“Was I the only child of my mother?”
Emma asked, letting her hands slip into the crack between her thighs, her heart thumping more than usual. She found it surprising that she so wanted Freya to be her sister. Her twin.
“Tempest didn’t say. But if I should take a guess, I would say no. The nurse we had hired to take care of her, mentioned that she must have given birth to more than one child at that time.”
Emma sighed in relief.
Hearing her mother’s answer solidified the already staying motion that Freya was her twin.
But she had left her sister back at the pack.
Emma scratched her hands, a bit unnerved and frustrated, balancing when she remembered that Freya wasn’t alone.
No, her sister was with the species that was stronger than the werewolves.
Emma paused here, coming to a startling realization. If Freya was her sister, and Sheila was her mother, then it would mean that she was part of the pack, that she could be a werewolf.
Had that been the reason why Tempest had instructed her family here to take her back home in the situation of her shift? Emma looked down at her body.
Freya wasn’t a werewolf. No, her sister was something else. Vampire and then a mage. She had heard Yodah talk about it.
What combination was she then? How was it that her sister had two different combinations from Sheila? It would mean that her father was a vampire then.
Emma visibly balked.
Annabel and the others in the plane had claimed that vampires were vile creatures. But she knew that the professor and the others were different. Including the one that she had infiltrated his head when she had felt Freya’s fraying nerves. Yodah’s uncle. She had deducted. They seemed to be good, not evil as Annabel had portrayed. Or was she missing something?
“Emma, are you okay? For a moment there, you looked sick.”
Emma shook her head to her mother’s question.
“Did you meet a girl that looked like you? Back in England?”
Emma nodded.
Her mother exchanged glances with her father.
“You must have connected the dots then. Why did you come back without her?”
Emma shrugged her shoulders.
They had chosen ignorance, and she would give it to them. She knew it was only a matter of time before the enemies traced her scent to this place. Then, they will question her family. Might even look into their heads. It was best they knew nothing of whatever she was, and where she would be going from here.
Annabel.
She really needed to contact her new friend too. But that would be after seeing her mother.
Emma’s lips shook. Her mother.
“Is there anything else?”
Her father shook his head. “Not at all, not that I can remember. Oh right… wait here….”
Emma furrowed her eyebrows again as her father stood up from his seat, and walked to the passage. Probably to get something.
Emma winced when she heard Freya take a turnt to hide in the darkness. She didn’t understand the position the latter had taken, but she knew that her sister was still at the door, somehow invincible to her father.
Emma looked at the time. An hour and a few to go. Her eyes left the clock to watch her father saunter into the room. He gave her a sealed gold plated box, before heading back to his seat, the sofa he shared with his wife.
Emma looked at the box, then looked at her father.
“Go ahead. Open it. It was the only thing that Tempest had given me to keep, apart from you. It belonged to your mother.”
Emma’s breath caught as she obeyed her father and opened the box. It was a beautiful necklace that laid therein. A beautiful familiar necklace that oozed strong magic. Where had she seen it first?
Emma racked her head trying to remember, trying to get back that memory, but it seemed to elude her at every turn.
“You know the necklace?”
“It seems familiar…”
Emma turned over the necklace holding the path large enough to be inscribed. She had thought as much. Initials. N&S.
Obviously S was for her mother. Sheila. Who was N. Her father most likely.
She unclamped the necklace, and wore it carefully around her neck, believing that it was the right thing to do. She will return the necklace when her mother was out of the coma. She couldn’t wait to tell Freya this. Maybe, they could even do something about healing her.
“Thanks for keeping this, dad. Thanks for taking care of me.”
Even though he had behaved cruelly sometimes, she still loved him. He had taken a child that was an alien and had trained her up to this point. She didn’t care that he didn’t do it because she was a good baby, and didn’t care that he did it for Tempest. What matters was that he had done it, and that he had done it well.
“Thanks too mom, for putting up with my tantrums.”
Her mother chuckled, and Emma smiled out tears when one darted right past her mother’s cheek. They both stood up together and as if programmed, as if the singular act had been rehearsed, hugged each other.
Mr Jason looked on, his emotion concealed behind an irrefutable face.
“Will you tell Amelia? What will you tell her? She will miss you the most…”
Emma didn’t know how to say that Amelia was right behind them, right in the passage, and that she wasn’t tearing up. Emma would have heard it. Emma didn’t know if it was because the latter was holding it in so as not to attract their attention to her presence. It would be that then.
“Just tell her I went back to England. Night flight.”
“She would have a hard time believing that.”
“There’s no other story that I have.”
Emma muttered.
Because I don’t need one. She thought.
Amelia had heard them all.
“Okay then. Let’s head to see your mother. It’s almost time.”