The room fell back into another suffocating silence.
“It might be the best we can do, for now at least,” Alpha Joel argued for the curfew. “We’ll have to talk about this later.”
At that point, their talk was more or less done. It was aggravating knowing that they had so little information on their assailants and they had one of their own. It was absolutely infuriating being helpless.
As Adrian walked back into the hallway, he then made a turn to head towards Aria’s room. Before he could open the door, he stopped in his tracks. He could hear another voice that was clearly not female. It was older, quieter, but very much concerned. It slowly dawned on him that this could be her dad.
“Are you sure you’re alright? You’re taking the day off of school tomorrow,” the older voice said. His tone was clearly tired.
Carmen saw him wait in the hall, and he silently thanked his lucky stars that she seemed to understand the situation. She must’ve felt enough sympathy to help him out as she knocked on the door with Alpha Joel in tow.
“Uncle Ivan.” Adrian listened to Carmen. “How are you?”
“Carmen, I haven’t seen you in a while! You guys should stop by sometime!”
“Uncle Ivan.” Carmen laughed a little bit.
“Ivan, how’ve you been?” Alpha Joel asked. “I’m really sorry about this, by the way.”
Aria’s dad responded, “No, no, I’m just glad she’s alright. What about Mira? How is she doing?”
“She’s in the intensive care unit,” Joel lied. “They said she’ll be fine, but it might take a week or two before she will be released.”
“Mira? Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Aria’s voice shook in tears like the news about Mira drove a stake through her heart.
“It’s not your fault, Aria. It was the stupid driver,” Carmen consoled her, and the more Adrian heard her cry, the more he wanted to be the one to hold her in his arms. He really hated how involved Aria was with this messy affair, yet they couldn’t tell her anything at all. It was like she was but wasn’t involved at the same time.
“It was a hit and run. We’ll find them. Don’t worry about it,” Alpha Joel said much more confidently. “We’ll also cover the medical costs—”
“No, no, I will pay for both Mira and Aria’s.”
Adrian panicked slightly since Mira wasn’t even in the hospital to begin with.
“Ivan we couldn’t ask—”
“You aren’t, I’m offering. It’s the least that I could do.”
“Uncle please, you don’t have to,” Carmen pressed.
“I insist.” Ivan didn’t seem to budge.
“Ivan please, let us,” Alpha Joel said.
“Joel, let me do it. You and your family have provided my daughter with so much. Please, allow me,” Ivan said so earnestly.
Carmen said once more, “Uncle, you don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
Chapter 18
Aria
How could everything go so wrong so quickly? One minute they were singing in the car, and the next they were being tossed around like a rag doll. After that, she was immediately brought to a hospital and was placed under a huge x-ray machine before getting stiches on her forehead.
It was all such a blur that Aria had a hard time properly understanding it all. It didn’t even hit her until she was in her own secluded section of the ER with her dad that the emotional aspect finally caught up to her.
Nothing physically hurt, and she didn’t know why she was crying, but she was. She really hated that. Aria felt like she shouldn’t be crying her eyes out or sniffling like a dog. Not when Mira was in the intensive care unit. Not when her best friend, the same one she dragged out just to rant about her feelings, is currently hurt. The only consolation she had was the fact that Uncle Joel had reassured them that Mira would make a full recovery in a few weeks.
But that still didn’t sit right.
Call it a gut feeling or call it her own paranoia, but why did she have a feeling that Carmen wasn’t telling the truth? At least, not the whole truth? Aria didn’t want to think that they were lying to her, especially since Mira’s their kin, but something about that explanation didn’t feel right.
Was it because she just needed to see Mira with her own eyes to verify that her best friend would live?
That was probably it.
Her dad almost insisted on staying overnight at the hospital which was overkill, considering that she only had a minor concussion, and that this was an ER clinic. After a few compelling conversations with a few nurses and the doctor who took another look at her, they were able to convince the stubborn man that she was fine to go home. That was the only place she wanted to be at the moment since she couldn’t see Mira.
Before her dad could exit their little section of the ER, a new visitor came and knocked on the door. It was probably really stupid for her to feel this way, especially considering all of the events, but once she saw Adrian her heart skipped a little beat.
Did he really come all this way just to see her? The notion of that nearly made her hide away as she thought about what she told Mira earlier that day.
“Hello, sir,” Adrian greeted her dad ever so politely.
It was horrifying to realize that this was their first meeting, and she looked like a mess.
“Hello . . .”
“Adrian, sir. I’m Aria’s friend,” he replied.
“Oh! Are you the boy my daughter talks about?”
“Dad!” Aria was ready to sign her death certificate.
If she were braver, she would take a peek at Adrian’s expression.
“I’ll go get your discharge papers.” Her dad finally understood that he needed to stop being
