Hi :) Sorry- uploading issues. Third time lucky!
I didn't have to tell Nick in the end. He knew I was upset about something else, beside the pregnancy, from the second he woke up. Some part of him knew something worse was going on and when I refused to tell him, he was more hurt than he would have been if I'd cheated on him. We'd promised honesty, he'd reminded me, before he moved into the living room. Lying to him, as I had to do, was the worst thing I could do.
There was nothing else I could do though.
Clayton agreed with Nick, agreed that I was lying, and I saw the respect I'd earned vanish in his eyes. He stopped looking at me like a pack-sister and now like an outsider, which hurt just as much, but Reece and Antonio stuck up for me. They both defended me when they shouldn't have. Clayton and Nick were right. I was lying.
Funnily enough, I ended up sharing a room with Daniella at the factory, the two of us in the 'dog house'. I'd tried to think of her as a bitch, a heartless bitch, but it was impossible to think that while I shared the tiny room with her. She was as wounded and fucked up as I was. We just had to deal with it differently and for her, sex was power, the desire she could provoke, and after being helpless all her life, she needed power.
I didn't like it. But the anger I'd felt at her faded somewhat. She needed power to feel safe and I needed to protect my family at all costs even if it meant hurting Nick. We came to a truce, without speaking a word to each other, the unspoken anger fading a fraction.
Nick was so upset with me that he somehow managed to avoid me completely. If I was at the house, he was at the factory, or visa versa. I couldn't catch him at all.
Somehow the Cabal scientists, using the other mutt I'd 'cured' of the fever, had figured out what I'd done. Suddenly in a matter of days, fevers were breaking, and mutts were leaving. I felt horrified at first, and when Demetruis called I heard myself apologising as if I was listening to someone else.
He was amused, amused at how much power he had over me right now, and reassured me that he'd fully expected this. It was only to break a fever- it was not the cure. Nor would it lead them to the cure. But he appreciated my concern and for a final barb, a final dig at the power he had, hung up after calling me a good pet.
I almost smashed the phone at that. He'd said it on purpose, he knew what that word meant, but ...there was nothing I could do. The helplessness made me furious.
To everyone's surprise, a week before Christmas, every last mutt was awake and gone. The Cabal still demanded use of the factory for the experiments with the corpses but the pack could go back home.
Nick drove back with the moving truck. I flew back with the babies, Daniella and Reece helping, and came back into Forestwatch on my own. Daniella went back to New York on her own, Reece wanted to stay with me, and I heard from him that Nick and Antonio had gone back to New York.
I tried to be happy. It wasn't working well. I couldn't blame the hormones either- it wasn't a stage of pregnancy, apparently, that was emotional. But at least here, at home, I had the toddlers with me. I had privacy. I could stop lying all the time.
Some part of me was trying to pretend nothing was different. It was easy for a few days, while the rest of the pack were so preoccupied dealing with the 'new mutts', to get time on my own with just the babies. I set up the toddler's potty, took care of them, and was so busy on 'forgetting' that I forgot it was Christmas till after lunch when I got a call from Elena, asking me if I needed help.
"Why would I need help?" I was scrubbing dishes, trying to hear her over the noise of the toddlers playing the saucepans, the breakfast and lunch pretty much the same meal. Not that they minded much about that.
"We thought you were coming for the morning presents. The kids have already gone over them. Matt showed up, said you were busy cooking, he didn't want to wait anymore."
"Morning presents?" I dumped the dishes onto the side, stepping over Dominic as he crawled underfoot for the cupboard. "What do you mean? I wondered where he'd run off to."
"Did you two forget it was Christmas?" She sounded amused.
"Christmas?" I froze. Oh shit. Now I remembered what today was. No wonder why Matt seemed confused and put off when I said I probably wasn't going to Stonehaven today. "Is that today?"
"Where's Nick?"
"New York." I replied. I heard her sharp intake of breath, her surprise, and the echo.
"New York? What's he doing there?"
"I don't know. Working." I grimaced as she repeated this to someone in the background, it sounded like Antonio, and I added, "It's okay. He was sick a long time. He has a lot of work to do."
"Clayton's coming to pick you up."
I flinched at that. I normally liked seeing him but now? Not so much. I didn't argue though. "The kids are covered in lunch."
"Good, Antonio and Lillian can bathe them. I think he got them some cute Christmas outfits." She seemed stunned. "You really forgot it's Christmas?"
"Shit, I don't even have presents." I swore. The shock over Lillian being there was overwhelmed by the horror that Christmas was here and I had nothing for Matt. Or Logan. Or Kate. The toddlers probably wouldn't notice or care so much but the older kids would.
"Don't worry. We'll figure something out. See you soon."
I tried to gather up the things we needed, a clean potty chair thing, racing up and down stairs, food in a box on the table, throwing things at it. Chips. Cookies. A loaf of bread. Shit. Did they want me to cook? I was not prepared for this. How had I forgotten Christmas? Was it because it wasn't snowing yet, where as the last two Christmases, it had been? I had no clue.
Clayton appeared after fifteen minutes, yanking the toddler's car seat out of my hands with such a look of annoyance that I froze. "You ain't supposed to be lifting heavy stuff. Remember?" His eyes darted to the lump that was more or less hidden under the winter clothing.
"Someone's got to."
He scowled and lifted up one of the babies under the other arm, turning and heading for the car. "No more lifting. Not even toddlers."
I couldn't leave them to roam the ground floor wild, nappy free, as much as they might have loved that... but I didn't tell him that, just went back to the kitchen and tried to find things I could donate towards the traditional Christmas dinner. There was a jar of Vegemite, I had a sudden urge to eat it, and I slid it into my pocket with a spoon. First craving? Maybe... but sometimes I did like to eat a spoonful of it. Sometimes. It was nice in hot water.
Clayton finally got everything in the car and returned for the box. He and I didn't speak as we pulled out, the three toddlers in the back seat, but he did glance at the house.
"You alone in there?"
"Yeah?" I wasn't sure who else would be there.
He didn't say anything else, hands tightening on the wheel, and when we pulled up I was instructed firmly to go inside and not lift babies. I didn't need to be told that- Antonio came out, arms open for me, then he got the babies out himself. They were happy to walk up into the house, with a little help up the stairs, following me inside.
The floor was covered in Christmas wrapping paper, the smell of a real pine tree filling the air, food already in the oven. I stepped over it, guiding the toddlers into the living room, already feeling claustrophobic. Some part of me wanted to retreat back to Forestwatch now that they were here, delivered, only able to give a tense smile to Lillian who was sitting in the living room and looking as stunned as she had when she'd seen us changing.
Elena waved from the tree and I sat down, my mind fading, feeling almost separate and cut off from the pack. I'd have to change tonight. Too much time had past and I was restless, frustrated, hadn't even realised how much time had passed since my last change. The stress was getting to me.
I felt no joy. No anticipation. Nothing but dread of how this would end. It showed, my stomach, but I had it covered up under the baggy top, trying to downplay what was going on inside. Their movements provoked only grief if I focused on it. So I didn't. I smiled, I helped peel potatoes, I told them how to make the potatoes crispy, and pretended that I was happy.
The cooking burnt a little, I struggled to care, but we managed to get the meal out. Roast turkey, cold roast chicken, a goose even, potatoes, all kinds of things that the hungry pack were going to gorge on. No one let me lift anything, they flat out refused to let it happen, so I just tried to direct the cooking like I had last year.
Nick showed up in time for dinner, making up an excuse which I could tell was a lie, his eyes not meeting mine. He wasn't going to talk to me till I told him the truth. I couldn't tell him the truth till after the birth.
We ate, Nick sitting beside me, but he didn't look at me or touch me. Didn't try and hold my hand under the table. Reece noticed, noticed the look on my face, and kept fixing Nicks with pointed looks, which Nick ignored, until finally Reece picked up his plate, came around the table, and squeezed in between us.
