Within the Sapphire Forest

Chapter 9

Caden was gone when I woke up. Melissa said that he’d sat at the edge of the bed for almost an hour, holding my hand and watching me sleep. Then, he kissed me on the forehead and left without a word to her.

He did, however, leave me a letter on the nightstand that I saw when I woke up. It was folded up, and when I opened it, there was a small lock of blonde hair tied with a string.

The note said;

I didn’t want to leave without being able to say goodbye, but I couldn’t wait any longer. If I had, I think my resolve to go would have crumbled and I would have just crawled into bed next to you. I know this is something I have to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Melissa said it was easier for you to astral project to a specific person if you had something physical of theirs, something with their energy. The only thing I have here is my hair, so I made sure to get you a lock. I really hope you don’t use it, but I’ll understand if you do.

I love you, I know that. You have made me a better person in the last month than I have ever been in my life. You are the light that has shown on my life after years in the dark. You are the greatest gift the goddess could have ever given me and I’m so thankful for you.

I hope to see you in a few days, Little Love, because being away from you for any amount of time is so hard.

With all my love,

Wolfie.

I bawled like a little baby b***h. Snot and tears mixed on my face and it was all I could do not to soak the paper and smear the words.

Melissa hurried into my room with a bowl of oatmeal and a box of tissues.

“You have ten more minutes to cry,” she said as she set everything down. “You want to support him, but you can’t do that while you’re crying, so you get ten more minutes. After that, I’m cleaning you up, and you’re going to see where he is, okay?”

I nodded, and true to her word, she let me cry for ten whole minutes. She held me and rocked me, handed me tissues and told me it was all going to be okay. When the ten minutes was up, she wiped my tears and I wiped my nose. I forced myself to stop crying and I quickly scarfed down the oatmeal.

Melissa helped me strip out of my dirty clothes, and I washed with a soapy washcloth. She ran some dry shampoo through my hair and helped me put on new clean clothes. Then she helped me limp to the living room to lay down on the couch.

“While you’re checking on your wolf, I’m going to clean your room. Brownie is keeping most of the house fairly clean on his own, and Manny is caring for the creatures outside. He even took to fishing on his own so Syline and Jewel can eat, since I apparently am not a great care taker,” she announced once I was comfortable. 

I nodded and thanked her while she propped my foot on a pillow. She handed me the lock of hair and I closed my eyes to focus.

I felt for the energy in the hair and found it, pulsing and blue. I used it to lead me to where the beautiful white wolf streaked through the trees, a blur, barely visible if I wasn’t holding his hair in my hands. He was closing in on Jackson quickly, a half hour away tops at the speed he was traveling. I felt he was okay for now, so I slipped back to myself and sat up.

“He’s almost there, but it may be another thirty minutes,” I told Missy. She nodded and handed me a cup with a brownish-green liquid and a straw.

“I took this recipe from your book, I hope you don’t mind,” she responded.

“No, it’s okay.”

I took as big a drink as I could from the cup, choking down the bitter nasty liquid. If it was the recipe I was thinking of, then it was a nasty mix of several pure teas with some other herbs added, blended with ice. The blending part is what really mixed it all together, but not adding ice made the thickness that always came from the mix too much to swallow.

Melissa helped me to the bathroom real quick, an awkward ordeal between friends, but we managed. I settled back on the couch and took some time to breathe carefully. I wanted to calm my nerves before I dove back into the astral realm to watch out for my wolf.

The astral realm was a strange place. It was a distorted realm that very few could navigate, between the supernatural dimension, and the human dimension. Only supernatural creatures could sense the astral realm, but only witches, wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers and sorceresses could travel it.

My very first time astral projecting, I forgot to tether myself to my body, and I got lost. I was only trying to get used to the realm, see what my room looked like from a different perspective, but it didn’t look like my room. Everything was dark, there was barely any light to see around me, but what I could see wasn’t my room. The bed was in the corner instead of where I had it in the middle of the room, and it was an antique steel frame. I took a step towards it, but everything distorted, like I was looking at it through a muddy puddle, and I lost the image. I turned in circles, but I couldn’t see anything but darkness.

I took another step and bumped into a dresser, older, made of what appeared to be pure oak. I tried to open it, but as soon as my hand touched it, it started to rot in front of my very eyes.

I cried out, wanting to get out of that place, but I couldn’t find my own body. It felt like I was stuck in that awful place for years, watching as my other hand aged and rotted away. I started forgetting things, like who I was, where I came from, and I started getting angry that I couldn’t remember anything. 

I ran as fast as I could, and every time I touched something, I shoved it with all my might. Why was it there? Why was it in my way? Why couldn’t I find the light?

I woke up in the infirmary of the coven house, which was actually an apartment complex where the elders lived with a basement for their practices. Grandma told me I’d been unconscious for three days, trapped in the astral realm, and she and the elders had to travel there to get me out.

