HELLO AGAIN! :D

Here is the second installment of The Hunt's Flashback Arc! If you have not already, please read 'Flashback 1' so you don't get majorly confused. :P

*** P.S. Just in case I forgot to mention it before – this Flashback Arc is supposed to take place two years before the main story-line (like what you saw in Chapter 1). Hopefully that makes sense! :)***

DISCLAIMER: I don't own The Mortal Instruments. Sorry. :)

FLASHBACK 2: THE AWAKENING

Jada bolted upright and sucked in a deep, laborious gasp – her hair straggling over her shoulders like tendrils of black seaweed.

At first, all she saw was light, and part of her wondered if she was already dead; if her soul, in the process of 'moving on', had somehow been delivered to the wrong eternal destination. White starbursts clouded her sight, and her body felt supernaturally weightless, like a feather hovering in balmy mid-air.

It was eerily quiet. Somehow… peaceful.

Less than an instant later, her soul was punched back into her body with savage force and she forgot what peace felt like. She doubled over in stabbing pain, choking on the dryness of her parched throat - fighting the tsunami of vertigo that accompanied it.

Maybe her initial suspicions has been wrong, she wondered, fighting to stay conscious.

Perhaps she was in hell, after all.

Burning agony jarred up her body like lightning, constricting her lungs. Her palm instinctively clapped over the right side of her waist, jamming down on the source, trying to stop the hurricane of pain by physical suppression.

The torture forced her vision to focus, like a hand dragging her consciousness through a water's surface. Once she broke through, her vision cleared and Jada took the opportunity to finally survey her surroundings - albeit with a tinge of bewildered disappointment.

If this was eternal damnation, it was much better than the world had made it out to be.

She was indoors, now, lying on a bed as stiff as plywood and tangled like a fly in its cotton-sheeted web. Jada was sure she had never seen this place before in her life, but the room felt perplexingly familiar. The melody of a long-forgotten childhood song – distantly recognizable, but not clear enough to recall with any concrete certainty.

Several similar, plainly-made beds neatly lined the wall beside her, their linens just as starched and unwelcoming as her own. Everything was lifeless and colorless, she saw – the walls, the furniture, the sheets – all as white as a blizzard. The only thing that seemed to have any vibrancy was the door, looming stern and ornate against the farthest blank wall. An expensive, oddly-placed mahogany plank, drifting through a winter sea.

Shivering, Jada pulled her hair from her sticky neck and tried to breathe. Even after a good ten seconds of effort, she still felt like she wasn't getting enough oxygen. Her body felt like it was not her own. A clammy sweat had budded on her skin, but her body was blazing with a raging fury. Like morning dew beading on the surface of the sun.

It wasn't until she took a second glance around the room that she saw the metal tray sitting on the narrow, bed-height table next to her. The tray plated a roll of bandaging, surgical thread, and an array of razor tipped medical instruments that she had used as often as her own stele. She raked her gaze over them in slow progression: Scalpels… scissors… tweezers… a long bowed needle…

The bed seemed to sway under her, like a boat rocking back and forth on a tumultuous sea.

Was this an infirmary? she wondered, whirling at the thought. Why would she be here? How had she gotten there?

Her brown eyes widened a fraction, but the shock of the realization only lasted as long as it took for the door at the other end of the room to creak open. Jada jumped at the sound, recoiled at the resulting jolt of agony from her side, and bit her lip to stop herself from yelping in pain. Silently, she cursed her own lack of composure as the raw, coopery taste of blood seeped to her tongue.

Normally, her nerves were steadier than that. A stupid door should not have startled her.

But even in the best of circumstances, what she saw next was baffling.

A tall figure had emerged from the doorway, backing into the room. At first, he was nothing more than narrow shoulders and an impossibly tall frame, draped in floor-length midnight-colored robes. Jada's eyes darted to the scalpel beside her, ready to use it, if necessary, but moments later, she caught the man's shock of spiking, raven hair. It glinted a bizarre shade of blues and greens in the harsh light of the room – and she stopped grasping for the scalpel mid-reach.

