Page 96 of Awakening

“Perfectly fine.” I give him a light kiss. “I’ll be back soon.”

After taking a nice, long, hot shower, and letting myself have a good cry, I’m already starting to feel better. I put on some comfortable clothes and make my way downstairs to the sound of voices. I’m excited when I hear Vanessa talking, but my excitement quickly turns to trepidation at the sound of Caroline’s voice. I may have forgotten the last five years of my life for a while, but I certainly haven’t forgotten how she treated me when I came back. “You can handle her,” I whisper to myself before going down the stairs to the living room.

“Olivia!” Vanessa runs to me and envelops me in a tight hug.

“Vanessa,” Ethan warns, “she just shifted for the first time.”

“Shit. I’m sorry,” she says, immediately releasing me.

“It’s okay,” I say with a light laugh. “The warm shower helped and I feel better already.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but I filled them in on everything,” Ethan says.

“We are so thrilled that you have your memory back,” Vanessa says.

“It feels good to be me again.”

“Olivia,” Ethan’s dad says from behind me. I turn to face him, and he pulls me into a gentle hug. “It’s good to have you back with us.”

“Thank you.” I pull away and look at the ground as I think of what I did this afternoon, and what that means to his family. I look back up into the eyes that are so similar to Ethan’s. “I’m sorry. I hope you don’t hate me.”

Realization immediately washes over his face. “Of course not,” he says, hugging me again.

“I already had consent from the council,” Ethan says. “If you hadn’t done it, I would have.”

“And, I gave the final consent to allow it to happen,” Edwin says.

“But, your family?”

Edwin shakes his head. “They’ll grieve deeply, of course, but they know Ian sealed his own fate. Don’t blame yourself, Olivia. You did what you had to do.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

“Of course,” he says, releasing me from our hug.

“Olivia,” Caroline says. I turn to face her, but say nothing. “I have some things I’d like to say to you.”

I sure as hell hope she doesn’t think she’s going to come into my home and lecture me about something after what I’ve been through today. “The last things you had to say to me were very cruel.” I cross my arms and stare at her.

“I know. Edwin and I have been talking, and I think I’ve concluded as to why I reacted the way I did, and I’m sorry. May I please explain myself?”

Ethan takes my hand, giving it a squeeze. For him, I give in with a sigh. “Okay.”

“Come and sit with me,” she says, sitting on the couch. “Please?”

Ethan rubs circles on my back, and I know he’s encouraging me to give his mother a chance. I join her on the couch and try to keep an open mind.

“You see, aside from Edwin, no one else knows this, but between having Ethan and Vanessa, I lost a baby.”

I sit up straight and my eyes widen in shock. “I’m so sorry.” Ethan’s mouth falls open, and Vanessa joins us on the other side of Caroline on the couch.

“Oh, mom,” Vanessa says, hugging Caroline with one arm.

“Pregnancy loss within our society is so unheard of, especially among Alpha families, that I kept the whole thing hidden. I was so thankful at the time that we hadn’t announced the pregnancy yet. I carried so much shame with me for not being able to do what I knew my body was supposed to be able to do…what my pack expected me to be able to do. I wondered all the time what it was that I’d done wrong,” she says as tears form in her eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I say, instinctively taking her hand.

“I know that now. Though, some days I do still blame myself. I still think about it from time to time, even all these years later. It never hurts any less,” she says with a sigh. “I think when you came to our house that night, and you couldn’t remember anything about the pregnancy, it all just hit me in the wrong way. It was really difficult for me to wrap my mind around your situation after my experience, and perhaps it brought a bit of my own feelings of inadequacy back to me. It’s not right that I reacted that way. Nothing about your situation was your fault, and I’m so sorry for making you feel the way I did.”

---