Chapter 22: Chapter 22
She stayed a week longer than she had wanted to. Seven days of boredom confined to a bed with nothing to do accept doodle on the napkins that came with her underwhelming meals. Soren wondered when she had become such a snob, somehow in her short span of time living with James, she had become used to the luxuries that he provided, good food, comfortable beds, hot steaming showers.
The person she had become appalled her, and she swore to remember her roots, where she had come from and what she should learn to expect and appreciate.
The only good times in the hospital were when Margot came to visit. The woman could talk for hours without taking a breath, and Soren was grateful to her friend for keeping her company while she recovered. James never stopped hovering, and while Soren appreciated the attention, he sometimes smothered her. He was always asking if she was warm enough, if she was hungry, if she was uncomfortable, and the only times he would leave the room were when Margot was over to visit.
Soren was glad to be on her way home. Couldn’t wait for the soft mattress that awaited her, and the heavy quilts that weighed her down comfortably. The hospital was not a place she enjoyed, and despite having to leave in the confines of a wheelchair, she still got to leave.
Upon returning home, the first thing Soren noticed was the banner that hung from the front door,
Welcome Home Soren!
It was hand painted, and Soren had no doubt as to who was behind it. Sure enough, when James swung open the door, the culprit was waiting in the living room. Margot had spread an array of food out on the coffee table, and Matt sat looking impatient on a chair by the fireplace. Soren’s heart expanded at the sight.
It had been so long since she had had any one to take care of her or worry about her. Yet here in the small living room of the cabin were three people that cared for her, her only little mismatched family.
They sat for a few hours in the living room, Matt regaling everyone with stories of the pack, and sharing embarrassing stories about James for Soren’s own amusement. It was funny, and Soren enjoyed the light and uplifting atmosphere and yet she found it hard to come up with the appropriate level of enthusiasm. She was tired, and the weight of the week’s events had not yet left her.
It seemed no one else gave a second thought to the death of Grace or what it meant for the pack. They had moved on without pause and for someone like Soren, it was a bizarre concept. True, Grace might have been trying to kill her, and yes, she had been angry beyond belief that she had dared challenge her for her place in the pack, but her death still hit Soren hard. Grace had been another person, another living, breathing thing on this earth, and now she was gone, and to Soren, that meant something.
It didn’t even appear that the wolves had held any sort of memorial for the poor girl. She had been somewhere in the range of twenty years old, with a whole life left to live, and Soren couldn’t figure out why no one seemed to care.
Excusing herself Soren rolled her chair out of the room and into the bathroom. Staring at herself in the mirror she tried to identify the old her, buried somewhere within the image of the girl she had become. On the outside she looked mostly the same, and she was sure to Matt and Margot she was the same girl she had always been. She wondered if James could see the difference, or if it was only her who felt the way her soul was being warped into something completely new and foreign.
She lost track of how long she stayed hidden in the bathroom, away from the stories and the eyes of her newfound family. She wondered whether or not she was happy with the person she was becoming, the person who shared feelings with others, but who felt less in general.
Leaving the bathroom, she went joined the others in the living room, only to ask James to help her upstairs. She saw the looks exchange by the three but chose to ignore them. She wasn’t in the mood to share her feelings, they didn’t need to know the depth of her identity crisis. James carried her up the steps, setting her down into the bed. Matt followed with the wheelchair, which he placed next to her in case she wanted to get up and move.
Placing a gentle kiss on her cheek, James left with Matt in tow, returning to the living room where they stayed for a couple hours, presumably talking about her and what had just happened. Soren sank down deep into the mattress, pulling the comforter up to her eyes, wanting to hide herself from the world and from the moon that stared down accusingly at her.
She had always known she was different. Whether it was the way that nature seemed to accept her as one of their own, or the way that she had accepted the bond with James so quickly, something which Margot had said was quite unusual. Still though, she had never felt uncomfortable with who she was, had never doubted the way in which she lived, or the convictions that drove her as a person. Until now.
It had taken killing someone to shake her to her core. Not even the idea of werewolves had managed to alter her world view. The fight had done it, had made her question everything she was surrounded by, even James, especially James.
