Within the Sapphire Forest

Chapter 13

“Are you okay?” Caden asked as he kneeled in front of me.

“I don’t know,” I answered, looking down at my lap.

I felt so awkward trying to meet his gaze knowing that girl was in his room.

“Elise, is your room available?” he questioned, standing.

“Yes, sir.”

“Can Evianna rest in there while I clean up my mess?” He sneered the word “mess” making it sound like something disgusting.

“Absolutely,” Elise responded, and they wheeled me back down the hall, stopping at a door half way down. 

Then I heard shouting.

“Get the f**k out! I never told you you could be in here, what the f**k do you think your doing?” Caden’s voice echoed down the hall.

“I thought you’d be excited to see me. You’ve been gone for forever, and I missed you,” a woman’s voice answered.

Elise and Melissa stood in the hallway, eavesdropping, which at the moment I totally approved of.

“Why would I be excited to see you? We broke up, Zoey, and I’m done. I’m moving on, and you should too.”

“No. We’ve been together for years, I’m not giving you up just because you had some near death experience. You are mine, and I will fight for you.”

We heard footsteps behind us and turned to see a woman walking towards us, her hair silver, but she looked like she was only a few years older than us.

“We can hear the fight all the way downstairs, I just thought I would check to see what’s going on,” she explained when she got closer.

“Zoey let herself into his room and stripped down to her underwear to wait for him. We found her, and he’s pissed about it,” Elise told her.

Something crashed to the ground in the bedroom, causing me to jump.

“It definitely sounds like it,” the woman said.

Then she looked down to me with curiosity in her eyes.

“Oh, my bad,” Elise said as she saw the look. “This is Evianna Woods. Evianna, this is Carrie Russel, Caden’s sister. She flew in last week to check on Caden.”

Carrie smiled and held her hand out to me, “I would’ve introduced myself sooner, but Caden was pretty strict on who could visit you in the hospital.”

I grasped her forearm, noticing a black mark on her wrist that I didn’t get a chance to look at properly, and nodded, “Yeah, I probably would’ve been horrible to meet last week.”

Carrie giggled and another crashing sound resonated from the bedroom.

“Should we go check on them?” Melissa asked.

The yelling had stopped, but crashes, glass shattering and thumps against the wall were still very audible.

“I want to say no, but she’s not out yet, and I can only assume Caden is trying to come up with a way to boot her out without having to hurt her,” Carrie answered.

“Isn’t there some sort of alpha power to force submission?” I wondered quietly.

“It takes years for alpha’s to build up that kind of power. That’s why most don’t take over a pack until they’re much older. It lets them mature and strengthen themselves enough to lead the pack with confidence,” Carrie replied.

I sighed, and pushed on the wheels of the chair, backing myself up. I knew I was pretty weak, but I hoped I had enough energy to help him anyway.

“Uh, where do you think you’re going?” Elise asked, stopping my movement.

“She said he needs help, so I’m going to help,” I said, pushing again.

She didn’t let me budge, so I sent out a pulse of energy, pushing her backwards. Then, I wheeled myself toward Caden’s room. I felt someone push my chair and I turned to see Carrie behind me while Melissa and Elise walked slowly behind her, both of them looking frustrated.

Caden’s door was closed, so Carrie tried to open it, but something blocked the door. I carefully moved whatever it was and we saw Zoey standing on the bed, a lamp in her hands while Caden stood on the ground, trying desperately to grab her. She kept swinging the lamp at his head whenever he got to close.

Carrie growled in her throat at the sight of the basically naked b***h trying to hit her brother, and something dark welled up inside of me as well.

Without even thinking about it, I separated the lamp from the b***h and flung her into the opposite wall, causing her to crash to the floor with a yelp. She rose to her feet, her eyes glowing with rage as she turned on me.

“Stay out of this, cunt, it doesn’t concern you,” she roared at us.

I froze at the c-word, but Melissa didn’t, reacting with a small jolt aimed at the bitches stomach. It zapped her and she tumbled to the ground. Then Caden grabbed her arm and her pile of clothes and forcefully removed her from the room.

“Let me say this as clearly as I can,” he snarled. “We are through. We are never getting back together. I am in love with Evianna, and I won’t do anything to destroy our relationship. I belong to her and only her. Do you understand?”

Zoey broke free from his grasp, grabbed her clothes, and stormed down the hall, shooting us glares on her way.

“You,” he demanded, pointing to Elise, who lowered her head low to show him total submission, “get her to your room and get her in bed. I won’t ask again.”

We all knew I was the she, so Elise quickly took her place behind my chair to push me to her room. As we passed Caden, I reached for his tense arm. His eyes were closed tight, trying to control his temper. Upon contact, his eyes darted to me and her relaxed substantially.