With him there, with his arm around me, I shuddered and leaned against the familiar presence, comforted somewhat. Whatever Nick and Clayton decided, Reece didn't care, and it was both a comfort and filled me with additional guilt. Would he feel this affectionate towards me when he knew I'd lied so much? When I'd traded my children for chemicals?
We ate slowly, the laughter echoing around me, and I smiled. Or tried to. If someone asked me if I was all right, I'd blame hormones, and that was good enough. Every time I lied, Nick tensed more, and he continued to avoid me. Clay never failed to notice this and he too withdrew. I saw them several times that night, outside, talking, and I knew it wasn't about the nice weather or when the snow would come.
The presents that night, the adults handing them out, it was like the first Christmas I'd been there when I'd been numb and barely able to focus. Mostly, it was food again, sometimes other things, and I tried to smile and be grateful every time I received a present. No one seemed to mind that I'd forgotten, reminding me that the days after Christmas were really the best days to buy presents anyway, and it was probably smart of me to do that.
I almost cried, almost, when I found a pair of presents for the twins. A 'twin cot'. Toys. Clothing. They weren't even born yet and they were already being spoiled rotten. What would they say when they were gone? The Christmas was a disaster, I ended up sitting outside, eating the Vegemite from the jar, ignoring Reece's attempts to grab it.
"That's probably not healthy." He told me, amused as he watched me eat spoonful after spoonful. "That's a lot of salt."
I shrugged. "Cravings."
"Want some bread to go with it?"
A shake of my head and he sat down beside me, giving up, and we sat side by side in the cold night, watching the stars drift overhead, the warmth of each other's bodies through the thick winter clothing.
"Did you fight with Nick?"
"He thinks I'm lying to him." I said quietly. I didn't say he was wrong either.
"Want me to talk to him?" Reece asked, softer, glancing back at the house. There was laughter, teasing, the usual love and fun that came when the pack was relaxed. The news that people had recovered so fast, so soon, it gave everyone hope that it meant the cure wasn't far behind. I wished I could tell them too. "You okay?"
"I'm just emotional." An understatement, but he hugged me closer, his lips kissing my forehead, and I eased against him, the sound of his heart and his scent as calming as anyone else here. "I'll miss you."
"I'm only in New York. You don't have to miss me that much." He laughed, softly, sneaking the spoon and eating his own spoonful of the salty stuff. "Just give me a call and I'll fly over for the night. Nick doesn't have to act like an ass all the time."
"He's in New York too." I muttered.
"So who's helping you with the triplets?" When I shrugged, his arm tightened, a low inhale showing exactly what he thought of that. "Shit. Does Elena know?"
"Clay will probably dob me in now. But yeah." I nodded a fraction, taking the spoonful and eating it, and stiffened as I saw something white drift down. "Look."
We watched as a single snowflake fell to the earth in front of us, melting almost as it reached the ground, and his lips curved up slowly. "Get to make a wish, I think."
"Isn't that a star?"
"It's whatever we want."
I wished that they'd forgive me. I knew deep down that I had to go, I had to leave, because I couldn't take it anymore here. Another week and I'd snap, blurt it all out, I couldn't take much more of Nick or Clay's cold shoulders.
I walked back on my own, after Antonio asked to have them overnight, as Nick was apparently staying there. The house was suddenly too empty and I stared it blankly, sitting at the table, aware that I was going quietly mad here. I had to get out. If I stayed here, if I kept seeing the pack, I would crack. They were going to do a nursery soon, were going to send someone to live here while Nick refused to come back, I knew it without them having to tell me. I'd heard them discussing it quietly. They didn't want me to lift the toddlers any more.
I headed upstairs, quietly packing my suitcase, and called a taxi for early the next morning before Antonio came over with the toddlers. Then I headed out for my last run on the properties, alone, not even finding joy in the first flakes of snow that fell. I padded through the ground, the change more of a chore than a joy for once, not caring or noticing the prey. I wasn't hungry. I was just getting the change out of my system so I could get going.
Daniella was standing there the next morning, arms crossed, beside the suitcase I'd left beside the door. She glanced at it then at me.
"You going somewhere?"
"I... no?"
"Good. Then you won't mind if I call someone to lift this for you." She lifted her phone.
"No, please. Don't. I need to go for a while." I reached out, grabbing the phone, and Daniella backed off. She didn't look surprised.
"I knew, from the way you were looking today, that you were already ...I'm coming with you."
"I need to go alone." I protested.
She shook her head, a small grimace mixed with a sad smile, and nodded behind me to the kitchen. Another bag was there. "I don't know what it is you're running from. I won't even ask. But I need to run away for a while too. Let me come with you. Please." She said the last word, quiet, her eyes falling, and I saw it. All that pain she used power to hide. She needed to escape this place too. It'd become a prison.
"I can't explain anything."
"Then don't."
"If I tell you to go-"
Daniella cut me off again. "Then I go. I won't hang around you, I won't pry, just let me escape for a while too. Please." When I sighed, her face relaxed a fraction. "Where are we going?"
She waited, as I wrote a note, and the two of us left.
The note was quick, brief, an apology to them and to the babies, and that I needed to go for a while. I promised to come back after the birth. It didn't explain much, except that I felt claustrophobic, and I left as much money as I could, as well as the credit card. It broke my heart to leave the triplets, as much as it did for Nick to not look at me, but looking at them... hearing them laugh... seeing them, day after day, grow up so fast, change so fast, a dozen new words every day...It just reminded me of what I was going to miss. Funny how I resisted the idea of more babies so strongly and yet now, all I struggled with the idea of never seeing them grow up, never seeing them learn what a toilet was for, or to tell me what they liked and didn't like. I'd miss their first Christmas. Their first birthday. Everything.
The grief Lillian felt, when she'd lost Nick, I understood it. It was something no mother could ever forget or 'let go of'. If I left now, didn't see the triplets, maybe I could go into a better state of denial. Get through the next few months. Denial was something I was great at. I'd been doing it for two years about the attack and the bite. Now I just needed to get away a while and continue it.
Daniella didn't even bother writing a note. She left something behind, something in a small box, and the two of us got into the taxi without a glance back.
The taxi to the airport was quiet and I wasn't even sure where I was going. Maybe I could do a tour of the UFO hotspots, like I'd always wanted to do, but Nick had snorted at. Maybe I could go on a cruise.
Maybe I could just go back to Australia. Daniella agreed, when I asked her if Andrew would allow, but then she brought up an important point. They wouldn't let me on the plane if I was too pregnant to come back. But I made a note of it to ask Demetruis anyway, not for permission, but to find out if he'd come to Australia to pick up the babies.
Almost as if he'd known I was thinking of him, he called while Daniella was in the bathroom, and he seemed amused. If I wanted to go home for the birth, then he would arrange for it to be set up there, and I found the two of us with a first class ticket for Australia. Paid for by him. From there, I'd find my own place, but …
I called Andrew, told him we were coming, and that I we want to be disturbed or for him to tell anyone. The Australian alpha had enough of a clutch on his role now to allow this, thankfully. He reassured me that fear of the disease spreading through America would keep all mutts clear of me- they'd only just managed to keep it contained and it'd stopped spreading. Daniella would probably visit him, I wasn't sure, but I didn't need to.
I might have been tempted to go to Russia and live with Pav. But that would have meant facing questions. Questions I didn't want to answer. While I waited for the plane to board, customs to let me through, I was on the phone arranging a place to live. This time I wasn't going to Melbourne. It would be expected- I grew up there- and I had to avoid the pack for a while. It was to protect them.
Just before I got on the flight, I felt it, a flood of panic that was not my own. Nick had found out. I cut it off, shoved the sense back, trying to ignore it. It was surprising how easy it was to block it out.
