*
‘Pisces, where the bloody hell have you been?’ Cancer shouted as I came through the door.
The others rushed forward and gathered. I held up my hands but they threw their arms around me. The black mist started again but luckily my siblings knew me well.
‘Leave off, you lot. She needs space,’ Scorpio said. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me out of the group.
‘Sorry.’ Cancer took my hand as Scorpio led me to the kitchen table.
Our new flat was Bohemian in style, older than our previous one. There were wooden floors, high ceilings and funky big windows. There were five bedrooms on one side and a separate room with its own bathroom on the opposite side of the apartment. They had given me the private room to myself so I would stay.
All eleven of them stared down at me.
‘Where have you been?’ Sagi asked.
I smiled at her. She was small with curly red hair. Her stature was nothing compared to her quiet but deadly personality.
‘I’ve been with Father.’
They gasped in unison and started to talk all at once. Aries stepped forward and whistled.
‘Firstly, let the girl breathe.’
They shuffled to a seat and sat around the table. I loved it when Aries took control. He was the one who always knew what to do.
‘Go ahead,’ he said as he joined us.
My throat contracted as I swallowed. Being centre of attention made me nervous. Luckily, it rarely happened. I tried to stay invisible, which was quite easy in a household of twelve twenty-year- olds.
‘I was taken to a house outside of London. In Surrey, I think. Father was there. He told me that I was about to start my mission.’
Cancer was sitting beside me. She grabbed my hand and squealed. ‘That’s so exciting. You’re going to meet your twin flame!’
Nodding, I pulled away, surprised that she wasn’t jealous. She always had lots of men around her. She was a brilliant flirt and I admired how easy she found it.
‘I’m going to stay with Father. He doesn’t want to harm us, he wants to protect us. I don’t know why Mother told us that he did. The Dysfunctionals are the ones who want to stop the union, they are the ones that want to hurt us.’
Aries growled. ‘The Dysfunctionals. I don’t like it. We shouldn’t be separated at a time like this.’
A part of me wished they would understand and accept me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be around them, I just needed space. My new bedroom was an improvement but even that wasn’t quite enough. The boys woke me at night when they came in late from a night out in the city. Cancer was always letting herself in and borrowing my clothes. Sometimes I just wanted to be alone.
‘I need to be with Father. He’s our guardian now,’ I replied.
‘What about Mother?’ Sagi said. Her light green eyes met mine and I had to look away. She was quiet for a fire sign but she spoke up when called for.
‘I want to be with Father right now.’ What else could I say? I couldn’t tell them that Father had always been my favourite. For some reason I trusted him more than Mother, especially after Mother told us that Father was a threat when all he wanted to do was protect us.
I loved them both equally but Mother was trying to control us. My intuition told me that something wasn’t right with her, however, I didn’t know what was wrong. Hopefully Father’s absence hadn’t made him want to control us, too. I hadn’t had the opportunity to ask him where he had been for the last five years. I needed to find out.
‘We all miss him but he abandoned us.’ Sagi stated the obvious.
‘He left initially because Mother wouldn’t let us have a life. We know that, we saw that.’
We had lived in the same house our whole lives. We’d watched our parents’ marriage break down because of us. There was a point when we’d plotted to leave so they could have a chance to rekindle their love but we didn’t have anywhere else to go.
‘But he had you kidnapped?’ Scorpio asked.
Aries’ knuckles turned white as he grabbed the wooden table surface. ‘That’s not right.’
‘I had the opportunity to get away but I was curious. He said that he knew none of us would listen if he just turned up.’
Aries let go of the table and thumped it with his fist. ‘He still went around it the wrong way.’
‘You can talk, Mr Lover Man,’ Leo said.
I glanced at my brother and he winked. Leo was the clown of the group and could always be counted on to try and lighten the mood.
‘Shut it.’ Aries glared at his best friend.
We had bonded into two groups. Scorpio, Leo, Aries, Cancer, Sagi and I made up the first group. The opposite fire and water elements made things interesting. Virgo, Taurus, Gemini, Capricorn, Libra and Aquarius stuck together as the second group, although we all got on well considering.
Looking down, my eye caught Aries’ bracelet. It had been ripped. I reached out and touched the thick band. The men’s bracelets were chunkier but they still had the same silver charm on them.
‘I caught it,’ he lied, pulling his arm away.
I had tried to cut mine several times, too. In fact, I was sure that we had all attempted to get them off in our teenage years. We were twenty now. All born in the same year. We had finally started to relax into the knowing that we had a battle ahead. Being older and having more freedom helped us to accept our fate. We had to fall in love and then go from there.
‘What does he mean, Aries?’ Sagi said as she leant forward on the table. She was a feminist. I often wondered how a man would tame her. Then I remembered how much she liked pretty things and knew that as long as a man treated her like a woman, but with respect, he would be fine.
