Chapter 47: Hope you guys enjoy. Thanks so much for the reviews from the last chapter. You are all amazing for sticking with this for so long. Anyways, Sonia and Kim get a much needed explanation.
Up next: Jacob comes to visit Sonia (what will happen?) Mr. McBride tells Sonia and Kim something interesting and Bella shows up to cause crap.
Happy reading and have a lovely Thursday.
"Utlapa?" Kim repeated, confused. Mom gave her a steady nod.
"Yes Utlapa." It was like she was hoping for some recognition.
"He was the guy who betrayed Taha Aki. It was because of him that Taha Aki changed into a wolf."
"That`s true." My mom nodded again.
"He was killed. Taha Aki crushed his old body when Utlapa`s spirit was still inside." I said. This time my mom shook her head.
"Utlapa...made it out in time."
"Huh?" Kim asked, perplexed. Mom took a deep, steadying breath.
"Life wants to live Kim. Don`t underestimate the will for survival. Utlapa`s spirit lives on. Weakened...bodiless...but..."
"Is it him that`s...causing all of this?" I asked.
"Yes Sonia. It`s him."
"But how do you know all this?" Kim questioned. "How come the pack doesn`t know?"
"Yeah mom, if the elders knew this then so would the guys."
"They can`t know...it`s not their story to tell."
"Stop with the riddles mom. Why can`t they know?"
"Because Taha Aki forbade it! Sonia...Kim...remember. There is only one way to do battle with a spirit. That`s to leave your body and enter into the spirit realm."
"This is just getting more confusing. You`re saying that Taha Aki forbade the wolves from entering into the spirit world...but why?"
"Because it leaves the body open, vulnerable. He didn`t want Utlapa to jump into one of the bodies. Plus, his sons were the only ones that were wolves. He was talking about the original spirit warriors."
"Okay..so.." Kim looked like she was collecting her thoughts. "Why is he coming after me and Sonia?"
"Because you found him. Taha Aki banished Utlapa to a cave. The only way he could leave it would be if one of Taha Aki`s blood could set him free."
"But we didn`t set him free." I shouted. "Fuck mom! I think I would have remembered that!"
"It wasn`t you or Kim. If it was then the shit would have hit the fan a long time ago. It was someone else. But who? The person who sets him free would have to do it willingly. Would be happy to do it. Not a terrified child. It was done recently. The night you had the dreams." Kim and I looked at each other. This was a lot to take. Too much to take.
"Mom...why can`t the pack know? The real reason? Why does he want to hurt me and Kim?"
"The wolves...the boys...they lost their ability to enter into the spirit realm the minute Taha Aki asked to share the wolves body. It is something that is lost to them...but not to you. Not to the imprints."
"Are you saying...that...we are spirit warriors?" Kim whispered, wide eyed.
"If you want to look at it that way...but there is more to it than that. Shit...I should call Sue over."
"Sue knows?"
"Only me and her...and the two of you now...only the women."
"But why only the women?" I pressed.
"Because, if the boys knew about it then...they would take the imprints far from here, and leave the door open for lots of things to come and attack, not only Utlapa."
"Like vampires?" Kim said.
"Exactly. La Push, this place, it`s powerful. Not only the people but the land itself. It has always been coveted. It attracts both good and bad. Why do you think the vampires love coming around here? It makes them stronger. They feed off the life force here. The power. Now...Utlapa is getting stronger because there is an overflow of negative energy. He`s making his presence known to you...to force you away."
"So...if we can spirit fight with him then maybe we could defeat him?" I suggested.
"NO! It has been forbidden for a reason! The last time it happened..."
"When did it happen last?" Kim questioned.
"I`ll call Sue over. She will...explain things better."
"Mom!"
"Listen to me Sonia! This is important! I need her here..."
"Fine...just...promise you will tell us everything."
"I promise you."
My mom got up and went to call Sue. Me and Kim just sat in silence. It was too much...I was a spirit warrior...Utlapa was plotting his revenge...trying to scare us...
"This is nuts Sonia." Kim spoke quietly from the bed. "Never in a million years would I have imagined this..."
"I know...when my mom said all that stuff it was like..."
"The weight of the world just got heavier. Like more had been added to the load." Kim finished, sadly. I looked over at her and took her hand.
"I can take this on myself...you have a kid...someone who depends on you...I understand if you want to just...go home and forget about it."
