Thea's Return (Book 2 in the Original SOCIETY Series) ✔

☙7❧

I felt so drowsy when I woke up, and I squeezed my eyes shut from the bright sunlight peering through the window. Frowning, I blinked away the sleep and looked around me. At first I didn't recognize it but then the floral covers on me told me that I was back at my aunt's house in my old room.

My head dropped back onto the pillow, burying my face into its belly as I groaned.

When Maddox said for us to go home, I thought he meant home-home. Not my aunt's house.

Rolling onto my back, i stared up at the ceiling and frowned, thinking about last night. 

Athena outed me about Eli. Sort of. But she put it out in the open that I had a child. No one was supposed to know about him. Not really anyway. Other than Thatcher and my aunt, no one else was supposed to know that I had a child. I was supposedly abiding to the letter Auric wrote me about never mentioning him again.

I groaned into my hands that covered my face before dropping them to the sides and sighed.

The knock on my door was ignored, until three more knocks came after. 

Rolling my eyes, I lazily called for the person to come in. 

Still staring at the ceiling, I heard the door brush across the floor as it opened and then a small, "Thea? Sweetheart, can I come in?"

Aunt Penny slowly made her way over until her face appeared in my vision. I blinked at her weak smile as she asked me how I was feeling.

"Like I was hit by a train," I answered, slowly pushing myself up but then hissed, grabbing my shoulder. I looked at it to see that it was bandaged with a white gauze but it was still painful. Turning to my aunt, I sulked, asking what time it was.

"One-thirty," she replied and I groaned, then widened my eyes when she mentioned that I'd been asleep for three days.

"What!? Three days?"

My aunt nodded, taking a seat beside me with her leg on the edge. She tilted her head, reaching over to caress her fingers on my cheek. She smiled that my bruising was less obvious today, as well as the ones on my neck.

Dropping her hand to her lap, she frowned that I'd been asleep for so long because of the Hunter serum taking its toll on my body.

"Maddox tells me that you locked it away, unlike the others at the Society."

I nodded, explaining that I didn't have a need for it. So I trained myself to get rid of it almost completely.

"I learned that night at the station though..." I started, biting my lip, "I learned that anger triggers it. Or at least a really big threat."

Aunt Penny nodded slowly in understanding, then asked what the threat was.

I sighed, "Eli."

When she looked stunned, I grumbled that I shouldn't have lost it like it did because Athena---the she-wolf that I had been fighting against and her brother---had no idea about where my son was. That she was just getting a rise out of me.

"And then she had to open her mouth and tell everyone that she threatened my 'kid' as she so called him."

I scolded myself out loud that I lost control and that now I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I go back home because of my son.

"He's never seen me that way, Aunt Penny. What am I going to do? I can't stay away from him longer than I already have, that's too long! It took me half a year to lock it up before Eli was born! There's no way I can do that now with Eli being away from me!"