After all, there was only one person with hair like that.

Jada would have recognized it anywhere.

"Argyle?" she marvelled, choking on the word. The dryness of her throat had made her voice brittle and weak, but he seemed to know it instantly.

With an inelegant exclamation of surprise, he awkwardly fumbled whatever was in his long arms and it crashed to the ground. Patterned ceramic shattered across the dark wooden floor, spraying jagged emerald shards like a broken sheet of ice. A fragrant golden syrup seemed to ooze from the fragments – an ointment, perhaps – but she did not have time to dwell much on the fact.

Argyle's back had stiffened, and he paused to survey the mess, only for a moment, before turning his head to look at her with wide, vulnerable eyes.

Jada had seen that face so many times before that she could have drawn it from memory.

Argyle had always possessed such compelling facial features; so different from the endless swarms of self-entitled pretty boys that had clamored for her attention at the Academy. He was more striking than traditionally good-looking – which, Jada had always found, was infinitely more fascinating.

In a way, he had similar looks to the countless Fair Folk her father had nursed to health during his medical career. There was something in the high, sharp cheekbones and jaw, the narrow nose and chin, the cream-pale skin, that made her think, strangely, of Meliorn – the fairy knight that sat on the high council of her intel network.

Argyle's round eyes were widened in her direction, now, and gazing back at them felt less like looking into human irises and more like staring directly into a thick pine forest. A twist of remorse flashed in his face, then – a pain just as sharp as the jagged pottery strewn at his boots.

He quickly pried his gaze away, leaving Jada to try to guess what he was thinking.

Stiffly, he glared at the wall beside him – and there was silence, only silence, where his jaw worked until he next spoke. "This is my family's townhouse in Alicante," he murmured, almost apologetically. He raked his hand through his wild hair and Jada winced at the sight. Argyle had mentored under her father for over a year, and she knew that he only did the gesture when he was, on the rare occasion, at the end of his rope. "The iratzes weren't working. They… can't work, in the condition that you are in. I did the best I could with the supplies I had here, but…"

His voice trailed off and she instinctively stared down at herself - registering, without understanding, the hand she had clapped to her side.

Fabric bandages were circling her torso like a mummy, just as white and lifeless as the rest of the room surrounding her. It was like staring at her own body in a dream – knowing, somehow, that it was her, but unable to feel any real connection between her soul and her physical self.

Experimentally, she warily lifted her hand from her waist, dreading the outcome, but when her palm returned to her, it was stamped red with blood. It was then that she saw the wet, crimson crescent blossoming from the side of her bandaging - seeping through the layers of gauze like relentless, incorrectly colored ink.

Her hand began to tremble.

A wound? she wondered. But how…?

Memory burst over her like an opened floodgate, erupting through her consciousness like lightning striking gasoline. In sudden clarity, she recalled the rays of moonlight on the stone cavern. Argyle's willowy form cutting through the crowd of lycanthrope soldiers. The army of werewolves. The hideous angle of the pack leader's snapped neck. The glittering malice in his mate's eyes when she had launched herself at her in wolf form, teeth dripping and bared...

As the images faded away, all Jada could see was her own blood staining her hand, the bloody teeth marks seeping through the bloody gauze at her waist. They were glaring back at her, branding her, mocking her – and her stomach rolled.

Any fantasy that she was dead was immediately and irrevocably dispelled. The realization seeped in slowly, painfully, like a dagger sinking through her chest, scraping bone as it entered.

Slowly, purposefully, Jada curled her bloodied fingers into a shaking fist.

Her parents had once been physicians. Specializing in Downwolder-related medicine, no less.

She, of all people, knew what a bite from a werewolf meant.