“You are a giant pain in my ass, Little Love,” he muttered.

“That’s the goal,” I responded.

He smirked, and Elise quickly took me back to her room.

Elise’s room was exactly what I imagined from a twenty something year old woman. She had white walls, and a plain carpet, but she had wall art hung everywhere. Some pieces were drawn, some painted, there were a couple of posters, wooden wall decor, and even some hooks that she hung coats and keys on. Her bed was a queen size with blue bedding, and what had to be twenty pillows.

Elise threw some of the pillows to the end of the bed and slowly helped me out of the wheelchair. She sat me down, let me lay back, and gently elevated my leg using all the spare pillows. Then she grabbed a blanket, threw it over me, and took a seat in the comfy looking chair next to the window with a book.

“I’ll just be here whenever you wake up, okay?” she asked.

I nodded and closed my eyes, completely drained. 

Sleep came quickly, and I had the best nap of my life. I didn’t have any nightmares, and the comfortable bed didn’t put a strain on my body like the hospital bed did. I woke up refreshed and energized just a few hours later, around mid afternoon.

Elise had moved from the comfy chair to the edge of the bed, watching the TV that sat on her dresser. It was too quiet for me to hear, but with her superior werewolf ears, she probably had no trouble at all.

I stretched out my arms, and almost my legs until I remembered that I had a cast.

Elise turned when I stretched, and quickly got up.

“Hey, how was the nap?” she asked expectantly. 

I started to realize that since I met her, she was oddly attentive of me and my feelings.

“It was good. Did you just stay here the whole time?” 

“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure you were alright in here. I was worried you might flip on your leg, or wake up confused,” she replied. 

I tried to sit up, and she hurried around the bed to help me.

“You really didn’t have to do that,” I said.

She fluffed the pillows behind me so I could lean against them comfortably.

“It’s not a problem.”

I grabbed her arm to stop her, pulling her gaze to my face, as I said, “It is. You are not a slave, and you are not required to wait on me like a servant.”

“But, Alpha Caden said-”

“I don’t give a f**k what he said,” I interupted. “I am telling you right now, you are not my slave so quit acting like it.”

I put as much force in my demand as I could, hoping to get her to stop. Elise dropped her gaze in a submissive manner and nodded her head.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” she apologized.

“Don’t be sorry, just be yourself.”

She nodded with a soft smile, and then helped me to the wheelchair. She pushed me out of her room, and down the hall to Caden’s. She knocked, and Melissa opened the door, her hair pulled up into a bun, and a half filled garbage bag in her hand.

“It’s about time, I was worried you were going to sleep for forever.”

She moved to let us in and I saw that the room was rearranged and cleaned. The bed across the room, farther from the bathroom, with more space on either side of it. The TV had, by consequence, also hopped to the other wall, and the desk was going. Instead, there was a black couch in its place. The bedding had been stripped from the bed and replaced with black sheets and comforter, and there were at least twice as many pillows as before.

The door to the bathroom opened and Caden stepped out, only wearing his shorts. I had to stop my mouth from dropping open and drool dripping out at the sight, but somehow I managed.

“Hey, how are you?” he asked, smiling down at me.

“I’m good, it was a pretty good nap,” I replied.

The soft growl of my stomach pierced the air between us, and he raised an eyebrow at me. I blushed furiously.

“When was the last time you ate something?” he questioned, leaning down to look me in the eyes.

“I, um, don’t really remember,” I admitted.

He rolled his eyes, and quickly put on a shirt. 

“Let’s go,” he said, taking Elise’s place to push my chair out the door and towards the stairs.

He and a random guy I didn’t know carried my chair down to the ground floor, and Caden pushed me into the kitchen. There were a couple of others in there searching for food, but they quickly got out of Caden’s no nonsense way as he searched for food for me. He pulled out a can of soup and poured in a bowl before throwing it in the microwave. He waited patiently for the microwave to finish, and we all sat in awkward silence. When the microwave beeped, he pulled it with a towel and handed it to me with a spoon. Then we left the kitchen, heading for the next room over, a small study with a large mahogany desk, several chairs, some bookshelves, and glass doors leading out to a small balcony looking out on the community.

“Eat up, Little Love,” he instructed, leaning against the desk.

“You’re really bossy,” I mentioned as I scooped some food into my mouth.

“I have to be, otherwise you would starve to death.”

I rolled my eyes as I continued to eat. Caden took a seat behind his desk and looked over some paperwork stacked there.

“What’s all that?” I asked.

“Finances, mostly. Some of it is citizen, inventory, and land reports. I’m trying to find out how much repairs to the mansion are costing us, how much to replace our food inventories, who left with Nathan, where the territory line ends, and other things that aren’t as important,” he answered without looking up.

