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[attr="class","ctopline"]Sleep baby sleep

[attr="class","cscriptwolf"]what are you waiting for?

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[attr="class","clyrics"]The morning's on its way[break]
You know it's only just a dream

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[attr="class","cbody"]She had not thought that she was going to get out of there alive. There were several times when she wasn’t even sure that she wanted to. Her life since she had been turned into a werewolf had been complicated, there was no doubt about that. It had been hard. There had been times when she thought it would have been better if that werewolf had killed her that night. Times when she thought it certainly would have been a lot better for everyone in her life if it had. They would all be a lot better off for it.
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There were times when the guilt over what had happened to her sister was so all-consuming that she couldn’t feel anything else. She might not have laid a finger on her, she might not have told her to come out with her into the forest that night, but she was still the reason that she was dead. That was just reality. If she had stayed home that night, like she was supposed to… if she hadn’t snuck out, then Hayden would still be alive. She was dead not because of the choices that she had made that night, but because Shelby had made those choices first. And for the past month, hell, almost two months apparently, there had been plenty of bad days. Plenty of days where she knew that this was what she deserved after everything that had happened. Days when she didn’t even want to survive—when it felt like dying would be much easier.
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It was self-deprecating, it was morbid, it was a million other things, and it was in the past. She needed it to be in the past. It had not even been a week since she had woken up in a forest, instead of that basement. She had been confused, too weak to move, and then the sun had started to go down. It was then that she realized that it was a full moon. Shelby had no way of knowing if this was a vast forest or if she was close to people, but she knew that she couldn’t try to put more space between her and civilization even if it was nearby. She couldn’t even bring herself to move.
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And the next time she had woken up, she had not been back in that basement, she had not been out in that forest. Instead, she had been inside of a house. It was familiar, but not. She had been to Contessa’s house before, but she had never stayed there, so a bedroom was unfamiliar territory. She hadn’t realized that was where she was until she’d seen Tess.
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That had been three days ago now, and she had still not left the farmhouse. It wasn’t that she was necessarily still in horrible shape. She knew that she would have been, if the pack hadn’t found her. She didn’t have a wand or any idea where she was. She did not know much healing magic, and she didn’t know how much was wrong with her. Shelby did know that there was no way that Contessa had been able to heal her completely. From her injuries from the full moon, sure. From the visible injuries that her kidnapper had inflicted. But so much more had happened than was just on the surface.
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Shelby didn’t know why they had even let her go. As far as she was aware, they hadn’t found the answers that they were looking for. They didn’t know why she was immune, why werewolves were immune. Not as far as Shelby remembered anyway. If that answer had been found, then her kidnapper had kept that information to herself or it had happened while she had been unconscious. She supposed she couldn’t know for sure. Just like she wasn’t sure if she was even relieved to be alive, at this point. Shelby didn’t even know what to think.
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But she knew that she couldn’t hide around here forever. She had to go back home. She had no idea what she would find when she got there. No idea what kind of signs of struggle had been left behind after her abduction. Likely none, since Tess hadn’t even known that she was gone. Werewolves were flight—she was flightly. Even Gray probably hadn’t even realized she was gone. Her landlord had probably thrown out all of her stuff and rented out her apartment already. She had no idea at all what she was going back to.
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She did know that she should get out of bed today. Probably, anyway.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]763 ● @contessa ● can't resist using this picture when she looks like crap | borrowed from tess outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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SLEEP BABY SLEEP

what are you waiting for?

THE MORNING'S ON ITS WAY

There was a system. They were struggling with the wolfsbane, and she knew that it wasn’t as great as it had been before, but she was getting better at it. Isobel was helping her, and she was guiding her through all of the magical processes that needed to be done. It was worth it though, for her pack. They were her family. She would take care of them at all costs, and that was simply the way that it had been since she had come to England. Since she come looking for a completely different family. But that family did not need her. And this one did.

This was the family that she was supposed to have found. She was their Alpha. Their mother. Their sister. Their friend. She was family. To all of them. And she was proud of the fact that they could all come here and know that she was going to support them. That she was going to help them. Tess had been in England for a long time now, and she had established this as a sort of safe haven for those that she came across. Zero had been sent here from America, much like she had been. But they were not the only American implants.

