Aurin sat at a café in Hazelton Town Square, waiting for the waitress to come outside and take his order. He had his fist clenched, waiting to summon a Minakai at a moment’s notice, but he suspected there would be no trouble somewhere so public and crowded.

  He had spent the entire previous night surrounded by his team, many of whom had opted to stay awake and keep watch. Skrow and Quetzel took turns watching the skies around his house, Shamtile stayed awake in his rock garden, trying to sense any approaching movement, while Desparee and Lycavine patrolled the woodland for any ne’er-do-wells that thought they might try and attack Aurin at home.

  After Kyle’s ranch was burned down a couple of years ago, he had felt a horrible sense of paranoia as he camped outside. He had feared being attacked while he was sleeping despite the Minakai watching over him. Now, however, he was confident that he could face whoever dared attacking him. If someone was bold enough to show up at his home in the middle of the night, they would be the ones to suffer.

  “Aurin,” came a soft voice from beside him.

  He turned, expecting to see the waitress, but was greeted by the sweetly smiling face of Ruby. “Hello,” he said. “How are you feeling after the whole incident at Tamer Day?”

  “I’m good thanks to you,” replied Ruby, carefully setting a cup of tea and a plate with a cherry scone on the table beside him. “And this is just a small gesture to show my appreciation.”

  “Great!” said Aurin with great enthusiasm. On the plate beside the cherry scone was a small pot of cream and he couldn’t wait to tuck in.

  Ruby tore off a corner of the napkin, pulled a pen from her coat pocket, and scribbled something on it. She slid it over to Aurin, who picked it up and looked at it curiously.

  He was taken aback by what she had written. “This is your—”

  “My phone number,” said Ruby brightly. “In case you ever want to—”

  Out of nowhere, Aurin felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind. He was caught by surprise, but the red hair tickling his face and the smell of citrus perfume told him that Luna had finally arrived, late as usual.

  “What’s going on?” asked Luna, giving Ruby an exaggeratedly wide smile.

  “Oh!” gaped Ruby, looking from Aurin to Luna. “It’s just that… well, I… um…” Ruby snatched back the napkin and bowed her head apologetically. “I’m so sorry, Aurin. I didn’t realise you had a girlfriend.”

  Ruby stood bolt upright and whisked herself away, not daring to look back as she fled the scene.

  Luna sat down with a catlike smugness on her face. “Hello, my love,” she said.

  “I got free tea and a scone,” chuckled Aurin. “I’ll order another tea for you, but we can go half and half on the scone.”

  “Alright,” giggled Luna. “How scared did she look?”

  “Petrified. Did you need to be so upfront?”

  “She needs to know that you’re mine and nobody else can put her paws on you.”

  “I can’t help but be a chick magnet,” said Aurin with a shrug. He immediately regretted his words as Luna shot him a chillingly cold look. Aurin grabbed her hand and planted a soft kiss on her fingers. “But, of course, despite how many may find themselves pulled towards me, my heart is yours.”

  Luna raised an eyebrow. “You just saved yourself from a disaster. A storm was brewing, Aurin, and it was a dangerous one.”

  Aurin leaned back in his chair and grinned. “I’m too smooth, right?”

  “Oh, shush,” said Luna, giving him a playful kick under the table. “It’s time to talk seriously now, alright?”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “You lay awake, thinking about the Club attack all night too, right?”

  Luna nodded fervently. “Yes.”

  “What are your thoughts in the fresh light of day?”

  Luna slid Aurin’s tea over to herself and took a sip. “We already know we’re missing pieces of what happened and, without having met Club or seen the rift magic for myself, I can only make speculations. I believe the battle was to gauge your power. You said the visor on his mask was shaped like a club in a deck of cards, right?”

  “Thus, the name, yes.”

  Luna drummed her fingers on the table. “Then I’ll bet you anything that he’s working with at least three others and they’ll have visors patterned like a space, a heart, and a diamond.”

  Aurin lightly bit his tongue as he contemplated this for a moment, but Luna spoke again before he could.

  “Villains like this have patterns, don’t they? They like their symbols and motifs. It’s part of their twisted view of order. We saw it with the Zodiac Squad in naming themselves after zodiac signs. Twelve of them made up the elites with one of them heading the pack. If Club had four other allies, then I would expect his boss is called Spade.”

