Blood Bride

Chapter Sixteen: Like Father, Like Daughter

TOBIAS left with the same silence he had come in with, leaving Jon alone with Ophelia. He watched her. Occasionally her face would scrunch in distress, her fingers twitching and her body squirming.

He wasn't sure if it because she was in a questionable amount of pain, or because she was engulfed in another nightmare.

The strokes of his fingers through her knotted locks were drawn away when her cell phone began to ring vociferously in her backpack, causing her to sit up in a fright. She clutched her chest, wincing when the bruises punished her for moving rapidly.

In her heaving breaths, she looked around anxiously, her white knuckles clutching the sheets around her.

"Shh. It's alright, go back to sleep." Jon whispered, standing up and guiding Ophelia back onto her pink cased pillows. She stared up at him with wild eyes, grabbing his bicep as he guided her to lie down.

The phone still rang wildly, causing irritation to crawl under his skin like an unwanted itch.

The piercing ring was giving him a slight headache due to his sharp hearing, yet he still patiently waited for Ophelia to relax in her bed, so he could drape the covers over her. In a slow, he drew the light sheet over her and tucked it against her side.

Her lids shielded her chestnut orbs once more, returning to sleep's embrace.

Once he was assured she was sleeping again, he turned his attention to her bag, rifling through her pens and pencils until he found the phone. He cupped his hand over the speaker and left the room, easing the door shut behind him. He then checked to see who was calling.

Marissa.

"What does this lunatic of a child want?" He grumbled sliding his finger across the screen and answering her call.

He hadn't gotten a word out before she began spewing words.

"Ophelia! Where the hell did you go?! You left me. Again. Listen Pheli, I don't know who you think you are-" Jon cleared his throat and begun to walk towards his study.

"Good evening Marissa, hello to you as well."

At first, she was stunned into silence, not expecting the voice on the other end.

"Where's Ophelia?" She growled, regaining her voice. Jon chose his words carefully since Marissa was enraged with Ophelia for leaving their little get-together. Jon knew that Ophelia valued their friendship, so just this once, he would talk lowly of himself.

"Asleep. She's punished, hence why she left your presence earlier this evening. I forced her to come home and took her phone away."

"What for?! She called you and let you know where she was going like the little lap puppy she is!" Marissa shrilled.

Jon pulled an excuse out of thin air.

"Because I told her to be home at a specific time, and she was not. She deliberately disobeyed me. Any more questions?" Jon pushed open the door to his study and shut it behind him, moving towards his desk.

"You're a real asshole. I knew you weren't the nice guy she said you were. You're a cruel creature like the rest of them! You're lucky you're not in my grasp or I would have-"

Jon then hung up the phone mid-sentence and set it down near his pile of papers.

He sighed heavily, the amount of preparations still needed for the war dizzying him.

His hands rested against the polished wood of his desk, eyeing plane tickets he had Everly purchase earlier in the afternoon since Jon could not be out in sunlight. He didn't want the tickets to be sold out and then need to wait months for new tickets, so he needed to purchase them early. Africa, Cambodia, New York, and England. Parts of each place he planned to conquer as his own.