The flight was long. I arrived in Sydney, Demetruis probably expecting me to want to stay there, like most Americans... or Greeks, as I suspected he was... assumed all Australians loved that city. That damn city. Melbourne was much friendlier and I loved the alleyways. I stayed in neither city- once I'd withdrawn a large amount of cash so I couldn't be traced, I flew to Brisbane, where I'd lived for a few years as a student. Two reasons for it- they'd heard me whine enough about humid summers up here to think it was the last place I'd go during summer and there was a set of islands south of Brisbane that were cheap and while I didn't really have to worry about that... I wanted to make the money last as long as possible before I had to make another large withdrawal. Daniella parted ways with me in Sydney, she was going to go see Andrew first, but she had the address. She knew where to find me.
I forgot my phone was in my pocket. I stared at it, as I got off the plane in Brisbane, and at the tons of messages. I didn't want to throw it away, I wanted to keep it, but... it was too tempting. Sitting at the airport, I scribbled down phone numbers, and with regret... dropped it into the Brisbane river out of the train window, as the airport train took me into the city.
It was too late to have second thoughts or to let them convince me to come back.
Macleay Island, with a population of around three thousand, was perfect. An hour south of Brisbane, separated from the mainland by a passenger ferry, and the house I'd rented with incredible views of the sea. I'd lived out here as a student, out on this island in a shared house, and it was a familiar place that I almost felt relieved to come back to.
Only when I got into the house, shut the door, and dropped the suitcase in the living room, did I break down and really let it out, the exhaustion, the frustration, the hurt at how not once, not once, had those warm brown eyes found mine, or his hands brush across my hand, or anything of the sort to show that he was still there. I knew it was because I was lying to him, I knew that, but I needed that comfort.
I knew now, now that I was safely here, that it was done. I was cut off.
And like that, the supernatural world fell away, and with it some sense of what I was. Daniella would be coming in a few weeks, she sent a letter, and I was alone. Besides the need to change once a week, which was a chore now, there was nothing to indicate that off this island any of that really existed. There was just scars, like ghosts tattooed onto my skin, and dreams that broke my heart night after night. Memories of the triplet's scent, of Nick's smile, his caress, the look he got when he wanted to pounce me but there was a baby in his path.
During the days, I somehow pretended that it didn't exist. A few times to the mainland on the passenger ferry, a few trips in the taxi, and suddenly everyone knew I was here. That was the problem and the advantage to these islands- they were small, the population condensed, almost half of them pensioners, so a single pregnant woman became everyone's business. I hid the rings to try and avoid any more probing questions.
The thing about living on these islands was the problem of shopping. Almost every house had a shopping trolley, the kind usually associated with a grandma, and it was a weekly ritual for people to get onto the passenger ferry with their trolley, or for some, trolleys, get on a bus to the nearest mall, and buy up big. Bulk was a common need. There shops on the island too, one on Macleay, and one on the nearby Russell island which was one of the stops on the passenger ferry, but long life milk was usually snatched up so fast that in order to get it, you'd have to be there on the first day of the new catalogue.
Being more and more pregnant by the day though, as if my stomach was making up for lost time, I found that people were helpful with me all the time. I was full strength- I didn't need help to wheel a trolley or get it onto the passenger ferry or on or off the bus- but that didn't stop people from helping. It didn't stop them from popping over with a carton of long life milk, in case I was out of milk, or something else. My landlord lived next door and checked in daily. This was the thing about the islands I used to love and loathe all at once- the closeness of the community. Out here, on these islands, most of the community were what Australians called the 'working poor' or were pensioners. That meant that they tended to look out for one another.
It also meant that if anyone came here asking after me, I'd hear about it first, before they were shown my house. The Island taxi driver, who was always there to meet every passenger ferry just in case there were people who needed lifts, knew my face and my address. If there was someone looking for me, rather than bring them here, she'd probably drop them off at the pub up from the ferry and stop by on her rounds. Tell me so I could decide if I wanted to go to the pub to see them or not.
I relaxed on the porch, the hot summer day made easier by the cool breeze coming off the ocean that these islands had during summer, watching the passenger ferry go past. I smelt everyone on it. Daniella was there, amongst them, and I stretched lazily, though the smell of her brought back memories I'd been working really hard to suppress.
She appeared twenty minutes later, having to put up with the taxi rounds a bit, and looked at me like I was crazy. I'd poured two drinks the second I heard the van coming down the dirt road.
"This is your idea of escaping?"
"Small country community. No one can come here without me hearing about it." I replied and held out the second glass of juice. "I knew you were coming. Here."
She took it, relieved as I switched the air conditioning on, and collapsed onto the couch. Daniella glanced down at my stomach.
"It's growing."
I nodded, absent-mindedly, not looking at it. It was hard enough to feel them moving. She seemed to not know what to say for a moment.
"There's a spare bed in the second room." I gestured at the door I barely went into. The landlady had offered to put cots in there for me. "You can stick your stuff in there."
Daniella got up with a groan, wheeling the bag across the tiles into the second room, and glanced out the window. "Nice views though."
"Yeah. You can see the passenger ferry." I went to the window in her room too, gazing out, watching it circle back towards the mainland. "See?"
"What do you do out here?"
"Paint." I didn't do much else now. I painted, I read, I watched movies, anything to not think about everything else.
"I might spend some nights in Brisbane." Daniella said quietly. "So don't worry if I don't come back."
"As long as you're safe." I said quietly, and she nodded a fraction.
"Any cute guys out here?" She asked, trying to smile and joke.
"Not unless you're into pensioners or dole bludger." I muttered and Daniella's face fell.
"I may be in Brisbane a bit more then." She joked, again, reaching out to touch my arm. I flinched, the physical contact the first in a long time, but Daniella refused to remove her hand. "You haven't really gotten out much, have you?"
I knew she was trying to relax me, but the more I smelt her, the less I could pretend that I didn't miss everyone. So I muttered, yawning, "I need a nap," and left her to explore on her own. Once in my room, in the sanctuary I'd created, I curled up on my side and stared at the wall as music drowned out the sound of Daniella. She headed into the kitchen, complained about how crap the food was, and went shopping for us.
Twenty two weeks pregnant. Nick used to watch the weeks, read on the development, getting into it despite himself. I didn't even want to touch my stomach now. The most I indulged, with the pregnancy, was for the craving of Vegemite. I craved it worse than I'd craved anything. They moved a lot now, particularly when I was hungry, refusing to go with my denial.
I missed him.
She refused to leave for a week, even though saw her itching to go out, and we headed out the next day to go shopping together. Daniella was amused by the passenger ferry shopping, pushing it as I got one of the seats offered to me while she slid it into the front of the passenger ferry where everyone was sticking their trolleys.
"How does everyone know where their trolley is?" She asked me as she sat down beside me, the ferry pulling out from the dock. "Or who's is whos?"
"People get to know their belongings, I guess." I answered softly, tugging my bag into my lap, and resting it on top of my stomach. We watched as we pulled into the next island, Karragarra, more people coming on. Daniella was fascinated, having never seen the islands before, watching kids playing in the shark net.
"Why aren't they just swimming in the sea water? Is it protection from the boats?" She gazed around. The islands were surrounded by the sea and protected from the ocean by Stradbroke Island, which meant the water itself was more or less calm looking, and boats came and went through the channels between the islands.
"There's strong currents and sharks. Those pools keep sharks out and people safe." I explained over the hum of the motor.
"There's sharks?"
"And dolphins, and dugong, and..." I pointed out the window, suddenly.
She saw it too, gasping, sliding across to the window beside her. A turtle floated by, head up, before it dived down out of our sight. "Was that a turtle?"
"Yeah."
Daniella gazed out the window, eager, trying to see something else. The waves chopped gently around the passenger ferry and nothing else came up, though I knew that under us was a lot of life, a lot of fish... it was a place I'd really come to love as a student.
We reached the mainland as the ambulance ferry pulled out, and she watched it go by, that stunned look back on her face. "Was that the ambulance?"
"Yeah. No roads to the islands so..." I smiled somewhat as she watched it go, a person on a stretcher inside. "Sometimes they just use it to take older people on and off the islands and to the hospitals. You see it a lot, there's an ambulance on the island that waits to take them home."