She was furious and forbade me from ever traveling through the astral realm again. She punished me by locking me in solitary for a week. 

I ignored her and for the entire week I was in solitary, I practiced my astral projection. I focused solely on tethering myself to my body so I could get back without incident. That took the whole week to master, but Grandma found out and sealed my confinement room with spells to keep me from astral projecting, and added four more weeks to my punishment.

I broke them and continued to practice. I was dead set on being able to walk from one end of the room to the other without bumping into anything, or losing sight of anything. It took me the longest to learn to see past the distortions. I learned that, just like looking at something at the bottom of a moving river, sometimes it was easier to see if you dove in. I stopped fighting the distortion, and allowed it to envelope me, and suddenly it was easier to see everything in the room. I didn’t need light, or a guide anymore, I could see myself sitting perfectly on the floor while standing in the corner. It was incredibly freeing to be able to move through the realm without anything in my way.

I spent years working on my astral projection, being able to travel miles away from my body, transporting myself almost anywhere, and even being able to move objects or touch people in astral form.

I was so thankful for all that practice as I floated over the white wolf, only minutes away from a fortress. It was a modernized community with beautiful houses surrounding a huge mansion. They had parks, and playgrounds, a school, a training arena, and tons of open land for miles. 

As he raced forward, I saw men look up in surprise at the white mass. Determination and rage poured out of him. Some called out to him, but he kept going, his eyes trained on the mansion.

He didn’t stop at the door, he just shoved right through it, damn near breaking it off the hinges. Pack members that wandered around inside soon found themselves jumping out of the way of the bulldozer that knocked down anything in its path.

Caden reached the end of the hall where a staircase led up. He reached the top step in two bounds, and I followed him down the next hall to the very end. Only when he reached the last door did he phase back to let himself into the room.

I averted my eyes, blushing furiously at seeing his naked backside again. I contemplated gawking, since he couldn’t see me, but my nerves took over. All I could think about was the embarrassment the next time I saw him if all I could think about was his naked figure.

I glanced back quickly, trying not to see anything I shouldn’t see, and Caden thankfully had shorts on. He didn’t put on a shirt, so I allowed myself to ogle his chest. He wasn’t stacked full of muscles, didn’t have a chiseled body with a six pack and bulging arms. No, he was thinner, muscles less defined, but they were still visible. I could definitely see him winning a fight with his speed and scrappiness over his strength, which I found much more appealing than if he was built like a bodybuilder.

I also noticed that he towered over my five feet two inch from by at least a foot. I hadn’t met anyone that tall before, and it put my eye level right at his beautifully tanned chest.

I reached a hand out to touch him, causing him to jump. I hadn’t thought about what my actions would do and I felt stupid, stepping back quickly.

“Evianna?” he asked, gazing around the room.

I wanted to be able to tell him I was there, but I hadn’t yet mastered talking through the astral, which was incredibly difficult due to having to move my voice, which I couldn’t exactly grab, as opposed to my physical body.

I reached up and brushed the fingers across his face, pouring love into my hand. He sighed deeply and leaned into the perceived touch that he couldn’t see, only sense.

“Surprisingly, I’m actually glad you’re here. It makes me feel stronger, that I can actually do this.”

I sent out the strongest comforting vibes I could, and he smiled deeply, revealing adorable dimples at the corners of his mouth.

A knock on the door caught his attention, and his smile fell, leaving only an angry mask in its place.

“What?” he growled, reaching for the door. 

I felt the disappointment blossom in me at the thought of him hiding his chest, but I knew it was probably for the best.

A  man with ebony skin and buzz cut short black hair entered the room and stared at Caden. I stared in wonder at how opposite, yet similar they were to each other. It was like seeing those pictures of the two tigers next to each other, one with albinism, and the other with melanism.

“Caden? Where the f**k have you been,” the dark man yelled, scaring me.

Logically, I knew he couldn’t see or touch me, but his voice was so loud and passionate that I couldn’t help but jump.

“Don’t yell at me, Justin, I’m not in the mood,” Caden growled. 

His tone was softer, but the rage and power he put behind it had Justin shrinking back. He dropped his gaze a fraction, so he was no longer staring into the pissed off alpha’s eyes.

“My apologies, I meant no disrespect. We were just worried about you,” he backtracked, wisely I might add.

I brushed my hand over Caden’s arm, trying to calm him just a little. It wasn’t Justin’s fault that Caden was attacked, and he shouldn’t have been expressing his rage like he was.

Caden took a deep calming breath and replied, “I know, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped, I’m just on edge.”

“What happened? You’ve been missing for nearly a month and a half, and we were running on the assumption that we were looking for a dead body,” Justin explained. 

I could sense that he really did care about his alpha and he was just scared of the thought of losing him.

“It’s a long story, so you best sit down.”

