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

Chapter Forty-Four

Two days later

The house was quiet.

It was oppressive and heavy. The silence in the house seemed unending. Maeve was here but the house still didn't feel right. She had settled with me, as if she remembered who I was, but she wasn't back to her giggling and happy self. It hurt. She wasn't the little girl who left. She was bigger, had a tooth now, and I had set her on the floor and she crawled. Crawled. I had missed so much and it hurt so bad to see it.

It was almost enough to make me want to cry. I had missed two months of her life and I had to work around that gap. I had to figure out what milestones she had reached, where she was at on a developmental scale, and just what happened to her to make my happy little girl not as happy. I shook my head slightly as I paced the length of the living room. I hated that, I hated that I had to miss so much of her growing up. I wanted that time back, I wanted every moment that I missed. I just wanted it all back.

I had her back for nearly two weeks but while I was relieved she was where I could see her and hold her, things hadn't been fixed. I thought that I would get her back and life would go back to normal, that things would be okay and they weren't. There was something still cracked, something still wrong. I didn't know what it was but the house still didn't feel like home, like something was missing. I just didn't know what. I thought everything would be fine once I got Maeve back but it hadn't.

I had no clue what was causing the slightly hollow feeling inside of me. I felt empty and alone, more so than before I brought them back. It was like something had left me, something had abandoned me. I couldn't understand it, I had no clue what had happened to begin understanding it. Everything should have been fine, Maeve was back where she was supposed to be and Menza had been punished for what she had done. Everything had been set right in the world.

Except it hadn't. I was left feeling like something was still wrong. I couldn't figure out what it was. Maeve was home with me, she was sleeping in her crib. Menza had been punished for what she had done. I half expected that tugging to come back, to hiss at me that I was wrong but there was nothing but silence. From what I had heard, after Stenton had ordered the whelp to leave her there and everyone left, Jason had been the one to take her down and he brought her to her father's house. She had been there since.

I shouldn't have cared where she was, I knew it shouldn't have mattered but that slight possessiveness inside of me wanted me to know where my property was. It had been nearly two weeks and no one but William and occasionally him escorting his female, had left. The whelp and his sister stayed inside, not coming out for anything. I hadn't heard anything and no preparations were being made so I knew she was alive, more than likely healing in their house. I didn't like the thought.

The anger inside of me still burned bright. There was a satisfaction that she had been punished but I was still so angry. I missed so much of Maeve's life. I missed her first tooth, her crawling, her growing. I missed so much and it pissed me off. None of it would have happened if Menza hadn't done what she had. I was fucking angry whenever I thought about it, about her. She stole those two months from me, she stole them and I would never get them back. It made me so fucking angry.

But she was still mine.

The dark and possessiveness inside me surged upwards and I shoved my feet into boots and grabbed my jacket. Maeve would nap for another hour and I would be back well before then. I left the house and stalked across the territory. Half of me wanted to turn around and go home, to not go and see, the other part of me wanted to ensure they knew she was mine and she was to be returned to me, an every other bit of me was so angry it was hard to think.