How could she live with someone that so easily condoned the killing of another person? He had openly admitted to her that he wished he had killed Grace before she had managed to stir up all the fuss at the ceremony. When James had talked about protecting her, about taking care of her and keeping her safe, he had been referring to the murder of other people, of taking lives to ensure her own, and the revelation was too much for Soren to handle.
Closing her eyes, she willed sleep to come. Begged for the mercy of a dreamless sleep, but alas as consciousness slipped away, it gave way to much worse.
She dreamt of Grace. As an adult, with kids and a mate of her own. She pictured her as she baked cookies and hugged her children tight. Soren imagined the way her head would fall back as she laughed deep stomach clenching laughter as her faceless mate told joke after joke. And then she would dream of blood. Grace’s hair coated in the sticky red substance, her children screaming and her mate on his knees, begging for her back.
Even in her dreams Soren knew she was the one responsible, she was the one who had stolen it all away. Standing in the Grace’s kitchen, watching as her family fell apart, Soren looked down at her own hands, covered in red, marking her as the killer. The murderer.
She woke with a start. Tears streaming down her face. Sleep had brought her no escape from the reality of her world, nothing she could do would change the fact that Grace was dead. Pulling herself into the metal chair, she directed herself towards the window. It was still night, the moon still high in the inky black sky. Soren wondered how long she had been asleep, and if James was curled up on the small couch downstairs.
Soren stared up at the moon, asking it for forgiveness, unsurprised when she received no answer; she didn’t deserve it. She stayed fixed in place long after the sun had risen, and the moon was nowhere in sight. That’s how James found her, facing the window, with no recognition of the world around her. Her stare was blank, her eyes glazed open as the stared up and out towards the sky.
James didn’t know what to do. Shaking her on the shoulder didn’t alter her state what so ever, so he took her downstairs and started on breakfast, waiting for her to realize where she was. Frying eggs on the stove, he finally heard her, and relief washed over him.
“James? How did I get downstairs?”
She was looking around confused, how had she not noticed him bringing her downstairs? Setting her at her spot at the island? Shaking it off, she smiled up at her personal chef, mouth-watering as he placed a plate of bacon and eggs before her.
“You were a little out of it this morning. Sleep walking maybe?” He shrugged, and just like that they both forgot about the incident, and Soren did her best to shove Grace to the back of her mind.
The day was spent lazing around the cabin, asking James to bring her upstairs so she could change, relaxing on the couch by the fire, nothing the doctor deemed too extenuating. The problem with it was it gave Soren time to think, too much time to dwell on the situation she was in. She spent a lot of time contemplating her hand, it had yet to regain much movement. James encouraged her to the exercises she had been given and so she spent lots of time running through them meticulously, anxious to have her hand back at full function.
They went out for dinner the next day. James claimed it would be good for pack moral to see her up and about, even if ‘up and about’ meant him pushing her through town in her wheelchair. They went to the same diner they had gone to on their first and only other outing in town, and Soren allowed James to order for her again, not remembering what she had eaten the first time around.
Variety and Pops fawned over her again, only this time they were worrying about her, asking her all sorts of questions about her wellbeing. Instead of the warm feeling they had given her last time, Soren felt overwhelmed and irritated by the lack of peace and quiet they were allowing, and so she was grateful for the arrival of their meals, as it prompted the departure of the well-meaning couple.
James didn’t comment on the dark circles that had begun to grow beneath her eyes, nor the stringy nature of her unwashed hair. He seemed to be at a loss, just like she was, both of them feeling immense guilt, but for completely different reasons. James felt guilty he hadn’t killed Grace earlier, while Soren felt guilty that Grace was dead at all.
She hadn’t slept the night before either, simply asking James to roll her to her spot by the window, insisting she would go to bed after a couple minutes. She hadn’t. Instead she had spent the night staring at the moon, wondering if Grace was up amongst the stars, afraid to fall asleep for fear of what would haunt her once her eyes closed.
He had found her again by the window come morning. It seemed a routine was beginning to form, in which he would find her, bring her downstairs, and wait until the sweet and savory smell of found brought her to her senses. The relationship they had only begun to form was falling apart before their very own eyes, and yet neither of them seemed to know what to do, and neither seemed to care.