Chasing Somnia

episode 6

Chapter 12

Jacob is standing in front and the river the next morning admiring his reflection . “ am I taller this morning. And my muscles are bigger too!”

I just smirked at him.

“ no seriously I’m a fourteen year old snake shifter I don’t think I’m supposed to be this big.”

Another nonchalant shoulder shrug. “wait? I’ve noticed you doing this kinda thing before, I mean, don’t get me wrong I appreciate the effort and all but, you need to take care of your growing packages instead. Besides that I’ve noticed when you do use, whatever this goddess given gift this is. It seems to.. drain you, I mean it actually looks as if your getting a little bit sick.”

He gently placed his hand on her head. She jerked her head back, still not comfortable with contact with males even though she knows it wasn’t meant to be intimate contact, and truth be told, she wasn’t planning on ever telling him just how far she was willing to go for her ‘ self made pack’ or how sick it was actually making her.

“ don’t be silly Jacob, the trip has been long, and the twins are heavy now. Wait till you meet Granny she’ll love you!

We both knew I was just trying to change the subject . But I really hoped it would work.

Jacob went to check on Amber, I was trying to force myself to allow him more time with her to bond. It’s not that I didn’t love her to bits. It’s actually the opposite. My little starter pack was the only thing keeping me going at this point …but there is a weight on my chest all the time, it makes the world, not as colorful as it should be. Makes it hard to breathe sometimes and…

‘Nia! Nia! Where did you go there I’ve been calling you for minutes, and you just spaced out on me.

“no worries, just inside my head. How’s my little Amber eyes?”

“perfect as always. Suspiciously looks closer to a four month old than two. You wouldn’t happen to know how that happened literally overnight now would you?”

“why you hogging my Amber eyes, squish heart I wanna hold her too!”

He heaves a deep sigh as he gives Amber a quick peck on the cheek and hands her over. “just promise me. No more ok. I’ll do the extra work. I’ll exercise to bulk up on my own to keep us protected. I’ll spend extra time foraging to keep us fed. I’m the man of the pack anyway Somnia. No more blessings, save your energy for yourself and your Child.

I was completely confused about the last part of his statement. In my entire life, I have never seen an example of the men caring for the women. That type of behavior was not tolerated in my pack, so I’d never actually seen it. Not that me and Sasha would have been allowed to watch another pack mate long enough to learn what normal was.

I stared at Jacob for a moment and reluctantly nodded agreement. I always meant it, I swear I did. I would never willfully lie to my only friend ,but living by the loopholes is the way I grew up. In fact I’m sure it’s the only thing that allowed me to make it this many years. Like what I’m doing right now. Stroking Amber’s hair, staring at the flecks swirling in her eyes, pushing all my warm squishy feelings into her heart like Mommy used to do for us, since mind linking was forbidden to anyone else who wasn’t directly speaking to alpha. But he never said anything about linking feelings. That’s how I know Mom loved us. Truth be told I still push those feelings into Mommy through our family link, even now I’m double timing it to Mom as well, so she knows I haven’t totally left her alone in that hole we lived in.

Amber tries to give me the feeling of trust and love right back, and I take the barest sliver I can. I gave it all back one day and she cried and cried. It took me hours to figure out that she thought that meant I didn’t love her back. The furthest thing from the truth.

But to Jacob it just looks as though I gazed in her eyes for a moment and gave little nose rub before handling her back. In truth that exchange made me a little dizzy. “Time to go.”

Chapter 13

I now understand why our scouts was so creeped out walking through what I can only describe as the assassins silent graveyard. At first glance it seems that intimidating, but the moment your foot passes the threshold of the first grave everything goes dead silent. The animals, silent, bugs nothing, in fact the charred vine hanging bodies were dripping with what appeared to be tree sap. The flowers on the next set of graves were dancing to no wind at all. There wasn’t even anything to smell. The only way to describe it was cursed, but the moment we passed to grave sites it’s as though life restarted the sun started shining again, the breeze was pleasantly blowing. It was so warm there were even butterflies in the air.

What didn’t quite fit in was the modern day log cabin with the large mixing of human and shifters preparing various weapons and seemingly waiting for something. The first one to spot us was a young vampire the looked to be around the age of twelve.