Gritting her teeth, Jada's brown eyes flashed madly from the wound at her waist to the tray on the table beside her – to the slender blades of the delicate instruments, glinting in the dim light like fireflies.

The rest of her body began to shake - not with horror now, but with rage.

She wouldn't let this happen, she vowed.

She couldn't.

To let herself become the beast that murdered her family? The same one who slayed her entire family in nothing more than cold blood…?

It was not possible.

A flash of an image popped into her head, then, and Jada almost cried out.

As if to spite her, her mind conjured up her little brother, Theo – mirrored as clearly as a photograph. Her stomach wretched with guilt, making her head sway.

To her horror, instead of seeing him at the times she had remembered the most fondly – holding him while he slept, brushing the tumbling hair from his little forehead, watching with pride as he mastered another weapon or academic subject – she remembered him now as he had most infuriated her.

In her mind's eye, he was not the angelic little pupil of his youth, but the obstinate eight-year-old that never did as he was told. Jada saw the details as clearly as if he was standing before her: his nose raised in haughty pride, the rebellious glitter to his brown eyes, the arrogant set of his jaw, the resolute air of his cross-armed stance…

And even then, she would have given anything, taken a million eternities of hellish torment, turned the whole world to ash, if she had to – just for the change to see him one last time.

When Jada came back to reality, she noticed her vision had blurred – burning the back of her eyes with the threat of angry tears. Through the distortion, the only thing that seemed clear with the glinting of the blades at her bedside, signalling to her like the beacon of a lighthouse.

No, she realized, eyeing the scalpels with feverish urgency.

Becoming a werewolf was a fate worse than death.

She wouldn't let it happen.

For her family's sake.

"Jada," Argyle stated, his voice wary. There was something in his face, a warning. "Jada, don't you dare –"

But Jada was far beyond reason, then.

In an explosion of imperceptible motion, her hand flashed to the tray beside her, fingers closing on the cold metal of the scalpel and driving it home, praying that it would have time to pierce her heart before Argyle reached her… She felt the blade sting as it entered her chest, biting like the kiss of a needle, freeing her from it all… But the moment was over too soon.

Abruptly, all movement stopped, and she felt, as if from a distance, an invisible force blocking the scalpel's entry to her chest. Wondering if she had already pierced her heart, Jada looked down - and grimaced in disappointment.

It was hardly a surprise when she saw Argyle's pale hand on the scalpel handle, his white-knuckled fingers savagely gripped over her own, white-knuckled and tremoring.

The blade protruded from her bandaged chest now, but the scalpel had only pierced her chest a half-inch at best.

Nothing, Jada knew, that was fatal.

For some reason, the realization made her stomach drop, as if the weight of her grief and shame had suddenly become too much to bear. The emotion broke through her mind like a wrecking ball, shattering through the carefully built walls of self-control. It sent her heart into a free-fall, tumbling downward into an infinite, gaping emptiness.

Choking on sorrow, Jada clenched her teeth and looked away, hiding her face behind her long hair. She refused to let Argyle see the single, blistering tear that rolled down her cheek, dropping to her shoulder like a single liquid diamond. Her pride tried to suffocate her grief, to shove it back down behind the curtain of her fury – but even so, she couldn't help but feeling that losing the chance at a human death was somehow like losing her family all over again.

The sorrow ate at her like acid – corroding her insides until she was sure there was nothing left for it to burn through.

There was a moment, the longest moment she had ever known, where she refused to move – refused to even look at him.

When her body finally moved, Argyle's pale face was hovering directly in front of her, obstructing the rest of the room. Growling, he cleanly jerked the scalpel from her hand and chest – with more strength than she had ever seen from him. It released a stream of blood that stained the front of her bandaging like red paint. Then, with unprecedented force, he swatted away the tray beside her.

The supplies exploded from the tray in what looked like a shower of silver sparks, the instruments skittering across the floor like dinnerware, scraping across the floorboards until they came to a rest at the furthest wall, far out of her reach.

