The Princess & The Queen

Chapter 18

Ava's P.O.V.

'Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP!' Fuck, what does Charlie want, can't she see I'm sleeping here? "What Charlie?" 'Knock on door, multiple in fact' I swear if this isn't Liam or Oli I am going to be pissed, and if it is them they better have a good reason for waking me up. Charlie and I walk over to the door, and when I open it, Liam is standing there. Once he sees me looking at him he signs good morning. Wait, he signed? He signed! "I'm sorry that I can only say good morning, but I woke up an hour ago and have been practicing so I could surprise you." Just then Oli came up behind him, "Which reminds me, first thing on my to-do list today is to get Liam and I signed up for ASL classes." 'Wow. They really aren't going to let us die are they Ava?' I roll my eyes at my sister. "Are you two fighting still?" Oli asks, seeing my eye roll. "No, just Charlie being Charlie. Let us get ready and we will join you and your families for breakfast?" "Will you two be okay on your own? I wouldn't want Charlie to trip." Liam says. 'I'm sure he wouldn't mind me tripping if I wasn't connected to you' 'Charlie! Enough, he is my mate and you said some hurtful things to me yesterday, so of course he is going to be a little prickly with you. Oli would do the same for you if the roles had been reversed.' 'Maybe' I am seriously going to give her a piece of my mind once I can dismiss these gentlemen. "Charlie and I will be fine, and if we are not, I'm sure your wolf ears would hear our distress. We should be down in about twenty or so minutes." And with that they take their leave. 'Charlie!' 'What? What could you possibly have to yell at me for now miss high and mighty Luna.' 'Maybe? Maybe Oli would have done the same for you? Charlie we have been learning about the mate bond since pre-school. You know as well as I do that Oli would bend heaven and Earth for you. And once we have our surgery, and get our wolves, you will feel the same. We aren't in Crescent Moon anymore Charlie. This is our home, it's where we have been destined to be since our birth. Things will be different here. Look at Liam and Oli's families. Once they learned of our past, they didn't push us away, they enveloped us more. We have been here two days and they have been nothing but patient and kind. Charlie, it was okay to have your walls up back in Crescent Moon, but you need to start demolishing it. I know it will take time, you've been building that wall since we were four, but I will be here for you every step of the demolition. So will Oli, and Liam will come around, promise.' I don't hear anything from my sister for a long time, and if I didn't know better I'd think she'd of shut off the link and that long speech would have been for nothing. But the barrier isn't there, she heard every word, and I will give my sister the time she needs to process my words. "Take all the time you need sis, but we should get ready for the day" I get a thumbs up, and we get ready.

We made it. We are standing outside the kitchen door, and I know Liam and Oli were on high alert since the moment they left our door, but we managed. Charlie pushed the door open, and we took what would become our normal seats. "Good morning Charlie. Good morning Ava." was the chorus response we got from both families once taking our seats. "Good morning" we reply together. I still feel weird having breakfast prepped and waiting for us at the table. For fourteen years I have been making our plates, but now my plate sits here in front of me, piled high with blueberry waffles (my favorite), a fruit salad, sausage, and some white toast with grape jelly. Charlie's plate has strawberry waffles, fruit salad, but there is melon(what we've only been here two days?), bacon in place of sausage, and toast with strawberry jelly. I quickly pick the melons out of her fruit salad, and give her some of my strawberries as replacement. "What she doesn't like melon?" Liam jokes. "I'm allergic actually. Only thing that can send me to the pack hospital faster than our first shift is melons." Charlie says back, chuckling a little. I chuckle too, because that is what we always said about our food allergies. "Well how would you know if your bad pack doctor didn't help you?" asks little Lexi from her end of the table. "That's a very good question Lexi. It was the same day Miss Franny found out I was deaf and Charlie was blind."

"When we were four, Charlie and I got into a fight and we found out we could 'tune each other out'" "By shutting off your mind link!" Olive shouts. "Exactly," I continue with the story, "as I said, we tuned each other out. Well, Charlie's world went black, she couldn't see anything, and it scared her. She started screaming and crying, but I didn't know because I couldn't hear. Miss Franny came running over to us wanting to know what was wrong." "I could hear her, but I couldn't see her," Charlie took over, "I kept saying 'it's dark, it's dark'. Ava sat there with her arms crossed, turned away from me. Miss Franny was calling out to her, thinking she was ignoring her. It wasn't until she tugged on her arm, and startled Ava, that Ava found something out too. She couldn't hear anything. She started pointing at her ears saying 'nothing! nothing!'" Everyone at the table was listening to our every word. We were like a movie to them, but not in the disrespectful way that our old pack used to treat us. They listened because they wanted to understand, not because they wanted to make fun of us. "Miss Franny, knowing that the pack doctor couldn't help," I started telling the story again, "put us in her car and drove us to the neighboring pack, risking getting in trouble. But she had to know what was wrong with us, and she couldn't take us to the human hospital, they'd ask too many questions, maybe even take us into custody. We arrived at Crystal Lake's border, Charlie and I had fallen asleep due to our panic. Miss Franny was questioned, but she pleaded, and we were allowed on their lands for medical treatment." "Their pack doctor asked many questions, which Franny told the truth, and lied. 'Why are they conjoined?' 'They can't be separated, to risky' 'Why come here and not your pack doctor?' 'They can not be seen by our pack doctor today' So on and so on. So Crystal Lake's doctor ran a series of tests and discovered I was blind, Ava was deaf, I was allergic to melons, and Ava is allergic to..." "Fish." I say finishing the story