It was distracting, amusing her with all this information, and she followed me onto the bus that took us to the mall. Daniella told me she'd grown up near Sydney, so she was more used to suburbs than anything else, her father and the pack usually only there part of the time. Then she went quiet for a long time, watching the streets go by, till we got to the mall.
We wandered around, watched a movie, shopped, and tried to have fun. Something about my attitude towards the babies made her never mention it, she didn't even glance at my stomach, as if they weren't there. But Daniella made sure she pushed the trolley, made sure she bought me extra food, and I wondered if Reece knew if she was with me.
"Does Reece know you're here?" I asked her when we sat down for a drink before we headed back for the ferry, the night starting to fall outside, the temptation to go for another movie overwhelming me.
"No." She replied, a tense smile at the name. "I vanished too. Less questions that way."
"They're going to be angry with us for it." I muttered, stirring the iced decaf coffee, and she didn't answer, just nodded sharply.
"I felt smothered." She said quieter, eyes on her coffee, moving the ice cream around the top.
"Why did you do it?" I asked. Finally, I asked, the memory of Reece's hurt face in my head.
"I don't know. Reece doesn't ….I don't feel anything physically unless it's rough. Like that. I can't get into it. I tried to tell him and he didn't understand." She said it so quietly I barely heard her, her eyes on the drink still. "He said he'd never hurt me and it would pass."
"You don't think it will?"
"I don't know." Daniella admitted quietly. "But I... if I faked it, that isn't any better, is it? I tried to tell him. In the end he only believed it when he saw it. I tried to let him down easily. I don't know how you can be like that with Nick."
"I don't either." I admitted, and Daniella's eyes shot up to mine. "It just happens. I thought I'd never want sex again."
"You had it pretty fast though. Did he for-"
"No." I saw the look on her face, saw the conclusion there, and shook my head. "Not at all. Encouraged, maybe, but it was me who ...well, I don't know. Spent my whole life thinking I'd be a virgin till marriage, wait for that one life partner, then I met Nick and by the third day I wanted him to be the first."
"But you are married now. Maybe you knew."
"Maybe. When you knew Reece before..."
Daniella flinched and I went quiet, as if the memory of that hurt her, and she sipped her coffee slowly. It took her a long time to answer. "It was a different thing then. I think I liked that he was stronger than he meant to be."
"Stronger?"
"Rougher. Human and a werewolf, he was rough so easily, and I think I liked it then too. It made me feel like I was really wanted by him. Now he's so gentle." She scowled somewhat, stabbing at the ice cream. "Like I'll break."
"Did you tell him?"
Daniella nodded. "Same answer. He'd never hurt me and it was the rape. Even if it was the rape, I still deserve to ...ah. Nevermind."
To feel good. The words hung in the air, the understanding of what she was trying to say there, and I stared at her as she stared at anything but me. Their sex life had changed and he wasn't willing to change to go with her.
"Is he your mate?"
"I don't know." The words made Daniella's lips purse together. After a while, she said, "You know Nick's your mate. How?"
"His smell, his eyes, everything. I don't know. I just know he's my mate." Maybe Reece wasn't her mate then. I didn't know if she didn't. Reece was convinced though. "Sorry. I didn't mean to pry."
"It's okay. I'd rather you ask me than just go off what he says." She muttered, the anger there for a moment, and then Daniella drank again. "Want to see another movie before we go back?"
We ended up renting movies and going back instead, as it was almost nine by the time we got to the ferry, and nine thirty after the ferry had gotten to the island. The two of us sat there, eating popcorn, watching old movies. She'd insisted that I watch the old Marie Antoinette from the nineteen thirties.
I thought I'd fall asleep but instead, I sat there the entire movie, stunned by the movie. The sets, the costumes, the actresses. I loved it, how the actors and actresses all had a natural beauty, natural noses, faces, talent, bodies, not a trace of plastic surgery or botex in sight. And it made them all the more beautiful to me. Why I'd avoided movies before 'modern times', I had no clue, but it was a beautiful film that had us both crying by the end.
I could see she regretted picking it, at the end, when I was seeing the kids and the grief and ...my own grief returning, the awareness of it coming back, and sympathy for her just as much.
We spent the next week watching movies, eating, and pretending that we hadn't abandoned our pack, even though I knew Daniella still had her phone. The temptation to text Reece, when she kept giving that scowl he provoked, kept arising everytime she lifted that damn phone. I'd come here to avoid them and be pregnant, get it done, but ...they kept tormenting me in sleep. And in movies. I saw Nick in every damn movie, somehow, and we ended up avoiding anything that had romance or drama. That left kid's movies, horror, and trashy science fiction movies that usually had girls playing the roles that horny teenage guys wanted to see. Half naked roles, or two girls making out, or something else silly.
After that though, she couldn't stand the relaxation, and vanished off to Brisbane. Daniella wasn't kidding about staying in Brisbane a lot. She stayed there more than she stayed on the island, though she seemed to need to be near me at least once a week, where as I almost looked forward to the moment she was gone again. I worried about her ...but some days it was a struggle just to get out of bed. There was no energy left to worry.
Jeremy sometimes tried to do that dream thing but I resisted it. I'd made up my mind. The less attached they got to this pregnancy, the better, and I had to face the reality of it. I was the incubator. That was it. They wouldn't even see my face.
Deep down I knew what it was. It was depression. I was grieving for a loss I knew I had to do. But I didn't know what to do, except eat when I felt hungry, sleep most of the time, and shop occasionally to put more food in the fridge. And, once a week, run. Macleay Island had an area of bush large enough for me to get away with it as long as I was careful. I felt guilty, unhappy, and then guilty about being unhappy. This had been a choice, I'd known I'd have to give them up, knew that I had to protect the pack... but nothing I could tell myself made the choice any easier.
Some part of me wished that Demetruis would just put me in a coma till the birth. Make it easier.
In some ways, the life I lived there, it was a coma. I barely talked, walked around like a zombie when there wasn't enough food, and slept more than most people would. I watched movies, ate fudge and Vegemite, and cried. It was pathetic, some part of me kept telling me off for being so weak, but it was the only way I could do it.
I didn't watch American movies anymore. The sound of their voices would trigger another crying fit. I didn't drink or eat American brands, which as it turned out, was quite a lot of what was on offer. And, embarrassingly, I listened to the same damn Linkin Park song over and over- 'What I've done'. That or Apocaylptica.
The months drifted past. Food was delivered, I suspected from Demetruis, and after trying to ignore it a few days and live on pasta and pasta sauce, I gave in and ate it. It was really good food, and there was a lot of it, as if he knew that I needed more than most. It sustained me and I didn't risk hunger or attacking the humans.
Sometimes, I thought I saw Nick, Jeremy, Antonio, Clayton. Or Reece. Elena. I'd see them on the streets, feel that ache that was more than depression, a loneliness that came with being so far from the people who were my pack. But they were strangers, every time, humans. Sometimes it felt like a dream. I felt like I was going mad, every time I saw someone walk like Nick, or give me a scowl that was a shadow of Clayton's scowl, feel my heart break all over again. Hear an American accent that tore at me.
Daniella came back, every few weeks, but the peace of the islands bored her too much to stay. She would leave me with things to do, movies, or books, but I was getting less and less interested in anything. Daniella returned to Andrew after a while, bored by Brisbane, and then let me know she was going back to America and wouldn't tell them where I was. I suspected she knew I was unhappy. But what could she do? Nothing.
Days seemed to drag by. Sometimes I'd sit there, on the porch, watching the sea and it'd seem like hours when I'd only been there half an hour. Other days flew by, and I could sit there all day, so lost in the depression that I didn't notice that it was already getting dark. When I needed money, I went into Brisbane, withdrew more, and sent them a letter. All it said was: "I'll fine."