“What are you finding out?”

He shook his head and sighed, “We are extremely unprepared for anything. If  Nathan attacks again, we don’t have the supplies to take care of injured soldiers, only enough food for a few days, and most of the citizens left aren’t trained to fight. We don’t have the money to make the renovations and buy the supplies, so I’m not sure what to do first.”

I finished my soup and thought carefully.

“Do any of the members have jobs? I mean, how do you make money?” I asked.

“Some people have jobs, and they give a portion of their earnings to the pack account, which is then invested. Lately, though, investing hasn’t earned us as much as we needed to live off of, so several more pack members got jobs to help out, and it’s just not enough.”

“Have you thought about starting a community greenhouse, to grow food and other plants for the community, teaching people to take care of themselves by learning to sew, training others to take care of injuries. In the long run, it can not only save you money, it can save your pack.”

“Our pack,” he said, staring intently at me.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“It’s not just my pack anymore, it’s our pack. You are a part of it now, as my mate, and future luna of the pack,” he explained.

“How can you be so sure that I’m your mate?” I questioned, looking down. “I mean, what if you just have feelings for me because I’ve saved your life twice now?”

He didn’t answer at first, and I didn’t have the strength to look up and face him. Then, I heard his chair move, but I still couldn’t look at him. I was so afraid that my words would strike a cord with him, and he’d leave me for Zoey, or some other woman. He knelt down in front of me, but I kept my eyes locked on my empty bowl.

“Evianna, look at me,” he commanded softly, but I just shook my head.

Slowly, he took the bowl from me, and placed his fingers under my chin, gently forcing my head up. 

His eyes were kind, but determined as he said, “Stop it. You keep avoiding this like it’s just going to disappear one day. I told you I loved you, and you questioned why, like you couldn’t believe it was possible. You haven’t said it back, haven’t made any signs that you feel the same. I don’t want you to think that I’m just going to drop you one day without warning, or that these feelings aren’t real, because none of that is true. I love you with all of my heart, and I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

I nodded as the tears I’d been holding back slid down my face. Caden gently wiped the tears, and planted a slow soft kiss on my lips, freezing me in place as shock took hold of me.

Caden laughed, his blue eyes glistening, as he instructed, “Breathe, Love.”

I took a shaky breath in smiling shyly.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I mumbled, still shocked.

“Remind me,” he demanded, still smirking at me.

“How do you know I’m your mate?”

“It’s a gut feeling I have, something deep inside me that says so. I won’t be certain until the mark appears, though.”

“What mark?” I questioned.

“When two werewolves find each other, and the mate bond begins to form, one of the first signs is arm markings. The more powerful the pair, the larger and more intricate the marks are. I can’t say that it’ll be the same with us, because I’ve never heard of a witch and werewolf mating before, but I really believe we are mates. I’m sure the goddess wouldn’t have made me feel this way if it wasn’t true,” he explained.

I understood what he meant, and nodded along.

A knock on the door interrupted our moment. Caden took a deep breath and stood to answer, obviously somewhat annoyed. He opened the door to reveal an older couple, both with graying hair and aged skin. The man hunched a little, but he was obviously trying to stand straighter than Caden.

“Hey, did you guys need something?” he asked, slightly blocking the doorway.

“Don’t be rude. Can’t we just want to talk to you, to see how you’re handling everything, given what you’ve been through?” the woman scolded.

She pushed her way through and finally saw me. Her body tensed and she glared at me.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you had company,” she sneered.

The man entered after her and adopted a similar attitude towards me. I dropped my gaze back to bowl, not wanting to confront their negativity in any way.

“Mom, that’s enough,” Caden growled, stepping between us. “Show her respect, or get the f**k out.”

We all gasped, and silence descended on us. I swear I could hear my heart drumming in my chest.

“What did you just say?” the man snarled.

“I said, you will show her the utmost respect befitting the future luna of this pack, or you can go back to your vacation home without another word to anyone.”

I couldn’t breathe. I was convinced someone was going to snap and there would be a nasty throw down right in front of me.

“Fine,” his mom said, breaking the silence, “we’ll try to be more respectful of your witch.”

I could tell it took all of her self control to say that and not storm out, and I’m sure she only did it for her son.

“My name is Evianna Woods,” I said quietly, holding out my hand for them. I really just wanted to break up the awkward angry vibes in the room and show I was a good person. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Caden has told me so much about you.”

His mother raised an eyebrow, ignoring my hand entirely. Then she turned her back to us and started walking toward the door.

“Join us for dinner, I’d love to get to know her a little better.”

They left and Caden and I let out sighs of relief. Then he looked to me as if to say sorry, and I felt my stomach drop. Dinner was going to be interesting.