Moana
I felt utterly shocked after my conversation with Olivia. At first, I thought that there was no way that she really was Ella's biological mother, because Ella's biological mother was supposed to be dead. But the resemblance was uncanny, and she even knew things that no one else knew, such as Edrick's drinking problem. And the way that she cried when she talked about Ella... It was too real. She didn't seem to be faking it, and if she was, then she was a hell of a good actress.
But even then, I still didn't know if I could trust Olivia enough to fully believe her. There was always a possibility that she was lying and wasn't Ella's biological mother, but was instead somehow related to Michael or Kelly. That would explain why she knew so much about Edrick and Ella, and why she called Edrick so much late at night. Maybe Michael or someone else wanted her to bother Edrick and lie to me to get me to leave. I had no way of knowing at this point.
Either way, as I took Ella home that day after training I decided to just pretend for a moment that Olivia was telling the truth. If I assumed that Olivia really was Ella's biological mother, then that meant that this entire situation was potentially more sinister than I originally thought.
I couldn't help but worry that my baby would be ripped away from me in the same way that Ella was ripped away from Olivia. Would Edrick really do that to me, after everything that happened between us? I thought that there was a chance that we were mates, but now I wasn't so sure.
Not only that, but did I really want to be with someone who stole his first wife's child away from her?
As I looked over at Ella, who was swinging her legs in her car seat and happily sucking on a post-training ice pop, I really could see the resemblance between her and Olivia. I imagined how Ella's life would have been different if she hadn't been raised to think that her mother was dead, and honestly the fact that Edrick lied to Ella in the first place made me almost sick.
But, even then, I still couldn't be entirely sure if I could trust Olivia or not. Maybe some of what she told me was right, but not all of it. I wouldn't know until I had the perspective from Edrick's side of the story, and as I took Ella up the elevator and sent her to her room to get washed up for dinner, I wondered when or if I could ask Edrick about all of this. Maybe he could offer some better insight on it. Maybe he would have some proof, unlike Olivia.
When we got home, I decided that I immediately wanted to talk to Edrick. It simply couldn't wait; I needed to tell him what happened and hear his side of the story, because if Olivia was telling the full truth, then I wanted to make arrangements to leave and get my baby out of here... As sad as that made me. To think that Ella had only just asked me that morning if she could refer to me as her mother, and now I had supposedly met her mother and even found out that Edrick may have stolen her from her mother... All of it felt like too much.
However, when we got home, Edrick wasn't there. I looked in the kitchen, the living room, his study and his bedroom, and he wasn't there. In fact, when I asked Selina where he was, she said that she hadn't seen or heard from him all day.
First, I had woken up without him two days in a row. And now he was out all day on a Saturday when he was normally home, and no one even heard a peep from him?
All of this was strange, even for Edrick. Frankly, I was getting worried.
I felt the sudden urge to retrieve my wolf tooth. I always felt as though I was more clear headed when I held the tooth in my hand, and right now I needed to be able to think straight after everything that had happened.
I let out a sigh and made my way over to Edrick's bedroom, where I had been keeping the wolf tooth lately. He had cleared out a drawer in his dresser since I had been sleeping in there again, where I kept a few clothes and some toiletries so that I wouldn't always need to run back and forth between my room and his room for basic things. I always liked to have the tooth nearby, especially when I was sleeping, so I wound up keeping the tooth in that drawer as well. Now that Edrick knew about it, I wasn't worried about keeping the tooth a secret anymore so I didn't mind keeping it in his room.
I opened the top drawer of the dresser, where the ornate little wooden box sat where I kept the tooth. I pulled the box out and walked over to sit down on the bed with a sigh.
But when I opened the box, the tooth was gone.
My eyes instantly widened with shock and my mouth fell agape. I clapped my hand over my shock in dismay before furrowing my brow and jumping up, running over to the drawer and frantically rifling through it for the tooth. Maybe I misplaced it. Maybe it fell out somehow... But it wasn't in there.
In fact, it wasn't anywhere. I searched behind the dresser, in all of the drawers, in my bedside table and even under my pillow. I checked under the bed, under the mattress, in the bathroom cabinets... I checked everywhere. When I realized that it wasn't anywhere in Edrick's room, I tried to keep myself calm as I hurried over to my own room, thinking that maybe I had brought it over there at some point and forgot about it.
But I tore my room apart, and it wasn't there.
By now, I was panicking. Did I put it in my pocket and drop it somewhere outside? I knew that there had been a few times in the beginning when I put it in my pocket without even realizing it. I had some sort of bond to it that made me instinctively want to keep it nearby, but when I eventually realized that it could easily get lost, I had become more careful about keeping it safely tucked away.
I decided that I needed to check in a few other places. Maybe it fell in the car, or maybe I even dropped it in the cafe with Ella earlier that morning. In fact, I even considered having the driver take me back to the orphanage to look for it if I needed to.
But when I re-emerged from my room with my shoes on, ready to go out in search of this tooth, I saw Edrick step out of the elevator. As soon as he did, his eyes instantly met mine, and his eyes were wide.
"He has it," Mina suddenly said, sounding agitated. "Check his pockets."
I didn't know how Mina knew that Edrick had the tooth, but I didn't care. I wanted to trust my wolf's instinct, and by this point I was frantic. Therefore, I didn't even hesitate for a moment before storming up to Edrick, causing his eyes to widen even more, and held my hand out.
"Show me what's in your pocket," I growled.