Indy tensed right before Micah flew into her.

"Stop it! I'm fine."

"He knows you are fine." Alex's voice was surprisingly calm. "This is over who is most deserving of the group position of Alpha."

"You were poisoning her to keep her human," Micah roared.

Indy dumped the binders to catch his fist as it swung for her shoulder. In an impressive feat of strength meeting dexterity for the lanky woman, she redirected the quick motion into a pinwheel, yanking him off his feet. The kitchen table and chairs jumped when his back hit the floor.

"I've raised Aurora as if she were my own. I only did what was necessary." Indy's lavender eyes were savage behind the platinum hair that escaped from steel bobby pins. She shifted into a tense stalk, head low, teeth wet when she bared them, reflecting the kitchen light. "She's mine. You're not taking her away from me."

"Okay, maybe this is about you," Alex said with raised eyebrows.

Together we watched as Micah spun to his feet and sprang with a short growl to tackle his elder cousin before she could react, his movements so fast now they blurred.

The table jumped again, sliding to the left and tipping over chairs as the struggling pair jostled into them. Alex reached behind me for the faucet, turning the water on full force. I swallowed hard when I smelled something like hot metal. The air in the room crackled.

"Onto my back." Alex hoisted me before I could ask why.

I watched with wide eyes as, with a quick dunk of his palm under the running faucet, he brought up a stream of floating water. He suddenly spun us as he made a large circular motion in mid-air. A loud pop sent the kitchen lights bursting, and I started, surprised to see electricity playing brightly over the surface of a giant dome.

Alex put up a shield using the water. The liquid dome surrounded us like we were figurines huddling in a snow globe while Micah's intense electrical anger danced outside.

Together, we flinched when Indy grabbed a chair and swung it high with a twist of her body to where he perched three quarters of the way up on the wall, out of her reach. Apparently those who lacked a gender could neither command lightning nor fly. He backhanded the chair into the kitchen door like it was a stuffed animal, shattering glass and bowing out the middle.

Positioning his feet flat against the wall, he left dents when he pushed off—not to where Indy was, but where he knew she would move to when avoiding the chair. Catching her in a full-on body slam, they flew together into the left side of the kitchen archway, cracking paint and drywall before disappearing into the front room.

More wood splintered underneath somebody's weight when they hit the floor, and I sighed. "Ah c'mon, not the new coffee table."

The next thing to go sounded like the flat screen shattering against the hearth. "So much for the new furniture," I sighed again, beginning to feel depressed as the adrenaline wore off, and we listened to the destruction of the living room set, the one thing that had instilled this place with an impression of home.

Alex's shoulders shrugged under me. "Well, at least some good may come out of all of this now that we know what substance she was giving you."

Easing down from his back when he motioned it was safe to do so, I stood close while I watched him trail his fingers through the side of the liquid dome, breaking it apart. A wave of a hand gestured the water back into the sink, being courteous not to add "water damage" to the list of structural grievances. Holy cheese and crackers, who was going to pay to fix all of this? It looked like a rampaging bear had broken in. Although the insurance adjustor would probably question the fact that the backdoor was bowed out, not in.

"What good could come from this?" I asked, my gaze going to the broken door and light fixtures.

"I presume that you're no longer lactose intolerant. I think the milk slipped to you was a test of this, which you clearly passed." He offered me an encouraging smile that made my heart flutter. I could eat ice cream now?

Micah stormed back into the kitchen with Indy roughly in tow.

He righted a chair and placed her on it.

Her elbows thumped against the askewed table, head going into hands that trembled. "You don't understand. I had a perpetual infant on my hands when I first took the assignment." She was hissing, but there were tears in her eyes. "I had no other choice but to continue with the ambrosia treatments when we finally located an effective compound."

They had moved on to talking instead of throwing shots at each other. Clearly, Indy had been beaten. Micah was now our group's Alpha.

"She wasn't growing!"

"What do you mean," Alex cut in. He held me back as Micah stalked to the far side of the room, movements slow, mechanical, the hot smell of electricity following him.

I sensed a flash of rage in him at the sight of Alex holding me in place because he didn't think it was safe. Hard amethyst met my quiet gaze and instantly softened. He was going to keep his distance until he calmed down. He agreed it wasn't safe.

