Part 2
Merida
All truth is good to know, but not all truth is good to say.
"Breathe." Dr. Scott said in a state of near panic. "Merida, you need to breathe."
I've never felt the blinding heat of the white flames before. It was usually a cool, faint sensation. Struggling to follow the doctor's orders, I inhale sharply but painfully choke on the scent of stiff sulfur.
Our training sessions are never halted by an interruption, especially one created by my own magic. However, things were different this morning.
After the argument that Mia and I had, to which words were exchanged that I would burn the world down to take back, I awoke the next morning to a feeling of loss and numbness. Unlike months ago, when she'd first rejected me by accident, I wasn't in pain this time. Nothing about her leaving hurt me like before. Even the thought of it didn't tear me from the inside out. I felt nothing. Just trapped in a constant state of unusual calmness.
Or at least I thought I was, until I decided to pick up training again.
After Mia left for California, I fought Melody off from running after her, breaking my phone in the process. It was a brutal fight followed by days of having to lock myself in my room and then Mia's.
But after nearly two weeks in isolation he'd finally calmed down. Though in actuality, it took Kristen telling us that Mia didn't have any ill intentions on leaving. That it was at least for a reason. Not an urgent reason, but one serious enough to pull her away for a time.
See, it wasn't all my fault. Okay, maybe some of it was. But how was I supposed to react? Mia doesn't tell me anything.
And even when I prompted Kristen on whatever that reason was, all she said was 'I don't know the details; I... couldn't hear everything, but Mia had to leave, despite my mate Alex. Something in her tone was urgent yet hesitant!"
Mia didn't leave me out of spite.
Melody and I clung on to that hope. Mia needed to leave for something and once it was figured out, she'll come back.
She'll probably come back.
If she does come back.
If she forgives me enough to come back.
"Merida, focus." Scott urges.
Chill it. I press. I take another short breath, but breathing is becoming too difficult under this newfound feeling of agony.
It was a cheap shot. I realize. Bringing Mother into it... knowing before that she only ran away for her safety years ago...
And now. I don't know. She wouldn't open up to me. She promised to make this work and yet, she couldn't trust me with whatever this was.
"Merida." Scott pressed.
"I get it!" I shout in frustration. Suddenly, a power behind my voice suffocates the fire, snuffing it out in a beat. I hunch over exhausted, as I start taking careful breaths.
"You should talk 'bout it." A gentle voice called out to my right. I turn my head to see Victor standing on the edge of the field, it seems Mia's punishment mellowed both him and Caleb out. He's holding a small cardboard box in his arms. "Take it from me, it won't get better the longer you hold it in."
Victor turns away, walking towards his destination. The light caresses each strand of his hair as he walks away. They shine like fine golden strands. Him and Caleb hadn't stopped squabbling since they arrived, but only I understood why.
We've tried to make it a silent rule here not to openly discuss anyone's past except when you're talking with the Alpha. The reason was because you never knew what a person went through and Peter and Stephanie have always tried to make Saga Moon as welcoming and warm as possible.
Though with Father and Mother gone, and now Mia, and only me as the leader left, I'd gotten the opportunity to learn about the circumstances surrounding their change.
Apparently, the two were out with an old friend who was the son of a politician when they got into a fight with some men they claimed turned into monsters. At first, I assumed vampires but from their story, it seems the group of men turned into scaly creatures that were a mixture between orcs and snakes as if by magic.
Caleb and Victor had been separated from their friend when they were found by a local wolf that saved them, while their injured friend, unfortunately ended up captured by a group of stray vampires.
They learned of their friend's death shortly after coming here and they've been fighting ever since. Of course, until Mia left.
"Do you want to sit in my office and talk about it?" Dr. Scott asked.
With a nod, I follow him into the clinic, feeling too drained to protest. As we walk through the front door, and down the hallway to his office, I try to drown out the memories of Mia that begin to pierce its' way through my head. I can't bring myself to struggle through another two weeks of fighting Melody.
He ushers me into the room, beckoning me to take a seat. "So where do you want to begin?"
The moment my ass sinks into the leather, everything spills up like vomit. From the attack, to the meeting, and lastly to the argument that we've had.
Scott, with his arms folded and a neutral expression that does nothing to calm my nerves, regards me with a distant look in his eyes. "I see." He replies.
"All I wanted was for her to trust me enough with the truth." I tell him. Regardless what her secrets are, I would stand beside her. No matter what. Mia isn't liable for anything that happened, even if there might be a link connecting her father with my biological mother's death. It doesn't matter to me.
"All truth..." He whispers. "is good to know. But not all truth is good to hear." Dr. Scott's face looks jovial yet lost in thought as he mutters the phase. He takes a moment to himself as the silences hangs between us before indulging himself in a heartbeat of self-blame.
I look to him, confused as to what he had to do with anything that happened between Mia and I.
As if reading my mind, he starts, "Mia came to me. A few months ago, she came to the office at night asking about something she couldn't find the words to. It was difficult to help her then, but after your story about the attack, I was reminded of something."
"To put it simply, she was asking about whether she might possess magic. At the time, I told her it was unlikely because of Luna Stephanie's composition. It...was shortsighted of me to overlook the possibility of magic running through her father's side."
I gnaw at the side of my mouth. My heart begins to thump harshly. The question I've been sitting on is pounding to get out. If the answer were true, then it'll explain everything about the letter Mr. Agrinya sent. It would confirm Father and I's suspicions to a T. This small bit of information was too good to pass up.
