Chapter 29 - New November (Faith POV)Pt.1

Knowing what I did now when I looked back upon my life back on the mountain and the safe house, it's painfully obvious that I hadn't been actually taking care of myself properly. I had panic attacks frequently but I always thought out in the world, there are children, teens that are experiencing this exact same turmoil when one of their parents ventures outside for supplies.

I was wrong, so far from the truth.

Everyone doesn't experience frequent panic attacks when someone they care about leaves the house. So readjusting my norm took some time, I had been working on it for nearly five months, to the point where now I only had panic attacks few and far in between. However the burning in my lungs as I ran, I couldn't be certain if it was from exertion or if I really was in the middle of an episode.

I was having trouble put things in order, or even finding labels to put the problems in at the moment, so when I enter Nova's office, panting, my hair wild, my cheeks probably heated from the run or flushed from the cold, the receptionist eyes me than the clock. While I may have had an appointment that day, it wasn't until after school, a few hours to go.

"Can - can I see - see Nova," panting out, wincing when the burning I was feeling in my throat seemed to manifest into a stinging pain on my arm. Pushing that aside, though, I watched with my chest rising and falling rapidly, as Kelly typed on her computer below and before I could say anything else Nova came out from her actual office, worried.

"Faith? Are you okay?" she asked concerned, "How did you get here?" she looks out of the one-sided glass not spotting Samson's, Ansel's or Kalenah's cars.

"I walked, but then I jogged until I was running," she flitted around her waiting area getting a small cup and filling it with water and coming back to me. "Come let's speak in my office," she murmurs.

Nodding I try to take a step but my legs, calves they all feel tingly and from behind me, "Ilamar Kalenah, por favor informarle de qu la fe está aquí," Nova tells Kelly to inform Kalenah that I'm at her office in Spanish.

Still near Kelly I add, "decirle que no se preocupe sin embargo," tell her not to worry, though, in the same Spanish that Nova spoke to Kelly. Although I knew very well that Kelly spoke English, maybe today they had decided to speak in Spanish... I don't know.

Kelly's eyes widened, and she coughed, while Nova just chuckled although I didn't understand just why. With my shaky legs and disorganized thoughts, I went to the adult session room, sitting in the spot I had since day one.

"I know that you aren't okay, especially since you're here outside of your scheduled time, and before you start speaking, I just want to say that I'm so honored and proud that you didn't run away or isolate yourself, that is very promising."

"Now that I've said that - why don't you tell me what warranted this emergency session?"

Now that I was where I wanted to be, it was like I had lost my ability to speak, "Why don't you just start anywhere Faith, then after we work through whatever you've mentioned..." Nova said calmly, but her eyes betrayed that external calm she was displaying.

"Samson said he likes me-" I stop abruptly. There was one thing that had been on my mind since my big revealing talk with Samson.

Before November 2014 shifters and people like me had to be kept hidden, although now that was still the same case now humans knew that we existed. 

Which were both good and bad.

"Are you like the Conrads?" I asked being unusually coy in my question, but Nova returns a smile in the same fashion.

"I'm not like them, I'm like you Faith," my eyes widened, she was a Fae.

Resting back, "Are you upset?" Nova probes.

"I never asked if you were different before, so I have no reason to be upset with you, you didn't try to deceive me," I replied after a few moments.

Nova nodded before she wrote something down, but since I knew I would never get to read her notes I just went back to what I was saying. "Samson said he was my friend but that he wanted - wished - if he had his way that we would be more than just friends," I repeated the words.

With sharp brown eyes, she was silent, "And that - what did you say?"

Looking away, I shook my head, "that I couldn't be his girlfriend," my shoulders deflated.

"Did Samson ask you to be his girlfriend?" I blinked looking back at her, "So he said he wanted to be more than friends, and you assumed that he wanted you to be his girlfriend from this one revelation?" I opened my mouth to speak, but again no words came out right away.

"But then - then I thought of how he looks at me," I added, but it was a bit weak.

Nova sat forward, "Does he make you feel uncomfortable?"

I shrugged, "Sometimes my stomach feels like it's spinning out of control like it has a - a swarm of bees or flies inside of it."

"Like a stomach ache, painful?"

I shake my head, "I used to have pains like that, though, when Dmitri first started going away, I would worry myself sick, this isn't the same." No, this one made my heart race, made my face get all red, and even with my racing heart, I always felt a gentle, calm wash over me as well.

I didn't mind being alone with him, even though sometimes I still heard Dmitri in my soul. In my minds eyes telling me to be wary of everything around me.

Everyone around me, but with Samson, it was like all those rules, not eating food others prepare for me, being alone in small spaces with them, sharing your inner turmoil and fear with them, they all just evaporated.

"Dmitri said that people in the world were mated to breed the best, I don't remember telling him that," I start with one of the thoughts I was having trouble placing.

