Meredith
I open the door to the relieved but smiling face of Emily. I notice the dark circles under her eyes before engulfs me in a tight hug and I melt into her embrace. It's only been one night but I haven't been alone in ages and I really missed her being around. We stand at the front door for a moment, just hugging each other until Em pulls away to hold me at arm's length.
"Are you OK? I've been so worried about you." I give her a small smile, shrugging my shoulders.
"I'm better now that you're here. Are you OK? You look like you haven't slept." I reply, worry filling me.
Em has always been the one to put effort into her appearance, despite her natural beauty, she wears light make-up and dresses stylishly. But today, her hair is thrown up into a messy bun, she has no make-up on and she's wearing jeans and a hoodie. It's not her usual look.
"I couldn't sleep thinking about you being in this house on your own all night."
I step to the side to let her in and close the door behind her before following her into the living room. It's still a mess but I somehow managed to turn the sofa's back over and hoover up the glass that covered the carpet. It's not nearly back to how it was but it's a working progress. I'll get the house back into shape eventually.
Em sits down on the sofa and I follow, sitting down next to her and relaxing against the cushions behind me. Em turns on her side to face me, pulling her knees up onto the sofa to make herself more comfortable. She takes my hand that's resting on my leg and squeezes it softly.
"I missed you." She whispers, her smile sad.
Since losing the baby, Emily and I haven't really had a proper conversation about anything. I've been so closed off and drowning in misery that I haven't had the strength to pretend to be OK and act normal. I know that I wasn't the only one affected by the miscarriage of my baby, Em was so excited about having a niece. I know she was keeping a strong facade for me but it looks to be taking a toll on her. She looks exhausted.
"I'm sorry Em, for not being a good friend lately. I wasn't the only one that lost the baby." I reply in a soft voice while returning her squeeze.
It still hurts so much to talk about the baby but I can't avoid the topic otherwise, I'll never heal from it. It'll slowly destroy me if I don't learn to accept what's happened. When I lost my parents, it nearly killed me. I became a shell of a person and the only reason I managed to pull through it and begin dealing with it was Jack. As much as I hate the man, he was there for me when I really needed it. Although, if it wasn't for him, I would have never been in that position in the first place. He's been the cause of a lot of my pain in my life. I plan to end that.
Em stares at me with utter disbelief, tears clouding her vision.
"Are you insane? You have nothing to apologise for Mer! As much as it upset me, you were the one that lost your little girl. I had to be there for you, not the other way around." Em wraps an arm around my neck, pulling me in for another hug. "God, don't be silly." She whispers in my ear.
I close my eyes for a moment. She's right and I know that but I still feel bad for not comforting her also. She's supported me from the moment I met her and she welcomed me and the baby with an open heart. She never judged me or my situation with Jack. She didn't care that the baby's father was him, all that mattered to her was that I was the baby's mother and she would be her auntie. I loved her for that.
I pull away from the hug this time before I start crying again. Em is crying and I wipe the tears on her cheeks away with my fingers.
"I hate that all this bad stuff keeps happening to you." Em cries, her voice full of emotion.
"Everything happens for a reason Em. We just have to accept it."
As much as I hate to accept what life throws at me, I do believe that everything happens for a reason. If we couldn't handle it then it wouldn't happen.
"Well, it sucks." I laugh as she pouts, wiping the remaining tears away herself.
"I know. How's Chase?" I ask her, changing the subject.
"He's good. Better than me apparently." She huffs as she waves a hand at her emotional self. I shrug. If only she had seen me last night, I was in a worse state than she is. But it felt good to get it all out of my system.
"He's a man. I'm sure he's crying inside." I wink at her. Chase is a complete softie and we all know it. He's probably just being strong for Em.
"So, what was it that you wanted to ask me?"
"Jack came over this morning." I tell her. I don't really know where else to start, I'm not sure how much she knows.
Em raises an eyebrow in surprise. Since I found out about him killing my parents, we hadn't seen or heard from him. I wasn't sure he was the one sending the notes. Now that I know about Sarah, I have a suspicion that they were from her. If she was mad enough to hit me with his car, she was mad enough to send stupid notes.
