AN;  Seriously you guys are the best, thank you so much for the 54 votes! You are the best OG readers a girl can ask for. Also, it's great that this book is now at 254 reads. We are growing slowly but surely. It would be crazy if this book got millions of views like my other book did, but I still love it, even if it didn't. Also if you never read anything else I wrote, I'm a terrible proofreader! Feel free to point out my mistakes! Thanks for reading- Sam

PS. I'm not fluent in Italian. If my Italian doesn't make sense, correct me, please!

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" Figlio di puttana!! Hai dormito con mia moglie!"the shorter of the two men yelled. His beady small eyes stared daggers over a sharp, beak-like nose. The taller of the two men stood beside him, glaring over his own sharp nose. Their faces were way too similar for them not to be brothers.

"Grayson? Who are they?" I whispered. I hugged the yellow dress closer to my chest.

"When you were talking about the people in my memory of this place, it triggered my memory of those  guys."

The man smacked his chest with his outstretched palm," Adesso... o ti divorerò! Se sei abbastanza uomo da !" His small eyes blazed with pure hatred.

"He seems really mad, what did you do?"

"Nothing it was a misunderstanding, we worked it out. But I'm remembering the time before we did."

The man abruptly charged at Grayson. Grayson grabbed me and gave me a hard shove. I went flying into the clothing rack. I grabbed onto the fabric to keep myself from falling, while I found my footing.

I turned just in time to see Grayson connect a right hook into the taller of the two men. The man fell to the ground with a thud. Upon seeing his comrade fall, the smaller man let out a scream of fury and charged at Grayson head first. For a split moment, it looked like he was going to collide with him, but at the last second, Grayson twisted out of the way and brought his elbow down on top of the man's head. 

The shorter man slammed face first into the ground with a sickening thud.

Grayson immediately raced over to me and grabbed my wrist "We need to run like now!"

"Why?" I asked and looked back at the men on the ground.

At that very moment, the shorter man raised his head off the road and made eye contact with me. His eyes, now an ember orange, had almost tripled from their original size.

He staggered onto all fours and ripped off his black shirt. Brown and white feathers began to sprout over every inch of his exposed back and chest.

My mouth fell open in shock.

"Run!" Grayson yelled again and this time I didn't question it.

We raced down the street. Behind us, came a loud screech and the beating of massive wings. We rounded a corner, then another and another, until Grayson abruptly stopped beside a bright yellow house. Grayson pointed up and I looked to see one of the windows above our heads was wide open.

He got down on one knee and laced his fingers together on top of it, "The window on the first floor is open. Put your foot in my hand,  I'm going to hoist you in."

"Okay"

"1-2-3!"

I yelped when I suddenly found myself airborne and hurdling towards the open window. I grappled at the white window sill, more of me out than in, but still somehow managed to pull myself inside the small kitchen. Grayson joined me inside and slammed the open window shut.

I sank into one of two wooden chairs positioned around a small coffee table. I took deep breathes struggled to get enough air into my lungs

Grayson sat down in the chair opposite from me, also breathing heavily, but not as heavy as me. His sunglasses had disappeared from his face. We locked eyes.

"Why did we run away? Back there, why didn't we just leave the memory? We can do that right?"

"To leave the memory, we would have to leave through the door we enter and my door is all the way in the house where I stayed across town. It would shatter the memory if we tried to leave in any other way."

I groaned. "What does that even mean? Lunera's aren't supposed to mate, not even to each other, so maybe I'm just missing something here? I didn't even know mates could share memories."

"Mates can share memories, although rare, they aren't like this place where you can, touch, taste, interact, and feel things. They are more like a movie...you do know what a movie is right?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. 

Grayson cleared his throat, "My memories are different from that because I solidified my memories with magic into something called a Somnium Memoriae. It roughly translates into dream memory. So unlike a regular memory, it doesn't save the experience it saves the place. But experiences can be triggered with the memory by certain words or thoughts. For example, when you mentioned the people that were here when I created this memory, my mind jumped to the Griffin brothers. That's why they appeared."