She zipped over to us, took one whiff, turned around, and shouted, “Nonna, the bears are here!” “Well, tell them to come inside!”

‘Took you long enough, now she’s all cranky!’

“Follow! Human Nonna has vital information!”

That’s all it took to get our feet moving. The twelve-year-old looked up at us and asked, “Do you want me to run and fetch the rest of your crew for you?”

Alexander He looked fondly at the young child and stated, “Allow us to speak to your Nonna first, and then we can speak of gathering troops, okay?”

“It’s your dream at risk, but okay!”

“Shouldn’t you be helping your mom with dinner, Miska?”

“Yes, Nonna!”

“You four come inside!’ Once they were inside the cabin they discovered it was actually a good mix of supernaturals. But she led them away from everyone else to a door located on the second floor and suddenly stopped.

“ now boys. I’m only showing you what’s behind this door to show why you’ve had such a deep sense of urgency the past few days.’ She held up her hands ‘don’t bother denying it I maybe only human, but I’m fairly sure I’m still older than you. And as you can see through my rather rich family history, I’ve learned to trust my instincts and I’ve been dreaming about you lot for days.”

When she opened that door their bears stood at rapt attention, they almost floated into the room. The entire room was saturated with the sweetest aroma the brother’s had ever smelled. It was both relaxing and energizing at the same time. The most surprising thing for all The brothers were that all four of their bears whispered “Mate!”

“Good. That’s going to make the rest of this conversation that much faster and easier to do. Now if you’ll please follow me downstairs, I can show you…”

Suddenly, her Apple Watch came on, and a voice spoke through: “Granny parameters have been breached on the west side.”

‘ how many ?

“ It appears to be around twenty”

‘take care of it sweetie we’ll give support from the tech room.

Ethan immediately jumped to action. “Let me and my men take care of it. It’s what we were sent out here to take care of! Let us keep you safe.” She smiles and giggles like a schoolgirl. ‘ So gallant. Follow me downstairs and see why that is completely unnecessary.

The brother’s followed her quickly to the first floor into the library and she went to a window seat and lifted the cushion suddenly the entire seat smoothly shifts to the side to reveal a short set of stairs leading to a room filled with state of the art tech followed by wall to monitors. It was being manned by two others, both twin girls no older than fifteen they clicked on a small red button and stated “ you are trespassing on private property please turn around now! It’s not worth the price!”

“This lot is learning; they came with armored vehicles.

It won’t help!

To be fair, you did warn them.

Stefan, fully curious, walks across the room and asks, “Mind if I join you?” One of the twins glances over and says, “We’d be offended if you didn’t.” Stefan proceeds to hook up his personal laptop into their house system while watching the live feed. Granny asked them to put it on the large screen mounted above all the others. They all settled back to watch after Stefan pressed the record button on his laptop.”

As they watched the screen they saw men and women running through the forest attempting to get to the cabin to attack but, the ones on foot were being tripped up by tree roots only to be swallowed by the earth.

Some of them that dodged a few tree roots were straight up slapped in the face by giant flowers that suddenly grew on the trees just so the connecting vines that connected to the flowers handed off the people to the thick vines, where they continued to hang hard enough to hold them, but not kill them just yet.

Some of the armor on the vehicles was being ripped off by the vines as though the trees were annoyed that they were attempting to slow it’s tasks down. So the flowers wrapped around the wheels to stop the vehicles completely, then the vines would simply rip the man or woman out of the vehicles seatbelts or not. Some of them were pleading for their lives and some were silent.

Once they were all hanging, the vines began to swing , and as soon as some of them would touch a patch of sunlight their body would catch on fire. On the live feed you could hear living on screaming as they were cremated alive, but for just a scattered few hanging you could still hear them whispering and pleading. Or just straight up saying ‘ I’m sorry… so, sorry!’ even though they were clearly dead. Caught in a nightmare they could never escape.

Nonna stood up, put a hand on both girls manning the cameras, and asked, “What have we learned today, girls?”

“The plants are learning!”

“Correct, and?”

“The Goddess’s blessings are not to be messed with.”

Mikolai jumped in, “What in the world could cause what we just saw?”

“Somnia.”