[[OLD]] A Handful of Daffodils (Forgotten Series, #7)

Chapter Sixty

Two weeks later

I paced back and forth in my living room, glancing at that stupid fucking box every so often. I had spoken with everyone I could in the past few weeks and everything was falling apart. Some of the males refused to talk to me, not because they didn't know anything. They just told me they didn't want to associate with me and that I should be ashamed of myself. A smaller portion told me to stop questioning Getts and Stenton. The rest... they had painted a very detailed picture of what they believed to have happened.

And it was detailed.

They told me that Menza had been injured by the rogue chasing her, the one that had been in the house. I hadn't smelled anything and brought that up but several of the males reminded me the rogues had used a scent neutralizer, meaning for a good portion of them, they didn't leave any scent until we started chasing them and they sweated it off. They then said that the rogue had injured Menza somehow and she had called for her brother, they said more than likely because she believe he was closer. Jason, who had been chasing the two rogues, had intercepted the rogue leader who had attacked Menza and she was more than likely chased by the two other rogues to the river.

The details from there were a bit fuzzy. Some said she went into the river and others said she couldn't have survived. But the fact remained, she ended up a good distance from the territory and then walked with Maeve until they were picked up by Fortis, a pack that was over three hours away from us. She apparently stayed there and was very sick before they were both moved to Altia. Other rumors indicated that Stenton knew where she had been, that he had paid off that rogue to follow and essentially track them until he felt ready to bring them back.

That unsettled me.

To think that I had allowed myself to be manipulated like that. I didn't know what I would do if it was true. If it came out that Stenton had known nearly the entire time where Menza and Maeve had been and had left me in the dark to manipulate me because he wanted me to be compliant with what he wanted to do to Menza. I swallowed hard at that thought. There were a lot of emotions inside of me and some of them I wasn't sure I could handle. If what they said was true, if Menza had done nothing but ran away to escape danger, then I allowed her to be punished, I had been so horrible to her, for absolutely no reason at all. I wasn't sure how to feel about it.

I glanced at the box again.

Mike told me it had reality in it and I had wanted to open it right away and see what he meant but a part of me told me no. That I needed to just leave it alone but now I had nothing left to do. A part of me, the anxious part of me that told me again and again to leave it alone, to live with it how it was but I couldn't. I told myself I wasn't a coward and I wasn't going to be a coward.

Still the box had taunted me all month and I closed my eyes before inhaling and marching over to it. I sat down on the couch and pulled it closer. The top was folded and I stared at it for a few moment. Maeve screeched, banging a toy on her saucer and I looked over at her. She looked at me and held out the toy, waving it rapidly before babbling and then banging it down again and again.

I let out a shaky breath, "I can't be a coward." I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. I grabbed the top flaps of the box and gave a shaky exhale before closing my eyes and pulling. The cardboard flaps flipped open and I cringed as I slowly opened my eyes. There was a piece of paper with my name written on it sitting on top of some grey fabric. I stared at it for a moment, wondering what the fuck was going on before I reached out and picked up the piece of paper. It was folded parchment and when I flipped it over there was a red wax seal stamp holding it closed. I cracked it and slowly opened it, wondering who the hell wrote it.

The paper was blank except for a single line written across the middle. I frowned as I held it. "What lies in this box belongs to you more than it does Menza. One, eight, three, five?" I murmured the words out before flipping the page over but the back was empty. I furrowed my eyebrows and set the paper down on the coffee table before I reached in and pulled out the grey fabric. It was soft against my hands and was a mess until I moved it around and I realized it was something like a robe. That made the confusion even worse as I set it to the side. I looked into the box again and the items inside were even more confusing.