Summer turned into autumn, which meant nothing in the sub-tropics, and I started to get closer to the point where I would give birth. I knew it, deep down, felt it as keenly as I felt the absence of my pack, felt the urge to nest and set up a nursery for babies that'd never see it.
Then one day, midway through May, almost exactly on thirty eight weeks, it was time.
I called Demetruis, packed my things up, and got onto the passenger ferry. A car was waiting. It took me south, towards the Gold Coast, and bit by bit the last bits of me broke as I knew. This was it. The last time I'd feel them. The labour pains were almost a relief, a break from the hurt, and by the time I was in a surgical room with Demetruis's employees, I was numb. Overloaded. They didn't even wait for me to give birth- I was drugged up, body numbed from the waist down, and they performed a c-section. He didn't want to risk a single thing going wrong for them.
I lay there, on the table, hearing them speak softly as they cut. Even up to this point, even up to now, some part of me had been waiting for Nick.
The cry of one of the babies, it shattered any belief that he'd come, and I watched as a small body was wheeled out of the room. I shut my eyes, trying to not cry in front of Demetruis, trying to keep my face passive. Another baby, another squeal and protesting cry, and then it was done. They were gone, he was gone after them, and I lay there quietly. No glamour spell this time. Just the final reality of what I'd agreed to.
I wanted to die. I wanted to bleed out, my eyes squeezing shut, as they did a good job fixing my body up, the job only the best surgeons could do. I wasn't going to die, not physically, but ...some part of me broke.
I must have passed out, because when I woke, I was in recovery. Demetruis was there, the babies weren't, I couldn't smell them. He would come with me to America tomorrow, the promised cure and information would be awaiting us, and he asked for names. It was a surprising request, one I hadn't expected, but ...
"Rose-ella and Reece." I told him. He wrote them down, didn't complain, and left the room again. At least, if they couldn't have me, they could take our names. Rose-Ella, after the Australian bird, and Reece... after he'd been so good to me. At least they could take something away of mine.
The next day, I vomited, I tried to heal, and I swam in the relief of morphine. Never mind that I wanted to avoid it. It helped, it helped block out all the pain on every level, and I clung to the need maybe longer than I had to. When I asked him for morphine, he smiled, a smile that made my blood run cold again. I found myself given enough of it to last for months.
After a week, I was taken back to the house on the island, refusing to fly to America yet, still swimming in morphine, and collapsed into the bed on my side, my stomach empty, my heart shattered.
I dreamed of home, when I got back, I crawled onto the bed and shut my eyes. I dreamed it was dusty, that there were cobwebs all over the building, and that the fridge was empty. I dreamt that Jeremy was in there, waiting for me, and I didn't reject him.
He looked tired. Tired again? Almost surprised to see me standing there, as if he'd given up on it months before, and he stared at me as I sat down and curled up on my side.
"Where are you?"
He asked this several times. I told him I was far away. That there was a cure coming. They would be safe now. I told him other things, about the babies, the birth, everything, the lucid dream a comfort to me as he sat there quietly and listened.
The impact of what I'd had to give for it, the pain of that exchange, it shattered the dream and instead I went into nightmares. Other things, other places, dreaming of chasing my pack but always alone, of Nick so close I could smell him but not see him, and that room. Over and over and over. That room, with those babies, and the squeals that were the first and last things I'd ever hear from them. The cure would change a lot of things, I hoped, but I wasn't going to be there to see it.
I knew at some point the cure had to be taken to Stonehaven. At some point I had to go home and really tell them. But I lay there, ignoring the food, changing inside only, using the pain killer as desperately as I'd once rejected it. It was pathetic, how weak I'd gotten, I knew that. But I needed the morphine and some part of me had gotten too tired to care.
It didn't matter.
Two weeks alone, I ate what was left in the cupboard, cleaned out the fridge, ate and slept, changing only to sit in the house and tremble. Morphine filled in time. Weight vanished, my body healed, but I couldn't leave the house. Online banking made the landlady happy. I left the bags of baby things t hat had been donated over the last few months to the op shop on the island. No one asked me where the babies were, no one really saw me, but they probably assumed something had gone terribly wrong.
Truth was, as much as I longed to see the pack, I couldn't bear to face them or tell them what I'd done. I regretted it, and I was stubborn about it at the same time, and was so confused about the two conflicting reactions that facing the pack was too much. I'd sold my children and didn't deserve to see the triplets now. I'd saved the pack, unless he'd tricked me, and I didn't have the strength to find out.
Sometime after I arrived, I ran out of food, though I wasn't sure how much time had passed. Two weeks? A month? It was winter outside, I suspected, because it had cooled down and the sky was grey more often than not.
I hid, curled up in the house like a wounded animal, clutching to the last of the morphine as if it was more precious than life itself. It was going to run out soon. I didn't know what I'd do when it did that. It made me feel desperate, desperate for the release it gave me, the freedom from the agony.
Someone was outside. Knocking. I didn't answer. I knew I had gone mad then, knew it when I heard voices that sounded like they'd come right out of my nightmares, and stayed quiet in the room till they went away.
The next day, the nightmare voices was back, and I ignored them. Instead, I stared at the last of the drug, knew that no matter how long I waited, I'd never have the strength to return, and gave up trying. It was better this way.
When I next used it, I filled it all up, and tried to get it all in. Maybe this would make it go away.
I woke up, arms and legs tied, somewhere else. Panic flooded me, blinding panic, as I tried to free myself. It wasn't working. The bindings were strong, the smell of clean sheets under me, and all I could think about was that the morphine was gone.
How stupid, that was the first thing that scared me, but it did. It was gone. I needed it again, my body screamed for it, but it was gone.
Struggling, I tried to free myself. I struggled hard, trying to snap the chains or the bed, not caring how much noise I made. Feet came into the room, a face straight from my nightmares, Reece coming down, and he grabbed me with as much strength as any werewolf should have. He'd never gotten sick or he'd been cured. Or maybe I was just really fucking weak without the drug. I didn't know which one and didn't care.
"Calm down. It's all right."
"I need it." It didn't matter how much shock or disgust he showed, I ignored his face, I tried to get myself free so I could get it. "Please. Please, Reece, please, give me some. Just a little."
"Guess I was right." I saw disappointed there, disappointed in me, as he realised that I was addicted again. "You're not having any. There's nothing left. I tipped it down the sink."
A keen of grief, one so alien that it took me a moment to realise it was me, filled the basement. Then desperation. I needed it. I needed it more than I needed anything. "You have to get more. Please."
"No." He growled, sudden, the anger in it shocking me. "No more."
I shut my eyes, tried to shut the memory of them out, of seeing them carried away as their cried, not even knowing which was born first. He got his heirs. "The cure. Is it used?"
Reece didn't answer.
"It cures us. Use it. Please." I pleaded. Maybe there was a drop. One last drop. "On everyone. Cure everyone and get me morphine. Please."
"You're not getting any morphine. Not now, not tomorrow, never again. I don't know how you got so much." He let go of me. "Where are the babies, Anne?"
I couldn't answer him. I shut my eyes again, twisting away, and heard Reece sigh.
"Nick, you can come now."
I flinched, hearing familiar feet, the scent crash into me, Nick's scent. Nick's panic. Nick's fear, like a cloud, sinking over me. It hurt to feel him this scared. With a soft moan of pain, I tried to ignore Nick's gentle hands, tried to ignore the flood of warmth and love that broke through the barriers that kept him out, or the comfort in knowing that my mate had found me. Finally.
Instead of face him, I kept my eyes shut, shutting out his questions, forcing a change to happen. The restraints were gotten off, the two backing off, but I just crawled into the corner and whimpered, eyes shut, tail tucked under me.
A warm body, a wet nose, the gentle whuff of lungs breathing me in, and I knew Nick had changed. I felt him press against me, trembling, felt his muzzle rub against my neck, and leaned against him. No denying him when I was changed, like this, every instinct screamed at me to trust my mate. To let him protect me while I was hurt.