When he turned back to her, he looked, for the first time since she had met him, blindly furious. Color was flaring high on his pale cheeks and his dark eyes were wide and glistening as he reached out and gripped her by the shoulders.

"What the hell were you thinking, Jada?" he snapped. "What the hell were you - Do you want to die?! Why would you -?!"

With a choke, his voice broke off and Jada could only stare back at him in momentary astonishment as he caught his breath, his chest unevenly hitching.

Gentle, sweet, clumsy Argyle was a creature she knew, but this one – this one was foreign to her.

Ever since their time together at the Academy, he had always been like the sun. Unfailingly patient, intrinsically warm, hopelessly consistent. Looking on from a distance, happy to run his course with silent endurance…

An Argyle that lost his temper? Who lashed out in emotion?

She had not known that such a thing was possible.

Like a rubber band, his emotion snapped back as soon as it had erupted – pulling back the fury to reveal the heavy underpinning of his own inner turmoil. The color flooded away from his cheeks, draining his face to a sickening white… In a few seconds, his emerald eyes were glistening with something far from fury, as he pulled her, abruptly, to his chest – caging her there as if she was as vital to him as his own breath.

Despite everything – losing her family, killing the pack leader, the werewolf bite – Jada still felt a stab of guilt at the feeling of his arms around her, at breathing in his bright citrusy scent, even at the small comfort his gesture was offering her…

Emotions had always been easy for her to read, and she knew the one that had flickered behind his long dark lashes all too well. It was something that had always been there - simmering in unspoken waiting, quietly infecting him, festering like bacteria in a wound that never healed…

Jada had always known the feeling had existed. Tried to side-step around it. Wished even, for her own selfish sake, that it would have faded with time.

But apparently, it seemed, it hadn't.

Staying in his arms like this would only make things worse for him.

"What were you thinking?" he was whispering, over and over again. "Why would you do something like this?"

For some reason, the comment irked her, pulsing into her veins like venom.

Suddenly, she felt her own pride bleed to the surface of her despair, tearing through her hopelessness and sorrow like a wild animal ripping through flesh.

What right did Argyle have to ask why? What right did he have to stop her?

With a sound of disgust, she firmly shoved him away.

Jada shook her head in blind rage, sending her hair flying.

"What was I thinking?!" she demanded. "What the hell were you thinking?!"

A normal person would have been defensive, but Argyle only sat back on the bed and stared at his hands, clenched into quivering fists in his lap. "I was thinking," he whispered. "that I was saving your life."

"This isn't a life!" she snarled, gesturing wildly to her waist. "Did you think I would want this? Want to live out my days as the same monster that murdered my family? You should have left me to die as they did – torn to ribbons by those monsters. At least then I could have died as a human."

Argyle looked stricken.

"What has gotten into you?!" he threw back. Some distant part of her was fascinated to hear his voice rising to a yell – was relishing the punishment of making him furious. "First you murder the pack leader, now this? Branding lycanthropes as 'monsters'?" Gentleness returned to his face and he reached out and put a hand on hers, as if to connect to her emotionally through physical touch. His long fingers felt strangely cold to the touch – which she found disturbing abnormal. She had always remembered Argyle being warm, from the years they had known each other at the Academy… Feeling him as anything different was… wrong.

Without invitation, she heard the voice of her father, tortuously near, as if he were in the room with them, reciting a passage in his research notes:

Lycanthropy, he recited. After initial infection, beginning stages of the disease may include: high fever, aggressive outbursts, mild hallucinations…

High fever… Hallucinations…

The thought of her being 'infected' made her want to rip her own heart from her chest.

Fighting the urge to do so, she balled her free hand into a fist, so tightly that her fingernails broke the soft skin of her palm.

Pain darted like a jolt of electricity up her arm, clearing her head.

"This isn't you." pleaded Argyle, drawing her back to reality. "Listen to yourself, Jada. Can't you see? You aren't thinking straight –"

With a growl, she jerked her hand away from his touch, knowing it was true.