"Why? He didn't hurt you or anything, did he?"
"No, he just wanted to try and deny that he killed my parents. He's the worst liar in the world. It was actually quite pathetic. He thought I'd be the one crawling back to him, begging on my knees but it was the other way around."
She snorts in laughter, covering her mouth to stifle her giggles and I smile. It did feel good to be the one in control for once and have Jack begging for me. He's crazy if he thinks I'm going to believe him and take him back.
"I'm glad you're standing up to him. You deserve so much better than him. He's a creep."
"I thought it was him that hit me with his car." I confess to her, I hadn't told her of my suspicions or that I had recognised the car.
When the police had come to talk to me in the hospital about the accident, I was too numb to tell them anything. I didn't answer a single question, I just stared at them blankly as Em sat next to me clutching my hand in hers. The sympathy in their eyes angered me because I didn't want their sympathy, I wanted my baby girl back. It wasn't their fault, they were doing their job but I was in too much pain to help them.
Her jaw drops, her eyes wide as she stares at me in shock. A slight smile appears at the corners of my lips at her expression. I didn't think she would be that shocked about it. Jack is a likely suspect. But I do believe that it wasn't him, he was telling the truth for once.
"J-Jack- hit- what?" She stutters, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water.
"Before the car hit me, I recognised it. It was Jack's car. But when I confronted him about it today, he was adamant that it wasn't him who hit me. It was only when I showed him my broken leg that he knew it had happened."
"You believe him?" She asks me, her expression now unconvinced and doubtful of my instincts.
"I didn't at first but his face when I told him I had lost the baby... he seemed genuinely shocked and upset about it."
"He's a good actor. He's been practising all these years Meri."
"He has a mate."
"Wow, really? Who?"
"Her name is Sarah. He reckons she's had his car for the past few weeks or whatever."
"Sarah? Sarah Adams?" Em asks me, her eyes lighting up with recognition.
"Who's Sarah Adams?"
She sighs, her expression conflicting with emotions before she throws her hands up in the air.
"Forget it, I'm telling you. I can't keep it to myself anymore."
"Tell me what?"
"About Jack and his history with us, how we know him."
I say silent thanks in my head. At least I don't have to ask her, she's willingly telling me. I was worried she would say no and I'd have to talk to Eliot about it. I don't want to see him right now, let alone talk to him. I turn onto my side to face Em, mimicking her position and take one of the cushions behind me to hug against my chest. I'm so ready to find out everything about Jack.
"So, as you know, we all belong to a pack that has Eliot as the Alpha and Chase as the Beta. The White Cresent Wolves." I flashback to a moment when Eliot and I were snuggled up on the sofa and he was telling me about his parents. The White Cresent Wolves is the pack they belong to.
"Right." I nod. I understand that much. My werewolf knowledge is pretty limited.
"We all grew up in the pack, born into it. That's how I met Chase and Eliot. We grew up together as kids. That's also how we met Jack."
"He was in your pack?" I ask, my eyebrows raising in surprise.
"Yeah. He was older than us but we knew him. He was a decent person back then, he cared about people and their feelings, he was actually a nice friend to have. But it all changed when we were teenagers. Did Eliot ever talk to you about his siblings?"
I frown at her. He has siblings? I thought he was an only child. He never mentioned brothers or sisters when I asked him about his parents. I never met them when we moved to the pack house either.
"No. I thought he was an only child." I mumble with creased features, my mind buzzing.
Why would he not tell me that he has siblings? It doesn't make any sense.
"He has an older brother, Carter and a younger sister, Charlotte. It was on Charlotte's sixteenth birthday that things between us and Jack were destroyed."
I have a horrible feeling about this story. I'm not so sure I want to hear it anymore or if Em should be the one telling me.
"Charlotte was a beautiful girl, she had all her mother's looks. A lot of the male wolves in the pack took an interest in her but she was completely off limits. Her brothers made sure of that and no one was stupid enough to go against them. She's an Alpha's daughter. It's high status in a pack. But Jack wasn't like the other male teenage wolves. He was older and smarter, he knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it."