"Sonia.." Kim shook her head and laughed humorlessly. "No way in hell am I leaving you to deal with all this shit. I wouldn`t even do that to my worst enemy."
"Miss OC?"
"Not even her." Kim sighed and wrapped her arms around me. "Life is never easy Sonia. You have to take the good with the bad right?"
"Right. Doesn`t stop you from being scared shitless though."
"And not being able to tell the guys..." She trailed off.
"Jared, is he..."
"Furious. I suppose telling him a half-truth is easier than telling him what`s really going on."
"What did you tell him?"
"That I needed my space. That everything has gotten to be too much and I need to clear my head. It was true in a way. But not in the way that I made him to believe. Not the way he did believe it."
"You said that stuff to push him away? So he would be protected?" I said. Kim nodded, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.
"I love him more than anything. Him and Noah...they are my life and I would give myself up to make sure they were safe. That no harm could come to them. And I know Jared would do the same to protect me but...this...is something that he can`t save me from. This is something that I have to fight."
"We have to fight. I`m behind you Kim. Jared will respect your wishes, he will stay away until you say so."
"He won`t...he`ll put some distance between us for a while but...I know him. He`ll try and worm it out of me some way. He`ll get it into his head that it is something that he can fix, that he can make better. He doesn`t really listen to me...he`s just..." Kim looked like she was ashamed to say out loud what she was thinking.
"Go on." I encouraged her. She took a deep breath.
"It`s like...he know`s that I`m unhappy and ignores the real reasons. He thinks that sex and constant reassurance is enough to keep me happy. Don`t get me wrong, I love the sex."
"You feel that you are missing something?"
"Something that he can`t give me. Something that my life now won`t let me have."
"Like your education? You can still do that Kim!"
"I could have went to NYU! Imagine! It was my dream for years. All that studying, all that work I did to get it and then..." Her face contorted into a bitter frown then softened. "I gave up one dream to have a more important one. One that will last forever. But still...I miss the studying. I want to learn about new things. Then maybe I could see the world that way."
"Jared doesn`t know any of this?"
"If he does then he is keeping quiet about it."
"Maybe he`s worried about it? Maybe he feels like he can compensate you in other ways. Like giving you all of his love and devotion." Kim covered her mouth with her hand and let out a strangled sob. I spotted my mom at the door and shook my head at her, telling her to leave us for a couple minutes more. She nodded and disappeared. "What`s the matter Kim?" I smoothed her hair and put my arms around her shoulders. After a while she took in some ragged breaths.
"I`m throwing everything back in his face..." She hiccupped. "He`s given me everything he could...he`s made sure I`m comfortable...that I don`t have to work...he works full time and patrols full time so I have security...and I just threw it all back in his face...I`m such a selfish bitch."
"You`re not Kim! Don`t feel guilty for feeling a little disappointed." Crap! I knew the one place Kim needs to be right now is in Jared`s arms. Talking to him and not me. Today has been too hard on her. Harder on her than me.
"If it keeps him safe...then...I`ll let him think that. He can be angry at me but I know that it is for his own good. Because if I can`t tell him..."
"You can`t tell him Kim. Not now." Shit. When did Sue get here? She`s like Houdini. Just appearing out of thin air. She came into the bedroom followed by my mom.
"So...Utlapa`s back. And you two are unfortunate enough to have met him first."
"Tell us Sue." I demanded, getting sick to death of the round about way of saying things.
"I`m going to tell you about imprinting. Some things you may not like but..."
"Tell us!" Kim said.
"When the chosen few of the tribe had the ability to be spirit warriors...the men weren`t the only ones with this gift. The women had it too. When you go to the spirit plane you find the soul`s other half. Sometimes you get lucky, he or she would be on the earth, waiting for you. Sometimes they have lived before and others haven`t been born yet. But putting that aside for the moment, imprinting didn`t exist when we were spirit warriors, only after."
"Why?" Both me and Kim asked.
"When Taha Aki chose to share the wolfs body, it made finding your soul mate more difficult. A warrior is his strongest when he has somebody behind him. It is not only about making a genetically strong future wolf, it`s about finding someone who will make you stronger."
"Mr. Black told us that before." Kim said.
