Alara

I woke up after the best sleep I had in days, the feeling of soft sheets beneath me, in a bed I could call my own without any sort of drug coercing me into a lack of consciousness. Who would have known sleep was the best thing there was. I had been so tired after dinner that I hadn't even bothered to change out of my utterly destroyed dress.

I let out a deep sigh as I got up, gazing into the mirror at my once beautiful gown, it was ripped and smattered with a mixture of dirt and blood. The once fine material was coarse and starchy from the rain that had soaked into it.

It really was once beautiful, but part of me didn't want to throw it out, even if it was ruined it held meaning, it was something that reinstated my resolve, my ability to survive no matter what. And it was still the first gift Cameron had truly given to me and if that wasn't worth at least something I didn't know what was.

I had a quick shower, revelling in the warmth of the water against my skin. I dried my hair and slipped into a comfortable jeans and blouse. I decided that I wanted to put on a little makeup only a little mascara and a swipe of lip gloss, I pulled my hair together and braided it into a simple fish plait and when I was satisfied with how I looked I made my way downstairs.

"Cameron?" I called out, wondering why I hadn't seen him yet this morning.

"Yes, darling," his velvety voice called out from the kitchen. Where I saw him by the stove, he was trying to make pancakes which brought a smile to my face.

"Aww you're making me pancakes," he began to flip the pancakes to cook on the other side before placing a stack on a plate from me. He lathered them in maple syrup and cut up some strawberries for me.

"They won't be as good as yours, but I tried," I took a bite of the pancakes and loved them. They were soft and fluffy and melted in my mouth with the syrup.

"These are so good," I all but moaned which made him smirk.

"They're basically your recipe, I tried to follow what you did," he admitted.

I laughed, "It explains why they are so good, I knew I was a damn good cook,"

"Hey, don't toot your own horn, I still made them," he almost pouted and I found myself loving these small moments between us. This side of him he did not show anyone else, the side of him that was reserved only for him.

"Now, I have some business to attend to, but there's no way I am leaving you here on your own, so you can hang out with the gang at the base, it will be good for you to get to know everyone and you will be safe there. No one will be able to take you not with my most skilled and trusted members looking over you,"

I nodded in response, "Sounds good," before adding, "If you don't mind me asking, where are you going,"

"No where you need to worry about darling," he picked up his keys.

"Leo will be here to drop you off shortly before I head out, I'll wait with you until he comes," he turned to grab his keys and I did something that I didn't intend to do, something out of pure impulse.

Once he turned back around, I ran towards him and engulfed him in a hug, he seemed surprised at first, stilling at my touch before settling himself into the hug.

I then leaned on my tip toes and pressed a soft kiss against his cheek, I watched as a tinge of pink spread in its wake.

He froze for a moment, "You're such a tease,"

"I am," I laughed my eyes full of mischief, "How so Cam?"

He leaned forward, "You know how," his eyes flickered to my lips and for a second I thought this would be the moment, he was so close, one movement and my lips would be on his.

My eyes fluttered closed as I leaned forward expecting the his lips to capture mine.

I could feel his warm breath on my face, the blush rising on my face, as he leaned forward.

Then I felt the soft press of his lips, but not on mine, just a little off to the side on my cheek, my eyes snapped open to meet his, they were full of burning desire, "Now you know what a tease you are,"

I almost leaned forward to show him just how much of a tease I could be. And I would have right then and there had I not heard the distinct sound of a car horn.

"Hey lovebirds," Leo called out from the drivers window, "It's time to go."

I slipped into the passenger seat of Leo's car just as Cameron got into his own car, "See you soon sweetheart," he called out before speeding off.

Leo began to drive towards the base, the radio playing soft mellow tunes, it was a comfortable silence that had spread between us.

"Thank you by the way," I said suddenly.

He turned to me for a second, "For what Alara?"

"For helping to get me back, I really owe you for that," he shook his head and smiled.

"You don't owe me anything, Cameron care about you and he's like a brother to me, I would be damned if I let the one girl who could get him to soften up get hurt, you really do have an effect on him."

"Really, you think I have an effect on him?"

