Chapter 6
Maddy and Rhydian sat at the dining table wolfing down bacon sandwiches as Emma worked behind them. Rhydian had one round while Maddy had several to help her body restore its balance. Rhydian didn't mind. Emma had done him some fried bread with his to make up the difference and there was nothing better than fried bread cooked alongside bacon. The flavour was incredible. He'd only just finished when Emma called him over.
"Rhydian, can I have a hand please, love?" Rhydian nodded and got up, taking his plate to the sink before joining her at the kitchen counter. "Okay, once you've washed your hands I need you to core all these cooking apples while I start mixing this flour, sugar and butter together."
"Got it." Rhydian accepted the apple corer that was offered to him as he washed his hands and got to work. He heard Maddy stop eating briefly to turn and watch with fascination as he worked. At first he struggled, unable to find the right angle or pressure to use. But he picked it up incredibly quickly. He could feel her gaze on his back as she watched him with fascination.
"Your learning curve is amazing." she blurted out suddenly.
"Thanks." Rhydian grinned to himself but was careful not to let Maddy see. Emma did, though.
"Don't let it go to your head, Rhydian. And for someone with such an amazing learning curve I'm surprised your school report wasn't better. Oh yes, I had the phone call from Mrs Vaughan. She told me everything and we compared notes. If you want, I'm sure Maddy won't mind helping you if you're struggling."
"I'll be fine, thanks." Rhydian could feel his defences coming up despite knowing it was needless. At that moment, he pushed down with the apple corer only to hear a grating metallic 'click'. He looked down at the plastic handle in his hand, the metal blade now embedded in the last apple. Emma saw and realised she'd said too much.
"Never mind, love. I still have enough here and that apple corer is pretty old. It's lasted well enough that I'm satisfied." She grabbed a knife and cut the apple apart to free the blade before starting to cut up the apples into smaller pieces. "Can you get us the punnet of blackberries from the fridge?" Rhydian nodded and went to get them. "Thanks, love." She took them as he passed them over. "If you and Maddy want to head up and relax until this is ready, that's fine." Before she'd even finished speaking, Maddy had grabbed him by the arm and started hauling him towards the stairs.
'Yeah, she's definitely feeling better!' Rhydian thought to himself as she dragged him upstairs.
"Jesus, Maddy! My arm doesn't bend that way!"
"You should have thought of that before you made me jealous." They reached the top of the stairs as Rhydian turned around to walk with her only for her to shove him into her room.
"What was there to be jealous of?" he asked, clearly confused. Maddy responded by pushing him backwards to sit down on the bed with a strength he had no idea she possessed.
"Those apples." She suddenly kissed him with a furious passion. Before he knew what he was doing, his arms were wrapped around her and they both leaned back to rest on her bed. They tried to get even closer as Maddy's hands started to make short work of the buttons on his school shirt. She went to slide it off his shoulders, their excitement and the blood pounding in their ears almost making them miss the front door opening downstairs. Dan and Emma's voices rose up through the floor and he clearly sounded agitated. Reluctantly, the teen wolves decided it would have to wait. They made their way downstairs and Rhydian re-buttoned as they franticly smoothed the creases out of their clothes. They arrived to see Dan looking incredibly angry.
"-I mean it was totally dysfunctional! One minute he was trying to change the subject to the quiz night and handing me off to someone else to take me to the technician to see the footage, and when he showed up after he'd arranged cover for Mrs Parish's lesson I could barely get any sense out of him!"
"I wonder what happened." Emma mused. Dan shrugged, looking at the floor in disgust.
"I honestly don't care at this point. What I care about is our daughter and he's not even a blip on the screen. To top it off, someone apparently stole his car while I was waiting for him. I can't even feel bad for him. He kept me waiting an age, too. Then he claimed not to even know what I was here for!"
"So did you get a look at the footage?" Rhydian asked. Dan looked up, seeming surprised. He clearly hadn't even registered they'd come downstairs at all.
"I did and it was definitely her. They caught Scott bolting out of the darkroom too." Dan nodded as he reached into his jacket pocket and held up a DVD in a blank case. "They gave us a copy for record too, but I had to sign a piece of paper to say I wouldn't show it in the public domain because of the data protection act. It's basically just for if we want to take it to court. I also stopped by the phone shop and explained the situation with Maddy's phone." He pulled a box out of his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. "Just put your SIM in that and you're good to go."
"Thanks, Dad." Maddy relaxed, knowing that was now one thing off her mind.
"Well we can't go taking this to court!" Emma looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "The last thing we need right now is that much attention. For me, we're already way too exposed right now as it is."
"I never said I was going to." Dan shrugged as he tossed the DVD onto the sofa. "I was wondering what was going to be done about this, though. I've thought about it all the way home. We can't draw any attention to ourselves but we can't let something like this go either."
