Chapter 2: Chise
"Just put two drops into your tea every morning and your morning sickness will be gone," I said and handed over the bag to one of the newly pregnant women from the village.
She took it and handed over the payment and smiled kindly at me before leaving, I watched her go and envied her just a little.
She had a husband who truly wanted her and a child that would be the best parts of both her and her husband.
Sighing I closed the door and began checking the number of bags left over and saw that there was only three left, nodding I walked into the living room and curled up on the sofa.
"You okay Chise?" Ruth asked as he padded his way into the room.
"I'm fine Ruth…I'm just worried about Elias, he's been so distant lately," I said and stroked his soft furred head and he rested said head on my thigh.
"He'll come around. He always does," He said then sat up as the doorbell rang.
Getting up I walked over to the door and opened it to see Simon standing there smiling his normally kind smile at me.
"Hi Simon, how are you?" I asked and handed over his medicine.
"Hello Chise, where's that fiancée of yours?" He asked and I had to fight back the urge to yell 'he's my husband not my fiancée!'
"He is taking care of some stuff in London and won't be back till dinner," I answered instead.
Simon must have seen my irritation because he quickly said goodbye and that I should attend service next Sunday then he was gone.
"Church is the last thing I need," I grumbled to myself and closed the door.
God hadn't done me any favors in the past, so why would he help me out now?
Muttering under my breath I entered the kitchen to see that Silver was already finishing up making lunch, I sat down at the table and grumbled some more.
I ate lunch silently while Ruth chatted on and on about his patrol aground the village and the nearby forest and how boring things were right now, how they should go one some kind of quest soon.
I ignored my familiar ranting because all I wanted was to fix whatever was wrong with Elias and for us to be happy, hell maybe even have a child of our own.
I went still at the thought.
Elias had told me once that he hated young children…so would he want to have a baby with me?
"Um…Chise? Are you okay?" Ruth asked and blushed I shook my head clear of that those thoughts.
"I'm fine Ruth…just thinking." I said and quickly finished up my food.
Once all if the medicine was picked up, I quickly started on my course for the week since I had time to kill and changing into my work clothes grabbed everyone's laundry and filled up the laundry tub up with warm water and mixed in some lemon-scented oils and started with the sheets.
Everything had to be done by hand because powerful magic plus normal electronics such as washing machines did not mix well together, they would either not work or blow up, so that meant I had to most everything by hand.
Grabbing a long wooden pole I started to stirred the many sheets in the tub, which weren't as easy as you would think it would be.
It was back breaking work but I was now used to it, once that was done I grabbed some pine smelling powder from a nearby shelf and put half a scope full into the water and began stirring again, steam began to rise from the tub and after another ten minutes the water had evaporated leaving clean damp sheets.
Picking them up I quickly put them all on the drying line and started to fill up again when I saw a flash of light at the edge of my vision, turning I glanced around but saw nothing shrugging it off, I started sorting the colors from the white and this time I saw the flash of light coming from one of the hedges by the side of the house.
'A camera?' I thought to myself and stopping what I was doing and mentally called out to Ruth and allowed him to see through my eyes.
'I got it,' he thought at me and I watched through his eyes as he silently made his way towards that part of the house until he was behind greasy looking men with a camera in his hand.
Baring his teeth Ruth let out a low threatening growl and the man slowly turned around at the sound of Ruth's growl and swallowed hard.
"Nice puppy," The man said and Ruth lunged forward causing the man to scream and tumble backward.
Blinking I quickly made my way over to the side of the house to see Ruth had the man pinned down, his large paw was slowly pressing harder and harder into his throat.
"Well, what do we have Ruth?" I asked and patted his head as I stared down at the man.
The man looked greasy with unkempt brown hair, muddy brown eyes, and a small beer belly.
"Who are you?" I demanded and Ruth lets up enough to allow the man to speak.
"Listen here you brat! You better let me go or ill…"He started but I shook my head at him.
