Chapter 30: Feeling Safe?

I was woozy and disoriented after sleeping for an unknown amount of time. I didn’t know where I was, and the softness and warmth of the bed felt unfamiliar.

I slowly opened my eyes and found my parents sitting next to me.

Mom was holding my hand and crying silently, while Dad sat in deep thought with a frown that seemed to have gotten permanently stuck there. Both seemed tired and worried.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but my mouth was so dry it was hard to form any words. But the groan that followed when they realized I was awake and threw themselves around my neck was unmistakable.

“Ow,” I mumbled, but Mom was ecstatic with relief and refused to stop hugging me and pestering me with kisses.

“Oh, sweetheart! We’ve been so worr…”

“DON’T EVER CALL ME THAT!” I exclaimed so suddenly that I startled both myself and them.

Since my voice was a lot louder than what my head accepted, I pushed them away and sank back into my pillow while rubbing my forehead and temples.

“O-okay?” Mom stuttered, clearly confused, but my head hurt too much to even think about explaining.

“Just don’t. Ever.”

She nodded and exchanged glances with Dad, who also looked a bit bewildered.

“Is ‘honey’ okay?” she asked hesitantly and reached for my hand again. Her skin felt so soft and warm, and when she squeezed mine, I gave her a tiny smile.

“Yeah, yeah. Everything else but…”

I couldn’t even say the horrible nickname out loud. It was like it brought me right back to the cottage with Kemar.

“We thought you were dead,” Mom whispered, and I could see her eyes well up with tears again. It made me feel horrible.

I wanted to embrace them both and tell them how much I loved them, exactly the way I’d been doing in my head while I was lost.

But now? I didn’t know how to react, and I felt terrible for being so cold and distant to them. I just couldn’t help it.

Since I was so dismissive, Mom pulled away and searched for comfort in my dad’s arms. He looked upset.

“What happened to you?” he asked after a long moment with crushing silence, and I could tell he struggled to hold back his emotions.

But before I got to answer, he continued while nodding his head, clearly about to blow up with anger. “It was him, wasn’t it? That son of a…”

“Rick, not now,” Mom interrupted and grabbed his arm to avoid a confrontation.

That would be the last thing I needed. And to be honest, I would have told them to leave the room if this turned into an argument. I had enough to deal with.

Yes, I was happy to see them again. And yes, I was incredibly relieved to be safe and out of the woods.

But I felt sad, too. Why did this have to happen to me in the first place? Would I ever be the same again? I sure didn’t feel like myself anymore. Not even remotely close.

There was also another thing that kept haunting me, continuously circling in the back of my mind.

~Jared~. The way we met. The intensity of the situation, and the way he’d protected me. No one had ever done that to me. Not in that way, at least. I missed that. And I missed him.

And right now, my eyes were stinging with tears because he lost his life trying to save me from Buck, which he kind of did, too, since he gave me that silver knife.

I realized that now. No normal knife would ever have been able to kill a supernatural beast like him.

“The knife!” I exclaimed, and abruptly sat up. “Where’s the knife?”

An explosion of pain threatened to split my head in two, but I still searched around for the old sheath containing the most valuable thing I had.

I would never forgive myself if I lost it in the river or at the camp with the men who saved me. I would have to go back and search for it. Until then, I couldn’t relax.

“What knife?” Mom asked and looked confused between me and my father. He had turned around and was facing the window now and tried to rub his face free from frustration.

“The knife! I need to have my knife!” I continued, and I felt so upset that I wanted to cry. “And the sweater! I need…”

A machine next to my bed started beeping, and I felt a tug in my hand that came from a tube, which turned out to be attached to some kind of intravenous fluid from a bag that hung on a pole.

Mom tried to make me lie back down, but I refused. Not long after, a woman in white came through the door. She immediately rushed to Mom’s side and tried to calm me, but I kept asking the same question over and over.

“Miss! You need to calm down, miss!” the nurse said and clearly tried to keep her voice down not to make the situation worse. But she wasn’t the problem. Them not listening to me was.

“Skylar! Listen to us!” Mom begged, but I shook myself free from their grip and was about to stand up.

“NO! I NEED MY KNIFE!” I screamed, and more people entered the room, a doctor, and another nurse, and together they pushed me back on the bed again.

Then the two nurses held me down while the doctor gave me a shot with some sort of tranquilizer that made my body limp and head dull.

It became difficult to talk, but I refused to give in to the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. I’d felt worse. A lot worse.

“My knife…,” I mumbled and tried to fight myself free.

“Go get it,” I heard the doctor say. I recognized that voice. It was the man who saved me. Kevin. “It’s in the bag together with her clothes.”