Jaxon was from the States too. And she didn’t think that she had really been looking for him when that had happened. But she was happy with the way that it was going. She had gotten to meet Renzo. And she knew how special that was for Jax. They had talked about kids. More than once now. And she knew how much he loved his son. She had her family, and he had his. Their packs were not forced to be around one another, for more reasons than they could really explain. What they were… What Jaxon was. She would never betray that.

It was not her place to reveal that to anyone. He had a reputation to maintain. He had a life that he had to be present for outside of all of this. There was still a terrible reputation that came with what they were. And she had long ago learned to embrace that. Being a werewolf was a curse, yes, but it was no different than any other ailment that one might have. Psoriasis, in a much more dangerous form. Tess followed a philosophy that played far more into who she was, and where she had come from, than it did the modern world.

Her traditions and beliefs helped her to accept who she was. She was a daughter of the ni wo di. She was her mother’s daughter. And that was all that mattered. The Great Spirits had chosen this path for all of them. Whether those that were of a different belief chose to view things from her perspective or not, Tess believed in those things with all of her soul. That she was a daughter of the Great Spirits. That she had been called to this path, because she was supposed to do more. She was supposed to be a guide, a mother, a leader, for all of those around her.

And yes, she was young. Younger than a lot of her own pack. But she was still their Alpha. She had earned that place amongst them. And they respected her for it. When they had found a rogue wolf in the woods the other night, they had responded as they had been told to. They had subdued, and they had waited it out. Tess made sure that her lands were protected, and safe during the full moon. If they weren’t then how was she supposed to protect her pack? She had to. That was her job.

The howls had led her to them, the far eastern portion of the forest that belonged to her. Far from the riding trails, and yet, when she had seen what was there, she had asked them to wait, and she had gone back to the barn. She had saddled her mare, and she had ridden back on horseback to get her. The boys had lifted her up into Tess’s arms, and she had brought her back here, to the house. It was all that she could do at first. Bring here her, clean her up.

The medicines that she had given her, paired with the spells, and the potions, she was healing, though slowly. Carrying a pitcher of iced tea, and a plate of molasses cookies, she pushed the door to the guest room open with her hip. “Hey, feeling any better?” Her voice was quiet, she didn’t want to startle her. That wouldn’t do any good for the herbs that she had pressed to some of the spots that she had wanted to try and heal a little more naturally. But they were rather secure. She wasn’t going to let her lie around at risk of them falling off at any moment.

@ shelby • 827 • contessa's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]SLEEP BABY SLEEP

[attr="class","cscriptwolf"]what are you waiting for?

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[attr="class","clyrics"]THE MORNING'S ON ITS WAY[break]
YOU KNOW IT'S ONLY JUST A DREAM