"No you listen, you're the one taking pictures of me without my consent. Now you can either tell me why and who are you or I can get the local sheriff down here and don't think he won't come. I helped with the birthing of his granddaughter last week, he'll make a special trip for me."
The man swallowed hard and I just waited calmly, I had dealt with his type before and knew that he would talk at some point.
"The name is Jay Morgan, I'm a PI." He finally said.
I nodded and picked up his camera and started looking through the pictures, there were hundreds of pictures of me and Elias some of them were separated others were of us together sleeping in our bed!
"What the fuck is this?" I demand and held the camera close to his face.
Jay looked nervously between me and Ruth then back at me.
"Um... well you see Miss. Hatori…" He started but I cut him off.
"First off it's Ms. Ainsworth, second how in the hell do you know my maiden name?"
Jay blinked in surprise at the news and stared at me for a long moment.
"Um… , I was hired to find you by your father."
I stared at him in shock, my father had hired this creep to track me down after almost ten years…why?
"Why? It's been ten years since he last saw me why after all this time?" I demanded as anger and pain burned through my body.
My ability to see the fae had caused my father to abandon me and my mother when I five, he had taken my brother and left my already depressed mother alone to deal with my problem. Days were social services would come and accuse her of hurting me because of the dark bruises on my body and scratches on my face, nights were I would wake up screaming to find my hair tied in knots on the headboard and afternoons where I would huddle in fear in the empty tub.
She hadn't been able to deal with it anymore and ended her life to get away from the madness… from me.
"I don't know he just wanted me to find you and report my findings to him," Jay says and I snapped my fingers and Ruth slowly allowed Jay to sit up.
"I'm keeping this," I said when he held out a hand for the camera. "You are going to leave and never come back if you set foot on this property or come near me or my family again I will let Ruth eat you."
As if to back up my empty threat, Ruth snarled and snapped his sharp teeth at Jay which caused him to squeak and nodded his head.
"I understand Ms. Ainsworth, but your father has spent a good amount of money trying to find you, I believe he is genuinely concerned about you."
I had to give the man point so saying that, it showed me that he wasn't a complete asshole.
"Jay I think you're a good person but you have no idea what that bastard did, so do yourself a favor and get the fuck out of here," I said and nodded for Ruth to let him up.
Jay got up and dusted himself off and reaching into his pocket held out a business card to me.
I took and saw that it had his work phone and personal phone numbers listen along with his name and IP firm on it.
""In case you want to get in touch with your father." He explained.
I slide it into my pocket.
"I won't."
I watched him leave without another word.
"Why do I think he will be back?" Ruth asked once Jay was gone.
I snorted as I looked through the pictures.
"Because people like him don't give up, not when they think they are on to something," I answered.
These pictures went back to at least three weeks, which meant Jay had been watching me long enough to wonder about my relationship with Elias and how a 17-year-old girl from Japan ended up in England with an older man.
"We need to show Elias this when he gets home," I said and showed him the pictures, the upside was that none of them showed any of our adventures but somewhere more damning than others.
"Wow," Ruth said as he looked one of the most damning ones.
It was a picture of me standing in nothing but a pair of baby pink sheer lace bra and panties, and modeling them for Elias in our bedroom.
I remember that he had caught me eyeballing them as we walked past a lingerie while we were in London and had gone back to get them for me, I blushed at the memory of him handing over the simple brown box and finding the bra and panties wrapped in white tissue paper.
'Try it on for me,' he had said and finding a courage I didn't know I had, slipped off all of my clothes right there in front of him and slowly deliberately I slide of the simple cotton bra and matching panties I had worn that day and changed into the sexy pair, then began to mimic some of the more sexier movement of the runway models I had seen on T.V once, twisting and turning this way and that so he saw every inch of my body in the bra and panties.
I had seen the line of this arousal through his trousers and knew he wanted me but after I was done my little show, Elias hadn't taken me but instead helped me into one my nicer nightgowns and helped brush out my hair.
Blinking I forced myself to focus on the matter at hand and hand the camera over to Ruth.
