Chapter 28 Morning

Sara took the elevator up to her floor. Her mind was lost in thoughts of a family she had never known. It was hard to speculate about what would have been if her biological mother had lived. 1st of all she didn't know who she was. Had she been Lycan or had her father? Were they both Lycan?

2nd everything she wondered about them made her feel guilty about the Allen's who had loved and raised her. If her birth mom had lived she never would have met the Allen's. There was simply no way to have both lives at once.  The Allen's may have adopted another child and had a much simpler life. A child that didn't hear voices, no separation and visits to the hospital to have a child beg to come home. Her mom wouldn't have died unable to see her little girl one more time.

On auto pilot Sara walked down the hall.

"Hey stranger."

She jerked out of her thoughts to see Sebastian standing by her door.  He leaned his back against the wall and his arms were crossed over his chest. He grinned as her eyes caught him. She returned the smile, pleased that he was there.

"Why are you here, not that I'm not pleased to see you but why?"

He shrugged his shoulder. "I needed to see you." the statement was so simple but the way it made her feel was not.

She bit her lip. "You could have went in. I forgot to lock the door." They both stood there, frozen.

Finally he lifted off the wall. "Come on." he motioned to the door. "I don't think Taron will let me relax until I see you're really okay."

Sara nodded. Evodine had seemed to come to attention at the site of him. She probably wouldn't want him to leave any time soon. So Sara moved forward and opened the door.

"Want some coffee or a drink?" She asked as she crossed into the kitchen.

"Tea if you have it." he said as he took a seat at the bar.

"I made some earlier. It's got a little mint in it." She shrugged a little bit." I got used to drinking mint tea at home and it," she pulled two tumblers from the cabinet above the dishwasher, "taste strange using the bag stuff."

"Thats fine, Sara." he said and paused. Sara heard him shift in his seat as she pulled the jug of cold tea, something she still wasn't used too, from the fridge. "So... You wanna talk about what had you so upset that you had to wolf out for four hours?"

Sara closed the fridge and looked at him. "Four hours? It felt like an hour at most." she went to the counter were the tumblers sat. He spoke as she poured the tea and added ice.

"It can do that sometimes, hours feeling like minutes and when your really absorbed days can feel like hours. Wanna tell me why you needed an escape from reality?"

She thought about it a moment, wondering how she would explain how she had felt. "You know those mimes they have at the fair when you're a kid? They move their hands, tracing an invisible box around themselves. I felt like that only the box felt real and it was getting smaller. It was like there wasn't enough room in my head for all my thoughts."

"What thoughts?"

"My parents, the biological ones. I don't know anything about them. And I wonder if it would have been better for my adopted ones if it wasn't me they ended up with. I have lost every parent i have had, two without knowing them. My biological mother died in an alley. She could have lived but she didn't go to the doctor. Why, why didn't she go to the doctor? Gloria died because of me, you know? That guy was angry at her because of me." she moved about the kitchen, distracted, not looking at him. She focused on one task then another. Pour tea. Add ice. Place tea pitcher in fridge. Open the box of pre-made brownie snacks. Put two on counter, place box in cabinet.  Put tumblers of tea on bar, place brownies beside tea. Sit.

"Don't. Don't do that. Don't accept responsibility for the actions of other people. The only reason Gloria is dead is because he chose to kill her. Dispite Gloria's choices he made choices that effected her."

Sara opened the wrapper around the brownie. Slowly she picked off the bits of walnut on the top of the cream cheese icing. She let his words spin around in her mind but was unable to change her view. It wasn't about being responsible for what he did. It was a simple fact that if she had not been born her biological mother most likely would be alive, Gloria wouldn't have had to protect her from a man that would seek revenge, and her adopted mother would have not been in the crash that killed her but sparred Sara's life. Maybe that was a part of it too. She lived when she should have died in that crash. She should have died in the womb, in that alley, from the fall when she was 4, in that crash, Lonnie should have killed her and not Gloria. She should have been dead many times over but instead it felt like others took her place.

She realized that Evodine was whimpering in her head and looked up to see Sebastian staring at her. She forced a smile and lied. "Maybe your right."

She could see his relief and somehow it made her feel better as well. Her smile shifted to a slightly more real one. "Do you want to watch a movie since we're both awake?"

Sara fell asleep less then twenty minutes into the movie. Sabastian realized she had drifted off to sleep when her head rested on his arm. He didn't want to wake her so he planned to let her sleep deepen before picking her up and moving her to her bed.

The next morning he woke feeling content and stiff at the same time. His neck hurt from resting at an odd angle. He felt a most satisfying weight pressed into the length of  his side and a warm arm rested over his rib cage, draping down over the other side of his body. His arm was wrapped around Sara's back and her leg was thrown over his. He didn't care that his back was pressed into a wooden support of the sofa. A persons body, human or Lycan, was not meant to bend as his currently rested.

Taron preened in his head. He enjoyed the feel of his mate pressed against his side just as much as Sebastian did. Sara shifted and Sebastian almost held his breath not wanting the moment to end. He looked at her face and saw her eye lids flutter. She blinked and her eyes took a moment to focus on his face. She took a deep breath threw her nose. As the breath slide from her lungs she smiled.

"Hey, Stranger." she mumbled sleepily.

He grinned down at her. "Morning. Did you sleep well?" he asked.

Her eyes widened slightly and she scrambled to sit up. "Sorry." Sara said realizing that she was practically laying on top of him.

"Don't be." He told her as he sat up. Muscles protested. He ignored them. "I'm not. I haven't slept that well in weeks." It was true. Dispite the angle he had slept well.