*This is my own story, please let me know what you think!

Chapter 2

Suspicion

"Um…hello. My name is Emmett. I know I must have startled you, and I'm sorry. My town was just attacked and I seemed to be the only survivor. They killed my sister." as he said this, his brow furrowed as if the effort to stand and talk to her had used up a lot of his energy. But his eyes looked sincere and seemed to be pleading with Ayden to let him stay and rest for a little while.

Ayden relaxed just a bit as he said these words. She knew that there had indeed been soldiers headed somewhere close by, but she didn't know what their intent had been.

So she nodded and released her weapon.

"My name is Ayden. I am sorry to hear about your town and of your sister. You may stay here to rest. That is, until I feel that it isn't safe for me to be here any longer." Emmett looked confused, but was grateful that she wasn't going to make him leave. As he sank back down to the ground he grunted in with discomfort. Ayden stepped closer when she heard him and asked what was wrong.

"When I was fighting, I got hit a couple of times. But it's not that bad." he added hastily when he saw that she was coming over to inspect his wounds.

"Sure. Just let me have a look." And without waiting for an answer, she carefully took his shirt off, being extra gentle where the blood had dried it to his skin. When it finally came off – with a few small gasps of pain from Emmett – she shook her head.

"Emmett, you should have never traveled for so long without at least cleaning these! They don't look infected, but they very well could have been." she chastened. "Stay here while I get something."

Emmett watched her as she went over to a bag hanging in a tree. She groped around in it for a second and came back a moment later carrying a few boxes and jars in her arms.

"What…" he started to ask, but was silenced by a look that she gave him. He probably didn't want to know what was in the containers anyway. He was sure he would find out soon enough. He was right.

"Ahh!" he yelped, "What was that?" Ayden squinted at him, and then answered, "It's just something that will clean your cuts. Now hold still." she started to clean the blood out of his hair, and, he had to admit, it felt really good. He closed his eyes and tried to enjoy the feeling as she gently ran her fingers through the strands that were bloody, and when she finished, all that was left was a small bump where he had been hit. She moved on to his back, gently wiping the blood that had clotted and dried around the original cut.

"This one is pretty nasty." she commented, but other than that, she did her work in silence. She smoothed a balm over the slash on his back. When she was through, she laid a clean mat on the ground for him to lie back on so she could reach his stomach easier.

"I got this right after they killed my sister," he said quietly. "A man was holding me at sword point, and she came running into my room. When she saw him, I guess it startled her so bad she screamed. The man turned and s-stabbed…her. I, I tried to kill him, but he got me first. Ha, but I got him in the end." Ayden didn't say anything as he was telling her the story, but when he finished, she looked down at his face. He had closed his eyes and looked like he was getting ready to sleep some. She was fixing to turn back to her work, but she noticed a tear running silently down his face.

…

The first thing that Emmett noticed that morning was that he had a blanket over him and his wounds didn't hurt as bad anymore. He sat up slowly and looked around. The girl, Ayden, was nowhere in sight. Lifting the blanket he realized that he still didn't have a shirt on and the full realization of what had happened last night suddenly hit him.

He had stumbled into an unknown camp, let a complete stranger (and a girl at that) clean his wounds, and he even told her what had happened in his town. He must have passed out while she was still helping him and she had put the blanket over him.

Emmett looked down at himself and noticed that she had also stitched him up. "Ouch," he thought, "I'm glad I don't remember that part."

As he started to get up, he looked around for his shirt, and found it lying over the

same branch that held her bag. He realized that would give any stranger a great chance to snoop in her things so they could find out more about her. It was really uncommon for a girl to be out on her own like this, but, he decided that he would trust that she wouldn't hurt him after she had helped him. So he got up and went over to the branch, grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head.

…

Ayden got up that morning before the sun, as usual. As she got up, she went over to Emmett and grabbed his shirt. Deciding that it needed cleaning, she ambled over to the spring that was near by. After washing his shirt, she herself rinsed off and then hiked back up to her camp and laid his shirt over the branch that also held her bag.