“But doctor, it’s not safe to give a knife to someone who’s as unstable as…,” the nurse protested but was cut off promptly.

“Just do it!”

I was grateful for that. I heard my parents talking, and that they asked the doctor about something, but there was only one thing on my mind. The knife. The knife was all that mattered. The knife…and Jared.

“Are you sure about this, doctor?” the nurse asked and looked nervous when she returned with a plastic bag containing my belongings. But a strict eye from the doctor made her obey and give me my things.

“The knife…,” I mumbled while I dug through my clothes. My bra, my tank top, my jeans. It wasn’t there. Jared’s knitted sweater. I took a moment to hug it to my body and found comfort in the familiar smell.

Then I emptied the rest of the bag, and only my shoes fell out.

“No! The knife!” I yelled again and hated the feeling of numbness. It was exactly what I’d been fighting against the last days in the wilderness, and it was not something I wanted to feel now that I finally was safe.

I couldn’t even open my eyes properly. Not until someone grabbed my wrist and placed something in my palm.

I didn’t really need to look at it, because my fingers wrapped around it with all my strength. Then I lifted it to my heart and held it with both hands, almost like I was hugging it.

“Thank you,” I whispered to whoever it was that brought it, but I wasn’t sure if they heard me. But they sure heard my objections when they tried to take away Jared’s sweater.

“Relax, Skylar. We’re just going to wash it. It’s dirty and it stinks.”

“No, it doesn’t!” I exclaimed and pulled the hardest I could. Once again, the doctor agreed with me.

“Let her keep it,” he said. “If it makes her feel better, let her keep it.”

They started talking to my parents and randomly asked me questions I didn’t respond to. I just wanted them to leave.

I was safe when I woke up an hour ago, but it was only now that I ~felt~ safe.

All the time I’d been walking through the wilderness, wishing for everything I missed at home, and now that I had it, all I could think about was the link that kept me attached to the woods.

The link that was Jared.

***

I stayed at Alaska Native Medical Center for a couple of days until I was strong enough to sit on the plane home to Chicago.

The following days felt like a bubble of nothing but chaotic emotions. I still didn’t feel like talking much. What was there to say anyway?

No one would believe me if I told them what really happened. The werewolves, the little ghost girl, and the demon.

No. It was better left unsaid, both to keep them from doubting my sanity, since I did that enough as it was, but it would also be easier to eventually put it behind me. Hopefully.

I talked to the police about Kemar though, and I told them every single detail. A week later, they found the cottage I’d been trapped in.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much evidence left, because Kemar had lit it on fire, so everything was just a pile of ash when they got there.

But after searching through the forest around the cottage, they found the remains of five different women, either bones or personal belongings. The others? Lord knew what Kemar had done with them.

Because he’d crossed so many state lines and into Canada, he was now wanted by the FBI and Canadian authorities, and the policeman I talked to assured me that they would find him soon.

They were searching for him in every state in America, but also in other parts of the world. Especially Alaska and Canada.

However, even though he was considered to be armed and extremely dangerous, they didn’t think he was arrogant enough to take the risk of approaching me again, or to even be in Chicago at all.

They still chose to have a police patrol parked outside our house both day and night for the first couple of weeks after I got home. I was okay with that.

My wounds healed, and so did my ribs. And thanks to antibiotics, I got rid of a pretty bad infection both from my injuries and from being extremely cold for so long.

The doctors were surprised I survived at all because of severe electrolyte deficiency and starvation. However, even though my body healed, my fatigue kept increasing, and I felt sick.

I slept all night and most of the day and still felt tired, and there was just no way I would be able to return to school this semester. And I found that I didn’t really care.

The doctors called it post-traumatic stress syndrome, and I didn’t really care about that either. But when they wanted me to take a pregnancy test, I suddenly cared a lot. I couldn’t be pregnant!

There was just no way that was possible. Not after all I’d been through. My body shouldn’t even be able to conceive.

Just the thought of carrying Kemar’s baby made me want to hurl. Because it had to be his. Jared pulled out when he came. Kemar didn’t.

Unfortunately, the test came back positive, and I cried for a whole week. Then I got angry and actually found Dad’s suggestion about having an abortion tempting.

There was an extremely tiny chance that it might be Jared’s baby after all, and I cried even more. How could I be so devastated over a man I’d known for barely a week?

Would I be able to live with myself if I knew that I might have murdered his daughter or son? The answer was no.

I cried myself to sleep while Mom and Dad ran around the house to find out why the fire alarm went off.

It was just me, burning the abortion papers.