"I have something in mind for Scott." Maddy said, surprising everyone. "I doubt Mrs Parish will be keeping her job so he's the only one we've really got to take care of now."
"What did you have in mind?" Rhydian asked. "He broke in and straight-up attacked you, Maddy!"
"Well I need to talk it over with Tom and Shannon, but so far I'm thinking we'll call it even if he agrees to thoroughly clean up the darkroom, fix the door lock and pay us back for all fourteen bottles of C41 photo developing fluid. Seriously, that stuff is like thirty quid a bottle!" Emma turned to her daughter with a puzzled look on her face.
"I thought Bradlington paid for all the costs of the photography club?"
"Yeah, and we need to replace those bottles before they find that out!" As Maddy said that, Rhydian burst out laughing. Emma and Dan slowly began to put the pieces together in their minds.
"Madeline Smith!" Emma roared. "If I find out you've basically been embezzling money from your own school...!" By this point, Rhydian could hardly stand up.
"Look, I'm not paying to develop the photos I take for the school!" Maddy protested. "And they really are that. Most of the ones I develop there are ones I take officially for the school. Any of my own I develop are me just taking my cut. I mean I have an instant camera for a reason!"
"Look, rightly or wrongly this just gained a new level of urgency." Rhydian finally managed to stop laughing long enough to speak. "If we don't sort this out covertly and the school find out what she's done, they might not let her back even if you decide to keep her there." At that, Emma gave him a glare that could turn a mountain to ash.
"That's looking less and less likely by the second."
"Well if I don't stay there then what's Rhydian going to do?" Maddy cut in. She stared her mother down, daring her to say that she didn't care, it wasn't their problem or anything along those lines. "There are no other schools in this catchment area. If we send me to a different one, we'd have to move. Jana left to run the wild pack. He'll be the last Wolfblood in Stoneybridge. We'd be abandoning the territory we've fought to keep secure since our family first came here three-hundred years ago. And for what? So I can go to school?"
"Yes." Emma answered far more easily than Maddy had hoped. Dan noticed that too and jumped in.
"Look Maddy, it's not about abandoning our history. That's just an unfortunate problem that comes with all this. And Rhydian's a nice lad but he's not our lad. From a parent's perspective, it's all about you and your life and if you're not safe in that school-" As he spoke, the black veins raced through Maddy's arms as her eyes flashed a dangerous yellow.
"Then you've forgotten the whole reason we're here!" she snapped. "Dad, we're not humans and we never will be! You two rattle on about our heritage and culture and then you want to leave it all behind over something I never even valued for the sake of the humans! If we come to that, I'd sooner be home schooled." With that, she turned on her heel and stormed upstairs. Rhydian considered whether to give her a second to cool off or go straight after her and make sure she was okay. Since Emma and Dan looked ready to start talking among themselves, he opted for the second one. In his heart, he knew there was very little danger of him being left alone. Maddy wouldn't allow it. If it came to it, she'd sooner stay in the house alone than go anywhere else and he was well aware of it. Highly illegal, but she truly wouldn't care. But as long as they were together they would try and stop it coming to that. Whatever happened, they would face it together as they always had.
Author's Note: Okay, so while I definitely owe an apology for the lateness of this update, there is something I would like to take a moment to address: When I started writing for this fandom back in 2015, Wolfblood was in its prime. But over the years, it took knock after knock as more and more of its original cast left. Despite this, the fanfiction community for it remained strong, resolute and energetic. Slowly but surely, that has changed. We've lost momentum. This story has been up for four months now and in that time has only had one review, no follows and no favourites. Even with my brief absence and lack of updates due to a new full-time job and some family stuff, that statistic shows the stark difference in activity on this fandom as opposed to before. It's not just this story either. I have seen this on multiple stories that have been published in recent months.
To the reviewer who posted: thank you. I have said snice 2015 that your support is what keeps me updating and sure enough, your review kept me posting chapters. But it's very clear that the support for this fandom as a whole seems to be drying up. I was planning to make this into a trilogy but that is now not going to happen. For the sake of not leaving things unfinished, I will continue to update until this story is complete and after that this will be the last Wolfblood fanfiction I write unless/until this fandom gets rediscovered and becomes active again or if enough people leave reviews by the end of this story telling me they want more. I will, however still be active in the fanfiction world as a whole. I am now writing for fandoms like Life is Strange and The Owl House. If you haven't heard of either of them, I recommend looking them up. It kills me to leave the Wolfblood fandom like this, but it looks like it'll be just another thing to add to the pile of the calamity that has been these last two years. Author's notes will be thin on the ground over the course of the updates so I'll say this now: Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has supported me so far and joined me on my journey over these last six years. You're all amazing and I wish you the best of luck.