Grasping an arrow, she walked back off to the creek to catch some breakfast.

Ayden stood in the icy water. With her pants rolled up to her knees, the water lapped gently around her legs. She stood as still as a statue as she waited for the fish to come to her. If she had learned anything from her past, it was that if you wait long enough your prey will unknowingly give themselves up to you.

After waiting what seemed like twenty minuets, a fish finally came into her sight. It was slowly swimming aimlessly but was making its way towards her all the same.

With a few more swishes of its scaly tail, the trout came within her arrows range. Ayden carefully took aim, but right as she threw her weapon, the sounds of yelling and crashing came from the thickets behind her, causing her to miss the fish completely as she whirled around to see what was making the commotion.

…

After pulling his shirt down, Emmett got his first good look around the camp. It was clean, and in a small clearing. The fire pit was in the center and Ayden's few belongings were off to the side.

Looking to the ground, he noticed sets of footprints in the dirt. He saw his. They weren't really footprints but looked more like something had been dragged along the ground. He saw her footprints going to and from her bed and the fire pit, her bag, and the mat where he had slept last night. But the freshest set he saw was headed down towards the woods. Deciding to follow them, he set off.

Not exactly paying attention to what was going on around him, he didn't notice that the footprints had disappeared. He also didn't notice the root sticking up out of the ground, jutting up just enough to trip him. Doing its job, Emmett tripped over the root and tumbled head first into a rose bush. Being spring, the roses were in full bloom.

Shouting out in surprise, Emmett got tangled into the bush with thorns sticking themselves in all of the wrong places.

When he finally looked up, he was staring straight into Ayden's eyes. Big and green, they were full of laughter and concern…also maybe just a little bit of annoyance.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked, exasperation playing around the edge of her voice.

"You mean this?" Emmett answered, gesturing around at his thorn bush prison. "Oh this is nothing. I was just trying to…well, what do you think I'm doing?" he asked, not exactly sure what he should say. "Oh I woke up this morning and found you were gone so I decided to follow your footprints and see if I could find out what you were up to. Then all of a sudden, I trip over a root and find myself literally suck in a bunch of thorns. So what are you up to?" Instead he offered up a rose, and tried to give her what he hoped would look like a very sorry, puppy-pleading face.

Rolling her eyes, Ayden took the rose and offered him a hand up in return.

"You know, I just can't seem to figure you out, Emmett. You come into my camp half dead, you were all upset about your sister (which I get) but you don't say anything about your parents. Then you wake up and the first things you do is fall into a rose bush and get stuck with a thousand thorns. You are one strange man."

"Yeah, well…my parents died years ago. And I didn't see that tree root, okay? Hey, I'm injured. Be nice." He pouted. Pulling out his puppy eyes again. "Anyway, I don't seem to be the only one who needs to explain things a little. You are a young girl, in the middle of nowhere. Your hair is super short (I'm not complaining, just stating a fact). And, you are heavily armored. If I didn't know better, I would think you were running from the police or something. Well…I don't know better, but I hope you're not. But if you are, I won't tell anybody. Pinky swear."

"Oh, wow. Sorry, I didn't know. And how could you not see the root? It's sticking up a couple inches out of the ground! You're not that injured and I don't have to explain myself…I'm the one who helped you.

Ok. I'm sort of an ex-cop. My hair kept getting in the way so I chopped it off. And no, I'm not running from the police…I don't think… Anyway, it's safer for you if you didn't know to much about me."

"And why is that?"

"It just is. Trust me."

"You know? I don't know you very well, so I really don't think I can trust you that well."

"Well you have to on this…" Ayden paused, cocking her head to listen to something better.

Suddenly, she was running back to the camp, pulling Emmett along by the hand. As soon as they got there, she started running around and packing her things into her bag, just kind of tossing things in there. Turning to Emmett, she whispered, "I was never here. This is your camp." and she was gone.