I had just missed trig class. Oh well.

Our movements slow with dissipating adrenaline, Micah led me away from the pillar when the hallway emptied.

"I don't want you to leave," I said, despairing. "I just found you."

"I know, I know." Micah sighed. His hands became gentle as he straightened my shirt, twisted from being carried. "It's only going to be for a week, little one. Nobody's forcing me to leave. This is my decision."

Vision blurring with the threat of tears, I looked at him, and his determination faltered.

"Although, now that you can see me, it makes it incredibly hard for me to tear myself away from you." Sighing again, he lowered his head to mine, our hair mingling. "Even though, as of late, my leash has been loosened so I am able to take physical form to strengthen your safety, as things stand, I can't be with you to take care of you the way I would like to. If I don't finish the last of my guardianship trials, my elder cousin will remain in higher authority. She will be able force me from you, as she has threatened to do."

"So you need to leave voluntarily so she can't make you leave?"

Our hold on one another finally relaxed. We sat on the floor in the small amount of space behind the pillar, him leaning against the wall with me sitting before him. He touched the makeup coating the hollow under one eye. "You look so tired."

"I am," I said, quietly admitting to this.

"You've been having nightmares for weeks."

Reflexively smoothing the wrinkles in my skirt, I remarked, "You do seem to know a lot about me."

A half-smile lifted one corner of his mouth. "Aurora Anne Whyte," he breathed my full name. "Born under a new moon. Heiress to one of the most successful fashion houses on the west coast. You plan to take your rightful place in your mother's company, as soon as you are ready." He paused before continuing, his expression going solemn. "The first thing that you wanted after you woke from the two- week coma was a glass of water and your mother. You...you cried for nearly four hours for her. And fought like a wildcat when anyone touched you."

Remembering, I nodded slowly.

His hand stroked my hair again, weaving it into a loose braid. "Yes, I know a lot about you," Micah said, opening his heart to me through his eyes. "For how I could not, when I've kept watch over you for the past eleven years?"

Since my mother's death then. He had clearly been there when I woke in the hospital.

"I know you can tell what I have spoken is true, as I am sure you have been able to taste the honesty in my words, my clairvoyant little one."

So he really did know more about me than most. Mom was the only other person who knew I could taste the truth.

"Yes, the flavor of your words is peppered with honesty," I said, taking the braid from him. "I can taste this coming from you, among other things." It felt weird to be able to talk with someone about the unusual way in which I experienced emotions.

Opening my fingers, I dropped the loose braid. "Your decision to leave has a fleeting flavor about it, like you've only seriously considered leaving since this morning's conversation with Indy in the kitchen. And you just decided it was the right thing to do after lunch." What had Alexander said to make Micah decide to leave?

"It is a decision that has needed to be made for some time. But I've been reluctant to leave you again after what happened in New Mexico."

"Y-you left before?" I stammered. Was that what had given that thing the opportunity to attack me?

My guardian's jaw clenched with unspoken regret. "Don't think I left without setting up what I thought was proper protection. I would never leave knowing you were unsafe. The substitute guardian went missing the morning of the attack."

"All of this effort to protect me. I don't get it," I said, gaze lowering. I glanced up with a start when his legs went around me. He crossed his ankles at my back and slid me closer.

"What don't you get?" He curved his arms about my waist, and my body relaxed—being with Micah put me at ease.

We were just having a conversation, but still. For once in my life it was okay to talk freely. To be open and speak of things that I had never disclosed to another person before, besides my mother. I was safe with him; he was my guardian, after all.

"What is with the lifelong surveillance?" I asked. "And why did that invisible thing come after me?"

"Umbra." Micah put a proper title to the creature.

"Umbra?"

"An umbra is a phantom gathering of nature's energy. Most kinds that exist are either defined by an ability for growth or for deterioration. The plural for umbra is umbrae, and I guess it could be rightly said that umbrae are to my kind, what animals are to humans. They have various levels of aggression and intelligence. And they will do what their instincts drive them to do," he explained. "As for why my cousin and I have encircled our lives about yours, it can be generally said that my kind are held in high regard for protecting their own."

