, two seconds and he did.

A smile flashed across Lycus's face as he greeted the hunter with a nod, "I don't know much about the Jaeger family, but I know you're closely linked to the Larrens."

Frankie fumbled with his glasses and said, "We like to keep a low profile. And we go way back, don't we, Accalia? How are you?"

Accalia smiled brightly and embraced Frankie like a distant relative. "I'm good, I hope the travel was quick and easy."

"Would have been better if I didn't let that one drive." Frankie gestured to his niece and Cadence shouldered Erisa harshly.

"Still a crap driver," Cadence mumbled.

"At least I have a car."

Cadence rolled her eyes, having nothing to fall back on with that and stepped up toward everyone. "Can we get everything speeding along? There have been wolves from other packs spying and attacking and an oracle saying all kinds of things."

And a hybrid she wanted to avoid.

The sooner she could get this over with, the better. Although she would bet money that she didn't have, he was hearing the currents of her heartbeat.

"My pack will be overrun by hunters," Lycus sighed and motioned everyone around the table to take a seat.

Cadence was stuck between Frankie and Erisa, wanting the presence of hunters at her shoulders and Accalia sat in the middle, lost in thought and not wanting the company of Lycus at her ear who sat at the end of the table.

Not wanting to drown in an unneeded silence, Cadence cut to the chase and waved a hand over to Alpha of Alphas and then to her best friend. "Lycus wants you to spy on Cole Canus."

The silence drew out in a long and winding tune.

"What?" Erisa questioned, appalled.

Before Cadence could come up with a response, Accalia leant forward, stretching her arms to Erisa in a reassuring gesture and said, "You don't have to if you don't want to."

Cadence flickered her sights on Erisa to find her stone-faced and ridden of any emotion to show itself.

"But, we'll explain to you why we want you to," Lycus added darkly.

The first detail of their explanation was that Cole, the delirious and diabolical Alpha bound to his lycan side just so happened to turn human. Cadence sat back as Accalia brought up the details of the presence Cole received and how little they knew about them. Mentions of the claws, the memories and the very little humanity Cole possessed and how it corrupted into an obsession toward a certain type of woman.

Accalia brushed over the last part and Cadence knew why — she wouldn't know how to word it either.

"Can't you just fight him?" Erisa angled her question to Lycus without looking at him.

Lycus grinned maliciously. "I intend to, but I can't do that when the life of my mate hangs in the balance and an oracle believes there's more information we can learn about him."

"What more information could you possibly learn about him? He's an animal, a being wanting to conform to a life of primal behaviour. What else is there to find out?" Frankie questioned wisely.

"The oracle, Vaela, believes there's more we need to know. I want to tear him from the inside outside and the only way to do that is by using your niece as a spy." Lycus stated simply.

"Why me?"

Cadence cringed and noticed Accalia react the same way.

"You look like someone he once knew. His mate. He often turns human when he finds a particular female that resembles her: black hair, blue eyes and pale skin." Lycus answered.

Cadence wondered if Erisa would ever want to look in the mirror again after that.

In her seat, Erisa stiffened and a flinch flickered across her face as her eyes became a blue mist. "What's this going to lead to? Because if it leads to my death —"

"It won't." Cadence snapped quickly and sneered at Lycus, regretting ever calling her friend for this. "It won't, Erisa. You don't have to do this. This is just to get information and see what the oracle can find out. If you do this, we'll have me to watch over you. You'll be safe, nothing will happen to you."

Nothing will, Cadence rang out in her head and many times after that. Nothing will happen to her.

Erisa shot from her chair and pinned a stare to Cadence, jerking her head toward the front door. "I want to talk to you. Outside."

Cadence nodded and followed her outside of the house, ignoring the eyes following them.

The weather was crisp and neutral, the wind as welcoming as the sunlight. Erisa turned to Cadence and she swiped a hand against her eyes, smudging her eyeliner.

"Erisa, you don't have to do this. You can walk away right now, this isn't your fight."

Erisa's gaze fell to Cadence's neck and she cleared her throat, all chokes of incoming tears gone. "The plaster is gone."

"Stop deflecting." Cadence snapped.

"I'm just observing."

"And I'm observing that you can't do this. I shouldn't have called you, it was a bad idea. Let's forget about it." Cadence muttered quickly.