She was vaguely away of the feeling of her loose hair, showering over her shoulders as she tried to get her breathing under control. She felt namelessly weak – a shell of herself, somehow dead and yet simultaneously animated – like a skeleton puppet.

"If you cared about me at all," she spat, heaving breathlessly through the words, "you would have let me die an honorable death – let me die as a human. Not as… this." She gestured to sweat-soaked body with disdain. "Not fully Nephilim and not fully beast. Not even in control over my own body…"

Pain skittered across Argyle's features, but his tone, when he next spoke, was level and smooth. The voice that he used with difficult patients.

"You don't know that you are infected – not yet," he gently amended. "Not everyone who is bitten contracts the werewolf disease… We have to wait until -"

Knowing what he would say, Jada cruelly threw back her head and laughed. Her waist throbbed in a way that should have made her cripple into fetal position, but she refused to let it affect her.

"Until the next full moon?" she finished for him, glaring into his face. "My parents were the world's leading Downworlder physicians, Argyle," she hissed. "And in all that time, I have only seen three patients escape lycanthropy. Three. I highly doubt I am any exception."

"If anyone can do it, it would be you." A misplaced hope was blazing in his eyes, and despite their years of friendship, it made Jada want to reach out and rake her fingernails across his cheek.

Horror froze her and she stiffened at the thought, shocked that she would have imagined such an awful thing. Was this a side-effect of the lycanthropy disease, she wondered distantly? Or just the ravenous appetite of her rage – the new-found wildfire that wanted to destroy everything – to break the world as it had so heartlessly broken her?

She could not tell.

She had felt it when she had killed the pack leader, as well. And she had not been infected with lycanthropy then.

Her mouth twisted as she tried to suppress the urge to lash out at Argyle – but it was useless. She felt like she was trying to stop an eruption by clapping her hand over the mouth of a volcano. Fury seeped through the futile gesture like molten lava, charring her skin down to the bones as she vainly struggled to delay the inevitable.

Before she could stop herself, Jada flicked off the white sheets and tried to slide out of bed, ducking around Argyle's objecting hands, in the process.

She needed to get around him, to leave the infirmary, even if only to remove him from her wrath's uncontrollable line of fire…

Unfortunately, it seemed, her body had less altruistic ideas.

Sucking in a harsh breath, Jada felt her feet slip bonelessly from under her as they met the chilled floorboards, and she braced for the impact. Quickly, Argyle's slender arms shot out again, catching her body just before it plummeted to the wooden ground below, locking around her shoulders like a vice. He gasped in surprise as he took on the burden of her full weight, but, regardless of the struggle, he had pulled her into his chest, saving her from the fall.

For the second time, Jada found herself plastered to Argyle's body, and this time, she was horrified to note, she almost let herself stay there.

She had not noticed before, but Argyle's pale skin was refreshingly cool against her fevered flesh, giving her a sliver of release from the agony pulsing from her chest and side. Her grief begged her to melt into him, to bury her head in the icy softness of his robed shoulder, to hold onto someone loved and familiar – regardless of the consequences – even when she knew she didn't deserve it.

Gently, Argyle's narrow chest rose and fell in a sigh, his exhalation rustling the top of her dishevelled hair. "Your parents wouldn't want this," he whispered against the top of her dewy forehead. Still conflicted, Jada said nothing, and he seemed to take it as a victory. "And think of what you would be leaving behind," he continued, softly. "Think of Theo… what would he do without you now? It wouldn't be fair for you to abandon him like this."

A block of ice instantly formed in her chest, blocking her breathing. She jerked backward, looked into his face, and swayed uneasily, the edges of her vision rippling like rushing waves.

"Theo?" she echoed, ignoring the vertigo. Her rage surged forth, and she was unable to catch it back before it left her lips. "You can't use my little brother to manipulate me," she barked, making him wince. "The Clave already told me he was dead."