"But since Taha Aki forbade traveling and his sons didn`t have the ability to travel from their bodies something strange happened. Generations later, when his second wife died, when he laid his eyes upon the third wife...the second half of his soul...he became bound to her. Since his spirit could not leave his body it spoke in a different way. A more consuming way. The imprints spirit called to his in such a profound manner that all of his love, his entire being, his entire self, man and animal, was channelled into keeping his second half safe. He knew the danger, she could, if she had wanted to, if she had the knowledge, could leave her body."
"But why is that dangerous?" I asked. Sue grimaced.
"Because you would be breaking something that has been made whole. Remember girls, the spirit of a wolf cannot travel freely from his body. To do so would mean instant death. If the imprints spirit was to leave her body it would be taking the spirit of the wolf with her. The only thing is, she could come back and he couldn`t."
"Holy shit." Kim whispered out.
"Imprinting, to sum everything up, is a safety mechanism. It ensures that the imprint would never leave the wolf. It gives him strength to be with her but she can`t use her own innate powers."
"How do you know all this stuff?" Kim asked.
"Because this information has been entrusted to the female line of Taha Aki`s desendants. It has been passed down from mother to daughter, imprint to imprint."
"And if the guys knew they would take us away?" I confirmed. Sue nodded.
"The overwhelming urge to keep the imprint safe and alive comes before all else. Don`t ever underestimate that! If the guys knew that La Push was a natural magnet for all things, good and evil, they would take you all away, and leave the rest with no defense. That`s the knowledge the women carry. It`s up to you now to use this knowledge as you will. If you want to leave...then you leave...but if you want to stay..."
"We`re not going anywhere. Right Kim."
"Nowhere. La Push is our home."
Sue and mom smiled at us proudly. Crap, who would have known that La Push was some type of Buffy style Hellmouth?
"So...what are we supposed to do with all this information?" Kim asked. Trust her to ask the smart questions.
"Nothing." Mom said.
"Nothing? Mom? Seriously?"
"I`m dead serious."
"Utlapa is on the loose and we do nothing?" Kim almost screeched.
"What can you do? You can`t leave your bodies to seek him out and fight him, you will kill Jared and Jacob plus you wouldn`t even know how if you wanted to try. Utlapa is looking for a way in. Whoever set him free has opened the door a crack but not fully. True, he can mark you, but only you. Because you saw him. He can`t hurt anyone else. He wants to scare you, make you run away and take your men with you. He feeds off fear. Off weakness."
"So...we just..ignore this stuff?" I growled.
"You can`t ignore it. You can find whoever set him free and why they did it. I can promise you that this person is acting on what Utlapa wants."
"How can we even go about that? I mean...who the hell would know he`s there? You said that one of Taha Aki`s blood set him free. The pack and the imprints are his blood. I can`t see anyone doing this." I told them.
"Taha Aki had many sons. Had many daughters. They themselves had children. This has been going on for centuries. Not all of them chose to shapeshift. Not all of them knew the secret. The pack and the imprints are the ones who carry the strongest magic and blood within them, but others are from his line." Mom said.
"So we are looking for one of Taha Aki`s great multiplied by God knows what grandchild. That narrows it down to about a couple of hundred people." Kim said sarcastically.
"Do we tell Rachel and Emily?" I asked.
"No. Not yet." Sue said quickly. "Emily...will freak out I think. She would let slip to Sam. Rachel will want to leave and Paul would obviously go with her. Claire is too young to even know what`s going on. Keep it to yourselves for the time being."
"Okay. So, looks like we have to digging to do Sonia." Kim said, play punching me on the arm.
"Sure does."
"Girls. I trust you to keep this secret. I know that it will be difficult keeping it from Jacob and Jared but you know how important this is."
"We know. We won`t tell."
"Maybe in the future you could...if things start to get out of hand but...some things can`t be fought by the pack. They need different skills. Skills that you have." Sue said. Noah could be heard crying from my moms room. Kim snapped her head up and bolted up.
"He probably needs changing and a feed." She muttered, leaving the room.
"I should take her home." I said, getting off the bed.
"Let me. Stay here with your mom." Sue asked me. I nodded.
"Sure. Just...if Jared`s there don`t let him freak out."
"Jared won`t pull that shit with me." Sue snorted. Leah was so like her it was creepy.
"Thanks Sue, mom, for telling us." I said.
"We couldn`t leave it any longer." Mom pulled me into a cuddle.
Thanks for reading and remember to review. It makes the story better cause I do listen to what you have to say. Besos.