"Scott," I inquire. "Is Mia.." This changes nothing about her. This changes nothing about her. "a witch?"
A small rhythmic beat, like the pounding of a drum, works its way from the ground up my leg. It travels ever so slowly as I await the answer, any freaking answer, from him.
"Nearly a century ago, I did some work overseas in Africa." He begins. "I was apart of a group of traveling medics who went into unreachable areas to help, or so I thought they were. However, I didn't intend to join them. I was an idiot then, hell-bent on acquiring information about different forms of medical practices from anywhere and everywhere. I just couldn't... I couldn't stand the isolationist mindset of the wolves at the time. I didn't believe that we should shelter ourselves so much. I wanted to prove them wrong. To show them, that we didn't have to be one-sided, that we could help others and in turn use them to help ourselves."
"That sounds reasonable." I tell him, something in the back of my mind urging him to get to his point.
"No, it wasn't. You see, at the time of my narrow mindedness, I went into places, into sacred grounds, that I shouldn't have. I foolishly tried to learn things that weren't meant for me to understand. And yet, I still persisted. As a doctor, I'm supposed to help others, to save them to the best of my ability. But I neglected that, all to prove a point."
"Two months, into my journey, I came across a small village. I'd thought they'd be the like the others, small and hidden, yet weak, in the ways that unfortunately many small towns across the world were. But this place was something... mystic. Not even London could hold a candlelight to the beauty of this village. Their castles were intricate, delicately designed from the earth but built to withstand armies. Their streets were lit from fires that never died. The statues and symbols they dedicated to their Gods made you feel inferior in their presence. Their people," Scott breathed. "were so diverse, beautiful. Powerful."
"When I first saw it, I couldn't believe something like this was hidden. A nameless society. And like an idiot, I tried to walk among them."
"They didn't want you there?" I questioned to which Scott only laughed.
"If you built a vast empire, designed to protect your people, would you just accept a stranger from another world to just waltz in there?"
Point taken.
"I didn't even last three minutes before their guards found me. You would think, from the way they quickly captured me, that the next place they would take me would be their royalty." He continued. "That's what I'd stupidly thought. I would be strange yet alluring enough that they might want to see something they must've never encountered."
"Why didn't they?"
"There were many reasons, for one their leadership seemed to be divided amongst two great families who hated each other, leading to a series of issues that even I could see, to the main reason being that they didn't think of me as a presence of worth to them. It was almost eerie they way they saw me as ignoble." His humored expression confuses me as to how he couldn't be angry. "But I'm grateful for it, if they did care enough to pay attention to what I truly was, they would've killed me on the spot."
"However, one group took mercy on me. They came to me dressed in white garments and took me from those they called the Osebo, the guards from earlier. The elder amongst them, Ada, gave the order. She dressed like a priestess in white and gold robes, her hair was more silver than grey and she wore different shaped silver rings on each finger, her neck held these strange bright red markings like a collar imbedded in the flesh. The most surprising part, was that she was the first one to speak to me directly in my language, whereas the others did not. Or perhaps couldn't, but to this day I'll never know. They'll always make sure you'll never know what they're capable of."
Interested, I continued to listen intently to this story. There had to be a reason he was telling me this.
"Ada personally escorted me to the borders of the village, telling me to leave. But like an idiot, I wanted answers. Witnessing my defiance, she should've killed me for it, she had the power to. But instead, she decided to entertain one question."
Scott paused for a long time before I decided to ask him.
"'What are you?' I asked of her. Of all the questions," he stated, laughing at himself. "Ada laughed then too. But then her eyes went black, like lightning had stuck her." The mention of Ada's eyes catches my attention. "Her body tensed and then relaxed but her eyes stayed the same. Fluidly, she reached up to me and spoke, but behind her voice were others; young and old, male and female, so many different kinds of voices spoke through her all at once."
"'Judge.' She told me. As she came down from whatever possessed her. She spoke more carefully, telling me this: 'the Laibon won't overlook this a second time. Be wiser.' Despite the warning, it was the last thing she told me that still puzzles me. 'Go north,' Ada told me, 'where you'll be needed.'"
"Go north?" I repeat.
Scott nodded. "I left Africa and did as she said. The moment I settled back in Britain, a series of battles and rebellions broke out leading up to World War One."
The gear started turning in my head as I began to piece together his story, and how it might be related to Mia, "She could see the future?"
He shrugged. "Maybe."
I think back to all my encounters with Mia, if she could see the future, there would've been many encounters that we could've prevented. Like the witch for instance. Unless, this was a recent development. "You think Mia, maybe even Alexandria as well, could see the future? That she could be apart of that place?"
"I don't know. Ada was the only proper encounter I had with the Laibon. But until Mia or her sister tells us when she returns, we have no way of knowing."
If Mia returns.
Okay, this was something. We're getting somewhere, even if somewhere still feels like nowhere. "Hypothetically, if Mia is a 'Laibon' as you say it, then why would she leave? What would make a powerful being like a Laibon, run halfway across the country?" And to leave her own mate behind?
Scott seems to take a moment to ponder this, so I decide to switch up the question.
"What would make someone as powerful as Ada run?"
Something behind that question seems to rattle Dr. Scott, because the next words he says is something a wolf never wants to hear when it comes to their mate.
"Hypothetically, the only thing that any powerful being would run from is death."
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