We lay there, side by side, Reece throwing some food into the room, and Nick gave me the food as he sat and 'guarded'. I craved charcoal and when I'd changed back, I found the craving came with me. I lay there on my back, a thin sheet across me, eyes shut as Nick sat beside me.
"Why are you here?" I asked, voice strange after not using it so long,
Nick didn't answer. He kept one hand on me, eyes going around the messy room, taking in the mess I'd been too unhappy to clear away. He knew me well enough to know the messier the house, the worse I felt, and … it was a disaster in this place. There was food disintegrating in the fridge.
"When? How?" I tried again.
Nick's brown eyes met mine. For a while we stared at each other and I understood. He didn't need to answer me, I knew exactly why and how, because if it was the other way around... I would have known. I would have felt it.
He leaned down to kiss me, so tender and gentle, that I burst into tears again, which Nick ignored. He didn't push for answers. Not yet. We knew that I had to do something else far worse first. Withdraw from the morphine.
The detoxification from the morphine was worse than the first time, except that this time, Reece was right there the whole time, Jeremy and Amar on the phone day or night, and Nick was beside him. And they came with medication. I knew it was the best thing, I knew that it what I wanted, but the next week was a nightmare. Nick was there the entire time. It was like the fever, all over again, and it was agony. I was aware that I begged, over and over, for them to just give me a little. Make it easier. But they refused, and slowly it eased again. I stopped vomiting, my body stopped aching, my heart rate slowed, body cooling as the sweating stopped. Slowly, although the need for it didn't leave me, my body started to recover.
Nick didn't speak. Not once, not a single word, he just sat there, more aware of what was going on than any of them, knowing when I had to vomit, or my body ached, knowing. I suggested he go home, once, and the look I got for that suggestion made it clear that nothing I suggested he was going to take seriously if it involved that.
Then one day, I woke, and I knew my body had gotten over the worst of it. Nick was beside me, an arm over me, his chest rising and falling slowly. His eyes were shut but I knew he was awake, I knew he'd woken the second I did, the fear in him not allowing him to sleep if I wasn't.
"He took them."
Nick's body stiffened but he didn't open his eyes.
"In exchange for the cure. Demetruis took them. They were his." I lay there, eyes going up, unable to look at him now. Grief flooded through me again. They were mine too, no matter how they'd been conceived, and …
Nick shifted onto his side, leaning across to kiss me with that same tender kiss, his hand brushing across my face.
"We know."
"What?" The shock this statement caused, it snapped me out of the grief, as he stared solemnly down at me. "How?"
"You told Jeremy. When he contacted you in your dreams, you told him everything. I guess you didn't know it was real." Nick's face twisted, his own anger and hurt, but it wasn't directed at me.
I flopped forward, forehead finding his shoulder. Nick's hands stroked my arms gently, his own grief and regret mixed with mine, as he added, "I was just trying to find out what you couldn't tell me. I didn't mean to leave you alone like that."
"He said that if I told anyone, he'd give the cure to the mutts and let them ..." I didn't need to say it. Nick swore, his hands tensing, and I heard the sound of someone tense in the doorway. Reece had been listening and I knew that, deep down, knew he'd heard every word too. He glanced at Nick with a look that suggested he was angry with him, even now, as if he'd noticed at Christmas too. But he didn't say a word.
Nick lifted me up, suddenly, surprising me. "Where's the shower?"
We showered, the two of us as fucked over physically as the other, sharing the pain more deeply than maybe was healthy.
"When do you want to go home?"
I didn't know. I didn't answer, as we stood there in the tiny shower, using the soap he'd brought. He was strong, the cure had worked on him, and I wondered how many others were cured. The mutts? Would they cure them? I didn't know. The cure was also only for werewolves. I didn't know or ask what about the rest, and I felt terrible, wondering if he'd bribed them into some other agreement for that one.
"How did you find me here?"
"I don't know. Daniella said you were on the island but I didn't know where you lived. Then Reece got into her bank account and saw she'd been sending all this food here." That shocked me. All that food had been from her, not from Demetruis? She'd been trying to take care of me. "You need to go outside more, so I can smell your scent, not hide indoors. There was no food in your cupboard." He shook his head, reaching up to run his fingers through the tangles in the wet hair, ignoring my cringes as he tried to get it free. "I kept coming back to this house, much to Reece's annoyance, but ...then I knew you were doing something stupid."
Oh shit. I'd forgotten. I had tried to kill myself.
"Did I ..."
"You didn't. I smashed the window, yanked it out of your arm, and tipped it down the sink." He growled softly. "We fed you charcoal just in case. Apparently it's good for that."
He showed me when we were done, showed me everyone at home grainy mobile photos on his phone. And when he called them, I flinched, expecting... I didn't know. But Matt answered and he did not sound upset that I'd run off. He knew the whole story and he was one hundred percent strong again. He was actually sounding kind of proud, much to my amazement and I burst into tears, struggling with the emotion of hearing his voice again, the pride and love there. He was so young and so... good. Antonio was there too, his voice just making it worse, and no one seemed angry. At least not with me. I got scolded though, the loving gentle scold a parent gave a silly child, reminded over and over that I could trust them. Antonio seemed to understand why I had to stay quiet though.
Or maybe he could hear me crying and whatever harsher words he'd had planned for me were gone. I didn't know.
"Come home." Nick said, softly, his chin on my shoulder as the call ended. "Please."
"I don't know if I can yet." I flinched when I saw the triplets and shut my eyes. I'd abandoned them all for this.
"No one's angry." Nick tried to reassure me. "No one."
"I didn't want to lie to you."
He tensed. "I know. I knew then. I just ...knew something was upsetting you. It was bothering me. I was trying to find out what without getting you stressed. Come home."
I didn't answer and he didn't push it. Some part of me wasn't ready to leave the house yet, body still struggling with the drug, and Reece stayed close by as I continued to have reactions. He didn't scold me or tell me off, not for the drug use, not for leaving, none of it. Elena didn't either. She said the same thing Nick had, that no one was upset, and that I could come back whenever I was ready to. She did tell me off, for leaving without a note, she was not happy about it. I could have at least told her where I was going, she'd told me, and she would have kept it quiet for me.
Nick amused himself with the island's version of shopping, clearly finding the 'get on a ferry and go to a mall on the mainland' idea amusing, particularly as the granny trolley was too low for his height. And he went to the pub more than once, once he was convinced that I was recovering, unable to resist an 'Australian pub'. It was really just a bunch of old regulars drinking beer, watching the races, and gambling on it. The pub had good meals though. He brought them home, sometimes, convincing the ladies in the kitchen to make it takeaway when it usually wasn't.
While he did that, I was sick. I shook, I vomited, I pleaded for the drugs again, my body felt like it'd been hit by a truck , the agony of the drugs leaving my system as messed up as the agony that came with the babies being taken away. My body changed with no warning, over and over and over, the wolf trying to deal with the physical torment in the only way it knew how. Jeremy kept me in the room though and I was in control enough to not go nuts.
Finally, when I could go a day without vomiting or having a side effect of the withdrawal that didn't leave me in bed for hours, I knew. It was time to go back.
We went for dinner at the bowls club this time, sitting there and watching the boats come and go, Reece and Nick close to me as I tested my instincts on a crowded place. I told them there, as we drank the cold beer, ate the dinner, that it was time. Neither Nick or Jeremy really seemed surprised.
We stayed close to each other the trip back, Nick's arm brushing across mine, or a hand sneaking over, unable to let me out of his sight. Not just that, but I was still sick, and it was a very long trip back. Two days, and three planes of this, and I was exhausted again.
Deep down, I felt guilty, guilty that they'd had to come save me. Come help me. I didn't want help, I didn't want to be weak, but … I had to accept it. Sometimes I needed help. And trying to be strong on my own had just made me worse, not better. Reece had to go to New York, had to go back to work for a while, and he let us go on without him.