Justin nodded and quickly shut the bedroom door before taking a seat in a chair in front of a desk. I quickly realized I was so preoccupied with Caden earlier, I hadn’t bothered to look around the room. So, while Caden filled Justin in on everything, and I do mean everything, including me and what I’d done for him, I studied our surroundings.

The room's walls were painted with a mural of trees and animals. There were beautifully painted robins and sparrows, rabbits, snakes, foxes, and squirrels. It was like sleeping in the forest, the painting was so intricate and beautiful. I looked up to see the ceiling was painted blue with a sun surrounding the light, and soft fluffy clouds that looked so real, I half expected them to start floating around. He had dark wood furniture, all looked hand crafted and beautiful. He had a king sized bed in the middle of one wall, a television attached to the opposite wall, a small walk-in closet, and a desk next to the door. 

He also had a private bathroom that looked like an underground cavern with a rocky waterfall painted to look like it was filling the giant bathtub. The tub was a dark gray color and deep. I figured I could practically swim in it, so Caden must have fit with room to spare. He had candles and beautiful pure gems, amethyst and quartz and aventurine, placed carefully around the room to look like the cavern was filled with shiny stones and crystals.

I was incredibly jealous of everything, until I saw a black lace thong thrown casually on the sink counter.

Oh, Goddess, I’m so stupid. Of course he’s had girlfriends, he’s twenty-nine. Did I really think he’d be lonely all that time? I questioned smacking myself in the face and slipping back into my body.

“What’s wrong?” Melissa asked when she saw I was conscious.

“So, he’s definitely had s*x before,” I mumbled, wishing I could force the image of those stupid panties out of my head.

“No, s**t, Sherlock. Did you really think a man that gorgeous would stay single his whole life?” she asked, giving the best don’t be stupid look.

“I know, but I didn’t think I’d see some random girls underwear in his bathroom.”

Melissa snorted, and I looked to see she was fighting back laughter.

“I’m sorry, honey, I’m not trying to laugh, it’s just comical that he has his current love floating around while an ex lover’s clothes are hanging out.”

I rolled my eyes at her and sunk back into the couch.

“I’m going back. If I find anything else, I think I might have to jump off a bridge.”

Melissa laughed and let myself soar back to Caden in the room. 

He was just finishing recounting his experience as I settled down on the floor.

“So, you think you’re in love with this witch?” Justin asked, skepticism thick in his question.

“I don’t think, I know. It’s so different from anything I’ve ever felt. I truly believe she is a gift from Luna, she was meant for me. I’m calmer, stronger, and so much happier when she’s around. I don’t know how else to explain it to make you understand,” he insisted.

I smiled softly, loving how he talked about me.

“Whatever makes you happy, man. She saved your life, that’s all I really need to know,” Justin explained, and I was thankful for that.

“I just have one question,” Caden said, pinning Justin with a demanding look. “Where’s my cat?”

I giggled at his conviction and worry, knowing I’d react the same way in his shoes.

“Trey has her in his room. After the first two days of your disappearance, he worried that she was too lonely in here by herself.”

Caden nodded and stood quickly.

“What’s the plan?” Justin questioned, ready to jump into action.

“I need a few minutes alone. There’s a lot to think about right now, and I’m not sure what to do first. Can I meet you in the kitchen in thirty minutes? I’ll have some kind of a plan by then.”

Justin nodded and quickly excused himself.

I couldn’t hold back any longer, knowing those f*****g underwear were taunting me. I laid a hand on his arm and sent out my mixed feelings. I was embarrassed by myself, and a little disappointed in him, but mostly confused, unsure what else I was feeling.

Caden’s face twisted in confusion. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I floated into the bathroom and focused on turning the water on. I willed it to be so hard, that the knob on the facet turned to let water run into the sink. He hurried into the bathroom, and he looked around carefully, I’m sure trying to see if he could find me. Then, his eyes landed on the underwear and his face fell.

“Evianna, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I’m not going to deny that I had relationships before you, I’m just sorry that my past is affecting my present.”

I let him know that I’d be fine, but it still felt weird to know he had other girlfriends, especially ones that left their dirty undies on the counter. 

He grabbed the thong and tossed in the trash without a second thought. Then, he grabbed the iPhone on the nightstand and plugged it in. It turned on and he scrolled through the missed calls, texts, and other notifications that he accumulated over the month. I saw several from someone that he’d labeled “Princess” asking in angrier and angrier messages where he was and if he was ever coming back. He deleted them all without responding and scrolled through the ones from his family.

They all were so worried about him, and in one voicemail, his mom was hysterically begging him to come home if he could. He sighed and fell back onto the bed.

“This is all a s**t show. I want to call my family to let them know I’m okay, but I have to deal with Nathan and his lackeys first.”

I let him work through it for a while longer, unsure what to do.

Finally, he rose slowly to his feet, and walked out into the hallway.