Hey everyone :)

First. So everyone wants to know how Lydia can die if she's bound to Bend and the grandmother? The thing about my stories is you have to read VERY carefully. I didn't say that she bound ALL the children. Danny is the one that told Cynthia that the children are bound to Bend and his mother. BUT when Mary - Danny's mother - tells him what she's done, she doesn't say ALLLLLL the kids.

Second. Guys, Faith wouldn't remain some punching bag forever. I know she had a rough start in the beginning, but she was locked away... 

bye... don't forget to vote if you haven't. Enjoy :) 

Chapter 46 – Burn (Danny Conrad POV) Pt.1

"She's just a girl," words that I never thought I would say come from my mouth, with a dubious tone attached. Was Cynthia really wishing death on some girl? "She's something that was created that was never meant to exist. There is no one in the world, here or Zedwood like her."

"So you're – you're what? Jealous?"

"Of her? I have everything, Danny, but I lost so much because of her, she doesn't get to come randomly into my family twice and destroy what is mine."

I close my eyes, resting my head back with nothing left to say. Or maybe it is that I just didn't have the words.

Or maybe it is hard to say them out loud?

One minute I was driving my happy family to start over in Bend, the next I'm in my brother's dungeon, and – and for what?

What answers did I hope to find by remaining with Cynthia in here? So far all I had gotten was the extent of her hate towards the girl that my brother and his wife took in.

I do not believe this is the woman – Cynthia – that I met all those years ago? How did she keep up the pretenses for so long? How did she conceal her hate?

How could anyone with so much hate inside them love anything or anyone? Was there any room to love someone else? I hated the people that took Tina from me, but eventually I had to let that hate go, concentrate on my children. Should I meet them again, I want to say that I wouldn't be reacting like Cynthia now, but at the same time, I would want them to suffer.

The difference – the only one – I could come up with was: what I'd be willing to risk exacting my revenge? My children in exchange for watching them suffer? No.

I'd lose my children and my revenge still would not bring Tina back. I'd have nothing.

"Tell me again, why did you start – why is Lydia practicing magic? Do you have any idea how dangerous it is?" Cynthia grew up in Zedwood; surely she knows how unpredictable spells can be? With whatever spell she gave my daughter, there was no telling what would be risked to keep the equilibrium of nature in tack.

"Why Cynthia? Why would you even-"

"What else am I supposed to do Danny?" she asks plainly, "Your brother has no intention of ever letting me leave this place and eventually, you will leave too," say because our children need one parent and if you can be that one parent I can live with that... I think silently. Please, Cynthia, finish your thought with something along those lines.

"I once again, have to think of myself, Danny. How can I get out of here to be with my family? To protect my children from that monster? I won't be able to do that in this place where Ansel wants me to rot," she spits.

Wrong. Answer.

My skin immediately feels prickly, the only reaction her words get that's visible while I try to keep my face neutral. These solutions impossible to believe, I shake my head, "this – this woman isn't you," I say sure of my words now. Cynthia - this version of her - couldn't be whom I married and had children with, wanted to spend my life with.

"This woman," Cynthia parrots my words back, forcing me to open my eyes. "This woman is the reason we will be free of your family. We will be able to support our children; anywhere we'd like Danny."

Her lip trembles and though I feel a bit of sadness, my only outward response is to bite my lip and stare straight ahead at her.

"There will be no need to worry, calling the Elders, and asking them to spare your family... I have the upper hand now. I'm still the woman you love Danny; I'm in here, but you don't know the actual suffering I've had to endure for a child I tried to kill."

"Does life mean so little to you?"

"Only her life."

I nod and silently question. Where is my Cynthia?

"When we were captured Danny, Alpha Monet thought that I had this hidden power. I couldn't understand what was happening. I was nothing special, but day in and day out I was beaten, tortured, abused, and do you know what I realized?"

"That I was worthless to the people that created her. They protected her and how? By using me once again. How do they protect her? By using a delusion confusion spell. By hiding her potential in me. But I figured it out," she arches a brown brow at me, and for a minute, the look in her eyes.

I know it. That pain deep inside, it's familiar, and I know why. It was never about a long lost daughter that was murdered. The person that was lost was Cynthia herself.

"You know what I also figured out?"

She looks away, "that eventually, that type of spell would wear off." Gaze back on me, she nods. "Yeah, so I left her behind to die, I would never be used again."

"Then, she hit me, and I felt it. All that power the Elders and Alpha Monet-" I frowned. Alpha Monet and the Elders? I thought only Alpha Monet had her locked up, but she was calling the Elders just to give them the girl. What did they have to do with one another?

