“NO WONDER THEY FELT SO FAMILIAR! THEY WERE ORIGINALLY MY FAMILY!” Rylan exclaimed. “I had always wondered where the rest went when everything was over. I just assumed they all died even though the lack of corpses was lighting a red flag in my mind… But wait… so Shadow is…”

“Mine. I made it from scratch. We didn’t start out as “Shadow”. Just a group of people loyal to the Isen family. Then eventually loyal to me. Afterwards, people from NERAL came. I may have accepted Neral’s people but only if they qualified. Neral had no problem with that. Most of them made it anyways. The ones who didn’t were the corpses you saw. Though some of them did choose to go down with the family.”

“… So you knew my great-grandfather huh… No wonder you weren’t impressed when I said I could give you NERAL. You literally had the majority of it already… You know I don’t know how I feel about this…”

“Well I can’t help you with that.”

“I mean I knew you were always a “need-to-know” type of person but isn’t this something you could’ve told me long ago?”

“Well… why? Why would I have told you?”

“But this is relating to my family! I told you I was out for revenge!”

“And I assumed you knew what you meant when you said you wanted to be a shadow. Now that you know your great-grandfather had a hand in accelerating Shadow’s creation, I’m assuming it’s him that told you?”

“Yes… He said if anything happened to us, we should become a shadow. It’ll keep us safe… However, to be a shadow means you’ll trade up your life for it.”

“Your revenge matters not to me. When someone comes to us and decide they want to be a shadow, we will accept them. That is our rule. But those who know this rule would also know that once accepted your life is ours. We train you how we want to train you. We command how we want and expect your complete loyalty and servitude. Follow us and we will give you a family. A home. A place to belong. Betray us and we will be your grave. You decided to be a shadow. Your past no longer mattered for the most part. You want revenge? Do it yourself. That is, if you’re capable. You asked why I’ve never told you. On what basis did the need for you to know arise?”

“I…” His eyes were searching mine for a little warmth and a false sense of comfort. However I gave him nothing but a blank emotionless stare.

He let out a frustrated sigh and pulled me tighter in his arms. He squeeze me hard as he said, “I really don’t know what to feel right now. I know. It’s a hard topic. Either with me being someone you couldn’t trust to tell or just wasn’t the right time or you just didn’t feel like it. But it’s just… I feel betrayed. I know logically I shouldn’t feel this way but I do. But at the same time, I can’t bring myself to be angry at you. Because there’s this deep rooted fear that if I do something on impulse I’ll lose you…”

“I would love to tell you to get rid of your insecurities but I can’t since I know full well most of the time I purposefully cause them as a reflection of my own insecurities and instability. I also can’t deny what you just said because knowing myself, I know I can just as easily walk away. But I can say that if you feel betrayed, that’s fine with me. All I ask is you tell me. Tell me so I know where we stand. Don’t just leave to “cool off”. You know what I mean. You know me. You know when I know you storming off means it’s not about us but something you need to cool your head on. But you also know when I don’t know what’s happening between us. You can read me a lot better than I can read you. You want to feel emotions like a normal human being? Just tell me because I for sure don’t know what emotions are supposed to feel like.”

We didn’t talk for a while and just drifted off to sleep. We barely slept before the sun had risen and glared at us.

“Come on. Let’s go home,” Rylan said gently.

I slightly nodded and we began putting on our clothes and packing up our things. We stuffed them back into the car and drove back home.