Heidi and the Wolf

36.

I mean, apologies are definitely in order. Writers' block is no joke and my sweet, little, innocent baby has turned into a demon -.- I kid, she's amazing but my god she's hard work. I come home from work and I'm in bed not long after! Toddlerhood has well and truly hit us with an iron fist. Like being yeeted into the clouds by a giant in Skyrim, (those who know will know). Anyhoo, lets get on to the very long awaited chapter 36! (half a year-I'm terrible).

The return to normality was strange.

Everyone around me was exactly the same as I had left them. Their looks, their personalities, their clothes, shoes, hair. The pretty houses the same, the pub, the manor. Mason.

All the same.

Mason was slightly more rugged and his eyes reminded me of someone who hadn't slept in a year, but apart from that he was still the handsome Alpha I had come to adore.

It was just me that had changed.

And that was getting some used to.

There had been tears, laughs and plenty of snot on my shoulders as I was smothered in hugs by the girls who knew me best. Those who didn't treated me as though I was a bomb about to explode, but I didn't pay them any mind. They may have known of what happened to my body, all the unspeakable things Dan did to torture me; but they would never truly know or understand the damage to my psyche.

I didn't miss the way people's eyes darted to the side slightly too late as I caught them looking at my haphazardly cut hair, or the bruises around my throat and any other skin I dared to bear. I felt ugly stood next to the girls, though I would never voice these thoughts out loud. I could hear people's reactions clear as day...

"What of course not!"

"You look...better."

"You're so brave."

Ugh, brave. I had been called brave by what felt like the entire population of Penshaw Lake this week alone. I was tired of it. I didn't feel brave.

I felt tired. I felt lucky. I felt relieved.

But not brave.

It had been almost a month since Dan had been shot to death in the airport and some days it felt like only yesterday since I returned from hospital into the waiting arms of my best friends. There was a crisp, fresh feeling to the air and the trees were beginning to shed the first red, yellow or brown leaves. I donned a light jacket for the first time since the incident and somehow, the loss of the warm weather felt like a change I was more than welcoming. It was something different; like me.

I stepped into the main living room of the manor, a place I was beginning to see as another home, seeing as Mason wouldn't let me leave his sight for more than a minute at a time. I curled the hand-knitted, woolen cardigan around myself as I stood behind the couch and let my eyes rest on the television; the news currently capturing everyone's attention.

"We come to you now live with a story that has been sweeping the nation..."

I sighed lightly, I should have known that someone would have been filming Dan's murder attempt at the airport. Social media went wild with the footage of Dan flying at the police, some having even counted the amount of shots fired before he went down.

Some guesses were probably right, others were a little ridiculous.

It did make everyone a little more on edge. Having taken on way more bullets than any normal human could, people were speculating and theorizing. Robot, Vampire, Government Experiment, Werewolf. They were all theories circulating the net like wildfire.