"And I can assure you, that is not occurring as far as I know. I don't know everything everywhere, but here, in Bend, in Eugene and Portland and the surrounding areas, I haven't heard of that happening Faith," her eyes sincere but there was a piece of something being held back.

"I want to tell you more about us, and I know you're dealing with a lot, but there are things I know about our ancestry that I want to share with you, you are aware of the supernatural world you now live in?" I nodded unsurely.

She puts her pad and paper down, crossing her legs, "First, there is another realm, it's called Zedwood, and in that realm, only Fae's live there. Full-blooded Faes-"

"Humans?"

Nova shakes her head at my interjection, "Only Faes, now six months ago when the shifter existence was mainstreamed, it also led the way for other supernatural to come forward, which has it's positive and negative impacts."

I nodded having read many of the positives; the main one was now being able to report a shifter as missing, something that couldn't be done before.

"Our kind, we were hunted by vampires, our blood for some of them, can be used as a way to blend into society depending on the type of Vampire. I have know Kalenah for a long time, she was at my undergrad, and we both studied psychology together," I nodded. Kalenah had told me this already, Sonya had studied with her at a Masters level, while Kalenah knew Nova long before.

"So I've known for a while that she is a werecat, specifically, werejaguar-"

"I know that now," Nova smiled, "Of course... but what I was explaining is the topic of mates. Humans don't have predestined mates, matched up... they may fall in love, but it can be with anyone, that they deem right for themselves - and I know I'm over simplifying this. However, werewolves have mates, chosen mates." Samson had mentioned this to me already, and I read it on the internet as well.

"Werejaguars don't have chosen mates, they are like humans..." it was easy to help her along so wanting to know where she was going with this, I helped. And looking down I smiled to myself, I was contributing to the conversation, it was small, but in doing that, it helped greatly in getting me to trust what I knew. Even though it was only the newer things.

When I glanced up at Nova, she had a big smile on her face, and I remembered that she had given me that tool and idea to begin with. It wasn't something that I got to do with everyone especially since Nova, warned me that it would be annoying to always be interrupting someone when they spoke.

"Good job," she murmured, I just looked on with a suppressed grin, all the while I'm proud of my small accomplishment.

"Yes, you're correct Faith, but our kind, we do have mates..." her words make me wonder, she said she's like me, or well I asked, but was she like me wholly or just half? Cynthia is a full Fae, but Samson had already said I wasn't.

"It's not the same as wolves, it's more half and half with humans and werewolves. We get mates when our soul bonds when we reach a level that leaves us changed, but also that person we solidify with as well."

I took a few moments to think and evaluate her words. Unlike werewolves we did have a choice in whom we were drawn too, however once that person altered us, they too had been changed as well. I could see the difference; it was the same life bond as wolves, but choosing? That was left to us in some way? Was that what she was saying? Or had I overreached and changed, flipped and only picked what I thought I wanted to see? My second guessing myself went rampant, with a sort of checks and balance questionnaire.

"Hey - I can tell you're over thinking things over there," she immediately made the thoughts slow down and come to a halt.

"What are you thinking? What's giving you problems?" her voice calm, she was ever patient with me.

I sighed heavily.

"There are so many thoughts going through my head at any time, even now, with what you're saying nothing is pushed aside for it, I'm still thinking about what Samson revealed to me. I'm thinking about what I? I'm half Fae... but what else? Why can't Samson and his family tell by my scent? And then, that is the gateway back to why was Dmitri hiding me? I mean why never let me go outside, I know - well I don't know that he was protecting me, but I think he was. So then I try to fit the pieces I have together, for whatever Dmitri continued on with the false statements I told him, for years..." I inhaled deeply, as more fell out.

"But then," the 'n' exaggerated.

I snort at how much like Amy I sounded at that moment.

"I learn that Shifters and all supernatural had to hide away, keep who they really are outside of public knowledge and then it makes sense why he hid me," Nova gazes at me as my voice shakes. Things hadn't changed overnight, and I still held some burning inside when I thought of what Dmitri did, but there was another part of me that wondered if I had asked him to keep me inside?

Was I so far brainwashed from wherever he found me that I was adamant about staying inside? But it that question always led to the next one, 'why couldn't I remember?' Nova had touched on this subject frequently explaining over and over, and after a month, I could honestly say I was still confused.

From her professional standing point, I had repressed memories.

From my opinion? I remembered a voice of a man, but it wasn't a memory... it was more like watching projections in my mind. And the man speaking... well he didn't seem to be talking to anyone else but myself. I couldn't trust what was in my head, not when it felt like what was there wasn't good. Wasn't something I'd like?

Two finger taps and I blink returning to Nova, to this session, out of my mind once again, "Roaming mind again?" I nodded there was no point in hiding it.