"Dead?!" Argyle's body tightened reflexively around her. "What in the world are you talking about? Did something happen -?" Suddenly, Argyle's eyes became impossibly wide, sympathy flickering in their depths. "Oh, God," he breathed, his narrow lips trembling. "You… didn't know, did you?"

"Didn't know what?" she snapped.

He jerked away from her – near enough to still carry her weight but far enough away to study her face. His eyes fell over her like a cool mist, brushing over her features.

"That's why you went to the werewolves' lair – why you wanted to kill the pack leader," he breathed, as if he had not heard her. His arms were shaking. "You thought you had nothing left to lose..." Abruptly, Argyle was all business. He put his hands firmly on her bare shoulders, forcing her to look up into his face. "Jada, it wasn't what you thought," he told her. "They found him, right after you went after the pack leader… Theo is alive."

Dread washed over her like a tidal wave.

The world seemed to open up beneath her, its jaws ready to swallow.

"But – they said," she stammered –

And as soon as she breathed the words, she knew she was a fool.

It had all been a lie.

Her brother had never been dead. The Clave had just wanted her to think so. Probably even wanted her to go after the pack leader on her own, knowing it would have killed her in the process… When she had begged the Council to avenge her parents' death, they had turned her away so much as trash. Said they wouldn't want to risk causing any political unrest by hunting down Italy's head pack leader.

But Jada knew the truth.

The Clave had wanted to wipe any memory of the Buonavento doctors and their research from existence. Even if that meant getting rid of her and Theo…

Theo.

Despite the flare of her burning skin, her blood ran cold in her veins.

She had thought she had lost everything, and then, suddenly, she hadn't. Her heart had been dead and gone – silenced as soon as she had lost her family to that werewolf's murderous rage…

Now an invisible hand shoved it back into her ribcage with bone-crushing force. It started to beat again for what felt like the first time, with a painful, shocking hammering that sent electrical tremors through her limbs.

Her hands were on Argyle's forearms now, keeping her balance. At the news, they began to claw into his skin like talons.

Any desire to fight back her rage was gone.

The Clave would pay dearly, for what they did.

They would pay for it in blood.

"Where is he!?" she demanded at a growl. "Where is my little brother?!"

Argyle hesitated. One look into his eyes told her that he was calculating – trying to determine the advisability of telling her Theo's location or keeping the knowledge to himself.

"Jada." Gingerly, as any good doctor would do, Argyle tried to lower her back to the bed, to get her to rest. Despite her former weakness, she noticed that her body now refused to move under the pressure. Quickly, Argyle sighed and gave up the attempt, his face tightening. "If the Clave saw you right now, they would lock you in an observation chamber until the next full moon," he explained. "Maybe even kill you… Theo is safe – that is what matters. Don't make the situation worse by running in headfirst like –"

His argument was reasonable, but she refused to listen to logic, now. She saw her brother in her mind again, but this time he was different. Now he was waiting for her – out there, somewhere behind these walls – alone and terrified, not sure if she was alive or dead…

The thought was more wrenching than the idea of becoming a werewolf and her heart thundered against her chest like a battering ram.

Time was not on her side.

She grabbed a fistful of Argyle's dark robes and dragged him forward, until his face was barely a breath away from hers. Up close, she saw the dark rings under his eyes, the strain. But it was not grief that she needed from him. Not now.

"Tell me where my brother is," she snarled. "Or by the Angel, I will rip this city apart, brick by godforsaken brick, until I find him."

Although Jada understood she was being unkind, their nearness had the exact effect on Argyle that she knew it would.

She watched the thrill of her nearness take him over, muddling his judgement like poison.

His next breath caught in his throat. His pulse stammered. Heat rose to the tops of his cheekbones. He fractionally leant toward her, his eyes locked on her lips.

There it was, she thought bitterly – romantic desire. The legendary elixir she read countless stories of, but had never personally drank of.

