28. Yellow Gummy Bears: Josephine's Pov
Chapter Goal- 250 votes (for Eric's Pov)
QOTC- what do y'all want to see from the characters?
*6339 words
"See you tomorrow, sorellina," Nate hugs me goodbye when we hear Archer's car pull up in the driveway.
I hold onto my brother a little longer than he was expecting me to, not wanting him to leave yet and make me explain everything to Archer by myself. "Can you stay? Please?" I ask, knowing that our conversation will stay more focused on Eric if the three of us discuss it together. Knowing the way I am with Archer, I would probably beat around the bush and possibly even hold off on the subject until I feel like he's in the mood; which no one really ever is.
"He came back early to spend time with you, Sophie." Nate says, not sure if he should stay or not. "I don't want to intrude on that."
"You won't be intruding." I tell him, actually meaning it. The only thing that Archer and I would be doing is probably eating a quick dinner and then watching a movie before going to sleep, nothing important. "We can explain to him the Eric/Elia stuff together and show him the security footage. You're good at explaining that kind of stuff."
Nate gives me a skeptical look, not knowing what to say at first. "Don't you two want some alone time together, though?" he asks. "You two haven't really spent time together since you were released from the hospital."
I bite my lip, trying to find a way to tell my brother that I don't want to be alone with Archer without making it seem like a major problem. For me, it's still awkward around my mate since we haven't properly discussed all the shit I told him when I was looped up on painkillers. "Don't go." I plead, hearing Archer close his car door and locking it outside. "Please??"
"You don't want to be alone with him." he states, frowning at me. "Why??"
"Because-" I shut my mouth when I head the door begin to unlock, ignoring Nate's pointed stare as I listen to what Archer's doing.
The loud slam of the front door makes me not want to meet him in the living room, but I still get up and follow my brother nonetheless. "Archer," Nate nods in acknowledgement, receiving the same greeting from my mate.
"Hey, Archer." I whisper when he approaches me, his touch surprisingly gentle compared to the force he used on the door just seconds earlier.
'Go tell him we found stuff on Eric.' I mind-link Nate.
He narrows his eyes at me for a second, but does as I say. "We think Eric disguised himself as a nurse and visited Sophie in the hospital." he tells Archer, lNate eading us back to the office room to look over the security footage.
I tell Archer about the cut on Eric's face and how he kept avoiding eye contact and stuff with me in the hospital room, plus the donut thing too. "He has to be in the territory somewhere." Archer states after we review the security footage once more. "It shows that he disappeared into the woods, so that means that he's hiding. My patrol officers would've said something if he tried leaving the territory."
"Unless he went through the west border where Alan and I used to live." I speak up, causing both men to stop what they're doing and look at me. "Remember how easy Keaton's rogues were able to attack the house?"
Shock takes over Nate's features when he hears that there was an attack on the old house, but I don't let him ask questions about it, "If Eric managed to escape, that's where he would leave and enter from."
"I increased the security in that area after the attack." Archer shakes his head, seeming to be in deep thought. "We need to send out search parties tonight. The longer wait, the more time he gets ahead of us."
He contacts Roland and a couple other wolves to lead the search parties, including Nate, before sending them all off. "Do I go with my training group or do I search with you?" I ask when I get a mind-link from my officer. They have two other trackers on the team, but I know that I'm still expected to show up.
"I'm not staying here by myself while everyone else goes out to look for Eric." I add, stepping a few feet away from my mate. Regardless of what he 'allows' me to do, I will go looking for my brother.
"I didn't say that you're staying here by yourself-"
"No." I shake my head, walking out of the office and into the living room to get my shoes.
"You aren't suppose to be working yourself so hard, Josephine, you still need to heal." Archer sighs, trying to get rid of the distance between us. "Our search teams will be able to find him."
I resist the urge to scoff, not wanting to give him too much of an attitude, "You don't know how he is. If he's hiding in the territory, he won't be anywhere our wolves can find him."
"Do you have an idea of where he is then?"
