Hello everyone. First of all I would like to apologize for the long wait. Also, I would like to thank all of you who keep reviewing and following this story.

For those of you who don't know völvas are shamanic seeresses in Norse mythology. Also ashwagandha is a real plant who helps with sleeping problems but of course the effects of those do not last fourteen hours.

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Chapter 25

"You're really good at this." Muttered Allison as a chinese ring dagger hit the bull's eye.

"Hardly. This…" I said waving at the wall. "is the power of the warriors talking. If you asked me to do this six months ago, I would probably cut of one of my fingers."

"It's still pretty impressive if you ask me."

Grabbing her bow, the brunette got ready to shoot a few more arrows while I grabbed the daggers once again. It was an early Sunday afternoon and the two of us were having some girl time. Lydia would join us in a couple of minutes.

Her parents wanted to have a family lunch with her, considering she would be away for a week. When I told my friends that Derek and I would be going to Forks they all insisted on coming with us.

It was hard to convince the school to let us leave, but since Lydia would be going and considering she was more than a capable tutor, the parents managed to make an agreement with the school: we would be free to miss a whole week of classes if we studied enough to keep our grades up. The only exception to this was Isaac, who unfortunately would not be able to make it.

Instead he agreed to stay behind and keep an eye on the Nemeton and on Kira.

Allison narrowed her eyes, and shot the arrows after a few seconds. They ended up landing inches away from the center of the target.

"It's getting better." I tried to comfort her.

"Yeah, until I freak out again and totally miss." Placing her bow on the floor and taking of her glove she sat down, indian style.

I sat down next to her.

"I have nightmares too, you know? It's all part of the magical imprint the ritual or death in my case left on your soul. That's why you have an emotional tether."

Tilting her head, she looked straight into my eyes.

"You do? How do you deal with them?"

Once again, I grabbed the daggers and started throwing them keeping my eyes shut. As expected all of them landed perfectly on the central red portion of the target on the wall.

I shrugged in response to her question. How did I deal with it? Should I tell her the truth or make up a white lie in order to make her feel better?

The truth, I decided, was the best road to take.

"I don't know, to be honest. I try to focus on every other thing I can. But you don't have to do the same. Your nightmares or visions, whatever you want to call them, will disappear eventually. Mine however, won't." Not until the Nemeton dies and takes me along, I added silently on my mind.

"Pain does help though." Allison raised an eyebrow, clearly asking what I meant. "Whenever things get bad, I pinch myself because…."

"It forces your brain to focus on something else." She completed.

"Exactly, but that is the job of your tether. That connection exists to keep you grounded. If you have trouble, just talk to someone. It doesn't matter who, just…don't keep it in."

"Thank you, for everything."

Hugging each other I thanked her too, for coming with me to Forks, for inviting me to spend the whole weekend with her and for becoming one of the best friends someone could ever ask for.

Over the last two days, Allison and I had bonded quite a bit. She told me about her uneasiness around Isaac and the others, things were still a bit awkward around them after everything she did to him during her "dark fase", her words not mine.

In return I confided in her about my fears over Ethan and Aiden and the guilt I felt over not being able to protect Lexa, who was the youngest in my pack and several others. Sometimes it felt good to just let everything out. In the end you had two choices: either get all the anger and resentment out or let it destroy you.

A few days had gone by since my "little" fight with Ethan, and I hadn't heard from him ever since, however Aiden called me a few hours ago and promised that the two of them would go with us to Forks, not that I would mind if I they decided to stay here.

The huntress grabbed several small knives including the chinese ring daggers, placed them in a leather bag and inside her suitcase.

"Since I can't use the bow and arrows, I might as well grab plenty of other stuff I can use." She said while twirling an electric cattle rod.

In the meantime, an energetic knock on the door interrupted us.

"Are you two ready?"

"Yeah, Lyds." Grabbing our suitcases we loaded them into the car with the help of Mr. Argent.

Hugging the older man goodbye, we drove off ready to pick up another one of our friends.