"Okay well let's discuss Dmitri first," swallowing I waited.

"I - we, you and I - can never definitively say why Dmitri did what he did, or even if you remember it clearly as of now because your memories are coming back. Faith, as I've already stated, you may not get some of them back at all-"

"I hear some memories, or maybe I'm seeing them, that aren't my own..." I blurted out, and Nova's eyes widened.

"Can you explain more?" she says after a moment, her eyes serious, interested.

I'm not sure how she knew, but just knowing that I could reveal anything, that nothing I was experiencing would be too 'weird' or so far out of normal that I could tell her, was so - so much. I didn't even have the words to explain how it felt to have that little place where I could go to, explain. But what I liked about leaving Nova's office was I always felt somewhat lighter.

"Well, I had a...vision... projection?" I stumbled on what the right word to use, looking to Nova for help.

"Was it in the future? Or was it something in the past you believe?"

I rested back thinking for a moment, concentrating on how Cynthia looked in the images I saw, to the woman in the kitchen. "Cynthia looks older now than in the-"

"Projection," she interjected.

"Visions are of the future?" I asked with a smile, but Nova just shrugged so I just continued, "Well Cynthia is younger, she points down to her stomach and says she doesn't want this baby, and the man, he's dark skinned, he just looks on. She accuses him of tricking her?" I find that I'm ending the statement more like a question like Nova was inside of my head and able to even tell the difference.

"Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of. His voice I keep hearing him say random words, but when I start to hear him, it's like - like ripples of sound or - or a boomerang of it," I stammer. "I don't receive it like this: 'my name is,' the words aren't fluent-" Was I explaining this correctly? "They sound like an echo of rippled sound. His lips are moving, but I just hear the worst screeching noise I've ever heard. Typically it feels like I'm being pricked inside my brain. I have to be in complete silence and darkness because the heaviness in my head is unbearable during and after."

I leave out that when Cynthia points down to her swollen belly, she's probably talking about me. She didn't want me. Felt tricked.

"But you don't remember meeting the man?" I'm already shaking my head before she actually finishes the sentence. "I don't remember or have projections of Cynthia outside of the room we were in when I'm younger. Those don't bring me pain to see, but these, I'm with the man, his voice or even just a fragmented picture in my mind and I'm in pain."

Nova rests back, her lips pursed perplexingly. "Hmmm," she the hum low. Remaining contemplative, her eyes seem to be staring off at something behind me. "I think - I'm not at all sure about this, and I won't speak to anyone outside of this office, this room even, about what you're telling me. However, I don't think you remember those moments on accident. I think I'm not at all sure, but I've heard from my mother that there is a man in Zedwood – the Fae realm, the best at what he does."

What does he do? I wondered while she became more animated.

"He can imprint memories, moments, information into someone's mind..." So that wasn't the most bizarre thing I had heard at this point.

"So you think I was in... in that realm place? Zedwood?" she slowly shakes her head from side to side, her face pinched.

"Half-breeds aren't allowed back-"

"What?"

"I don't know much, but I know that some may come here on purpose but not very many still do that to this day. The leaders in Zedwood sent Fae's here as punishment..." I'm not sure what is wrong with me, but when those words leave Nova's mouth, I'm throwing my head back, laughing until my gut hurts.

"As punishment?" I finally choke out, but Nova is looking at me seriously, her face unreadable.

"If you have more than one child in Zedwood, they send you here, or you can give up your baby to a royal, and they spend their lives as maids, which are considered the equivalent to slaves. They do what they want with that child, and you just have to go along with it. If you try to hide your baby - the first one - and they find out? You're immediately sent here. If you know you're pregnant, go to the council and tell them, you can either give up the child you already have. The second option is you give up the one you're currently carrying when he or she is born," and just like that, it was like she threw a bucket of cold water over me because I was instantly chilled to the bone.

"And you just stay here?"

"Where they know that Fae's are hunted," she finished.

I suddenly had a bad taste in my mouth, and I just couldn't believe - fathom what she was saying, "So can Fae's go back?"

"That is another thing... the portable used to travel, they can only do it twice, and no humans, shifters of any kind or half-blood are welcomed back."

I nodded, my head full of new and old things now, "So I would never have been there... and this man or person that could do what you're saying, he wouldn't be here? Right?"

She nods distracted, "But you may be a descendant Faith..." and yet still that doesn't tell me much. I couldn't have been in Zedwood, or crossed paths with this person, but I had memories, no projections, that weren't my own.

"I know you're frustrated but what I'm saying is, that without knowing where you came from, we can't tell exactly why this is happening to you, and even then the supernatural world is such a fickle place Faith." She was telling me?

"You have to understand that many more times than not, things will happen to us our kind or any supernatural and there is no science behind it, no way to explain what we are saying away. So while it may be unnerving, drive you mad - you may need to just make peace and move one because there is nothing else you can do." With those words, the pressure I feel with her admittance is a bit heavier.

