Shards of Sanity (Book 6, Forgotten Series)

Chapter Twenty

A week later

I brushed my teeth, feeling exhausted from the activities of the day. Lilith had wandered off no less than three times today and Shey and Luka had a set back. It had been Luka that hadn't wanted to get out of bed. He had curled up in the dark, refusing to leave the bed, let alone the room. Shey had stayed with him and it had taken them nearly two days to come out, even with May going in and out periodically.

I did think that a lot of the problem had come from the fact Mari, Bennett, and Jackson had gone home. Mari was a huge stabilizing factor in Luka's life, she always had been. So my guess was that her leaving had left Luka feeling uncertain and unbalanced and hit by everything he had been trying to drink away. It left him practically shut down and unwilling to leave their room. I didn't blame him, losing a stabilizing force in your life after something so horrendous had happened would make anyone shut down.

However today was the day that both he and Shey had returned back to their schedule after all that. It had been hard, you could feel their grief and it was hard to be around. It was a dark and heavy cloud that drug you down but they were our Alphas and we needed to be there for them. I knew Kiel had been distracted with Heidi, he had been with her pretty much all the time.

Although for the past two days Heidi had been with Shey and Luka. Kiel had been with her and I knew the entire situation was hard on him even more so than with me. He had been within the emotional turmoil and I had been stuck on the edge. Kiel had left the house early this morning and had only come back when it was Heidi's bed time. I didn't pry into his reasoning, there was no reason for me to do so, I understood him. I hadn't spent years with him to not know how his mind worked.

"Micheal?" Lilith's voice filtered into the bathroom and I finished up brushing my teeth, rinsing out my mouth.

"Yes, Lilith?" I rinsed off my toothbrush, setting it into the holder before wiping my face.

"Where is my blanket?" She sounded so confused and I headed out of the bathroom. She was wandering around the room, looking for her blanket. I knew that it had been washed because she had drug it outside to play with Heidi.

"It was washed." I came into the room and grabbed the laundry basket that sat by the dresser. "We just haven't put anything away yet." I pulled the blanket out from the bottom of the basket and Lilith gave a happy sort of wiggle as I tossed the blanket onto the bed.

"Thanks, Micheal!" She crawled onto the bed, wrapping herself in the blanket so that only her face poked out. I ignored the action, just happy that she was using a blanket and sleeping on the bed properly. I lifted the laundry basket, putting it back before I pulled off my tshirt. I tossed it into the laundry hamper before I walked around, turning on the side lamps and the plugging in the various night lights we had for Lilith. Once those were all on and plugged in, I shut off the main light to the room.

I moved towards the bed and Lilith peeked out at me from her blanket cocoon. "I don't like the dark." She frowned as she said it and I nodded.

"I know, Lilith." There hadn't been a single night we had slept with the lights off and she avoided every single dark place there could have been. I knew how she didn't like the dark. I walked to the bed, pulling back the covers, and getting in. I sighed and rubbed at my forehead. I just wanted to go to sleep and I hoped that the slight headache I had from my exhaustion would disappear.

Lilith shifted on the bed beside me as I pulled my blankets over top of me. "Time for sleep?" At the question I nodded, exhaling heavily.

"It's ten, Lilith and I am tired." I just wanted to sleep and get rid of the headache that was growing in the base of my skull. My wolf huffed at me, covering his snout with his tail. I shoved at him mentally, irritation filtering in that he could just push everything away.