"Your own," I echoed, letting that last statement sink in. "You're saying that you feel obligated to shield me from the things that would do me harm because...?"

Micah tilted his head, smiling as he watched for the moment when everything clicked for me.

"My father? He is like you?" Jeez, way to score big, Mom.

"I don't know for certain whether he is or was like me specifically, as there are different races. Normally it isn't hard to tell with the offspring what race their parents hailed from, but with you being born half human, it is impossible to tell."

He had used the words "is or was." "You don't know if my father is alive?"

His expression went sympathetic. "We think your mother may have been the last to see him. My nation's Bureau of Guardianship was alerted to the live conception, but nobody was able to track him down."

"Your Bureau of Guardianship?" I cocked an eyebrow. "What? You have something like a half-breed protection program in place? So if somebody gets cross-species knocked-up, a team is dispatched?"

A smile flashed across Micah's face. "There is no such program as you suggest. There simply was no need for it up until now, because humans and my kind cannot conceive viable offspring."

"No live offspring? Ever?"

"You, my little one, are the only exception," he told me with a sense of pride about him.

I, on the other hand, couldn't see much to be proud of. "I'm a physical abnormality?"

Micah shook his head. "It isn't as though our two species are so very different physically. It is more like our souls are incompatible."

My mind went blank at this foreign concept. I gave him a lost look and Micah rushed to clarify. "The incorporeal essence that animates my kind's bodies is different than that which animates a human's body. You see, we both inhabit the same planet, occupying the same space, but we live separately on two different planes. Each plane is a habitable area in its own right, divided by a thin veil of cloaking reality."

"So, basically, you know about humans, but humans know nothing about you?" I interjected. "It has something to do with that strange sight of yours, doesn't it? I bet you can see across the veil that divides the existences," I guessed.

He shrugged, but didn't offer any further information, choosing instead to stick to his current train of thought. "Humans live on the plane of physical existence, and thus have a physical soul at the center of their being. My kind's existence has been cultivated on the astral plane. At the center of my people's core lies a soul that is compatible with our plane's metaphysical existence: the spectral soul."

He paused. I shifted to lean against his one bent leg, prompting him to go on. "Physical soul, spectral soul: they're incompatible," I summed up, my cheeks beginning to grow warm. "This is leading into some sort of a sex talk, isn't it?"

"Um, I'll ah, try to keep it—basic," he stammered.

My attention drifted down to the lines of his dress pants, studying where the fabric spilled into the generous wrinkles at his hip. I warmed more when I realized I wouldn't mind if a sterilized birds- and-bees conversation went a bit off track. "I bet it takes a physical soul mated to another physical soul, and a spectral soul to a spectral soul, to make viable children," I offered.

It took the dividing of two sets of chromosomes to make a new physical body, so why not the same with a soul? A little bit of mother soul, and a little bit of father soul, melding to create a new soul. A new life.

"Yes," Micah confirmed. "The pairing of two compatible souls creates the spark of life that ignites a new one. The spirit springs into existence at that very moment, the result of the energy released from the joining of two lives. The spirit acts as the sheath that binds the new soul to the physical creation, working from that point forward to keep it anchored to the body."

"But that crucial spark isn't present between a physical and spectral soul pairing, is it?" I guessed. "No new soul is ignited, no spiritual sheath." There would be no life to tie to what was physically created.

I trailed my fingertips along the seam of his pants, smoothing the fabric down into the wrinkles. My hand froze when Micah let out a shiver. Oops. I sucked in a quick breath, filling myself with his nervousness at how touchy I was getting with him. I immediately untangled myself from his leg. Jeepers, what was wrong with me?

Embarrassed, I swallowed hard, then realized my mouth was swimming with the same undefined flavor that had overtaken me at lunch. The odd, bittersweet tang that manifested at the visual of Micah shedding his clothing.