"Take this inside and give it to Silver please, I need to finish this up before Elias gets home," I said.
Ruth nodded and turned into his human form and gingerly to the camera from me.
"I'll be right back." He said and dashed back to the house.
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Elias
"I'm back!" I called out as I entered the house, the scent of baked chicken and session greens filled the house.
"Welcome home," Chise called out from the kitchen can come out to greet me while wiping her hands clean with a dish towel.
Leaning down as Chise rose up on her toes for a quick kiss, I let out a long sigh of pleasure, to finally be able to do this simple thing with my wife after so long made me happier than I had been in a while.
"How was your day?" I asked as I followed her into the kitchen to see Silver was cutting up the chicken and Ruth was setting the table.
"About that, I need to talk to you about something that happened today." She said and I saw the look of hesitation on her face.
It had taken Chise a long time to finally open up to me and longer still to tell me everything that bothered her or what was really on her mind, to see her hesitated to tell me something meant that whatever it was had hit a past issue for her.
"What happened?" I asked but she simply shook her head.
"After we all eat… and maybe after a glass or two of brandy." Chise said.
I raised an eyebrow at that, Chise knew that I only drank when I was every irritated at something or someone, so whatever her news was it was bound to irritated me greatly.
Dinner was eaten in relative silence, the only sounds were the occasional mutters for more food to be passed over or the clink of silverware.
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Chise
When Dinner was over and the dishes cleaned, Elias led me into the library and immediately pull me into his lap, I cuddle closer to him needing him in every way but having to make due with just this.
"While I was washing clothes…someone was taking pictures of me." I said and felt him tease with worry.
"Ruth caught him and when I asked who he was and who had sent him…he told me his name was Jay Morgan and that my dad had sent him."
Elias said nothing he knew how much I both resented and hated my father, he had abandon me and my mother when we had need him the most. While I understood him wanting to protect my baby brother from the crazy that seemed to follow me daily, part of me still believed that if he had stayed than my mother would still be alive.
"That's not all," I said and held up the camera. "He's been taking pictures of us for at least three weeks and sending them to my father."
I heard Elias growled and I saw his eyes flashed with his anger, Elias was a very private person and disliked others butting into his life without first earning his trust and respect, so the thought of some stranger spying on us angered him greatly.
Elias too the camera from me and began to look through the pictures and his eyes only glowed brighter with every picture he saw.
When he was finally done I watched as he crushed the camera between his two powerful hands and let the pieced crumble to the floor.
"The PI's name is Jay Morgan. He gave me his card in case I wanted to get in contact with my father." I said and Elias took in a deep breath and looked at me.
"Do you want to?" He asked and knew that if I said yes he would be their every step of the way.
Staring up into his eyes I was once again thankful that this man had come into my life, Elias had always supported me and inspired me to do better.
"I love you." I said and kissed him.
I put all of my feelings into my kiss and silently let him know that loved every part of him.
When the kiss ended I laid my head down on his shoulder and sighed.
"I don't want to see him but if we don't meet with him I'm worried he'll come here." I said.
Elias stroked my hair out my face and held me closer.
"Okay, let me do some digging into this Morgan character and find out how much of this is real." He said and reaching into his pocket pulled out a small box and handed it to me.
Taking it I opened it and stared at the beautiful ring inside, it was a simple gold band with three diamonds on it. Picking up I saw that inside the band was an engravement.
Forever mine and never alone.
"Oh Elias… it's beautiful." I said and slide it onto my ring finger.
Elias pulled me closer to him and tilted my head up to meet his gaze.
"Chise…I love you so much. The day I saw you I knew I had to make you mine…so…will you do me the honor of becoming my wife." He said and I felt tears begin to fall down my face.
"Silly man, I'm already your wife." I said but Elias shook his head.
"In the matter of magic yes but I want you to become my wife in every sense. So I ask again…will you marry me?"
Crying in earnest now, I nodded and began kissing him everywhere I could reach. His nose, his cheeks, his lips all while muttering yes over and over again.