"You can't be that oblivious, he's not like this with anyone else, he really does care about you," Leo explained softly.

I hummed in response, still not being so sure of myself that I could verbally affirm that I agreed. I was still teetering on the edge, on the precipice of what I longed for in a partner. He was right there but still somehow out of reach.

We pulled into the gang's base, somewhere I had only been once. I slipped out of the car and ran after Leo who also being pretty tall was much faster than me. I really needed to work out more because I was heavily out of breath when we reached the entrance.

Many of the other gang members nodded or said 'hello' to Leo as we passed and he led me to where all the computers where. A hacker's dream with so many devices all whirling away, concentrated faces with a glow of blue light on their features.

I had to try and contain my excitement at all the devices.

"I heard you're a Computer Science major," Leo responded to my look of glee, "Thought you'd feel the most comfortable here."

He led me to a desk more at the back of the room, in a quite secluded area, there was a guy with dark skin hunched over his laptop, his eyes flitting between three different screen each with something different on it. One had a command line interface on it as he was making modifications to the software on the device itself while others were snapshots of security cameras. As we got closer I realised the footage was of the attacks that had happened at the Wolfsbane ball.

"This here is our secret weapon when it comes to anything computer related," he clapped the hacker on the shoulder causing him to turn around, his concentration broken and a look of contempt flashing across defined features. He was about to lay into Leo before his eyes met mine, and his anger seemed to subside.

"Echo, this is Alara," he pointed to the man named Echo, "Alara, Echo," Leo spoke with a cheery tone that on anyone else would be wholly misplaced.

"Alara," his voice was deep and brooding it matched his atmosphere completely, "It's a pleasure to meet you,"

"It's great to meet you too, " I responded genuinely excited to get closer to the gang.

He gestured to a swivel chair beside him and it took everything in me not to start spinning in it like a child let free in a classroom, no I had to maintain some level of dignity.

"This set up is amazing, what kind of topology do you guys use here?"

"It's a hybrid topology but it is mostly a star one as the gang can afford it and its the best for our uses," he explained eloquently.

His fingers flew across his keyboard as he typed in more commands, "I'm just scrapping through all the footage from the recent attack trying to see if there's any moment where the ring leader takes off his mask or any other evidence as to who they were."

"Sounds like a big task ahead," I mentioned looking at the rows and rows of code, he had created a video crawler that could go through each frame of the footage to narrow down all the information that could be gathered from it.

Leo turned to me, "I've got to go set up some stuff and run some training sessions but you should be fine here with Echo,"

I nodded in response and just before he went to leave he called out, "Don't go getting yourself lost again Alara, there's only so many times we can find you,"

"I won't," I promised turning back to Echo.

"It's really cool all this stuff you can do, I'm looking to specialise in cyber security which is kind of ironic given that you mainly break into cyber spaces."

"It'll be good to have some insider knowledge," he winked at me before returning back to his task.

"You can help look through the footage that my crawler has flagged as suspicious or important, it doesn't require too much coding just a keen eye and from what I hear you are quite observant."

Glad for something to do, I began to scroll through the highlighted clips, it was a monotonous task looking through seemingly similar frames that looked like nothing was remiss.

I must have scrolled through hundreds of snapshots before I really honed in one one thing. I squinted at my screen unsure of whether what I had seen was real. It couldn't be, there was no way.

"Shit, shit, shit," I cursed repeatedly as I zoomed in. This was bad this was really really bad.

"Alara what's wrong?" Echo looked concerned as I jumped from my seat.

"Where is Cameron?" my voice was rushed plagued with urgency as I began to panic.

"He's having a meeting with his father, why what's wrong? What did you see?"

"Fuck, he's with his father?" my eyes were wild as I stared at Echo my heart thundering. In an instant, I was running towards the door.

"Alara!" Echo called out after me, "Alara you're supposed to stay here. You can't just leave," He went to rush after me but I stopped him, "No Echo, you need to stay here, you need to look at the frame that I just saw and you need to alert everyone that needs to know."

He gripped onto my arm, "Alara," his eyes were deadly serious, "Alara what did you see?"

"The masked leader, it was Cameron's father."