The three of us, plus Stiles would go in Lydia's car and Derek would give Scott a ride. I assumed that Ethan and Aiden would use their bikes or ask my mate for a ride too.

As we drove off, I couldn't help but sigh. I was not in any way ready to go back to Charlie's house.

"So…what's the plan? I mean what are we going to do about vampire boy and the shapeshifter people when we meet them? Clearly, you are not the same person they knew."

I shrugged because for once I had no idea what to say. Six months ago, I left Forks without saying a goodbye to either Edward or Jacob, which I feel slightly guilty about but at the same time, if I had told them…I would have never left.

Edward was as possessive as someone or something could possibly be and Jacob was a sweet kid but his persistence to date me even after I told him that I just wanted to be his friend, really freaked me out.

The few times, I spoke to my dad he told me that the Cullens, especially Alice and Edward, and Jacob kept asking him questions about me which he somehow managed to avoid answering, but my gut was telling me that even after all this time they hadn't given up.

"Honestly, I don't know. There is a very high possibility either of them will break into my house and demand answers as soon as they find out that I'm back."

The girls glanced at me with a disbelieving look.

"Are you serious?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Edward is the kind of person, or should I say vampire, that doesn't know how to take no for an answer and Jacob and his persistence can be very annoying, though I'm positive the rest of the pack will leave us alone. They don't care about me, in fact I'm pretty sure they hate my guts."

"Really? Just you wait until all of them find out that you are not as defenseless and fragile as they think you are."

Truer words could never be spoken. They would call me a liar and a hypocrite not that I cared. People kept secrets for a reason anyway.

Pulling up in front of the Stilinski's house, Lydia honked and our friend repeated the process done at the Argents a couple of minutes ago.

The red head continued her driving after Stiles entered the car.

Arriving at nearest airport took us a while but to my joy, Derek and Scott were already waiting for us. Lydia parked the car and told us she had paid for it to stay here for the entire week, in case we had to come back early or something.

Checking in, since our flight was within the hour we waited for Aiden and Ethan who arrived ten minutes later.

They both looked angry and a little frustrated.

"We need to talk" mouthed Aiden making me nod.

At least half an hour went by, until we were able to go somewhere without arising Ethan's suspicion.

"There has to be something we can do to help him. He barely sleeps an hour every night and when he does he ends up screaming his lungs out, he barely speaks…there's only so much of depressed Ethan I can take." Taking a deep breath, Aiden continued. "What can we do?"

I thought about our options. First we had to make him rest and maybe then we could have an honest conversation about what was really bothering him.

"There's something I can get that will make him sleep…"

"Perfect! Where do we get it?"

"Slow down, Aiden. When I say sleep, I'm talking about a fourteen hour dreamless sleep, at the very least. Besides it's not that easy to find. My mom told me about an apothecary somewhere in Port Angeles, I can try to find it there but you know how those places work."

Apothecaries these days were mostly run by völvas, and even though they were mostly benevolent they did not hesitate in making a profit if they thought they deserved it.

"I'll talk to my mom first and then I will try to find some ashwagandha root, but this time we'll make it right. No more lying to Ethan."

"Fine, I can deal with that."

Last call to flight 281 to Seattle: all passengers should board within the next fifteen minutes.

"Come on."

We walked back towards the others and entered the plane. Hopefully Ethan would accept our help and I could focus on keeping the Cullens and Jacob at bay and on whatever the ghosts wanted me to do. One could only hope.

The landing in Seattle was smooth and after catching another flight to Port Angeles I was feeling incredibly tired. As soon as we landed, Derek rented out a nine seat SUV and I started to drive towards my childhood home.

"This is it. My dad will go to D.C. tomorrow so we will have the house to ourselves for the whole week."

"That is awesome, as long as the rain stops. God damnit! We've been here for less than five minutes and I already hate this freaking town."

I rolled my eyes.

"Stop whining, Aiden! It's not like it doesn't rain in California."

He huffed and knocked on the door, while I anxiously waited for Charlie to open it.