There were other active people like Sylas, but there were less than a hundred that had come back to the Brown family. With how large the compound was, the odds of a coincidence occurring were low at best, impossible at worst.

It was a young woman wearing a tracksuit. The outfit was quite formfitting, and for some reason, despite the chilly breeze, the zipper was undone to the point mounds of delicate brown skin were clearly visible.

She looked up toward Sylas in surprise, doing a double-take at his height before smiling.

"This is the second time," Sylas suddenly said before the woman could speak.

The young woman blinked in confusion.

Her reaction was expected. Sylas was speaking nonsense to her; she had all the right in the world to look at him like a crazy person.

"Who sent you?" Sylas asked.

She blinked in surprise. "I…"

Sylas shook his head. "Just tell them that they don't need to test me like this. It isn't necessary."

He stepped by the woman, continuing up the hilly trek with large steps.

"Sy, you're never going to get a girlfriend like that," Elara spoke into his ear.

Sylas almost wanted to laugh. "I can get a girlfriend just fine."

"Can you?" Elara asked doubtfully. "Why have I never seen you with one?"

Sylas didn't even know how to respond. He wouldn't introduce his family to random women, least of all his little sister. It was hard to judge a person's character even after you had known them for years, let alone a few short months. Who knew what they might do?

That wasn't to say that Sylas walked around thinking everyone to be some sort of mass murderer, but there were many levels below that, especially in the social media age. He didn't want to piss off the wrong woman, and have it end with his little sister getting harassed.

He was fiercely protective of those he loved.

"Maybe one day," Sylas finally said.

"Humph, if you're that desperate, I can introduce you to some nice girls. Remember Sophie? She really—"

Sylas reached back and covered his little sister's mouth, a cold sweat forming on his brow for the first time in this run.

He did not want to listen to his little sister pitch to him why he should be considering a 13-year-old for a girlfriend.

Elara wiggled her tongue into Sylas' palm as revenge and the pair of siblings continued their hike up the mountain, leaving a stunned young woman behind.

"Dammit! You're lucky you're wearing gloves!"

…

"He said that?"

The young woman stood before Astrid, half peeved and half respectful. Sylas hadn't even exchanged a word with her before he said that.

She wasn't really interested in Sylas, aside from his looks. How could she be? She didn't even know him. But at the same time, to not even give her more than a glance?

Astrid didn't seem to react much to this information at all. Sylas wasn't the first to react like this. There were others that were more aggressive, and even quicker on the pickup as well.

The reason Sylas reacted the way that he did was because just yesterday, on his hike with his little sister, he had coincidentally met with another man. But this man, in both covert and overt ways, was practically grilling him about how he felt about the Brown family.

It felt like the man was trying to goad him into saying something disparaging about the family in an attempt to get him into trouble, or at the very least, to tease out his real thoughts.

For that man to appear yesterday, and for the woman to appear today, it wasn't a coincidence.

Astrid sent the woman away and fell into her thoughts.

'His reaction wasn't the best. If he was the shrewd kind, he would have kept it to himself. But the true loose cannons reacted fiercely the first day. The man I sent was aggressive and hardly hid his intentions… but what is interesting is that today, he didn't even wait for the woman to speak first. Why is that?

'Is it related to something my brothers did? Maybe this isn't the second time he's run into such a matter, but rather the third, or fourth, or fifth. In that case, his grade might be even lower than it seems.

'Hm… I also need to factor in the fact that he was with his sister. Even if he was attracted to Malissa, it would take the worst of men to abandon one's sister for the sake of some time with a woman you had only just met.'

Pulling out a sheet, Astrid began to score Sylas, and in the end, she ranked him seventh on her draft sheet. Of the 27 individuals, she felt that there were likely six she should pick above Sylas. But the trouble was…

Next, she pulled out Sylas' file.

'He's my cousin… at least in name—there shouldn't be much blood relation, if any at all. His grandfather was a true Grimblade until he married out… A tenured professor at Veridian at such a young age… but the credentials of the other six are even better than this, his resume isn't very diverse and his doctorate was completed in an inconsequential field…'

Astrid tapped her pen on the desk, clicking and unclicking it out of habit.

She wished that she could meet him in person, but this would be against the rules. It seemed she would just have to stick with her current evaluation.

**

Sylas returned to his family's home with his sister on his back. As he passed by, he waved politely to the family that lived near them.

His parents had been bored out of their minds, so they had begun to make friends with their surrounding neighbors, and that had eventually roped him into the mess.

They obviously all shared the Brown family name, though that was now Grimblade. They seemed like decent enough people.