"Yeah." I stand up after tying my shoe laces. "That's where I'm going."
"I'll send the search wolves to the location." he puts his hand on the front doorknob before I can open it.
"If you do that, he'll bail."
Archer gives me a stare and I can tell that I'm annoying the hell out of him and his wolf right now, especially considering the fact that Alphas can't stand being challenged, but I don't back down. "I'm not going to stand here and argue with you, Josephine," he says in a low tone.
"Then we can make this easy and just go, right?"
I already know that I'm not going to leave the house alone and I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't want to be alone outside anyways. "You can come with me if you want, Archer. I don't care." I say even though I absolutely care if he comes with me or not.
"If I go with you, I'm not leaving your side and you don't leave mine." he tells me, still not letting me open the front door. "I can't have you get hurt again."
"Can we go now?"
"Not wearing that."
"Fine." I huff, not wanting to waste time arguing.
I push past him and head upstairs into the bedroom, smirking when I hear him follow about ten feet behind me. My consciousness tells both my wolf and I that our plan is stupid, but I honestly don't care right now. No one is going to stop me from seeing Eric.
Closing the door to our bedroom only gives me an extra few seconds, but that's just enough time for me to get the window open wide enough for me to slip out. "Come on, Archer!" I call out after I land on the ground, taking off in a jog in the direction of where I think my brother is hiding.
"Josephine?" I hear him call out from the window. "Josephine, the hell!"
"HURRY UP!" I shout, not wanting to be alone out here.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up to me. I'm pretty sure he thought that I was trying to get away without him, but he probably thought otherwise when he realized that I wasn't speeding up as he got closer to me. "I can't believe you jumped out the window." he shakes his head, oddly seeming less annoyed with me than he was before.
I slow my pace as we approach my old neighborhood, the one I lived in before my family broke apart. No one has moved in since we left, but I know that the property isn't under my parents' names anymore. "Why are we in a neighborhood?" Archer asks me, frowning when he notices my discomfort.
At the beginning, I used to come walk by everyday to see if they came back. Some stupid part of me believed that maybe if I kept checking they would magically appear. But I'm not related to magicians, am I?
"It's the only place that makes sense." I whisper, slowly walking down the streets.
Archer follows me and continues to ask questions, but it's hard to focus on him right now. "All the wolves are running around the border trying to find him in the woods." I state. "And he knows that, so he's not gonna risk leaving the territory and getting caught."
I'm not sure if he's catching onto what I'm saying, but Archer stops with the questions, now seeming more cautious than curious with what's going on. "I meant it when I told you that I'm not leaving your side." he reminds me, keeping his eyes on me when I don't reply. My wolf is reaching out to his, but I don't know if he's aware of that yet. "Where are we?"
"My old home." I answer when we're standing in front of the house.
I back away, not wanting Eric to catch onto our scent just yet, Archer following my lead. "I don't think he's gonna leave." I say, turning around. "So we can come back."
"Josephine," Archer stops me from walking away. "You jumped out of a fucking window to come here."
He gives me a pointed look, kind of like the one that I'm always getting from Nate these days, but his gaze softens after a couple seconds. "There's a convenient store right across the street from the neighborhood." I tell him, my voice starting to sound shaky the longer we're in front of the house. "I just wanna go there for a little bit, calm down, and then come back."
I awkwardly stand there in front of Archer for a couple seconds, debating whether or not to reach out for his hand, but decide against it and walk in the direction of the convenient store with my arms crossed. My hands shake so I ball them up in fists. The cold air starts to get to me, especially since I'm only wearing a t-shirt and running shorts. 'This is why mate wanted us to change.' my wolf chimes in. 'But that would've just wasted time.'
'Exactly.' I agree with her.
'Are we wrong for not walking next to him?' my wolf asks. 'I don't know if mate is mad at us or not. His mood keeps changing.'
My wolf and I are both aware that we a little... difficult when certain things happened. Most of it is because it's just our natural instinct to shut people out like we've been doing for so long, but I think another part of it is because we don't really know how to act. I've noticed that I act a lot different when I'm with Nate than when I'm with Archer, but then I'm a completely different person when I'm at school or with friends. I'm just really confused on how I'm supposed to be around people.
"Thanks." I mumble when Archer drapes his jacket around my shoulders as we walk. He puts an arm around me as well and gently kisses my forehead to remind me that he's still here.
We still need to talk, I know that for sure. He and I still haven't sat down and talked about the conversation we had in the hospital or even really see each other since I was released. "Food makes things easier." I say aloud, grabbing various snacks from the convenient store and placing them on the checkout counter.
Archer doesn't say much as he watches me purchase everything; he also doesn't bother starting an argument by trying to pay for my stuff. "Are you ready to go back?" he asks after a couple minutes of standing outside the store.
I know that I should, and I feel like with every passing second, Eric could be escaping. But at the same time, I know that he's not going anywhere. He has nowhere to go, anyway.
"Not yet." I shake my head, opening a bag of gummy bears to snack on. "I just.. I just want to figure out my game plan."
"Do you remember those other times we talked about my family?" I wait for him to nod before continuing, "I told you how I felt about them leaving; my parents, Scarlet, and Eric. The anger, hurt, betrayal... but I also told you that even though they made go through hell and back, that I would gladly reunite and forgive them within a heartbeat if I were given the chance."
I sigh, leaning against the wall as I speak, "At first I was scared that was going to happen, and I still am. But I don't know what I'm gonna say to him. Or what he's gonna say to me."
Archer stands in front of me and pulls me in for a hug, placing his chin on the top of my head as he holds me in attempt to calm me down. "And you're gonna have to stand really close when we go see him." I add. "Because he'll shoot you."
"What do you mean he'll shoot me?"
"With a gun."
I'm not sure if Eric would fire if it's just Archer and I going to see him, but you never know what could happen. And if he does decide to shoot, I know it won't be me... or at least I don't think he would shoot me. Eric was the closest sibling I had before we all split apart. The fact that he left, never responded to my mind-links, and just completely abandoned me is something that I never expected from him. But look where we are now.
"And he always carries silver bullets, so... yeah." I bite my lip, not knowing what else to say. Eric and I knew each other more than we knew ourselves, but we're different people now. Very different.
"Are you ready to go back?"
I nod, allowing Archer to take my hand. He looks really tense, but his hold on my hand is gentle. "I kind of want to shoot him in the foot." I find myself saying aloud, my wolf and I both knowing that we aren't letting Eric go the night unharmed. "If you try to stop me, I'll shoot you in the foot too."
"You won't shoot me." Archer chuckles, trying to make light out of the situation. "You'll probably hit me, but that's it."
"That's a bet."
'I don't want to shoot mate.' my wolf whines. 'I'm not shooting mate.'
'What if we need to though?' I don't think that I can bring myself to shoot Archer, but if he tries stopping me from hurting my brother, he's gonna be in a lot of trouble. 'He's an Alpha, so he'll heal fast.'
"I'll only stop you if I think it's dangerous." he tells me. "Or if what you're doing is reckless."
"Shooting him in the foot means he can't run away." I explain, having a pretty good reason for my plan.
Standing in front of the house, my heart starts to beat faster. Surprisingly though, I think it's more out of excitement than fear at this point. 'Should I mind-link him?' I ask Archer, not wanting to give away our location by speaking.
He nods, following me to the side of the house. 'Eric.' a chill runs down my spine when I look at the window of Eric's old bedroom. He's most likely not going to respond, I know that for sure, but there's a chance that he might be listening to me. 'Open the window so I don't have to break in.'
'He's not gonna open the window because you're here.' I tell Archer, knowing that being in the same room as an Alpha is the last thing he wants to do.
'Tell him I'm your mate-'
'No.' I frantically shake my head. 'Then he'll actually shoot you.'
Archer gives me a look, but I ignore it and start thinking about whether or not we should bust through the window. Five minutes later, Archer and I are inside my old home in what used to be the living room. "I'll only hurt you if you hurt her." Archer calls out as we up the stairs together. I can tell that he wants to walk in front of me and 'guard' me or whatever, but he doesn't know where to go.
"He's not gonna hurt me." I tell Archer even though I'm unsure of it myself. "That's not the Eric I know."
Holding the gun in my hand, I resist the urge to tease Archer as he walks around with the grocery bag full of snacks from the convenient store. "Unlock the door, Eric." I call out, Archer and I standing on either sides of the bedroom door.
We know that Eric won't risk leaving the house and getting caught by parole wolves, so it's just a matter of what he decides to do when we enter the room. Giving Archer a signal, I cautiously watch as he kicks open the bedroom door. "Eric." I call, beginning to realize that I don't trust him enough to just walk right into the room. "If you shoot at me, I'm gonna break your foot."
I can hear his breathing and I recognize his scent just like I did that day the hospital, so I know for a fact that he's in that room. "Can I come in?" I ask, trying to keep my voice steady and clear. "Or are you going to hurt me if I do?"
"I'm not gonna hurt you." my eyes widen when I hear his voice, the familiar sound suddenly changes the whole atmosphere.
"Too late for that." I growl, forcing myself to keep a blank face as I enter the room with Archer behind me.
My eyes are teary and I want to look away so he won't see the hurt in my eyes, but I don't allow myself to back down from his stare. "Put down the gun, Eric." Luckily there's still enough sunlight outside to allow me to see the outline of his body, but soon it'll be pitch dark.
"I don't trust him." he shakes his head, referring to Archer.
"I'll only hurt you if you hurt her." Archer repeats, letting his Alpha tone show through.
Eric stares at Archer for a while, then stares at me before slowly lowering his gun. "Put it on the floor and slide it over." Eric does as I say, keeping his hands in the air after he finishes.
He clenches his jaw, something he always did when he was in deep thought. "He's your mate?" is his first question, looking at how I'm wearing Archer's jacket and how close he's standing to me.
"Yeah." I nod, grabbing my bag of gummy bears from Archer and moving to sit against the wall across from my brother.
Archer picks up Eric's gun off the floor before walking back to stand by my side, his eyes not leaving Eric's. "Are you gonna say something?" I ask, still attempting to sound like I don't care about what's happening right now. Attempting to sound like I have better things to do at the moment than be here with him. "Anything."
"They lied to me." he says, his voice sounding strained. "Mom, Dad, and Scarlet. I found two weeks ago."
"Found out what?"
"About everything." his voice breaks and I see him move to cover his face. "On your sixteenth birthday, I woke up in another territory and our parents told me that we had to leave because you lost your human side during your first-shift. They told me Nate was being deployed and that Elia disappeared looking for you in the woods."
"All I remember is you starting your first-shift, but I can't remember what happened the rest of the night." he continues. "Scarlet told me to go inside the house with her to get you pain medicine. She handed me a glass of water and after I drank it... I don't remember."
I know he's not lying by the tone of his voice, but there are still some things that don't add up. "I'm sorry-"
"'Sorry' doesn't change the fact that you never answered my mind-links." I cut him off. Nate had a reason for not being able to answer my mind-links, Eric doesn't.
"They told me that talking to you wouldn't change anything. That it wouldn't bring your human side back." he answers, his knees pulled up to his chest. "I was dumb. I am dumb. I shouldn't have believed them. I should've at least tried talking to you again."
"Yeah." I nod. "You should've."
Archer's Pov
I keep my eyes on Eric as he and my mate talk. She may trust him to not attack, but I don't. From an Alpha's point of view, Eric is a threat. He trespassed into my territory and pointed a gun at my mate. The only reason he isn't dead right now is because he's Josephine's brother. Under any other circumstances, I would've had him ripped apart by now.
"You don't have a good excuse for not mind-linking me back." Josephine shakes her head, a cold laugh coming from her as she narrows her eyes at her brother.
She's putting up that hard shield again. The mental one that always appears when things get tough.
I step a bit closer to her, wanting to remind her that I'm here, but I don't risk sitting down. If Eric tries anything, I'll have the advantage of already being standing. "You can sit down." she tells me, her tone a lot kinder as she speaks to me. "He can't do anything."
"I'm not risking it-"
At the same time Eric let's out a scream, Josephine speaks, "Now he can't do anything."
She blows on the barrel of the gun and gives me an 'I told you so' look before handing the weapon to me. "That's what you get for being an asshole of a brother." she growls at Eric, not seeming to care about the pain he's in.
While Eric writhes on the ground, I walk over to him and check if he has any other weapons. And when I decide that it's safe, I take a seat next to my mate. "Stop freaking out, it's annoying." she groans, seeming disappointed in her brother. "You act like you've never been shot before."
Both Eric and I give her a look when she says this. "There's a hole in my foot!" he exclaims.
"No shit, dude!" Josephine gasps, mocking him.
She pops another gummy bear in her mouth, going through the grocery bag for the other snacks she bought. "I thought we were gonna get to eat dinner tonight." she sighs, leaning her head on my shoulder and handing me a bag of chips. "Just you and me."
"But no." she huffs, turning back to her brother. "We have to deal with him."
"Since when are you like this??"
"Since I had to figure out how to survive on my own." she shrugs, looking at his uninjured foot.
"Why not??" she asks me when I shake my head at her. "He deserves it."
"No." I simply tell her, knowing that it's reckless to shoot his other foot.
"Remember what I told you earlier?" she lowly asks, referring to the threat she made to me earlier.
"That's why I'm holding the guns."
My wolf and I aren't sure if our mate would actually shoot us, but we know that she won't hesitate to hit us if it came down to it. But judging by how comfortable she looks eating her gummy bears, I doubt she's in the mood to physically hurt me right now. "Why did you come see me in the hospital last week?" Josephine asks, sounding less angry but showing her hurt a little more.
"When I found out, I started looking through files and tried to track you down. The first thing I found was a statement saying you were in the hospital after an attack." Eric answers. "I had to make sure you were okay."
"What about all the other times, huh?" her voice is quieter now. "All those times I needed you? Needed someone? You weren't there."
I frown at her words, remembering what she said in the hospital while she was looped up on those painkillers.
Flashback
"I'm sorry, darling." I frown, watching as she plays with my hands, not really thinking too much about our conversation. "You know I have to be up early for Alpha duties."
"When I work a lot, you always get mad and convince me to take a break. But when you spend all day working, I don't try to get you to stop." she sighs, sadness starting to take over her features. "Like yesterday.. I needed you."
Flashback Over
She never explained why since we still haven't gotten a chance to sit down and talk about things since she was released from the hospital. I feel like a total asshole for not being home with her while she recovers, but my wolf and I don't know how to manage our work time with the amount of time we spend with our mate. The thing with slamming doors and being aggressive when I come home from work, however, is still a work in progress. Every day that I've come home this week, I don't realize what I did wrong until the next morning when it's too late to fix things. And even then, I always fail to change my ways by the time I get home again at night.
"Before I left to come find you, Dad stopped me. He told me to give this to you."
I stand up and walk over to Eric when he reaches into his jacket. "Which pocket is it in?" I ask him, not wanting to risk him pulling any tricks even though I already searched him for weapons.
"Inside left."
I search his pocket and find a white envelope in it. "We messed up, Sophie." he shakes his head as I walk back over to my mate and sit down. She holds the envelope when I hand it to her, but she doesn't bother opening it to read or even look over. "What happened when I was gone?"
Josephine lets out a laugh, that same guarded expression taking over her features again, "Too much."
'Is he gonna be taken to the cells?' she asks me.
'Unless you want him somewhere else, then yes.'
'What are we gonna do with him in the cells?'
'We can decide on it later.' I tell her, knowing that although she's angry with Eric right now, she doesn't want him to be treated like all the other prisoners in the pack cells.
Every werewolf knows how prisoners are treated in the Blood Moon pack. I'm not sure all the stories about what goes down in the cellars are true, but most of them are valid. 'I can just keep him there with other prisoners, but not do anything to him.' I suggest. The Alpha part of me wants to punish him for what he made my mate go through, but I know that it's not the smartest thing to do in this situation.
'For now.' Josephine agrees. Before cutting off our link, she tells me, 'You're gonna have to restrain him.'
*** (twenty minutes later)
"Do you want to talk to him in private?" I ask Nate once we're done putting chains on Eric.
"Not yet, but thank you." he answers, looking at his younger brother in disapproval. "I'll wait until after I talk to Sophie."
"Don't bring her down here-"
"No one said you were allowed to talk." Nate growls, shaking his head before leaving the cell.
I know for a fact that Josephine will never get to see what the Blood Moon cellars are like. We're only on the first underground floor of this facility and the sight is horrific. Even though all the prisoners here are chained up and secure inside their cells, that doesn't mean that I'll ever feel like it's safe enough to bring my mate down here. Eric knows this too; I don't understand why he would even think that we would consider bringing her down here.
Right now, she's standing outside of the above-ground building with Derrick and a couple other guard wolves. It pained my wolf and I to leave our mate up there, but we knew we couldn't bring her down here. The prisoners would go ballistic if they found out that the Luna of the pack was walking through the cellars. "You're all dismissed." I say to the rest of the wolves in the room. "Someone tell Josephine that I'll be up there soon."
"Yes, Alpha."
I wait until everyone leaves before moving my eyes onto Eric. He doesn't dare look me in the eyes or speak up without permission, probably going off of the stories about me from other wolves. "You don't understand what you made her go through." I narrow my eyes at him. "She's the only reason why you're alive right now."
Nate thought that I would be giving Eric the usual prisoner treatment and he didn't even look distraught over it. He actually looked shocked when he found out that Eric was just going to be held here. It's as if he's angrier than Josephine.
As I turn to leave the room, I hear Eric call out after me, "Tell her that I'm sorry."
I wash my hands and spray myself with Axe before leaving the building to see my mate, not wanting her to see traces of blood or dirt on me as I exit the cellars. She's standing between Nate and Derrick, but doesn't seem to be listening to anything they're saying to her. Instead, she stares blankly ahead of her, not even seeming to acknowledge my presence. "Do you want us to start the search on the house?" Derrick asks me. "We have teams ready-"
"No." both Nate and Josephine cut him off.
"The four of us can go through the house. We don't need extra people." Nate says, not wanting other wolves from the pack going through his old family home.
I try mind-linking my mate as we walk back to the house, but she's blocking me out. My wolf doesn't have any luck speaking to her either. "What exactly are we searching for?" Derrick asks when we enter the house.
"Anything." I answer. "He most likely didn't come here empty-handed. Take anything as evidence."
I start to assign everyone areas of the house to search, but Josephine walks off and doesn't even seem to listen to what I'm saying. "Eric's bed used to be here." she whispers, walking over to the corner of the room we were previously in. Derrick and Nate shine their flashlights over the area to help everyone see what's going on. I stand by Josephine and watch as she places her palms on the floor, her fingers searching around for something.
She lifts up a piece of floorboard and reveals a hole in the ground, slowly making it bigger as she lifts the other loose pieces around it. "There." she mutters, walking to the opposite side of the room while Derrick, Nate, and I inspect the hole.
The only thing we find is a backpack with simple things in it like clothes, some pictures, and a wad of cash. "How long are we going to wait before starting interrogations?" Nate questions, getting ready to go with Derrick to go store the backpack away as evidence.
"We'll start when you two are ready." I tell him.
They leave within the next ten minutes, leaving Josephine and I alone. "You wanna go home?" I ask, holding out my hand for her to take.
She doesn't take it though. Instead, she just walks by my side, but stays close enough for me to put an arm around her shoulder. "You can have the yellow ones." she murmurs, handing me the bag of gummy bears she was snacking on. Looking down at it, I realize that yellow is the only color left in the bag.
"You can shower in here, Josephine, I'll go to the guest bathroom." I say once we're home. I help her get sleeping clothes and walk her to the connected bathroom to ensure that she doesn't try protesting.
Usually Josephine finishes showering before I do, but to my surprise, she's still in the bathroom by the time I reenter our bedroom. My mind-links still don't go through to her, but I know that it won't be long until she comes out. 'We need to mark mate.' my wolf sighs, wishing we were able to feel what Josephine is feeling. To have an insight on what goes on in her head would benefit the both us, not just my wolf and I. But I'll wait.
"Are you alright in there?" I knock on the door, figuring that it's been about twenty minutes since the shower water was shut off.
At the time time as I'm about to knock again, the door opens and Josephine emerges from the bathroom, her hair looking more on the dry side than damp. She tries to hide her face from me, trying to just walk to the bed and not look at me, but my wolf and I don't allow it. "Hey," I stop her, hearing a sniffle escape from her mouth as she tries to pass me. "Darling, look at me."
She pushes my hand away when I try to lift up her chin to get to look at me, crossing her arms as she walks to the bed to avoid being touched by me. I notice that her eyes are a bit puffy and that her nose is also a little pink as she sits on the bed. Something I take as a good sign, though, is that she sits in the middle of the bed with her back against the headboard instead of trying to isolate herself on one side. When I don't move to join her on the bed, she looks at me, wondering why it's been taking me so long.
"Do you want anything to drink?"
She shakes her head and pats on the spot next to her, indicating for me to join her on the bed. Josephine still doesn't speak to me after I lay down next to her, but she puts one of my arms around her and leans against me. "Say something to me, darling." I urge her, wishing that things could've gone to plan today. The whole point in coming home early was to finally get some alone time with my mate, but that obviously didn't happen. "It doesn't have to be about what happened."
"I'm glad you're here." she quietly says, gently squeezing my hand.
I give her a small smile and gently kiss her forehead, my wolf and I feeling even guiltier about not being here with her while she was healing. "I love you." I tell her, knowing that those words haven't been spoken a lot recently.
Even though I would stay inside the house until Nate showed up to watch over Josephine, we never really talked. The only conversations we had were quick 'do you feel any better's followed by short goodbyes. Then I would come home and she would already be fast asleep with Nate keeping guard.
"I love you too." Josephine mumbles.
I debate with my wolf about whether or not I should ask about what happened while she was in the bathroom. It's obvious to me that she cried, but it's also obvious that she doesn't want to talk about it... or at least not yet. "Are you doing okay?" I ask, moving to point at my head. "Up here?"
"I'm doing better than before."
Neither of us bother turning on the tv or even try to make conversation with one another, both of us content with just enjoying the silence between us. With the lights in the room dimmed, I start to hear Josephine's breathing slow down and feel her begin falling asleep in my arms. Every once in a while, however, she readjusts herself and kind of wakes herself up again as if she doesn't want to fall asleep just yet. 'Mate doesn't want to wake up alone.' my wolf states. 'That's why she keeps trying to stay up with us.'
I sigh and wrap my arms tighter around Josephine, tucking her head under my chin and pulling the blanket closer around the both of us to try getting her more comfortable. We didn't get into bed until it two in the morning. It's probably three, maybe even four right now and we both have to get up early tomorrow. "Mmm." she sounds, snuggling against me. And just like that, she's out like a light.
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"I am a museum full of art but you had your eyes shut."
-Rupi Kaur
QOTC- what do y'all want to see from the characters?
So I didn't make All-State choir, but I'm proud of myself for getting this far and making 20th chair competing against upperclassmen. In seventh grade when I first started auditions for region choir, I literally cried in the audition room. Now in my freshman year, I made it to state auditions. SO I'M PROUD.
I'm sorry this chapter is kind of boring, so it would be great if I can get some feedback:
1. What did you think of this chapter?
2. What do you want to see less of?
3. Who's point of view do you like most?
xoxo Priscilla
xoxo Priscilla