Chapter 64

Emely

Parties were such a waste of time. Besides, it was damn hard on the ears after a while.

I was angry with myself for promising Alarik that I would keep an eye on my brother. I could have spent my time more usefully training at home or preparing for my term paper. But since life wasn't a pipe dream, I could only dream of such an evening. I was always responsible for my brothers. Always . And now, I was chasing after one of them again.

I had just bumped into Mady, and she had seriously tried to fool me into thinking that she was here, alone in a club owned by my family, and not looking for Nash.

It wasn't a lie that she had changed Nash and that it bothered me, the way he had been acting for some time now. However, it was a lie that I didn't like her because of that . It was hard to hate an innocent human girl like her, but it was my damn duty to keep humans away from Nash and the pack, even if that meant keeping them at a distance or scaring them off. A duty in which my future alpha had failed.

Shaking my head, I stormed through the crowds and continued looking for my brother. Luckily, I quickly found him near the exit. Far enough away from Mady.

"Nash, stop!" I yelled, and he turned to face me, a guy bumping into him and immediately apologizing. Nash ignored him.

He looked far too tense to simply walk away without continuing to fight. It must have taken him a lot of self-control.

"They've been filming us, Emy," Nash huffed in anger. "They're cornering us."

I swallowed.

He was right.

"We should think about what we can do and not lose our cool."

"Emely, just realize it. They have our pack in the palm of their hand. Father wants me to be the next Alpha... I should never have let something like this happen."

He ran a stressed hand through his hair, as if it was his fault me and Vivienna had gotten into a fight.

"Right. But soon no one will care what happened."

I felt a little ashamed, because I was aware of my guilt, but would he have done it differently? Would he have let a Quatura push him around?

"Why do you always say that? Why do you always have everything figured out like that, but I don't?"

And suddenly, Nash fell completely out of character.

"Come on, we'll talk outside," I said and pulled my somewhat distraught brother out into the fresh night air. My body relaxed instantly.

"You don't really believe I have a plan..." I laughed, a little overwhelmed by the situation.

"I just know it. You've always been the strategist." Nash propped himself up against a car, which on closer inspection turned out to be Hunter's.

"You've always been better than me."

I rarely experienced Nash like that. He used to be like that, yes , three years ago, before everything had changed. Before Mady had changed him. So, I didn't know how to react to him now.

I did the next best thing and put a hand on his right shoulder.

"Nash, you're the best person to lead this pack. And your reaction up there was the right one."

He didn't look at me, just looked grimly at the ground while his jaw worked hard.

"You don't understand, Emy."

It hurt me a little inside that he just said that. I was his sister , and if anyone knew him, it was me, right? Nash didn't see that I stood by him. Every time.

I sighed.

"You should go back to the guys. I'm sure they're wondering what's going on," he suddenly said, pushing away from the car.

"And you?" I asked hesitantly.

"I need a few minutes to myself."

I nodded.

Of course, I was worried about him. But the others didn't know what was going on and leaving them up there with the DeLoughreys might not have been so wise.

"You can be reached by phone?" I asked.

Nash held up his phone and smiled slightly before unlocking his lock screen, a selfie of the two of us.

I turned and made my way past the smoking high school kids, ignoring the haunting smell of weed, when I suddenly spotted an all-too-familiar face.

"Mia?!" I looked stunned at the girl in the miniskirt with the cigarette in her mouth. "What on earth are you doing here?"

I took the cigarette out of her mouth and threw it on the ground, stepping on it afterward. Then I gave the other guilty-looking girls around her a suspicious look before pulling Julian's little sister away from the entrance.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Julian's number.

"No, please." Mia looked at me pleadingly, but I waited until an alarmed Julian answered the phone.

"Julian?"

Mia scrunched up her eyes and grabbed her head.

"Are you at the party at the Dark Lion Club by any chance?"

"No. Why should I?"

"Because I ask you now if you'd like to come by spontaneously and pick up your sister ."

"What?! What's she doing there? Is she smoking? Is she drinking?"

He'd told me the other day that he'd caught her smoking outside Lola's Diner. Something you weren't supposed to do as a Senseque if you wanted to keep a usable lung in wolf form.

"No, she doesn't drink," I assured him, looking at Mia in warning.

She rolled her eyes and kicked the cigarette away on the pavement.

I had to talk to her about this. Julian would only worry more.

"Is she with you right now?"

"Yes."

"Could you hand her over, please?" Julian sounded annoyed.

