With that command Natalia walked out of the bedroom grabbing her shoes, shirt, and jacket as she went.
Kenneth took a few moments to quell his anger. How dare she even try doing what she did last night? He had taken her as his mate but right now he felt as little for her as he did his students. This lesson would teach her to never try that little stunt again.
He got up from the bed and walked downstairs. The darkness of night was already filling his house and his thoughts. He had to get back to Ansuya. But first he had to fortify himself and he prepared a double portion of blood. He was still fuming at what Natalia had done to him but the blood seemed to calm his body and focus his mind on what his true goal was. Tonight was when he found out just how far this new leverage against Ansuya’s mind would get him.
He drained his thermos flask and sat down in his chair. Tonight, he would try a different approach. Tonight, he resettled his mind into the by now familiar patterns of the elder werewolf’s mind and awakened her mind inside his dream world.
She was disoriented. She awoke stiff necked and cold on the sidewalk where he had left her yesterday evening. Her blouse was still torn and her abdomen now showed a deep red scab that covered her gash across her midsection. Her clothes were now splotched red with her blood.
He felt her slowly get up and look around. The dawn was coming quickly to the world and she felt very exposed. The light of the sun was just peeking over the houses around her and already the neighborhood was showing signs of life. A boy rode by on his bicycle gaping at her wounds and clothes. It was just a simple believable reaction from a small child.
Ansuya’s mind reeled from it. She turned away from the street and tried to bundle the tattered remains of her clothes in her arms, to protect her wound from the seeing world. She was very unbalanced and Kenneth decided that another little nudge was called for.
Ansuya leaned heavily on the picket fence that she had gashed herself on the previous night. She didn’t seem to be able to walk without its aid. The front door of the house to which the fence belonged opened and out stepped a handsome older man with shoots of white hair at his temples.
The man stopped and stared at the struggling woman as she tried to hurry past the house. Kenneth smiled as the man cried out, “Miss, are you alright? You’re bleeding?!”
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Ansuya was only able to mutter, “I’m fine…just…just a little…”
“No Miss, you are not fine.” He rushed out onto the lawn and reached out for her. “Please come inside and clean yourself up. You can use my phone to get help. Please, let me help you.”
Ansuya’s face was hot coal red, even through her brown skin, and she shook her head.
“Look you can hardly walk, please tell me what happened. I can help you.” There was genuine concern in the man’s face and voice and that seemed to only deepen Ansuya’s anguish.
“You don’t understand; please just…just leave me alone!” She pushed off the fence and starting running. Her legs in this world were not empowered by the moon and she tired quickly, succumbing to what it would be like for an ordinary girl.
The woman stumbled to a halt, her abdomen on fire with the exertion and the pain only growing worse as she tried to catch her breath. Her hair was matted with dew and grass and dirt. Her hands were stained with blood and now dirt and sweat and the only thing her mind could focus on was how concerned that man had sounded for her. All because of her stupid mistake, her stupid slip of her tired body. Why had she run? What did she hope to gain? These questions were all irrelevant, and the pain of her body muddled her thinking.
She had to get off the sidewalk; she couldn’t bear if another person saw her like this. How would her mother react to seeing her like this? The thought came unbidden and unwanted to her teetering mind. Why had she thought that? She hadn’t thought about her mother since…since…she couldn’t remember when the last time she saw her mother.
Her mind couldn’t handle the reality of her situation and tears started falling from her brown eyes. She knelt down in a yard behind a bush and silently wept.
She didn’t know why she was crying, but she was. Her world had become so backwards lately. She had trouble focusing her mind on anything. Where was she? Where did she live? She couldn’t grasp even those simple things that everyone knew. The thought of her mother and the lost memory of seeing her last was particularly difficult to come to terms with. She could see her beautiful brown face, elegant it its structure. Her softly shaded pink lips, her brown eyes titled at the corners, those eyes that once held such compassion and beauty for her, now looking down on her with scorn and disgust.
Ansuya looked down at her spoiled clothes and her mother of her memories scoffing at her for allowing her teachings to go completely unheeded. In the youth of her life, her mother would have nothing but scorn for her in such a state, weak, helpless, disgraceful. She tried to reach out to her mother, to touch her full gently curling hair that always seemed to perfectly frame her beautiful face. But there was no comfort from her mother now and even the memory of her mother turned her back on her, leaving her to wallow in her own shame and grief. Her mind cried out for her mother to come back. The memory only faded from her, shunning her.
She wept openly now. She didn’t care. There was nothing for her here, she had destroyed everything there ever was for her and there was no going back. Even her mother…the woman in her memory had been wearing a red and gold sari. Ansuya immediately stopped crying and stood up.