"What would have happened if we hadn't gotten away? From those..." I trailed off

"From the griffins? It would have most likely shattered the memory."

"And what would happen if we shattered the memory?"

"It would destroy this memory,
we could never come back here. And the shards could do some damage to my mind, nothing serious since I have never shattered any of the other memories. But it would be like getting a concussion. I wouldn't be right for a couple days."

Grayson stood from the chair and looked outside, "It's safe now we can make it back to the house I stayed it. They didn't find me until the sun went down, so we are safe for now. If you want, you can change into the dress that started all of this."

I looked down at my hands and saw that I still held the dress tightly in my grasp. After all that, I kind of had to put it on now.

"Yeah, I'll still wear it."

"You'll have to change here in the then kitchen. I haven't been in any of the other rooms."

Grayson looked at me expectantly.

"Um, could you turn around?" I asked.

Grayson shrugged and swung his legs over the chair and faced away from me. I retreated to the opposite corner of the room.

I turned my back to him and quickly slid out of the blue dress and into the yellow one. The fabric fell around me in gentle yellow waves.

I turned back towards him to find he was still facing away from me.

"I'm ready,"I said.

He turned and his eyes lit up. "You look beautiful," he said and stood up from the chair and crossed the room. He took my hand and brought it to his mouth. "I'm lucky that I have such a beautiful mate."

I could feel my face heat up, "We-we should get going now!" I stuttered.

I hurried towards the window and threw it open. I looked down at the street below, the window was higher off the ground than I remembered.

"Hang on, let me go first so I can help you down."

I stepped back and let Grayson squeeze past me. He dove out of the open window head first, did a flip mid-air, and landed on his feet."

He looked up at me from the ground.

He held up his hands to me. "Jump!" he called. "I'll catch you."

I perched myself on the windowsill, with my feet dangling in the air. I pushed myself away from the building and fell downwards.

True to his word Grayson caught me and delivered me safely to the ground. Once on the ground Grayson took my hand and intertwined his fingers in mine.

"Okay, lets go," he said. "As long as we reach the house before nighttime, we should be fine."

We walked again from the empty, narrow cobblestone streets in silence. But instead of taking in the sights and sounds, my eyes and ears were peeled for any sign of a feathery beast."

We finally came to another yellow clay building, that was a couple shaded lighter than the last building.

The sun had settled itself of the horizon, and the sky blue sky was now streaked with various shades of orange and pink

"The door out is right in this house," Grayson said and led me up a flight of white stairs through the front door of the house.

We were greeted by a kitchen crowded with numerous strange objects. The shelves were lined with various jars filled with various strange liquids, that glittered, and swirled in their jars. Various dried herbs hung above a sink and bones and skulls were scattered all over the kitchen counter and table. Grayson didn't comment on the strangeness of the kitchen and I didn't ask.

He led me down a short hallway the branched off from the kitchen. He grabbed the handle to a plain wooden door on the right side of the hallway. We stepped inside a room with nothing but a bed, desk, and a sliding glass door that led out onto a small balcony.

"Where's the exit?" I asked.

"Right here,"  Grayson said and shut the door beside us. I saw this side of the door was painted a bright red, the same red as Grayson's door in the hallway.

"All we have to do is open it  again from inside this room, and we can leave ."

I took a step forward and reached for the round brass knob on the red door. I was ready to get out of here before the griffins found us again.

"Wait!"

"What?" my fingers were mere inches from the door.

"Let's watch the sunset."

"You want to watch the sunset?"

I stared at him in disbelief, while he opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the narrow balcony. It was almost dark, so shouldn't we be leaving?

He looked over his shoulder and motioned me to join him.

"Come on, don't waste that dress. As least watch one sunset in it. We are in the clear until it gets dark, and the exit is only a few feet away.

I looked between him and the door. Against my better judgment, I found my feet carrying myself outside to join him.

I leaned against the railing and looked out over the roofs of the other houses, and onto the glimmering bay below. I could see Grayson standing beside me out of the corner of my eye.

"Aurelia," I turned my head towards him.  "Be my mate."