We sat in the taxi from the last airport, Nick beside me, an arm over me as we came closer to Stonehaven. The smell of the warm land, the forests whisking in through the open window, the land that was both alien and familiar, it made me shiver against Nick. Not entirely with dread, either, more of a sense of 'finally. I'm finally coming home'. Whatever human ideas I'd had about running away did not match the wolf side of me whatsoever.
"You okay?" Nick murmured against my ear.
"Will they be angry at me for being gone?" I meant the triplets. Angry may have been the wrong word. They might not have understood though, understood where I'd gone, and I wasn't sure if they'd even know me when I got back.
He wasn't sure, I felt him hesitate, but he said anyway, "Not for long, if at all."
"Matt's not angry?"
"He thinks you're a hero. Going and getting the cure like that." Nick snorted. "Kept telling me on the phone to stop making you cry."
We got out of the taxi at the gates. Jeremy was waiting, his calm energy and smell washing over me, and while he was probably angry at me... he didn't tell me off. Instead, he checked me then and there inside the gates, checking to see if I could walk the distance back. When it was clear I'd survive he relaxed somewhat, but he got something else out first, something on his mind.
"Post-natal depression isn't uncommon so tell me if you struggle. We'll find a way to make it easier. I don't want to risk you falling back onto that addiction to cope." Neither of us spoke, for a few minutes, as Jeremy waited patiently. Serving as the pack medic meant that he knew, and probably wasn't going to let up till I admitted I had it, and he still had that 'alpha' thing he couldn't let go of if Elena wasn't around. But he was right. It was depression. It was that illness, it wasn't entirely because I'd lost my mind, it was a natural biological reaction to the stress. There. Logic reason. That made it easier for me to face the fact that I kept bursting into tears every few hours and I didn't want to do anything but sleep.
"Okay. So it's probably that. Pre-natual too. All over." I said, dryly, and he nodded a fraction.
"I'll see what we can do. If you need the drug, if it gets too much, you call me or Elena first. Or tell Nick and he has to tie you up." He glanced at Nick with such a look that Nick stiffened.
"She panics when she's tied up."
Jeremy didn't ask how Nick knew that. He just responded, calmly, matter-of-factly, "She'll panic if she's needing morphine. It may take a few months before you can really control it. Your changes will probably be erratic too, as they were in the house, so just let them happen as you need to."
I nodded, swallowing, and wished I could make up an excuse for why I'd started again. It had come with the birth, they'd given it to me before I could tell them not to, but I'd asked for it afterwords. A lot of it.
We started up the long driveway, quiet, listening to the night as it peacefully hummed around us. It was summer here again, probably just a few months before the triplets turned three, and I could barely believe that so much of the past year had vanished like that. Illness, disease, and now a cure?
It was too much. It felt wrong, somehow, letting him leave like that. What if he'd made the disease in the first place? It should have been over- the pack was more or less cured. Like I'd wanted. It still felt wrong.
Everyone was asleep inside. I didn't know if they knew I was coming or not. We sat in the kitchen, ate quietly, and then the two of us headed for Forestwatch through the bush to be alone for the night. Nick didn't speak a word till we got there.
"You ...okay with me being … I mean, do you want to..." He was unsure, suddenly, as he'd half undressed.
I tugged him onto me, needing the comfort of his body and love, and I felt tension fade from him.
The release, when it came, was more than just the pleasure. He was back here, with me, close, and I felt the last of my barriers and guards fall down. We weren't as good being solitary, even if we could do it, we were pack people. I was more comfortable with him around. Stronger. More confidant. I couldn't deny that, couldn't deny that Nick added something that made me want to be more. Try harder.
"I love you." I whispered against his ear, as he relaxed with me on top of him, and I felt it. His own body relax further, the last of his barriers falling.
"Love you too. I wish you'd trusted me." There was so much hurt there, the lie hurting him even now, but his arms tightened. "You can trust me."
"If I … it would have been too real."
Nick lifted his head and gazed up at me. "You didn't want to give them over, did you?"
I shook my head, eyes squeezing shut as the pain returned. A image pierced my head again. The last time I'd seen them.
"I wasn't sure. You always said you didn't want to have more." He groaned, sitting up, and I sat up with him, my legs wrapping around his waist so we didn't have to surrender the closeness.
"I didn't. I don't. But they were there anyway." I let his smell fill my head, the sound of his heart take over my hearing, the intimacy as important to me as the sex. It wasn't just about the sex. It was about being so close and trusting of someone that I trusted them on every level. I needed Nick to see he could still go those places no one else was permitted. Including into the tender areas of my heart. "They were mine too."
"We'll find a way to locate them." He tried to promise but it was an empty one, even if he believed it, because I knew ...I knew that now that he had them, he would go. "Do you want another child?"
"Now?"
"No." He leaned back, a serious look there, Nick's hand stroking my face. "But do you?"
"One day. Maybe. I'm not sure any more." It hurt just to think about another baby right now, when I knew that there were two newborns out there, two puppies I'd loved even as I tried to ignore them. "I can't answer that right now, Nick."
"Okay." He didn't push.
I stood up, the sheet around me, and Nick got up and followed after me without bothering to cover himself. I went for their nursery, which had been used recently, but was empty right now. Inhaled slowly, a little weak legged as I smelt the triplets, their scent comforting me in a way nothing else had except for Nick's scent. God. They smelt okay. Healthy. The cribs were messy, as if no one had worried about making their beds, and Nick watched amused as I went around, changing their sheets, tidying up the toys.
"You don't want to sleep?"
"I do but … a bit longer in here." I told him and he vanished for a second, returning with a single mattress from one of the other rooms. When I blinked he grinned.
"We'll sleep in here. Okay?"
I smiled, a small smile, which made him light up more. Nick made it while I tidied up, throwing the pillows onto it, and we crowded onto the small bed side by side, tangled around each other, the smell and comfort of our babies filling our nostrils.
"So you're healed now?"
"Not me." He murmured against my neck.
I sat up, shock, and stared at him. "Haven't you ...used it yet?"
"It's for bitten werewolves only." Nick looked sleepily up at me. He looked surprised, taken back, as if he'd thought I knew this. "Didn't you know?" I didn't answer and lay back down, trying to let him sleep, the own horror rushing through me. Nick wasn't fooled. He rolled me onto my back, staring down. "You didn't know, did you?"
I shook my head and his lips pursed slightly. But then Demetruis had never said for all. Had he? He'd implied it, I'd assumed it meant that, but... the strain that affected those who were bitten was a different version of the one that attacked hereditary werewolves and other members of the supernatural world. But he had said. It was for the werewolves only.
"So who is cured?"
"Everyone who's been bitten. I'm still waiting." He smiled, a small tense smile, and I really hadn't ...noticed. Nick had been so damn insistent on carting me around in his arms, carrying me around, and he kept trying to smell me. I'd assumed it meant that he was cured too.
"I'm sorry. I should have realised."
"I thought you knew." Nick leaned back down, nuzzling my neck. "It's okay. You can protect me till we've fixed it. Can't you?"
"Of course I can." I reassured him, eyes wide open as I felt him relax against me, the sadness at the loss replaced by anger. He'd implied that it was a cure for everyone. Or had I mistaken something? No. He'd talked about the pack, not just a few members, and I had done it to protect the entire pack.
Nick went to sleep before I did. I lay there, trying to get over the sense that something was wrong, my eyes shut. What could be wrong? We'd made a deal and we'd kept to both sides of it. His version of the deal had been manipulated, twisted, and ...now I didn't know what to think.
SPACE
I woke late the next morning, the early summer sun already making the house hot, to the sound of whining and water being splashed in. My head twitched, as I heard the familiar American drawl, Clayton telling the kids to back off till he finished cleaning the pool for them. There was the sound of a hose, a squeal of laughter, and his threat that he'd do it again.
Then another squeal of laughter as he did just that.
"Relax. It's just Clay cleaning the pool." Nick tugged me back down, onto my back, climbing on top of me. He grinned at me. "You're getting cured next."
