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Chapter 313
He holds out his hand and I take it, shaking.
His grip is firm and cool, and there’s something almost comforting about it.
“I’m Emily,” I tell him in return.
His smile deepens. “That’s a pretty name.”
I laugh at this.
Ronan might be too charming for his own good.
“I think it’s pretty basic myself, but you’re welcome to your opinion.”
He gives a quick, friendly laugh.
“So, Emily, what has you out here looking so down on a day like today?”
I take a slow breath, working out how I can explain without sounding crazy.
“Something bad happened to me, something traumatizing,” I begin, choosing my words carefully.
“Something that went on for a long time. I finally got out just recently, and now my family are treating
me like I’m fragile and broken. Maybe because I am.
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But I don’t want to be. And I can’t stay with my family, I can see that. It’s just not going to work. They’ll
hate me when the realize the truth of everything that happened to me. Except I don’t know what to do,
and don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt
Ronan nods, listening with sympathy and understanding.
And I realize it’s something no one has bothered to do since I got home.
They all just assume they know what happened to me, and what they should do about it.
Well, I did have that moment with Axel earlier…
Except that wasn’t real..
And now I know he–more than anyone–would be first in line to kill me if or when the truth came out.
“Well,” Ronan says thoughtfully. “You don’t seem broken and fragile to me. Truthfully, I’m pretty sure the
fact that you’re here talking to me points to you actually being extremely strong and brave. You
survived that bad thing you went through. And maybe these might seem like empty words, but I’m sure
if you look inside yourself, you’ll see that you came out stronger for it.”
I know I’m definitely different, but I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to consider that I might be stronger for
what happened
to me.
Ronan is right. Just not in the way he probably means.
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he experiments were literally torture, but I can do things now that I couldn’t do before.
I’m not saying that makes it all worthwhile.
If I could go back and have a choice, I’d choose not to ever go through that, because I can’t exactly say
what I’ve gained makes it all okay.
Particularly since it puts me in greater danger from people like Axel.
However, maybe there are benefits to the new me, if I decide to look at it from a different perspective.
“I can sense that you’re special, Emily,” Ronan continues in a sincere voice. “In a way that no one in
your family can probably see. But I get the feeling that’s also because you don’t want them to see.”
I can’t believe how much this stranger has actually seen me- in a way Aaron and Jessica and Axel and
everyone else maybe never will.
Do they just not care?
Or are they simply so caught up in their own drama–and I was gone for ten years, so they’ve all moved
on without me–that they just don’t care.
And I don’t mean in a spiteful way, I just mean in an oblivious
kind of way.
“You just need to remember it’s them, not you,” Ronan says conspiratorially, leaning forward a little. “It’s
also their loss if they can’t see any of that. You’re strong. You’ve proven that to yourself. You don’t need
to prove it to anyone else, even if they are your family.”
I’m speechless.
I don’t know what to say, but I’m deeply touched by his words.
“Thank you,” I say to him, emotion catching in my voice.
He smiles as he gets to his feel.
“I like to hike these trails a few times a week,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see you around again sometime.”
“Maybe,” I reply, smiling, because I hope I do see him again.
I also get to my feet, and we stand there looking at each other.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmImpulsively, I step forward and hug him.
He seems surprised, but then hugs me back, and it’s nice.
“Goodbye, Emily. Nice to meet you,” he says as he steps back.
“Likewise,” I tell him with the first real smile I’ve felt in ages.
Ronan waves goodbye and then heads off down the trail, quickly
sight through the woods.
I feel better as I head for the break in the trees where I came out of the forest earlier.
This was just what I needed.
To get out.
To get away.
To speak to someone completely outside of the situation who didn’t know my history and hadn’t already
judged me based on the past.
As I walk though the woods, I feel more at ease.
And I pick up the scent of a rabbit nearby, making my teeth tingle.
Since I escaped the house I’d been locked up in, I’d been shifting to hunt and feed, not wanting to do it
in my human form.
I guess it was a way of still being in denial.
But now the urge to enjoy a fresh kill without shifting is too strong to ignore.
And I’m too curious to know what it might be like.
So I don’t bother shifting as I stalk the rabbit.
It’s a little hard to track, and a little harder to catch, but I manage to do it, and I’m going to feed. It sends
a satisfying thrill through me…
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