I wrapped my arm across my waist and put my hand on my elbow, fretting. I didn't like that he thought he couldn't touch me, didn't like that every time dark clouds hung low on the horizon, I trembled. As I did now against Alex when a ripple of electricity— resembling lightning—moved up Micah's arm and then vanished around his back. I hated that I was afraid and struggling to keep my fear separate from the person I cared about. I licked my lips and rubbed a cheek against Alex's arm, gaze fixed on my guardian. My friend.

I had to find a way to get past my phobia.

"Three years!" Indy's eyes were too wide, and red lipstick smudged the corner of her mouth. "Her devvi genetics were deadlocked with her humanity, stunting her rate of maturity. It took three years for her to grow to the age of one."

What? My breath caught in surprise, almost choking me. Just how old was I?

"We tried different compounds," she was rambling, confessing. "It was ambrosia from the South Seas blue market that made the devvi part of her dormant. Her growth rate eventually fell into a pattern that resembled other human children, and when her mother thought she was ready for school, I fabricated birth records to adjust the year she was born."

"What about the milk?" Micah demanded.

"You're okay, aren't you?" Her teary lavender eyes turned to me. "As I suspected," she said when I told them I was. "I wanted to see if she could stomach it now, though I knew with her stubbornness she would never try it unless she thought the milk was from you. The intolerance was a side effect of the treatment. The ambrosia was becoming less effective as time wore on. Right after we left New Mexico, I was trying to dose her with one last round before her body totally rejected it—Aurora, I was trying to get you to reach maturity before you stopped growing!"

Get me to maturity, as in sexually? The tang! My recent drive to mate kicking it. She dosed me heavily one last time to bring me fully into adulthood. "How old am I?"

"Now? After the last round of ambrosia?" Indy tipped her head back against the chair, eyes closed to think. "Your birth certificate places you at seventeen, though physically, because of the treatment, you may be a year or so older than that," she said slowly, eyes opening, her focus going to a burn mark charred across the ceiling. "You have been alive for twenty-two years on your last birthday." The room went silent when her words trailed off.

Outside, the wind blew on, a high whistle as it funneled between the house and the hillside. Alex gave my hand a squeeze. The same unspoken thought seemed to flicker between him and Micah and me.

"So she's physically locked in at about twenty." It was Alex who finally spoke. "Then what of her life expectancy?"

"As long lasting as any of our own, I suspect," Indy replied. I gripped his forearm when a soft sound, almost inaudible,

slipped from him. Micah uncrossed his arms as his leftover anger dissolved.

"So I'm going to be twenty," I whispered, "for centuries?"

She gave me a weary look, running a hand against her lips to wipe at her smeared makeup. "Yes, I think so."

I closed my eyes and let the impossibility of it slip in past everything I had been told was logical: people age within a century or less, and then they die. Micah had aged more slowly than me, and I was certain I was aging at a human rate. There had been no other evidence prior to this to make me suspect otherwise. Holy cheddar, I've been alive for twenty-two years?

Exhaling, I opened my eyes to ask, "What about the blue drink, the other stuff you told Micah was a detox?"

"It was," she said causally, as if poisoning me into convulsions meant nothing.

Micah's jaw clenched. "You really have no idea how the stuff you've been giving her has been affecting her, do you?"

Indy's nonchalant expression faltered. "Aurora?" she said softly, hesitantly, her heart opening to mine just a little. "I know you've had some problems, but has it really been so terrible?"

Lips pressing together, I let my gaze fall for a moment. Was she open to receiving what she seemed to be asking? Did she really want this answer? Was she...was she resilient enough to take on the truth?

I made eye contact again. There was an unsure trembling in the gaze she offered me, but what choice did I have? She wanted to know. I parted my lips, allowing every hurt of the past decade to come untethered in my one-word answer.

I simply breathed the word "yes" and the expelled pain rippled the air like the body-arching reaction of an animal being shot through, flesh shuddering before the creature falls dead.

Indy let out a heart-wrenching sob as the truth hit her. Her head fell against her arm, and she wept uncontrollably.

I hid my face against Alex. I hadn't wanted Indy to experience my years of hurt and loneliness like that, but she had asked.

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Hey everyone! So glad to be back for the weekend :)  I do apologize that I didn't get to posting this last night. It's been a pretty tough week, as we've been dealing with my mom's unexpected health concerns. I was so drained last night that I just needed some recharging time in my pjs, on the couch, not doing anything.

But here we are, our weekend chapters! I've posted the second (so without further delay, on to the next chapter!)