There was a time where she would have felt jealous of it – of Argyle's ability to feel that way about another person – but she could not find a reason to care anymore.

All that mattered now was finding Theo.

A moment past where Argyle's jewel-colored irises flickered with resistance. Then, he sighed and closed his eyes – and she knew she had won.

"The orphanage," he finally admitted, rubbing his temples. "He's in the orphanage."

Her temper snapped, turning her vision red.

She shoved him backward with enough force to topple him to the floor, even though it was not him that she was furious at. As it was, Argyle somehow stayed on his feet.

Given his track record for clumsiness, it was a small miracle.

"They took him to the orphanage?!" she roared, reeling backward. Some distant part of her noticed that she was shaking from head to toe – like she had been injected with a lethal dose of adrenaline.

Ever helpful, Argyle was extending his hands to her now, half detaining and half supplication. "His parents were dead," he explained shakily, the words tumbling from his mouth in a flood. "You were missing. I tried to take him, but the Clave would not let me. I have no blood relation to him – no legal right to take him in my custody. They had to follow procedure -"

Rage pulsed through her like venom. She was beyond hearing anything, seeing anything, feeling anything.

Swatting off Argyle's hands, Jada rose from the bed and picked her way across the glass-strewn hardwood to the door, ignoring the shards of porcelain beneath her feet and the overwhelming protest throbbing from her injuries.

"Stop!"

It was Argyle's voice.

For the second time that evening, he moved with a shocking amount of speed. He was now standing in the doorway, blocking her path to the exit. She took in the scene with shocking precision, as if trying to remember every detail with photographic clarity. He was so tall that she had to crane her neck back to look into his face, but despite his height, he was not very broad. He had to spread his arms to span the door frame – his dark robes filling in the gaps his body could not.

"You can't leave," ordered Argyle. Despite the gravity of his tone, his eyes were pleading, gleaming wetly. It broke her heart, to see him begging like this, but her own pride was an inferno, scorching whatever blocked her path.

And Argyle, unfortunately, was no exception.

She set her jaw and glared at him, watching the hope fade from his face.

"You know what they do to prisoners in those observation cells. If they found you now –" His voice broke off, and she saw him tremble. "I promised your father that I would keep you safe. You and Theo. I won't let you go."

"Then stop me!" she cried in blind rage, lunging in.

She was so close to him that her nose almost touched his collarbone as she glared up at him, and he took a defensive step backward, almost tripping over his robes in the process.

Originally, she had wanted to hurl the words at him, to cut him as with a whip, but her voice broke halfway through. In the next moment, Jada was horrified to realize that there was some part of her that meant it. Some part of her was terrified of how easily she had killed the pack leader. Was dreading what she was willing to do next. Was unnervingly confident, in her ability to do it.

She could feel her father, as if he was alive, begging her to let Argyle's goodness temper the blazing avariciousness that her soul was charging toward – to soften her.

But she was far beyond that now.

She waited for his reply – to see he what he would do. Part of her wondered, after his bout of rage earlier, if he had finally found the inner strength to stop her. To meet her force with a force of his own.

But again, Argyle flinched away from her – pain clear in his face.

He loomed in the doorway a moment longer, but she already saw the answer to her question.

His shock had given her an opening and Jada shoved past him and into the hallway, charging toward the orphanage with merciless resolve.

Hmmmmm... so mysterious... ;)

What is Jada about to do? Where is Theo now? How will Valentine fit into the story? When are you going to get some more Jonathan and Eve scenes? (I know this is what you are here for - don't lie. :P)

All of these questions and more will be answered - next week!

P.S. I may be able to post Chapter 2 of the main story-line a bit earlier than expected... If you want to see it before next Friday, feel free to review and let me know! If not, I will try to keep posting to my normal once-per-week schedule!

Thanks for all the love & support! I will see all you lovely readers next time!

Love, Fishie.