Ch.5: No One

“Well,” She said, “hopefully you find something new about this place again. Something you enjoy, even if you’ve lived here your whole life.”

‘Maybe that something’s you,’ Alexei thought to himself. He was so glad that he did not say that aloud.

“Hopefully I do,”

There was this intense eye contact between the two. Finally, Lena glanced down at the hay on the stable floor. “So,” She asked, “did you need a horse or something?”

“No,” Alexei looked at all of the beautiful stallions in his stable. Maybe he would go for a ride later, but not right now. “I was just trying to take a walk. Clear my head,”

“Ah,” Lena nodded. “I suppose I should leave so you could do that—”

“No…” Alexei told her, “No. Actually, I like talking to you. Come on, walk with me.”

*

Lena’s heart skipped a beat when Alexei asked her to walk with him. Alexei was a tall man with dark eyes and a mysterious gaze that was somehow dark and soft at the same time. She wasn’t sure what to make of this man considering the vague description Genevive had given her.

She had assumed that a man that commits borderline illegal acts that ran a thin line between vigilantism and self-defense would look more threatening. Although Lena supposed that the most lethal men were the ones that looked like they had stepped off the pages of a romance novel. She walked beside Alexei, studying him. Everyone seemed to steer clear of him, staring at her with odd expressions on their faces. She wondered what made these people fear him so much. What this man did. Was he someone that she should be associating with? Probably not.

Did she still walk next to him as he talked about his camp? Yes. He seemed to avoid all questions of substance, other than to tell her that their main purpose was to make sure that the military police on the island did their jobs, which they wouldn’t do if left unchecked. Alexei seemed to have a general disdain for law enforcement, and Lena couldn’t blame him. She had her own history, back at the commune, with the police. They weren’t even really police there, there weren’t enough people in the place to make a whole police force, but more elders that had enough power and experience in combat magic to be deemed qualified to be life enforcement.

He tried to ask her about her life, about the commune. She artfully evaded everything. She didn’t exactly know his attitude towards magic users, so she guarded herself. She needed the money and he wasn’t opposed to committing crime, so pissing him off would not be a good idea. He seems hungry for information about her, not exactly pushing her for details about her life, but devouring the small scraps of information that she gave him.

No one had ever acted like that towards her.

No one.

She didn’t know how to react to that.

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