  “It makes sense,” said Aurin with a shrug, “but with only having met Club once and knowing precious little about him, we can only theorise. What we need is to meet him again or any of these potential brethren of his. That would confirm things for us one way or another.”

  “Right,” said Luna. “And I think we need to be much more proactive with Club than we were with Zodiac. We kept hoping they would leave us alone each time we disrupted their plans or defeated their members, but that never happened. They ultimately got what they wanted and only undid the mess after they saw just how rapidly things took a turn for the worse.”

  “That begs the question then of how to draw one of them out, doesn’t it?”

  The two thoughts about this for a while as Aurin ordered a fresh tea for himself seeing as Luna had finished the one Ruby had bought for him. She had also eaten more than half of the scone. Despite his questioning and her denial, he knew it was because she didn’t want him accepting gifts from other girls who were interested in him.

  As Aurin’s new tea arrived, he saw someone familiar walking across the town square and aiming straight for him. It was Nolan and he looked rather serious.

  “Morning!” called Aurin, offering him a wave.

  “Morning, Aurin. Morning, Luna,” answered Nolan, stopping beside their table. “I’ve been sent to deliver a message to you on behalf of Gray.”

  “Gray?” asked Aurin, taken aback. “What does he want with me? A battle?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that… at least, I don’t think so. He wants you to come and meet with him in the Underground Dojo. He said that it’s a travesty that the town’s most revered tamer hasn’t even set foot in the dojo and he wanted to change that.”

  “Oh, I’ve been there,” said Aurin, thinking back to when it was a Zodiac Squad base. “I’ve deliberately avoided visiting it until now, to be honest. Tell him, no thanks.”

  Nolan fidgeted awkwardly for a minute as though he had not expected Aurin to refuse the invite. “He was quite insistent,” he said at last.

  “He was? Well, in that case… still no. I think the whole place should have been filled with concrete considering what it once was.”

  Nolan sighed. “He’s not one to get annoyed easily, but he seemed very excited at the thought of showing you all the hard work we’ve been putting in. Please, will you do it as a favour to me? I’m sure Rick and Holly would love to show you around too. I know what the dojo used to be, but I swear to you that it’s been put to much better use now. If anything, the tamers from the dojo would be the best people to rely on should the Zodiac Squad ever try and make a comeback.”

  Luna looked at Aurin with a faint smile. She didn’t need to say a word for him to interpret what she was thinking.

  “Alright,” said Aurin, deciding it would be best to get it over. If he visited now, he wouldn’t need to worry about being pestered about it again. At least, that was what he hoped.

  “Am I allowed to come?” asked Luna brightly.

  “I… I don’t see why not,” said Nolan, wrinkling his brow. “I mean, you weren’t invited, but it’s not like it’s on heavy lockdown or anything.”

  “Good enough for me,” said Luna, standing up. She grabbed the last small piece of the scone and swallowed it without even chewing. “Up you get, mister.” Luna grabbed Aurin’s sleeve and pulled him to his feet. “You’re going to at least pretend to be enthusiastic about this.”

  “How come Gray’s the one inviting me anyway?” asked Aurin, confused. “The last I heard was that it was some guy called Nelson running the show.”

  “Oh, Gray took over last week,” said Nolan. “Since he arrived, he’s left quite the impression. And he’s much stronger than Nelson, so Nelson offered to step down. Makes sense, yeah?”

  “After how he beat Jaden, I’m not surprised,” muttered Aurin, thinking back on his brother’s defeat a few days prior.

  “Come on,” said Nolan, turning around and beckoning the two to follow.

  “How’d you know where to find us anyway?” asked Aurin.

  Nolan let out an awkward laugh. “Well, I… I’ve been running around like a headless chicken all morning. It’s a bit embarrassing, to be honest. I tried your house and I tried Kyle’s ranch. It was only on my way back to the dojo that I spotted you from across the square. A stroke of good fortune, if I’m honest.”

  Aurin and Luna followed Nolan across the town square. While Luna was keen to see what the Underground Dojo was up to, Aurin’s enthusiasm was negative. He wanted to get in and get out quickly so that he could get back to training in preparation for whatever Club threw at him next.

  right here.

  Aurin's Team:

  Luna's Team: