Chapter 26 #2
“I will stay with her, Addie, I promise. You don’t want to watch this,” Maverick tells me as Eli pulls me up.
Tears run down my face, and I nod, letting him pull me out of the stable. Taylor’s screams are deafening, and as I step outside, I see a few pack members rush in with towels and water before closing the stables doors.
“Will she be alright?” I ask Eli.
“I don’t know, Addie. We will have to wait and see.”
Her screams of agony ring through the village loud and clear.
I can’t imagine what she is going through, and I understand what they mean about her not surviving; it is brutal, and I find myself continuously pacing, my ears ringing from the noise and driving me insane.
I have no doubt from the sound of her pain that she wishes for death.
I just hope she survives it. I can hear her body twisting and snapping even from the house, hear her ragged breathing, and hear Maverick trying to encourage her to keep going, trying to keep her fighting the transformation and willing her to live through it.
Cyrus has managed to get our son asleep and placed him in a makeshift bed he has made out of a basket.
“Any name ideas?” Cyrus asks, trying to distract me from listening to my sister’s cries.
I can hear her begging Maverick to kill her. I head toward the door to go back to her. It has been hours already; how long will this go on for?
“Addie, please just stay here. My father will take care of her,” Eli says, and I pause before sitting on the bed next to the basket. I adjust his little blanket, my fingers brushing his baby-soft skin on his cheek.
“Addie, I understand everything is overwhelming, but you can’t worry about your sister right now. We need to make sure you stay in control. We also need to deal with Pete. He has been staying with your mom, didn’t you say?” Cyrus asks, and I nod.
“That’s what Taylor said,” I tell him, my thoughts being sidetracked back to her. I am finding it difficult to focus on any one thing. Everything is distracting, just the dust particles in the air I find distracting as I watch them, fascinated.
“Addie?” Cyrus says behind me.
“What did you say?”
“Eli was talking to you,” Cyrus says, and I look at Eli.
“Emery is flying in with Calum. They will get here at lunchtime. I want to go back to the city with them.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
He sighs, rubbing his hand down his face. “No, Addie, you aren’t understanding. We will all be leaving. You are coming with us,” Eli adds, and I go to protest about leaving Taylor when he holds his hand up, telling me to wait.
“We can come back for her, but we need to go to the council. We also need to get our son checked out,” he says, and I look down at him.
“What about mom?”
“That’s why we need to go see the council.
We will get them to order Pete in. I don’t want to show up to your mother’s and have a war break out.
Maya and your mother could become collateral damage.
The council so far has kept their investigation to themselves.
Pete doesn’t know he has been caught out because they took care of the deliveries, and Porter met him at the forest edge.
So, I want to keep it that way until I know Maya and your mother are safe.
Dad will take care of Taylor, and once she is shifted, we will come back for her, I promise.
But you need to do this for me, please. I can’t leave you with our son by yourself, and I need Cyrus with me when we confront the council,” Eli says.
“And you will get a doctor to check him?” I ask.
He looks fine, but probably best he is checked out; he didn’t exactly have a peaceful birth as I intended. Eli comes over, his hand going through my hair, and I press my head against his hip.
“Thank you. Cyrus will take you over to see your sister before we go, okay?”
I nod, and Cyrus reaches over, gripping my fingers and squeezing them gently.
“Will we be coming back here to live, or what happens after all this is over?” I ask.
We’ve barely spoken of what will happen after Sam, and I honestly don’t think we will ever see an end to it.
“What do you want to do?” he asks, and I look up at Eli.
“I want to go home.”
“To your mother’s?” Eli says with a sigh, but I shake my head.
“No, home back to Soya.”
“What about your family?” Cyrus asks.
“We can’t live with my mom. It would be too crowded,” I tell him.
“We still have our house over there. We can move back closer to your family if you want. You seem in more control than I ever expected, so we can do that,” Cyrus says, looking at Eli.
I look up at him, and he nods.
“Do you want to go home and be close to your family, or do you want to go to Soya? The choice is yours,” Eli tells me.
“What do you want?” I ask them, suddenly confused.
I always thought I would go back to Soya. I didn’t think going home was an option.
“We can move our main base back home, not that there is much left of it. So, if you want to go home, we will do that,” Eli says, and I nod.
“It would be good to be able to see mom and Maya and also keep an eye on Taylor,” I tell him, and he nods.
“But what about the pack?”
“I will hand the title back. Dad is going to merge with Emery’s pack,” Eli tells me, and I nod.
They seem to have everything planned out, and I trust them to make the right decisions. My decisions tend to get us in more trouble, anyway.
“Why don’t you try to sleep for a bit?” Eli says, looking at his watch. “Emery will still be about another hour.”
