Chapter Twenty Six ▪︎

(Dedicated to , thank you so much for the support! ♡)

"Dahlia. Dahlia, wake up." Alexander shook her shoulder lightly.

She opened her eyes and yawned loudly. Streching her arms, she noticed how cramped her body was.

"My neck hurts." She mumbled.

"You slept in a car, you can't really expect much else. I can help with it when we go inside." Alexander spoke as he got out. A cool breeze blew through the opened door and Dahlia shivered as the cold reached deep to her bones.

She looked out of the window and saw a small cabin sitting on the edge of a deep cliff. It seemed old and worn out, matching the style people once considered very modern, but it had ceratin elements to it that made it seem homely, like the brick chimney on the rooftop.

Listening carefully, she heard waves crashing against the cliff loudly and angrily. Even the air had a salty tinge to it, she realised as she breathed in deeply. After she stretched once again, she closed the car door and walked to the car boot where Alexander was taking their bags.

"Do you need any help?" She asked him politely.

He raised his eyebrow as he whooshed past her and returned for more bags. He left them on the porch of the house.

"It was a polite thing to ask." She mumbled with a small smile, regarding the look he gave her.

He smiled at that as he took another bag from the booth and went to the house. He dropped the bags on the porch before he unlocked the doors of the cabin and brought them all upstairs, where she assumed the bedrooms were.

While all that happened, Dahlia barely took 3 steps, but she still continued towards the house.

Looking inside, all she saw were cobwebs and furniture covered in white sheets. She found a light switch on the wall and flipped it.

The room was lit up and, although it was covered in dust and bugs, it looked beautiful. The ceiling was high, but not like it was in the castle. The room was filled with gray and light blue tones which opened up the space and matched the cloudy sky and dark blue sea. She could see the foam the waves created and it looked dangerously beautiful to her.

"Alexander?" She asked into the empty space, listening to her won echo. There was no need for her to yell because the house was so small and Alexander was so powerful.

"Up here!" He yelled down at her. Ho obviously thought her hearing of being much worse than it actually is.

"You know, you don't have to yell, I can hear you perfectly fine." She told him as she climbed up the stairs leading to her mate.

"We have a problem." He ignored her complaints as he looked at the hole in one of the house's windows.

"Can't you put some cardboard on it?"

"I could but it'd be cold and I don't know what bugs may have crawled inside while it was there." He cringed.

"You have the couch." She continued.

"It's uncomfortable."

"You're such a baby, can't you get someone to fix it?" Dahlia groaned.

"No, only you and I even know this place exists."

"Wait, where are we?" She asked him. Looking through the window, the ocean seemed neverending and lifeless, just like the cloudy sky. There were birds on the cliff or in the sky, and no animal seemed to inhabit the ocean.

"A loop in the universe, I guess you could call it." He shrugged.

"Is this where the portals lead?" She asked him in awe.

"One of them, yes. How do you even know about them?" He looked at her, seemingly trying to read her.

"I heard some regulars talking about them, like where they lead, how they work and such." She lied perfectly.

She almost slipped up.

"Oh." He still didn't trust her.

Dahlia knew how to get his mind off of the subject. "We can sleep together tonight. It's quite cold in here and I feel like the walls are too thin to-"

"Okay." He chirped up. He needed no explanation or justification.

"Let's clean this place up, shall we?"

***

The day flew by quickly as they cleaned the floors and removed all of the sheets from the furniture.

By the end of it all, Dahlia was barely awake. Her lids kept closing and she had to peel them open every time she blinked.

Finally, washing the toothpaste out from her mouth and spitting the water out, Dahlia stumbled into the empty bedroom.

She took off her dirty, dust ridden clothes and put on her favourite pajamas.

Soon, she was asleep.

***

Dahlia woke up to a rustle in her bedroom. It was still dark outside and her heart beat skyrocketed when something shifted in the corner of the room.

Alexander burst into the room and turned the lights on, and for the first time ever, she was thankful for what he was.

"What was that?" He asked frantically, looking around the room and his equally frantic room.

"I have no idea, I only heard a rustle and you barged in." He whispered.

"How could anything even get in here?" She mumbled to him.

"We have to leave, it isn't safe here anymore. I'm so stupid, I should have protected the house at least with a barrier." He gripped his hair and whooshed out of the room. He came back in a blink with a backpack on his back and Dahlia assumed their bags were already in the car.

"Where do we go? Is there really any place safer than here?"

"We can't stay in one place for too long and we should be fine. I doubt you want to stay in the castle for the holidays."

Dahlia's face scrunched up at the thought and Alexander chuckled lightly.

"So, where are we going?"

"Do you want to go somewhere cold or warm?" He asked her.

"Warm? In the winter?" She asked him wide eyed.

"I guess you never went to Australia."

◇ ◇ ◇

This is a bit of a filler chapter, but I needed them to somehow get to know each other a bit more and I had no idea how to do that apart from like this. I also have an idea, but I don't know if I will choose it or if I will find something else. We'll see.

Btw, my school takes up a lot of time so I can't be writing so often now.

This chapter is unedited.