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[attr="class","cbody"]She didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know if her kidnapper had meant to let her go or not. It sounded ridiculous, but she just didn’t know why they would have just let her go after two months. Maybe they had just wanted her out of their hair for the full moon and they’d had every intention of finding her the next morning and bringing her back to wherever she’d been staying. Maybe they were out searching the woods even as she thought about it. There was no way of knowing for sure. Shelby just knew that she’d woken up in the forest before the full moon had risen in the sky, and there had been nobody else around.
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Maybe it had been intentional. Maybe they had given up on finding what they had wanted from her. Or maybe they had found it, and she just didn’t know it. It wasn’t like she was a healer or a person that knew anything about the human body. Maybe they’d gotten what they wanted out of her from one of the many tissue and skin samples they’d taken over the past couple of months. Maybe cutting her open had some purpose other than to cause her excruciating pain. But if they had gotten their answers, then why hadn’t they just killed her? Why let her live at all?
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That was the main reason she thought that it might have been some kind of mistake. Maybe they’d lived nearby and the forest she’d been dropped in originally was on their property. Maybe she’d just run further than anticipated and got out of their grasp. But that didn’t fully make sense either. If they wanted her out of the way for the full moon, there were ways to do that without letting her loose and risking her getting away. They could have warded a small area of a forest, surely. They could have went the old-fashioned way and chained her to a tree. Either one of those options would have gotten her out of their way for the full moon but would have ensured that she was still there the next morning.
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Shelby knew that Tess had a lot of land. What she didn’t know was what stopped other people from getting onto it. If someone really was looking for her, they should be keeping an eye on things, probably. Make sure that people weren’t snooping around that shouldn’t be. But she knew that she couldn’t really expect anybody else to do that for her. It was just something that she should probably suggest herself—and then she could see if she could manage to drag herself out of the house for long enough to check up on things. The last thing that they needed was the person who had abducted her coming across land where a pack of werewolves lived. Not that she thought that any one person was powerful enough to take on all of them—or even a group of them. But if they knew about this place, how hard would it be to pick off one werewolf at a time that wasn’t with a group? It would be easy for them to find more subjects to experiment on, and they couldn’t have that happening.
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The least that she could do was try to figure out how to help with that, but she knew that she’d have to leave the house for that. Since she had gotten here a couple of days ago, she hadn’t so much as gone outside, but she knew that couldn’t last forever. She should probably even just try to get outside once today, if she could manage it. It just sounded like a hell of a lot of work, and she wasn’t entirely sure that she was up for it.
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She had just been thinking about the odds of managing to make it outside when the door to the room swung open and Tess came into sight. Her eyes had moved quickly to her, not startled necessarily, but just wary. Especially with what was already on her mind. If she hadn’t been freed on purpose, they could all be in danger if her kidnapper came looking for her. Of course, she likely would have heard some kind of struggle if they’d somehow made their way into the house. Shelby had always been paranoid, but the last couple of months had magnified that.
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But it was Contessa, not anyone else, that came into the room. So, there was nothing to worry about. “Yeah. Feeling great.” She didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was obviously lying. Obviously they both knew that she was feeling far from great. “Did you really make cookies?” She asked, raising her eyebrows at the other witch.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]797 ● @ tess ● borrowed from tess outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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SLEEP BABY SLEEP

what are you waiting for?

THE MORNING'S ON ITS WAY

Taking care of her family would always be the most important thing to Tess, and that meant that she liked them to be here on the farm when the moon was full. It was easier to keep track of all of them when they were together, and she knew that it was something that they had all complied with. But last night there had been something off. And she hadn’t known what it was. Not until she had heard them howling for her, and by the time that they had the wolf subdued it was morning. She was not unfamiliar to Tess, in fact, it was the complete opposite, but what Shelby had been doing in the woods she didn’t know.

The witch hadn’t exactly been up to talking about it yet, and she knew that questioning her too early wasn’t going to do her any good. If she was going to get any sort of understanding about what it was that was going on, she was going to need more information. She was going to need to know what had happened to her. Why she had been without any wolfsbane? Why she had ended up here, of all places. With nothing… She wouldn’t turn her away, she had offered her a place here with them more than once now, but she didn’t know what to make of all of it either.

Zero was outside somewhere, and she had been sure that she was going to find that Shelby was once again asleep, but when she had opened the door the other woman had bene awake, and she had offered a small smile. There was no way that she actually felt any better. She was lying, and for whatever reason, she thought that that was going to work. “You are a liar.” It wasn’t friendly to tell someone that they looked like hell, but Tess had been raised in Eastern Tennessee, and they didn’t mince words all that often. “You still look like something I hit with my truck. Are you sure you don’t need anything else?”

Last time she had asked her, she had said that she was fine, and Tess had let her get away with it then. That wasn’t going to last though. She wasn’t going to continue to let her get away with the lies, just because she thought that they were easier. She was not fine. Something had happened to her, and though she wasn’t going to press about it, Tess didn’t need the Great Spirits to tell her that there was something that had happened since the last time that she had seen her. And she felt like that hadn’t even been all that long ago. Not for Shelby anyway.