"He wants to talk to you," I said and handed Mia the cell phone, but she refused it.

"Mia?! Are you there?"

"Take it," I said, and she clutched the phone in her hand.

"What the hell! Mia!" I heard Julian say loudly through my phone. "What are you thinking? You're fifteen! This is a fucking club!"

I immediately thought of all the things Julian and Nash had done when they were fifteen. How many parties they'd been to at that point. What they had tried. But they had never smoked.

"Yes Julian, I'm old enough. You don't always have to tell me what to do!" I raised an eyebrow and looked at her in surprise. She was still as cheeky as ever and, above all, she was still so stubborn. "Shall I remind you who's been looking after our father since everything just got worse?"

Mia seemed to be getting angry. Her eyes began to glow yellow.

I quickly looked around to make sure no one was watching us, but most people were busy with other things. Besides, Mia was still too young to transform. Although, she didn't have long before she too would undergo her first transformation and would rise from Omega to Delta.

It was obvious that she had to get out of the witch district, away from the stress at home and into the pack. Her behavior screamed for attention and the urge to prove herself. She would be in good hands with the others, but it was more a question of circumstances and the attitude of her family as to whether she would come to us.

"Give me Emely, please!"

I was back in the present and looked at Mia, who held out her cell phone to me, eyes rolling. She no longer seemed as shy as before, but defiant. She was probably annoyed with Julian and even more annoyed with me.

"Ems?"

"Yes?" I asked calmly. Fuss was out of place in this situation.

"Could you look after Mia?"

Now I rolled my eyes, just like Mia had a few seconds ago, and she had to grin. Her grin reminded me of Julian's, even though they didn't really look alike.

"I'll be right there."

Julian had to be worried about her. A lot.

"Hurry up, Bardot," I said with irony and heard a laugh from the other side of the phone.

"Thank you, I'll see you in a few minutes."

Then he hung up and left me with Mia outside the club.

"Did you have to do that?" Mia snapped and kicked the sign next to us, whose metal bent in the middle and made a couple of smoking teenagers jump back.

"Mia!" I hissed and pulled her further away.

Her strength didn't surprise me. She was a female Senseque, as her father and mother had both been Senseque. Only then was there a chance that a female Senseque would be born.

"What?! Let me do what I want, I'm old enough." She looked at me with glowing eyes.

"You should be careful not to turn," I joked, amused by her temper.

She widened her eyes. "I'm not turning. I'm not a murderer!"

I widened my eyes. "What was that you said?"

"I know what it does to you guys!" she hissed sternly. "You must be responsible for the murder on the border of Fogs Forest!"

I wanted to object, but she didn't let me.

"I can see what it's doing to Julian. And even though it's slowly getting better, I don't want anyone in this family to have to go through that kind of crap again."

She kicked another sign, which completely collapsed. Then she leaned against the wall, annoyed, to light a joint. But I didn't let it get that far. I snatched the crap thing out of her hand and threw it far away into the grass, next to the unmown meadow at the edge of the parking lot. Then I approached her.

"Listen to me now. If there's anything more dangerous than transforming, it's not doing it. All that energy building up in your body, all that frustration." I paused and looked at her startled face to make sure she understood me. "It's a part of us. It's a gift . Especially for females like us. And a gift like that is made to be used." I moved even closer. "And I'll tell you this. You can't suppress what is part of you for long. It will come out sooner or later. And if you fight back, it will only become more dangerous."

Mia looked at me in silence. She no longer protested.

I kept my distance again and leaned my head back to breathe in the cool night air.

Suddenly, I felt a strange tingling sensation on the back of my neck, which made me look around. My gaze fell on the dense forest behind the parking lot, which lay in complete blackness through the night. I didn't notice anything unusual, but the feeling didn't go away either.

Inside, the club was booming and somehow the music seemed louder now.

I tried to see the positive side of the situation, namely that I didn't have to sit there somewhere between all the noise and all the sweaty people and communicate under the shattering bass.

And then, out of nowhere, I felt a sharp pain in my neck like I'd never felt before. Like teeth were digging into my flesh. Next, the images raced through my head, but they were too fast. The pain was too intense for me to perceive anything other than it. Until finally a very familiar voice came through to me.

"Ems!" Someone shook me. " Ems! Where is she?!"

"Who are you talking about, Julian?" it came distantly from Mia, who stared at me in horror.

"Emely! Where's Bay?!"