It wasn't fair.
Jeremy had left me out again.
I paced up and down the corridor, feeling mutinous.
They say motherhood's supposed to calm you down, make you want to stay with the kids.
Not me.
I was sick of it.
Sick of them treating me like a bloody three year old, just because I'd had kids, just because I was the only damn female in this godforsaken house.
I pummeled my hands against the wall, punching a mirror, the wall, a grandfather clock.
It hurt but pain was good, pain brought me some sense of achievement, something other than being patronised.
I felt about as free as the day I realised what Clay had done to me.
And it felt shit.
I screamed as loud as I could, pummeling the wall again and again and again.
Time seemed to stand still.
I collapsed to the floor, mad with fury, enraged.
How could they do this to me?
A tear trickled down my face and I felt a sudden pain in my abdomen.
"My babies!" I yelled, feeling the stab of a knife.
Remembering that smell.
Remembering him.
"You can't have my babies!" I screamed.
Huddled over, my tears becoming quicker and quicker.
A lake.
I giggled.
A lake of tears.
And then I was falling, falling so fast the ground beneath me gave way of it's own accord.
Faster and faster and faster.
"Oh shit!" Clay muttered as Elena thrashed about underneath the bed covers screaming.
"Jer?" he yelled, hauling himself out of bed at a hundred miles an hour.
"JER!"
"I'm up, I'm up," Jeremy calmly replied, stopping Clayton's mad dash down the corridor.
"What's wrong?"
"It's Elena. She's yelling and screaming again. I think she might be delirious."
"Really? How so?"
"Jer, she was yelling about her parents a minute ago."
Jeremy's expression turned grave, every one of his few wrinkles showing.
"Clay, go get the medical kit for me."
He stopped Clay's protests with a raised eyebrow.
"She'll be fine without you for one minute."
Clay scowled before obeying, running down the stairs at full speed, his blonde hair beginning to matt with worried sweat.
"And Nick?" Jeremy said, directing this at an almost Mediterranean looking man, hidden behind the corner, "Instead of eavesdropping could you do something useful?"
"Sure," Nick said, emerging from his bedroom, looking dishevelled.
"Get your father up and get Elena a glass of water."
Nick looked suspicious.
"I'll need his advice," Jeremy replied, his worry showing, "Please Nick. Hurry?"
Jeremy walked down the corridor, almost hesitantly.
He loved Elena as a sister and to see her like this, when normally she was so strong, so annoying, was just beyond him.
Through all his time as Pack Alpha, through her rages, through her and Clay's constant intrusion into problems that, without them, would be simple, he'd been ok, known that in the end it would be all right.
But now he wasn't so certain. He'd have to put on a brave face, as he always did, for the rest of the pack's benefit.
He rushed the rest of the way, to her bedside, pulling off Clay's single coloured sheets, making sure Elena was comfortable, holding her down whilst she thrashed.
He didn't know what was happening to her, but he was damn well going to find out.
"Jeremy?" Antonio's cautious voice, normally so full of humour, called quietly from beyond the doorway.
"Come in" he sighed, leaving Elena's bedside for a second.
"My good friend, I need your advice. Elena's not getting any better and I fear..." he sighed , "I fear the very worst."
"Death?"
"No, as you and I know, death is not the worst thing that can destroy a person. I believe she's been infected."