“I’m not tired,” I tell him, and he sighs.
“Addie, please. You need to sleep.”
“I can’t because everything is too loud,” I tell him.
Now that I am a vampire, I have no idea how Cyrus can ever sleep; everything is loud. How I have never noticed before is beyond me. Even the electricity I can hear buzzing like an annoying fly; everything makes noise.
“Are you tired?” Cyrus asks.
“I… I don’t know,” I tell him honestly.
I don’t know what I want or need. Everything feels overloaded, my senses going haywire at the slightest movement when I notice Taylor is no longer screaming.
I look out the window, waiting for her screams, yet they never come.
Instead, a long howl that raises the hair on my body makes me jump.
My eyes go wide, and I look to the door.
I stand up to quickly and head for the door when I feel Cyrus tug me back against him.
“I will take you, but slow down. You will startle yourself if you don’t slow down,” Cyrus says, but I don’t know how to slow down.
How can he be like this? I hate it already, and it has only been a day. I feel tears prick my eyes. I don’t want to be like this; I liked being human. Everything in this new body scares me; I scare me.
Cyrus grips my face in his hands. “Calm down. It won’t end well with all these Lycans around, Addie. You have been good, but I can feel how anxious you are getting. I can hear your thoughts running rampant.”
“Wait, you can still hear me?” I ask him, and he nods.
“Can you hear Eli?” I ask, but he shakes his head.
“I have no idea why I can hear you, but my guess is when you fell pregnant, it opened a link to you, and because you died, you never closed it, leaving it open. But I like hearing from you. It doesn’t bother me like it does humans.
Here everyone has blocked themselves off to you being new so as not to overwhelm you.
They know you can’t control it. That is why I need you to calm down, Addie.
Because if you freak out, they will, and your head will be flooded with everyone,” Cyrus tells me.
I nod, trying to will myself to calm down but that is easier said than done.
Everything is becoming harder to process.
The longer I am like this, the worse I am becoming, consumed by everything.
I see Cyrus glance at Eli before feeling him move behind me.
I am frozen; I feel pulled in every direction, and I can’t pick which way to go.
I want to go home, but I want to go to my sister, want to hold my son but I also want to confront Pete, want to feed but also don’t.
But most of all, I want silence. Silence from the overwhelming noise clogging my head.
“Please, please, make it stop,” I cry, everything crashing down on me at once. I knew it would be different, but I never imagined it would be like this. So overwhelming; even their scents have me craving them in every way, in hunger and in lust.
“I can make it stop, Addie, but you can’t be mad when you wake up. We can put you to sleep,” Eli says behind me, and I nod. I trust them. They will never hurt me unless they have to.
“Our son… What about Taylor?” I ask, now panicking about going to sleep, too.
“Taylor is in the woods with Maverick and Porter. She shifted. That was her you heard howling. As for our son, we would die before we let anything happen to him, Addie,” Cyrus says, and I nod, his thumbs stroking under my eyes. I take a deep breath.
“How will you put me to sleep?”
“By marking you and draining you,” Eli says.
I shake my head; that sounds incredibly painful.
“Shh, shh… It won’t hurt, I promise. We will mark you, which will knock you out but to keep you asleep, I have to drain you, Addie. You won’t feel it, but when you wake, you will be ravenous,” Cyrus tells me.
I panic, shaking my head, my breathing becoming erratic, and I step back only to bump into Eli.
“Calm down, love. You can trust us. We would never hurt you, right?” Eli says, his hands running up my arms gently.
I swallow, regaining my bearings. “Okay…” I breathe, trying to will myself to calm down.
Eli kisses my neck before running his tongue over it while Cyrus steps closer and presses his lips to mine softly.
“I’ll see you when you wake up,” he says, his eyes holding mine, and I nod quickly before feeling Eli’s breath on my neck.
I feel his canines press to my mark before he sinks his teeth into me, sliding them into my skin and muscle.
My eyes grow wide when they hit bone, making me scream before it cuts off.
It was so much different from when I was human, like a rush.
My heart rate picks up, and I feel almost relaxed, like endorphins are rushing through me, almost like I am high.
He pulls his teeth from me, and Cyrus kisses my jaw before quickly sinking his teeth into me, and I suddenly feel heavy. My legs tremble, and I feel like I am about to collapse as the room spins, my body going limp.
“That’s it, love. You are okay,” Eli says when I feel Cyrus start draining me, his tongue lapping at my neck.
I moan at the feeling, my eyelids becoming heavier and heavier until I can no longer hold myself up, and Cyrus clutches me tighter, taking my weight before the room starts fading and then all I see is black.