Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) by Natalie Reid Read Free Book Online Page B

Pax
always received more, and those that had shown reluctance to it in the past
were hardly given anything.
    However, as much as she hated the Amias Gift, the baskets on
everyone’s doorstep were also the perfect way to re-gift back what was stolen.
    As Norabel walked up to her neighbor’s house, she could hear
Iris’s mother and father speaking in hushed, excited voices, deciding what they
should do with everything they found in their basket.
    Hiding the Albatross Seed in her hand behind her back, she
knocked on their front door. It was the father that answered. He looked her in
the eye and nodded his head, as if to say he knew what she had done. Then, before
anything could be said, Iris came running over to her.
    “Norabel, it isn’t…” she started to say, but stopped when
she saw the smile on her face. Iris’s eyes widened as Norabel brought her hand
forward and revealed what was inside.
    “You’ll be careful with it,” Norabel told her. “Never leave
it in a place where they can find it.”
    Iris carefully accepted it, turning it over in her fingers a
few times before hastily reaching out and wrapping her arms around Norabel’s
stomach. She held onto her for so long that eventually her mother came over.
    “Iris, sweetheart, she has to get to work,” Vera told her
daughter. “You have to let her go.”
    When she pulled away, Norabel turned to leave, but not
before taking one last look at the Albatross Seed in the little girl’s hands.
    Please let that not be the last seed left in the world ,
she silently begged her Guardian Albatross. Please don’t leave us when that
too is destroyed.
     
    *
     
    Hunter stared down at the breakfast bowl in his hands,
allowing a gradual smile to form on his lips. It wasn’t that his breakfast was
particularly delicious. In fact, this morning it was an exceptionally
gray-looking, mushy porridge. But what had him secretly smiling had nothing to
do with what was in the bowl, but rather, the bowl itself.
    He lifted his thumb and rubbed the bowl’s rim. There was a
simple, wavy ridge on the top. Most people might miss it. Though the bowl was
an earthy brown color, it reminded Hunter of the blue waves of a lake shore.
Carefully taking it in his palms, he lifted it up to his face. There were only
a few bites of watery porridge left.
    He looked around the room. Since he was a Pax official, he
lived in the Breccan stronghold like every other officer. And, though he was
free to eat lunch and dinner anywhere he pleased, breakfast was the one thing
he could not get out of. So he was forced to eat in a cold stone room with a
hundred noisy, smelly men, slurping down their breakfasts and boasting about
accomplishments made the day prior.
    Though some of the guys weren’t half bad, he had chosen to
sit by himself today. That meant no one would be paying attention to him should
he raise the bowl to his lips and drink the rest of his porridge in this
manner.
    However, upon putting his plan into action—closing his eyes
and placing the rim of the bowl between his lips—the obtrusive and tiresome
voice of an official named Fletcher rang out in his ears.
    “Interesting way to eat your breakfast,” Fletcher remarked,
giving him a smirk as he sat down at the table across from him.
    Hunter put the bowl down and tried to hide his irritation at
seeing Fletcher. Of all the officials he was forced to share a job with,
Fletcher got under his skin the most. Sure, there were men that were scarier,
more commanding. But somehow Fletcher managed to beat them all with an
unbearable amount of immaturity, greediness, and downright slimeball-ishness.
He seemed to take particular exception to Hunter, one reason being that
Fletcher’s own job ranked higher than his, yet Hunter was given better
accommodations in the stronghold because of who his uncle was.
    “You think no one notices,” Fletcher continued, flicking his
eyes down to Hunter’s bowl.
    Hunter didn’t know why, but he felt the