Erisa smiled distantly and scrapped her boots across the deck. "Still protecting me after everything."

The two bodies of the boys Cadence stabbed and killed two years ago floated into her mind and she shrugged nonchalantly. "Why wouldn't I?"

Erisa shook her head and strode off to the railing, peering at the landscape in front of them. "You don't need to, though. I still don't know why you killed those two boys for hurting me that night. You just wrapped me up in your blanket, asked for their names and the next day they were dead."

Cadence clutched the railing and hung back, stretching out her tense arms.

"I was scared to call Uncle Frankie, I thought he'd be mad at me for going to a party ..."

"So you came to my house and acted like you slept over there. Erisa," Cadence stressed, Tristan and William were on a hunt that night and it was just Cadence and Accalia at the house. "I know, I know."

Erisa laughed lightly and said, "I know you know, I told you and never told another."

Cadence told her cousin. Through hushed whispers, Accalia saw Cadence help Erisa wash the blood away between her legs. Erisa was doused in rain with blood painting the most delicate parts of her body.

"Cadence, what are you going to do?" Accalia pleaded as they both stood outside of Cadence's room where Erisa slept restlessly.

"I'm going to take care of this, don't follow me and watch over her. I'll be back in the morning."

Cadence claimed two needlepoint knives to her sides and left to exact death.

They were easy to find, Cadence recalled. After the pain they inflicted on Erisa in the woods, leaving her pained and battered, they went back to the party.

Cadence lured them out from the festivities of booze and drugs by placing the tips of the needles on their lower backs. She threatened to stab them right then and there. They were led outside shortly after that.

Cadence reminisced on the knives she carried two years ago plunging into the skin and through bone — continuously stabbing until there was nothing else to do but watch them bleed out.

After puncturing holes in their bodies, barely alive, she tossed them into a river after carving what they were across their foreheads. Cadence knew they would wash up at the bank of the river where people fished. Their deaths wouldn't be a mystery, but a fatal finality.

"Because you're my friend," Cadence muttered plainly.

They never found out who did it, even as it spread like wildfire across town and rippled a torrent storm across the media. They had no one to blame, they chalked it up to someone exacting revenge with no traces of who that could have been.

"You were sixteen, Cadence."

"And you were seventeen. They were older, stronger and I wished I made their deaths longer." Cadence's fingers knotted into fists and she wished to punch something, punch someone.

"You're not going to do this," Cadence sneered, wagging her head side to side as every single unsettling memory of the bloodshed she invoked two years ago paved the way. "Not after last time, you survived and that's all that matters. But I won't allow it again."

Cadence wouldn't pass Cole to be a rapist, he was as heinous and revolting as they came. If he wasn't that, he was still a predator that preyed on the vulnerable and weak.

"That's not your decision to make," Erisa said gravely.

Cadence snapped her head at Erisa, eyes narrowing. "The hell it is. That cannibalistic murderer isn't getting anywhere near you. What if he eats you?"

Erisa cracked and laughed but suddenly went serious, forbidding as she said, "He harmed Accalia, he wants to hurt you all. Don't forget, the Thrax siblings want you dead still. I should do this. I'm going to."

She wasn't going to back down and when Erisa came to that point, who was Cadence to stop her?

The idea of breaking her leg or dying her hair blonde came to Cadence's mind, but Erisa would use crutches, and Erisa would dye her hair back to its black roots.

Erisa wouldn't back down if it was a fight worth fighting for.

"Your funeral," Cadence said after a moment and ignored the calculating glint playing across Erisa's eyes.

"Trust me, I'll be attending your funeral first before you attend mine." Erisa retorted and stepped toward her, passing a device to Cadence's cold hand. "Here's your phone, you didn't come by like I thought you would."

"Accalia was protective after ..." Cadence trailed off. If he could hear her heartbeat, could he hear the words spoken about him?

"Speaking of him, where is he?" Erisa asked curiously.

Cadence sighed, a cloud of fog swarming around her face. "Another thing I gotta tell you," Cadence bared her teeth to Erisa in an attempt at a smile, but it didn't work. Not when it rotted her insides with distaste.

~

Tried to edit as best as I could.

I tried to handle Erisa's situation as delicately as I could even though it was a horrible situation. With how protective Cadence has been with her over the years, I think this is Erisa's way of trying to protect Cadence. :(

— Caranyx.