‘He pulled two women last night but didn’t even give them his phone number.’ Leo sat back and rested his legs on the table.
‘That’s so…’ Sagi started.
‘Wrong,’ Leo said, ‘I agree. He could’ve at least let me have one.’
Sagi hit his arm. He raised an eyebrow at her. She was strong but his muscles absorbed the impact.
‘Pack it in,’ Aries grumbled.
I got to my feet. The others rushed to do the same.
‘Sit down!’ Aries’ voice thundered through the room.
They did. I didn’t. He glared at me and I felt the full force of his fire energy. I stepped back just before his hands burst into flames. His temper created fireballs and he often threw them. He breathed deeply before absorbing the fire back into his body.
‘Someone’s winding Aries up,’ Leo sang.
Scorpio pushed Leo’s chair over with a kick. The blond man flew across the floor. Aries’ lips broke into a smile. I lowered myself back into my seat.
‘What did Mother say about winding Aries up?’ Sagi asked Leo as he lay on the wooden floor.
‘She said that I would get burnt…literally,’ he mumbled.
‘And you did,’ Aries said.
I glanced at Leo’s arm. He had a burn scar on his right wrist, just above his bracelet. It made him look manlier now but he had been in a lot of pain when he was twelve. He had paid heavily for tripping Aries with his foot.
‘Can we just get on with it?’ I wanted to go back to Father’s house and get started. Once I had something in my head, I went for it. It took me a while to make a decision, but once I did, I instantly acted on it.
‘There’s nothing we can say to persuade you to stay with us?’ Scorpio asked.
I shook my head. They knew me well enough not to push. If they did, I would shut down and not speak to them for days. I didn’t want that to happen.
‘You trust him?’ Cancer piped up.
‘Yes, I really do.’
The others sat back. The ones who had stayed quiet had already accepted that I was going. The rest of them sighed or nodded as I stood.
‘I’m leaving now. I’ll be back when I can. I’ll let you know what’s going on.’ I bit my lip as I headed across the kitchen. ‘And th
ank you for all you have done for me.’ I had said goodbye once before, when I moved in with my flatmate, but it was different now. We all knew that if I found my twin flame, I probably wouldn’t come back to live with them. I was the only one that cared about moving out. The rest of them were happy to just get on with it.
‘Who do you think her soulmate is?’ Cancer asked as I walked away.
Aries’ chair scraped the floor as he pushed away from the table.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’
I had to laugh when I heard his coarse answer. The men were less convinced about the whole soulmate mission. Most of them didn’t want anything to do with it. I was surprised they still lived under the same roof as the girls. I had assumed that Leo and Aries would run away but they had stayed. Scorpio was the only man that never let on his true feelings. It was something I was used to. I was similar. People were only allowed to see a part of me. There was a lot more to me than any of them knew. Maybe I would be able to show my soulmate who I really was.
‘I can’t believe you’re leaving us again.’
Scorpio sat on the bed as I packed. For a second I wanted to climb onto his lap and let him hug me. My brothers gave the best hugs. It often fascinated me how twelve men and women managed to live together so easily. We were always fighting but it wasn’t ever bad enough to separate us. The dynamic of our sibling relationship was weird. Although we weren’t blood related, we had grown up as a family.
‘Don’t you think this is all a bit…strange?’ I asked him as I took out my journals and put them in my suitcase.
‘What, Father coming back?’ He ran his hand through his fluffy light hair.
‘No, the way we’ve been brought up together. Waiting for the moment we were old enough to fall in love.’
He shook his head and fell back on the bed. ‘Yeah, it’s weird.’
I probably wouldn’t get any more than that from him.
‘I want to fulfil my mission. I want to be in love but I’m blinded by the fact that I’ve not lived yet.’ Once the words were out of my mouth, I had to face them. Did I really feel that way?
‘Then go and live. They taught us not to go looking for love, so just go and live. When it’s supposed to happen, it will…or whatever.’
He grunted as I laughed. Putting my clothes into my suitcase, I zipped it up, wondering if it would be the last time. I didn’t need all my stuff yet. I was only going to stay with Father until the first part of my mission was complete. Once I had united with my twin flame soulmate, we would have to work together to track down the Dysfunctionals.
‘Are you scared?’
His question made me stop. His eyes were closed but I could tell he waited for an answer. Sitting next to him, I lay back on the bed. I let my eyes close, too. He made me jump when he reached out and took my hand.
‘Yes…I’m scared. I have no idea what love is, or what it will look like. I don’t want to fail, Scorpio. We’ve been here too many times.’
He squeezed my hand and let go. ‘I think we’ll be okay this time round.’
The bed moved as he got up. I didn’t open my eyes. The door clicked shut behind him. A lone tear escaped and ran down the side of my face. I could do this. I was prepared for love. Or that’s what I thought, anyway.
The wrench in my gut told me otherwise.