The Hidden Forces & The Hidden Room

"Who was Lillian, anyway?" Diva asked herself. "Was it maybe Lillian, or maybe whoever said my name?"

She barely slept, with so many questions whirling around in her head she had no idea of answers to. Who was Lillian? And why did she think that she remained there?

The house was cold, bare, and tight by day. Every creak of every wood floorboard was the whimper of a crying baby, and every shift of the shadows in the corner gave her the shivers all over again.

Something was wrong this morning. That could happen to me," Diva snarled between clenched teeth as she zoomed down the hall. She swerved to the left and almost collided with Derek, who stood one step ahead of her. She instinctively dropped into a crouch and attempted to leap off on frog-fashion, and found herself running into an immovable object—Derek's knee.

"Oh—shh!!" she blasphemously uttered.

"Where on earth do you think you're going, little thing?"

Derek snarled sullenly.

"Wanna what?"

"Noth—" He dropped down beside her on flat ground and glared into her eyes. And the mate bond started pulling at them, reminding them of their issues. Derek was just about to sweep her into a kiss when Caleb burst into the room and shattered the mood.

"Hey," Caleb said as he entered.

"Alpha Derek! The rogues are attacking. They're at the north pack," Caleb panted like a dog.

"I have something that I need to tell you," Diva spoke to Derek.

"Later," Derek continued.

Derek indicated to Diva the look which said so much without saying it—Get your butt out of this house.

"What else did you see?" he snarled at Caleb.

"Alpha Derek, I think they're splitting up differently this time," Caleb informed him.

"Round up the troops. We're going another way."

Derek and Caleb departed, and Diva, being so obstinate, would have to seek the answers herself because Derek would not tolerate questioning by her. She would seek the answers herself.

The house was very large in size with very large corridors and shut doors. Something was going to happen this day.

It's just so huge of a building, and because stupid stupid bad cur that he is, he'll never rent out some of the rooms to homeless wolves of the world," she declared dramatically.

"I need to find Derek's room. He is hiding something from me."

The cold paper rubbed against her knuckle in her cuff as she made her way through the halls, watching for something out of place.

And there was half-opened door. She went in and pushed the door, and the door creaked. She saw Derek's picture on the wall. She found it—Derek's room.

She smoothed her palms over the walls, slapping them across their faces and thumping as a potter would thump on clay. She reached a wooden shelf, covered in dust, and on the shelf scrolls were strewn. She stepped over and drew some out, with a puff of dust as she drew them out. And unrolling a scroll, she saw a door—filthier than the shelf.

It didn't appear to have been used.

The air was thick with silence. The other door was ajar.

Diva stood up on shaky legs, pounding heart thudding in her ears. Something was off in this room. But then she'd reached the point where she'd not be able to turn back.

"Oh, God." She swallowed, shaking lips.

She moved cautiously through the door.

The room stood apart from the rest of the house. Dark and disorganized, tattered curtains draped across windows. Book scent and something years.

Her eyes swept the room, fall on a stool with a thin layer of dust. One hairbrush, still in its packaging. Beside it, a silver locket the size of her hand.

Diva wouldn't even approach it, shivering with cold of the metal. She opened it and gasped. There was Derek— young, jaw not quite set. And beside him—Lillian.

Diva's thudding heart. Her bedroom. Lillian's bedroom.

"This is Lillian's bedroom. So what is that bedroom?" Her eyes were wide with understanding.

She was turning to flee when the gusty windy cold blast hit down at the base of her lower back neck.

She turned around once more, glancing over her shoulder. But there was nothing.

And the whimpers, the raspy-sounding ones—this time nearer.

Her chest tightened. The voice was near. Too near. It wasn't in her head anymore. It was near.

She backed away, off balance, gasping breast to thudding heart. Room walls started to spin.

The door slammed shut.

Diva turned around and tried the handle, but it would not move. Panic wrapped around her ribcage.

"Let me out!" she exclaimed, beating on the door.

There was nothing.

The air in the room chilled, and she misted it with her breath in the cold. And then, on the stool, she shut the locket.

Try another one!

Diva's insides were all bunched up into a ball within her. She was alone. She didn't believe she was alone in the room.

Nothing. And then—the voice.

"Find the truth."

The whispers here were barely a whisper not, a whisper on the verge of being a plea.

And then, as it had begun, silence. The strangling tension was ripped away, the stiff old door creaking open by itself, and the heat came back.

Diva blindly staggered out of the room in fits. She did not stop until she had flung herself flat upon her bedroom, and the door slammed shut behind her.

She leaned against the door, gasping.

She had left the door to where Lillian opened.

And something—someone—had been behind her.

~~~~~

Soldiers fought bravely towards the north pack. Derek rode steady horseback, his right-hand man—Caleb—rode with him.

"Try to distract them with fire," Derek ordered.

"Yes, sir!!!!" Caleb yelled, his arms flung open and wide out in a wavelike motion in an attempt to distract the soldiers from their charge.

"Skirt around the north rim and the rest of the men so that none of these ne'er-do-wells will be escaping this time," Derek ordered.

"This time, I'll be ensuring that I'll be returning with their master," Derek muttered to himself.

"Kill any of the robbers you encounter along the trail, but bring back one alive," he ordered.

That night after that, Diva lay in bed, half-upright and staring at the ceiling. Next to her on her bedside table lay the locket she had taken from Lillian's room that was open.

Part of her realized that she was dancing on the edge of the secret she did not want Derek to know.

And in an instant, tension in the air had shifted.

She gazed at the locket.

It was open.

She remembered turning it off.

And when she was stooping down to grab it—

The candle on her nightstand shook and died.

Darkness crept into the whole room.