"I'm already cured." I had forgot that they didn't know. Nick blinked at me.
"What, when?"
"When we made the deal. He did it to prove he had it."
"Why the hell was I being gentle last night then?" He tugged my legs up around him, kicking back with a foot to shut the door, and I inhaled sharply as Nick pinned me down and entered me at the same time, his mouth nipping harder at my skin, the possessiveness not being held back at all now.
It hurt, somewhat, this slightly rough side... but with him, it was okay, it even turned me on. I wrapped my arms around him as we growled and bit each other, claiming each other with the more 'violent' side of our natures, the side that was more wolf than human. Neither of us could speak, at least not with words. For a guy who had lost all his werewolf strength, it was almost impossible to tell, the months of being apart put into it.
Even during it, he kissed me with that tenderness, and our bodies released together, Nick's teeth accidentally breaking skin as my fingernails accidentally broke skin at the same time. We lay there after, panting, barely a few minutes after he'd started, the smell of each other's blood and sweat and fluids filling the air around us.
It may have been strange, that mixture, but it was familiar. It was home.
"I missed you." He had just gotten the words out of his mouth when I heard someone come up the stairs. Nick followed my gaze, understanding what it was I'd heard and tugged the sheets over our head. "Shh. We're not here."
Clayton burst into the room. I felt the edge of the mattress lift, just a fraction, and then suddenly we were tipped onto the floor as Clayton yanked it out from the two of us. "You gonna go get your babies or make some new ones?"
The words stung, and he seemed to realise what he'd said wasn't nice, but I knew he hadn't meant it like that. I tried to smile, and Clay frowned, awkward suddenly.
"Good to see you back."
He wasn't looking at me with that contempt he had at Christmas. It was a relief. I stood up, Nick getting up and moving past me for the bedroom, Clayton's eyes meeting his a moment.
"The triplets are at Stonehaven?" I asked, as I wrapped it around me, and I felt him step closer.
"Shit. Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Yeah. They're over there. We told them you're home and they're bouncing off the walls." He smiled somewhat, a tense smile, the grasp on my arm growing stronger as I didn't pull away. "You got the cure."
"Yeah."
"There's going to be a meet about what to do now. Tomorrow." Clay's eyes stayed in mine, though I struggled to keep eye contact with him. "Not just about it but about the babies you gave up. You can decide if we're going to look for them or not."
I nodded, and moved past him, unable to speak. Clayton didn't pull me back, he let me go, and I showed hurriedly.
In there, I felt my body give into the depression again, and Nick came in after fifteen minutes to sit on the edge of the bath as I sat there, shuddering, body spent from another emotional release.
"If you're not ready to see them, it's okay." He dropped the clean clothes on the bench as he reached over, stroking my wet hair.
"I want to see them."
I made him stand so I could shave him first, an absurd little ritual I loved, and Nick seemed to love it too. His eyes were warm, the affection for me making me feel breathless, and there was that intense hunger back as time went on and his hand snuck up between my legs. I suspected we could have gone at it like bunnies for hours more, if we weren't expected, the intimacy and comfort of each other chasing away the rest of the world better than anything else. Even the morphine didn't do what he could do. He knew what Clayton had said to me, but I told him anyway.
"Do you know what you want to say?"
I shook my head and he didn't press it any more.
The fear that the triplets would be scared, or shy, or forget me, was shattered the second they screamed, literally screamed, and attached themselves to me. No fooling them. They knew exactly who I was. Matt informed me that he did daily lessons for them, just in case, and then he attacked himself to me too. Like a bunch of puppies latching onto the mother, I thought, and startled them all by crying again.
Antonio's comforting bulk sat behind me, his side against my back, as he diverted the toddlers somewhat from getting too overwhelming. His arm snuck around my waist. No words, nothing, just that gesture. He was glad I was back. I knew he'd be worried too.
"Lillian sends her hellos." He said softly. "She's gone home to face the music."
"About you?" I wasn't sure if he knew yet that she hadn't annulled the marriage. It amused me, to think of Antonio as a love struck teenager, marrying his pregnant sweetheart as they ran away from house and home.
"Nick, and myself. Seems her kids aren't taking it that well." He answered and I felt him shrug, trying to brush it off. "She's a tough woman. She can handle them."
I nodded and smiled, the first real smile for months, as Susie popped her head right up into my eyes and informed me that she could go potty alone now.
"No more nappies?"
She shook her head, a big grin, but I heard Antonio mutter something about except at night.
"Their hair has changed so much." I reached up to touch it. Silvery blonde, just after they turned two, golden blonde just before I'd left, and now they were blonde-brown again at the tips. It was amazing. It was beautiful, the effect, but it was a sign that they were never going to be blonde. The eyes were still that stunning clear blue though. Dominic, on the other hand, had not changed a single bit. He still had that dark reddish blonde hair, so much like mine, and warm brown eyes so dark that they were almost black. He smiled at me, mirroring my smile only when he saw it, so much more sensitive to me than the girls who just tumbled and played and barely noticed the tears at all.
"They haven't changed a bit." Nick called from the kitchen. "Don't let the hair fool you."
I laughed softly, agreeing, the three of them with the same personalities they'd had when I'd gone. Lily, the ring leader, Susie following her all over the place, and Dominic calm and incredibly observant, noticing things they never stopped long enough to see. Did I tell them about their little brother and sister? Did I need to tell them? I glanced up at Nick, who was bringing me a ginger beer, and knew that I had to tell them one day. He had siblings who'd grown up never knowing about him, and it'd hurt them all to find the truth out. Maybe one day they'd come back to me.
It felt like it hadn't happened. That it'd been a dream, a horrible dream, and the only reminder that it'd been real was the scar. Even my body had recovered faster than anyone expected. I found out why, when I asked to see the note that came with the delivery, and saw that he'd also gotten a plastic surgeon to repair the 'damage' pregnancy had caused. Out of gratitude.
Maybe after the triplets, I might have almost liked that, but it didn't help me now connect what I'd experienced to reality.
It was almost dinner when we got a call from the town. I saw Elena stiffen, her eyes going to everyone, and I knew something was wrong. She gestured to Antonio and Jeremy and they went outside, Nick following after them, well out of hearing range of all of us.
Matt moved closer, quiet, and very softly, he asked. "Are you sad a lot?"
I nodded and he frowned. He must have noticed on the phone, how I kept bursting into tears, something he'd probably never seen me do before. But his next words shocked me to the core. "Are you going to do suicide?"
How did he know what that was? I stared at him, seeing suddenly that he wasn't the tiny kid I kept thinking he was, that he had brains and was clearly old enough to know a lot more than I gave him credit for. "How did you hear about that?"
"TV. Are you?" The look on his face as he stared at me almost broke my heart all over again. I couldn't tell him that I nearly had tried to do that, shock and horror at my own actions cutting right though the sadness, suddenly seeing in Matt's face exactly what would have happened if I had done that. I was all he had left in the world, even if he had adopted the pack as aunts and uncles, even if he liked to run half-wild around the place like a wolf. It would have devastated him. He'd lost everyone else. It was the same face I saw on him so frequently, when he had been here the first six months, that grief.
"No. No. It's an illness. Depression is like an illness." I reassured him, reaching out, hugging him close. He didn't resist it. I smelt the fear, fear he'd hidden, and shut my eyes. I breathed it all in. Whatever the hell I was suffering... that kind of end wasn't going to make anything easier or better. "I'm not going to commit suicide. Okay?"
"Promise?"
"I promise. You watch too much TV." I tried to laugh it off, smile, and he smiled a little then. But he had been so close to the reality that it was one hell of a wake up call to myself.
I felt Nick's eyes find mine, and I met his, seeing something in his expression as he came in. It wasn't good news then.
Pulling toddlers off, Matt getting off as I did, I stood up and followed him into the study where Elena now was.
"What is it?"
"You have to go to town. Alone. There's a car waiting."
"Why?"
"Demetruis is waiting."