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

Chapter Thirty-Six

I was drunk but it certainly wasn't helping anything. My head was swimming, my focus was shot to shit, but I wasn't numb and I was still thinking. It had been five weeks since Menza and Maeve had been gone. Another week had passed with no sign of either of them and all I had left at the moment were my thoughts and they weren't good. I wanted the anger I usually felt but all I felt in my drunken stupor was sadness and worry. Sadness that the fact I was missing Maeve and worry that it had been so long since we had any sign, the longer they were gone the more I believed that they might not be coming back at all.

Jason said he thought she had been hurt. Like that the rogue hurt her.

The words haunted me. Worried me. What if Jason was correct? What if the rogue had hurt her? What if she had been injured and then chased? What if she had been taken? What if, right now, she was being abused, hurt, or assaulted? What if right now she was dead? The thoughts made my stomach churn. Menza wasn't a strong female, she couldn't fight a shifter off, I doubted she could fight a mundane male off. If the rogue took her, if they had her, she couldn't survive that.

Then the idea of the river haunted me. If she was chased by those two rogue and she went to the river and she went in to try and get away. She could have drowned, her and Maeve both. The thought made my wolf whine in anxiety and worry and I felt it deep down into my core, it saturated my bones with a form of panic I wasn't even able to recognize. The thought that they went into the rive and never came out, that they drowned that day and I would never know. That their bodies were discarded or eaten by predators, not to be found by anyone. Bones carelessly tossed aside, never to rest together.

That tugging inside me urged me to get up, that it was okay but it wasn't. I wanted the anger because the anger was better than this. This aching sort of panic at the thought that they were dead and there was nothing I could do to find them. That in my anger, I had let Stenton guide me away from searching for them myself, that I had lost valuable time finding them and bringing them home.

I closed my eyes and exhaled long and slow, the dizziness I had from the alcohol swirling me around and around and around. I had no focus and my perspective was all fucked up but I had no one to talk to about it. The pack was all over the board with what they thought and I didn't wan to get into any discussions about it. I just hated that the insidious little thoughts were creeping in. The thoughts that said Menza was innocent, that I had it all wrong but how could I?

The rogue had said he helped her, then Getts pretty much confirmed it. She had been upset after that night, she had been and pressure made people act in ways they might not have normally. She never should have left the craft hall that day, there was no reason for her to. I know Simon said she finished the quilt and it had been brought home but she should have stayed. For all I knew she had let her brother know to take back before she was supposed to run off with him but then the plans changed when the rogues attacked.

That tugging inside me grew to an unbearable and angry cramp as it told me I was fucking stupid, hissing at me with something that felt like irritation and agitation. I tried hard to ignore it. We didn't know how it happened but it was a possibility. Just like it was a possibility she had been working towards sex with me that night. It wasn't too far fetched to think that she had half a mind to try and seduce me. The cramping grew worse, causing a painful knot in my stomach as that whisper hissed at me that I was beyond fucking stupid and I tried harder to shove it away before I opened my eyes.

I had to get out.

I shoved myself off the couch, setting my feet as everything swirled around inside me and the dizziness threatened to send my face first int the floor. I held my hands out, my one hand still clamped tightly around the neck of the bottle of bourbon I had been drinking. I staggered to the front door and left the house. I couldn't stand it in there, it was so quiet and it made the absence of Maeve and Menza that much more apparent. She was a quiet female bu her presence had it's own mark, one that was noticeable when it was gone.