"What does the Elders and Alpha Monet have to do with each other?"

I loved my children equally. They all had their different personalities but Danny Junior; he was my walking clone, my only boy besides Andy. And he currently had a lying stage or maybe devious is the better way. Hiding things and taking snacks when he's not supposed too, but once we catch him, he always has this deer in headlights expression on his face.

As though, saying, "Oh no! I've been caught! What next? How do I get out of this? Oh no. What do I do?"

His eyes would widen, and the innocence in them throws me into peals of laughter. Especially because his little mind just is not advanced enough to lie or get himself out of whatever he was doing. 

It's in those moments that I think my son takes the most after me. Yet, the look on Cynthia's face right now is an exact replica of DJ's.

Right now, Cynthia had on Danny Juniors deer-in-headlights stare.

My body aches, but I find myself sitting straighter, "What does the Elders have to do with Alpha Monet Cynthia?" I ask between gritted teeth.

"How can one Alpha be so ruthless Danny, and the Elders never step in?" she asks cocking her head to the side, waiting for me to figure out something that she seems to know.

I of course have heard of this Alpha Monet, a man with no morals, a pack where women are treated worse than animals, mates ignored. There wasn't a smart shifter, Fae or vampire that would willingly travel to that state out of fear of being captured by Alpha Monet's pack.

Yet... the Elders have never stepped in.

Not once.

She... Cynthia couldn't be right. Elders do not... they govern outside of the packs and dens. Cynthia is telling you different, a small voice whispered.

How? How would she know?

She was – "We can go to the Elders, tell them that your daughter is still in that pack," As the memory of that moment years before hits me, I hold onto my head, the ache once dull, now throbs.

Still, in the haze of the memory, I recall Cynthia's panic at us reaching out to the Elders. Sure we knew they were crooked, but at that time, Ansel, hell all of us had been willing to go to them for her daughter.

Now I have a new prospective that shifts in my mind. It was not that her daughter died. That was all made up. The truth was there was no dead daughter. There was the girl that had upended my world; there was the Elders possibly working or supporting Alpha Monet-

I stop thinking along those lines when the door that bolted Cynthia and I is pushed aside. This time, I was ready to get out. I needed more time, and I needed it away from Cynthia. Eyes closed, I lean forward readying myself to stand and face whoever was coming. Most likely it was Ansel, he would let me out and I would stop what Cynthia had put in motion.

I would not let her use my daughter as a means of revenge. The air that comes in is welcomed, but it hits me that this is different. Normally, Ansel throws a word or two around outside of the door and so I force my eyes open.

Wincing when the brightness of outside streaks into the underground dungeon, I do not clearly see Ansel's face, but I look away.

When I hear him shutting the iron accesses, I open my eyes as he turns, shoulders hunched over, not his usual erect self. "I – I want out Ansel," I mumble, ignoring the gasp from Cynthia or trying to.

I watch as he inhales deeply, his back to me, and then Ansel turns to face me. I get a glimpse of his eyes first, the redness, the glassiness. Frowning, I slowly tilt my head to the side, and I expect him to look away, smile, talk, something.

That doesn't happen, instead his chin trembles slightly, and his eyes fill with tears, but Ansel keeps my gaze in his. "I'm so sorry Danny," he says voice barely there, but I hear him. His words confuse me, "Ansel?" Cynthia calls his name but he doesn't look away from me to her.

Swallowing he takes a step closer to me, "There was an-an event at the school," I frown deeper, "why are you..." I try to piece together his words, actions, everything but the puzzle eludes me.

"From what witnesses saw, Lydia," my body jerks as the truth and his words, behavior all snap into place, every part of me shaking.

My hands, legs, everything, weak.

"Oh god," I slowly move my head from side to side as my vision blurs, "No, no, no," I demand.

"She attacked Faith, and began chanting a spell-" Ansel continues explaining as something inside me dislodges. I have to force myself to listen when shouting from Cynthia echoes around me, "She murdered her! She murdered her!"

"Danny," she calls me as I just stare straight at my brother unseeing. "You said that your mother bound her to Bend, to herself, she couldn't die! If she died then that girl she did something to our baby!" Cynthia continues shouting, as the throbbing inside my head grows and her voice grates on my nerves, the pain in my chest too much to process.

Danny? Danny? Ansel says. But the sound accompanying the word is gone just as the edges of my vision darkens and the weakness in my legs give way. I feel as though I'm falling, unable to carry my own weight.

Everything going black before I hit the ground. 

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