Still I have no other option, I have to see her points as she's made them. There may very well be things I never remember, or never place in the truth, false or never actually happened pile.

"Now that is cleared up... let's go back to Samson..." I glance at the clock surprised to see that it's actually the time for my regularly scheduled session to begin.

"I was telling you about our form of mates-"

"Are you saying that Samson is my mate?"

"No one can say for sure Faith, he could be, he may not be, but you have to open up to find out. That's if you want to Faith," she tells me.

"Samson wants too," the words murmured.

Nova nods slowly but then she leans forward, her eyes focused, "That's good for Samson, but if that's not okay for you, then that should be fine with him too."

"His reveal alarmed you, but it seems to me that he just wanted to make his intentions clear, not blindside you later down the road. You said that you told him you couldn't be his girlfriend," I nodded my face suddenly red, my stomach in tumbles.

"Although Samson didn't ask you to be his girlfriend Faith," I nodded at a point she's touched from the beginning of our session that day.

With her not so indulgent smile, though, I knew she had more to say on the topic. "But I want to know why you replied the way you did, even though that wasn't what he asked, I want to discuss what brought out that response." See? I saw that was coming.

"There are many reasons," it's a vague response. One that doesn't please Nova so she just remains silent, one brow lifted, waiting for me elaborate.

"First, I thought that he had been mated with Taylor because she gave the impression that she was interested in him and would glare at me. Then I thought maybe it was Devin, but she's with Brennan... now though there are other girls that when I'm in school with him, I notice them looking at him, acting like how Taylor does. He has many girls that want to be his mate."

"They might want to be, but what matters if whether he wants one of them or not. Like how it only matters if you have feelings for him, you're not going to be with someone Faith, because it pleases one person, relationships should be balanced."

I nod, a bit smug because she just itemized my next point, "It's not only what I said first, but it's also what you just explained. I have such a warped mentality that I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone, much less someone nice like Samson. I feel like we're on two different pages, but when he actually pays attention or finally does I should say..."

"I feel like he's going to realize sooner or later that we are on two different pages, in two separate books."

"You mean because you lack in social experiences and skills?" blunt and truthful.

"Yes."

"Okay, what else?"

Swallowing the lump in my throat, "Everyone's always leaving me," I shrug a shoulder aiming for nonchalance, "I don't want to have Samson get closer to me and leave me too."

"So basically you want him to promise you undying love, as well as promises to never leave you or hurt you in any way, shape or form?" Nova "You want him to be perfect, the epitome of tabula rasa?"

Tabula rasa - a blank slate - I knew what it meant.

"You're both so young Faith, you're both learning who Fatima is, you more so than Samson because of how you grew up to this point. To the place, you are now, but when you were on your way here, afraid did you consider that maybe Samson was feeling nervous as well? Or confused and maybe even a bit frightened?"

No... I hadn't thought of any of that, and Nova knows it as well.

"You know how we have those times where you don't see the point from all sides, well this is one of those points. Do you know the insecurities that you have, other do as well? Even though they haven't endured or walked in your shoes."

"So I have to tell you that while I don't know if this is how Samson felt, or what he was thinking, but it couldn't have been easy for him to say those words to you in my own opinion. Not because you're something to be ashamed of, or because you aren't what he feels or deems worthy of his attention so he's thinking over if he wants to actually expel those words from his mind."

"But because coming forward like that, putting yourself on the line takes a lot of courage, and though you may see his external reaction, without in fact speaking to him, you'll never get to see what was on the inside."

I couldn't be sure if Nova was speaking the truth. However she was somewhat saying what I saw on the outside, he was confident when he said those words. "He knows about your past and for him to still lay his feelings out there was tough, instead of answering 'can't be your girlfriend,' you could've said 'I'm not interested in being your girlfriend..."

Tilting my head to the side, I wondered for a brief moment if Nova ever got tired of being correct. It wasn't a malicious thought in the least, but still she had a confronting yet gentle side to her approaches. And right now, I could almost sense where she was going with this, what she would say next, "You think I should just talk with Samson," I stated.

"Yes. You take the time to think about what he said if you need too, then speak with him..." Her final words on the topic, we discussed a few more things - school, had I made any new friends? - all while at the same time I was counting down to when I'd be done with our session, able to get home to my computer and look up 'how to be a girlfriend.'

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© 2016 roxann_season All Rights Reserved

hey all... so today was a rollercoaster and I had meant to update sooner but here you all are. 

anyways, I'm entering Loving Ashlynn in the Watty2016 so please vote, comment and share this story if you'd like to see it win. So Vote on every chapter, comment if you've enjoyed it even if that's all you're saying. I do love hearing from you guys and I'm always reading them :) 

Brennan POV coming up.