My face went hot when he leaned forward to gather my hands then continued, "But during the act of your conception, there was a spark. The seed of your parents' souls ignited, but as separate entities. And a superior spiritual sheath was created. A spirit strong enough to bind to your body that which animates your life."

"So some unknown spark ignited, and that's why I'm alive? Pieces of their souls came together in me to give me life, but stayed separate?"

"Exactly." He pressed fingers to the middle of my chest. "Aurora, you are in possession of two souls. One spectral and the other physical."

"I have...two?"

His other hand tightened in mine when my grip went slack. My gaze fell from his face, allowing Micah's emotions to spill out of me so I might clearly know my own. I have two souls.

So I was a freak then, born with Multifaceted Soul Disorder— great. Just peachy keen. My inner pessimism kicked in, chasing away whatever touchy-feely effect the unusual tang flavor had been having on me, leaving me hollow and bewildered.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" My voice came out thick, choked. I raised my eyes to meet his, silently conveying I was lost. "My mom, she wanted a human life for me, didn't she? But I'm not human. I'm not one or the other." I pulled my hands from his and gathered my knees to my chin, hiding in my hair. "I'm a freak of nature."

"Hey you."

He placed his hands on my slumped shoulders, and I wiggled in protest, unsure of what he was doing.

I was trapped in his grip when he raised my chin, and the surge of compassion in his amethyst eyes pierced me like liquid fire.

"You are not a freak of nature. You are Aurora," he whispered firmly. He pulled me into an embrace and spoke close, "You are a seventeen-year-old with a sharp mind and growing talents. Both sweet and stubborn. You truly don't have to be anything except yourself."

He withdrew his face from my hair, long strands of it sticking to him as we separated. It stretched between us before releasing to settle gently on my front, for with each word he had just spoken, a crackling static charge had built. It made my hair float and my skin tingle. Blinking, I tilted my head to meet his gaze when he sat back to straighten to his full height.

"You are overly sensitive to others, and yet hesitant to allow yourself to feel," Micah said, watching me as I let go of the turmoil whirling in my mind and surrendered myself to the emotions burning hotly inside of him. I fell into his eyes, subdued. He placed his hand on the side of my face, stroking my cheek. "I want you to start giving yourself permission."

I closed my eyes and nodded, allowing myself to concentrate on Micah's warm touch against me. A vibrating heat that seemed almost alive in and of itself as it spread out from the place where his skin pressed mine, the heat traveling to other places on my body that had never been caressed by another person. My toes curled in my shoes. It was...beyond wonderful. Blissful.

"I wish you didn't have to go," I heard myself saying.

"I don't want to. Although with the completion of the final set of trials, I will then outrank my elder cousin."

"So you will be beyond Indy's authority if you go do this?"

"She will no longer be a threat, and I can stay with you," my guardian rumbled softly, leaning close again. More of that delightful heat spread over me. "Would you like that, Aurora? For me to stay with you, forever?"

"Mmm," I mumbled distractedly, the tingle of his words over my neck filling me with even more pleasant sensations. "I want you"—Micah's arms tightened on my waist— "want you, to stay with me," I finished disjointedly, swallowing down a burst of tang.

"Can you do something for me?"

"Sure," I said with my eyes still shut. His bangs were soft where they occasionally brushed against my face.

"Stay in the valley while I am away—"

"—because it is safe here," I finished.

"And keep this conversation between us. Don't let Indy know we've spoken."

"Okay," I agreed on both accounts. I would just have to wait until he got back to go to the movies with Reese.

"That's my girl." Micah's hands found the sides of my face to tilt it up. A gentle snap of static licked my forehead just before he pressed his lips guardedly to it in farewell.

"I will be back for you soon." His voice trailed off, and his touch against me faded.

A moment later, an abrupt shift in the atmosphere burst upon the hallway in a rush of sourceless wind which rattled the flyers taped to the walls and sent closed doors creaking. I opened my eyes, and Micah was gone.

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VOTE if Micah's "warm touch" would make your "toes curl in their shoes" too!  Haha ;)

Chapter 15 posts tomorrow!  See you then!