Chapter Twenty: A Hairy Situation

Hello, and welcome back to the Hadley Legacy. When we last left off, everyone except Gweny had a birthday, and Katyrzena decided she only wanted to be heiress if she could marry her friend, Santiago.

"What should I do?" she asked him, and he clearly had a plan.
"Talk to your grandmother. Maybe she's not dead set on this maid."

Wendy scowled at her chess pieces. This wasn't what she wanted. She wanted Katyrzena to relinquish heirship because of her lie, not go argue with Gweny. But maybe things could still go her way.

"Grandma, can I talk to you?"
"Not now, dear, I'm getting skinny."
"It's really important. Can we go outside?"

And so Katyrzena proceeded to tell her everything. She told her about wanting to be heiress, and wanting to marry Santiago, and Wendy trying to take heirship away from her, and Roxy threatening her, and everything else.

"I think you picked me because you think I'm a certain kind of girl, and I'm not. I don't want to be chained to some sort of legacy ideal, I'm always going to be me."

"Oh Katty, it's not that at all. I don't want you to have to be someone you're not. It's just that I have to pick an heiress, and there can only be one. We can't keep doing this not choosing thing. If all of you guys move on the house will be full in no time."

"Think about what you want, Katyrzena, and I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you want the title or not."

That morning, on her way to the bathroom, Katyrzena heard voices inside Roxy and Chelle's bedroom. She stopped by the door and listened. It was her aunt, Roxanne, and her uncle, Ian.

"Even if she does give up the title, we have to kill her," Roxy was saying. "We have to make sure there's no way she could ever become heiress. We have to get rid of all of them, except for Gabi. Gabi's our ticket in."

Terrified, Katyrzena ran downstairs to her bedroom, and changed into clothes that didn't belong to her. She shaved her head, then ran out of the house before anyone else even woke up.

She ran away and didn't look back.

Katyrzena went to a lake high up in the mountains, far away from their home. She would live in the mountains, and gather food from around the lake, and never go home again. She was going to hide from the family, let Wendy be the heiress. It was the only way to stay alive.

Unfortunately, because she didn't look back, she didn't see a worried Gabija following her until it was too late.
"Kat? Katyrzena, is that you?"

"What are you doing here?" Gabi asked.
"They're trying to kill me," the heiress said. "Aunt Roxie and everyone. They're going to kill all of us, except you."

"So what, you're just going to run away from your dream and leave everyone else in danger? I won't let you run away!"

"I'm not running away," Katyrzena said, "I'm staying alive. This time, don't follow me."

And Katyrzena ran from the stream, up into the hills to the place she would make her home. And this time she checked if she was being followed, and it appeared that Gabi had left her alone.

Of course, she was wrong. Gabija followed her sister at a distance, until she had her cornered in the middle of stone henge.
"Katyrzena!"

"Gabija! I thought you were them! I told you not to follow me."
"Yeah, well I didn't listen. I'm not going to let you give up your dream just 'cause you're scared. You're going to be the heiress, and that's that."

"Gabi, you don't understand! They'll kill me if they find me."
"Well you can't hide forever. You're coming back with me."

Gabija swayed unsteadily on her feet.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said quickly. "Maybe all this running is getting to me."
"Maybe you should lie down."
"I will, once I've gotten you safely home."

The two talked for hours, up on the mountain. Gabija told her sister about her plan to protect her from Roxy and Ian, and how she was even going to get Wendy on their side.

The two girls shared a hug, and Katyrzena let Gabi keep the water she'd brought for her sister, and they headed back down the hill.

It was dark by the time they got home, and the house was quiet. The girls split up to look for Chelle or Gwen and tell them what had happened.

But before she found anyone, Gabija collapsed, all alone and outside the house.

What happened to Gabi? Will her family find her in time? Find out next, on the Hadley Legacy. Also, maybe we'll move on from this plot and start generation seven.