“Yes.” Her answer was simple, but it was accompanied by a warm smile. “I’m rather domestic, you would know that if you ever took me up on an offer of hospitality. Current situations aside.” There had been no arguing with her about bringing her back to the farmhouse when they had found her in the woods. She had sent for her horse, and come back riding Rain, to have them lift Shelby up to her, and then lift her back down once they had gotten here.

If it weren’t for her grandmother’s ways, she didn’t know that she would have been able to heal everything that she had seen on the other witch. Injuries that were more than just what there would have been from one night in the woods. There were still some poultices on some of her wounds, and she was going to want to check them before she left her on her own again. But she was trying to be nice first. “Molasses cookies. I think there are peanut butter, and chocolate chip still left in the kitchen if you’d rather have those.” Honestly, she didn’t know if she would eat them at all, but she wanted her to have the option.

@ shelby • 661 • contessa's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]SLEEP BABY SLEEP

[attr="class","cscriptwolf"]what are you waiting for?

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]THE MORNING'S ON ITS WAY[break]
YOU KNOW IT'S ONLY JUST A DREAM

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[attr="class","cbody"]She had thought that she was going to die in that basement. There was no reason to sugarcoat that. Shelby wasn’t necessarily the type of person to just give up, but she had done a lot of damage in her life She had hurt people—her sister was dead because of her, and her family would suffer that loss forever. Maybe it was justice, in some way, for her to die like that. To be locked up in a dark basement for months, with a psychopath doing daily experiments on her to try to determine how she had remained unscathed from the epidemic. Maybe it was what she deserved, to be pricked and prodded, to be cut open and sewn back together again. Karma a decade in the works, or something like that. She didn’t know. She had just known that she had expected to die in there.
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While her mind might had been on escape at first, she had quickly realized how unfeasible that was. Her kidnapper still had their magic. If they didn’t, it might have been possible. Physically overpowering them might have been an option. Man or woman, she didn’t know, but they were not the tallest or bulkiest person. She had liked her odds in a physical altercation, if she was being perfectly honest. But with magic and a wand, it was impossible for to think she’d be able to gain an upper hand in any situation.
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The cage that she’d been in had been locked with arcane magic, something that Shelby knew absolutely nothing about, so there was no chance of her figuring out how to break through it. Maybe if she had been a little bit more booksmart, she would know some way to break an arcane lock without a wand, but that didn’t even sound possible, even if she had cared more about studying in school. When she was out of that cage, she was strapped down to a table and usually at least mildly sedated. There was no chance of getting away then either and after they were done with her, she was usually weak from the results of whatever had been done to her. Whether it was from blood loss, or sedation wearing off, or the pain, there was no way for her to fight her way through in that state either.
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There had just been no way out. She had resigned herself to that. There was no way out, and there was no way that anyone was looking for her. That was the problem with being the lone wolf that she’d always teased about being to Tess. There was no one to realize that she was missing. She and Gray were broken up. She didn’t really speak to her family apart from a monthly letter—and they would not likely think that her not writing them would mean anything other than she hadn’t had time or was just being her usual flighty self. Tess was the closest thing that she had to a friend, but she still only saw her every once in a while, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to go a few weeks or months without speaking. She had just seen her, too, before she had been taken. There was no reason for the other wolf to realize that anything was amiss.
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But despite the growing certainty that she would die in that basement, she had woken up in the woods, and now she was here. She wasn’t sure that she had an apartment to go back to, so she was grateful that Tess was letting her stay here for a bit—even if she was a little concerned that the person that had taken her could be searching the forest for her as they spoke. The last thing that she wanted was for them to end up here, with a pack full of werewolves to choose from. “I can’t imagine that anything would really help me at this point.” She was lucky to be upright and breathing. Even if she looked half dead, she would take what she could get at this point. She didn’t really think that she could ask for too much more. “Yes, clearly I had no idea what I’ve been missed,” she retorted, dryly, an amused smile purposefully in place on her lips. Tess was going to keep worrying, it was in her nature. But she didn’t want her focus to be on her, when Shelby was worried that they might have bigger problems. “Molasses is fine. Thanks.” Her stomach was in knots and she couldn’t actually imagine eating them right now, but she was sure that they were good.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]778 ● @ tess ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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