“Are you sure you want to stay back here? I can book a close-by hotel for you to stay in.”
Emma shook her head to her father’s second attempt to stop her from staying at the cabin. Probably because it smelt of medicines, coma and despair. It needed a whole lot of cleaning too. But Emma knew that if she was to undergo a shift now-Maya had told her the morning she had left the pack about the intricacies of being a werewolf-she would need to do it in a place that was void of people.
She couldn’t afford to be seen. And so, here was the best place to do that. That was if she even had the werewolf gene. Freya didn’t have that. But she wasn’t taking any chances.
“Well, since you have chosen to do your mind intent…”
Emma watched in incredulity as her father took out his cheque slip from his pocket, and began to sign on it. Did he carry that everywhere?
A soft smile graced her lips when she caught her mother looking at her with an amused expression. The woman had known what she had thought.
“Here. Take this. This should be enough to stay on for a while. Are you with your card, your documents?”
Emma nodded, holding back her tears at the concern in her father’s question, in his eyes. How did she ever think that he didn’t love her, or care for her?
The truth was that she had given him a tough time whilst growing up, and he had just gotten tougher on her so that she wouldn’t go off the hinges, as if he had known the responsibility that would be saddled on her back; if whatever designs or mark that Zipfarah and the elders had talked about should appear on her back.
Her eyes strolled to the duffel bag at the corner. They hadn’t just zapped to this alone area without anything else, they had come with her entire belongings, or rather the important stuff, like her bank cards and good clothes.
“Good. I will keep it updated every month, with the best I can. Do you have your passport…”
Emma went ahead and engulfed her father in a hug, tears streaming down her eyes. She felt her father flinch-he wasn’t a hugging type-before he enclosed her in his arms.
“Thanks Dad. Thanks a lot for keeping your promise to Tempest. Thanks for keeping my mother safe for eighteen years…”
Emma sniffed, as the weight of that sacrifice snuck into her heart again. “Thanks for taking care of me, and not giving up on me when I kept bringing you trouble.”
Mr. Jason laughed. “To be honest, I sometimes enjoyed your trouble. It was a good reprieve from the monotony of daily tasks.”
Emma echoed his laughter, and then disengaged from the hug. “I will be fine, Dad. I promise.” She said, collecting the cheque, her eyes widening at the figures that she saw there. “Dad, this is too much..”
Mr. Jason shook his head. “The car is also yours. I know you have had your eyes on it for the longest time. You can take it as a birthday gift. Happy eighteenth birthday, my daughter. I will miss you.”
Emma noticed the sheen of tears on her father’s eyes; the first of its kind. She hugged him again, tighter this time around, not knowing how else to communicate her feelings of shock and gratefulness, and not knowing when again she would get the opportunity to do so. ‘If again’ should be the best narrative. She thought, disengaging and walking up to her mother.
“Thanks mom.. thanks for everything. Send my regards to Amelia, will you?”
Mrs Jason nodded, and accepted wholeheartedly the hug that Emma gave her. “I will, my dear. Stay fine. And if you can, if it is something possible, you can send me a text message to know how you are doing.”
Emma wasn’t sure that would be a good idea considering the danger that surrounded her, but she vowed that she would do it when all the bad guys were gone.
She nodded. “I will.” She will probably visit, moreso to see Amelia.
But she didn’t add that. Best not to raise their expectations. She didn’t know how long whatever she felt that was coming would last. She didn’t know how long it would take to fend off the bad guys, didn’t know if she would be able to even do so at the level she was now.
And so she hugged her mother for one last time and watched with teary eyes as they both wished her well, and then walked out of the cabin, into the cab that had been waiting for a while. She slumped to the ground then, and let the tears out.
***
Yodah felt the outburst of power first, and then Freya did, before the others.
He ran like his life depended on it, toward the area where the energy source had come from, partly because of the responsibility of safe keeping the pack and Freya that his parents had given him, mostly because he knew that the surge had come from Eva.
He was sure that the others knew this too. That Eva either was in trouble, or was just expending power, maybe has lost control.
When Yodah saw that it was the room they had kept the Esther girl in, he cursed and rushed in, already having a feeling of what he would see before he saw it.
Esther was by the far end of the room, looking dead, and Eva was just standing there looking at her, arms folded across her chest, a satisfied expression coating her face. Yodah didn’t need to see her face to confirm that. The energy was already trickling down the bond that they shared.
Yet when she saw him, she scrunched her face, and perhaps noticing that the others were coming, broke into fits of weeping.
Yodah stood there watching her, even when the others rushed in and started to fawn over her, not even mindful of Esther who laid as if dead by the end of the room.
Yodah knew there was trouble.