"I don't like this already." Knowing what Jack was like with me as I grew older, I can only imagine what he was like back then.
"On the night of her birthday party, it was the early hours of the morning and a lot of the adults were beginning to tidy up. I was still dancing with Chase on the back porch when Eliot came to us in a panic, asking us if we had seen Charlotte. We hadn't seen her for at least half an hour. Eliot and Carter started searching everywhere for her and we helped too. They checked the house while we checked outside. In the garden, we had a large shed that us teens had turned into a hangout spot. It had sofas in there and a TV, games for us to play."
Em bites her lip, her hands clutched tightly together as she stares down at them. I swallow down the lump in my throat. I can already guess what happened but Em continues.
"Chase and I found them. Charlotte was a mess. She was sobbing, her gorgeous birthday dress was torn in several places and she was laying under him on the sofa, pleading for him to stop."
"Oh God." I gasp, tears welling in my eyes. Em glances up at me with guilty eyes.
"We were too late. He had already raped her. I was too shocked to do anything but Chase was furious. He treated Charlotte like a sister and to see her like that... he ripped Jack off of her and started beating him to a pulp. I rushed to Charlotte and covered her with one of the blankets that we had stored in there. I was crying with her, not giving a damn about what Chase would do to him. The commotion must have caught the attention of others because Carter and Eliot appeared- God, you should have seen them. If I thought Chase was mad, I clearly didn't think about how her older and very protective brothers would react."
"I'm surprised he's still alive after that." I whisper, a sickening feeling in my stomach. I can't believe I spent most of my life admiring that man.
"Me too. Carter pulled Chase away from him, only to start beating him himself. Eliot joined in and they would have killed him if it wasn't for their parents stepping in. Jack was imprisoned for what he had done and Charlotte was taken to the infirmary, along with her brothers and Chase who had busted hands. I stayed with her through it all, she wouldn't let me go but I didn't mind."
"What happened to Jack?"
"He was banished from the pack and branded a rogue."
"A rogue?" I question. As I said, I'm not that knowledgeable with werewolves just yet.
"It means he was no longer a pack member and basically feral. Rogues usually live in the woods in their wolf forms and become crazy from not being a part of a pack, they end up vicious and wild. More wolf than human."
"Why did Eliot never tell me this? And how have I not met his brother and sister yet?" I breathe, more questions filling my mind as I process it all.
"Charlotte couldn't live with the humiliation of what had happened so her parents helped her move to a new pack and start fresh. Her brothers hated the idea of her being so far away from them so Carter decided to go with her so she wouldn't be alone. They don't belong to our pack anymore so you probably won't meet them until a family event comes up. They always visit when they can."
"Wow."
"Yeah. That's why we don't like Jack. Eliot only tolerated him to get this house, he didn't realise he would meet his mate."
I chew on my bottom lip as I stare at her. Why do I feel guilty all of a sudden? I wish Eliot had told me about them, I would have understood his aggression towards Jack if he had. I would have understood why he had trouble accepting a baby that wasn't his but was the baby of the man that raped his sister.
"He should have told me. I would have understood." Em smiles weakly at me.
"I know sweetie. There was a lot of things he should have told you but I think he was scared of losing you because of it all."
He didn't tell me about Jack or their history. He didn't tell me about his sister or the reason why he hated the man so much. He didn't tell me that he was having doubts about the baby. He may have been scared of losing me by telling me all this but by not telling me and then blowing up in my face about it... well he's lost me anyway.
Maybe things would have turned out differently if he had been honest with me in the beginning.
[ Hi all, this chapter is super long but I hope you enjoy it. I hope now you can understand everyone's hatred towards Jack and why they all warned Meredith about him. Do you agree that it was fair for Emily to tell Meri about Jack and Charlotte? Or should it have been Eliot's decision for Meri to know? Emily will explain who Sarah is in the next chapter. Only five more chapters after this one and then the Epilogue, can't believe it's nearly over! Please Vote and Comment, let me know your thoughts :) -x- ]