Chapter 24 - What Happened?

Chapter 24 - What Happened?
Fidelia

The muscle in Fidelia’s eye had twitched from pure irritation so many times, she was afraid her face would be permanently stuck in the scowl she was wearing. She had been travelling for twenty four hours now and they were easily the worst twenty four hours of her life!

She had thought that this trip would be quick and easy. It was roughly a three day drive from Orion Valley to Andromeda City; if you followed the speed limits and limited your stops to only necessary ones. She wanted to get to the city, find Raine and warn her about Axel being nearby; that is if he hadn’t found her already. It was gonna be quick and sweet.

But she hadn’t factored in taking someone as irritating as Jade along with her. The trip had suddenly taken a humungous turn for the worst, as far as Fidelia was concerned at least.

They were having to stop a lot more than she had wanted and it wasn’t even for a valid or necessary reason most of the time! It was mostly because Jade had spotted a shop she wanted to shop or peruse in and if Fidelia tried to argue that they should continue and not stop, Jade would feign concern and mention calling Fidelia’s parents to let them know where they were and that they were safe. So Fidelia was forced to pull over or risk being caught and dragged back home before she managed to warn her friend of the danger near her.

She took long and deep breaths as she waited in the car for Jade to finish her shopping and resisted bashing her head against the steering wheel in frustration at her bad luck of being caught by the packs most annoying she-wolf.

When they were driving again, Fidelia thought she had solace in the music she had the radio station trained on. It was a radio station that played random songs and would constantly switch up the genre; one moment you could be listening to rap and then suddenly an acoustic cover of a recent song would appear. She enjoyed this channel as she knew a large number of the songs that they played and it was easier to drown out Jade’s presence with the music when she knew the lyrics.

Unfortunately, Jade decided after about their tenth unnecessary stop that she would act as the car DJ and the end result was Fidelia having a huge headache. Her music was very poppy and peppy and incredibly irritating! One or two songs Fidelia wouldn’t have minded, but it was constant and they all sounded the exact same!

But more irritating than the music, which over a couple of hours and with a lot of patience Fidelia had managed to turn down until it was barely audible from one of the buttons on her steering wheel, was Jades incessant talking. You’d think eventually she’d run out of a topic or her voice would start to hurt, but no she just kept going. Fidelia had even stopped politely looking like she gave a shit in hopes that would encourage Jade to stop, but it didn’t. It had been twenty four hours of her incessant talking and Fidelia finally just snapped.

“Oh my god!” She burst out hitting the steering wheel with her hand in frustration! “Shut up! Shut up, shut up shut up! What is wrong with you!?” She demanded, but Jade just stared at her speechless for the first bloody time since they had set off.

But Fidelia was too far gone at that point, her rage and frustration finally bursting free from being pent up.

“Seriously! What happened to make you like this!? It had to be something huge to make you so irritating and annoying, I mean does anyone actually like you the way are? Because they need to have their brains tested! What happened that turned you into this!?” She burst, gesturing at Jade.

She sighed after her outburst but refused to turn around and see the look of anger she knew would be all over Jade’s face.

‘Great! Guess I just fucked up again and now she’s gonna rat us out and have mum and dad come get us!’ Fidelia thought angrily gripping the steering wheel.

They hadn’t even made it half way and they were gonna get dragged back. Fidelia felt like a right failure, anything she ever felt passionate about she always ruined. She couldn’t even go and help Raine without messing up and most likely causing a bigger mess of things. Raine probably would have been better off if she had just cut off her friendship with someone like Fidelia and moved on!

And now Jade was gonna yell at her and rat her in! All because she couldn’t keep her big mouth shut and her emotions to herself.

‘I don’t think you’re gonna have to worry about Jade.’ Blake whispered in her mind.

Fidelia was about to ask why, when she heard a sound that she wasn’t expecting. She turned her head to look at Jade and was shocked to see silent tears sliding down her cheeks, her eyes were watery and she was sniffling into her hand doing her best to avoid being seen by Fidelia.

Fidelia instantly felt bad, her heart clenched as she saw the last person she expected to cry breaking down right before her. She expected Jade to turn red and scream at her for being horrible and mean, but she was crying. Fidelia had no idea what to do, she knew you were supposed to comfort someone who was upset but she’d never done that before. The only friend she had ever had was Raine and she’d never had to comfort her as Raine was always so strong and confident.

‘Maybe we should apologise.’ Blake suggested.

“Look, I’m sorry.” Fidelia mumbled. “I didn’t mean…”

“Yes you did!” Jade interrupted her, looking at Fidelia through her teary eyes. “But you’re right.” She whimpered into her hands.

Fidelia was even more surprised by that statement than seeing Jade cry.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“Why am I like this?” Jade sighed, wiping her tears away. “I never used to be but…I just…so much happened and…this wasn’t how things were supposed to be…” She sniffed.

“Well, how were things supposed to be?” Fidelia asked, a little intrigued by the turn of events.

Jade turned to look at her, studying Fidelia carefully.

“You don’t care.” She finally said with an exhausted sigh. “It doesn’t matter.” She turned away to stare out of the dark windows.

Now Fidelia felt even more intrigued than before, what was Jade hiding? It occurred to her that she didn’t really know a lot about Jade since she had joined Orion Valley five years ago. Of course, she was always around Axel and Fidelia made it her mission to avoid her brothers very existence so it made sense that she wouldn’t have paid much attention to the she-wolf beside her now. But she wanted to know and she felt bad for upsetting her, so she wanted Jade to let go of whatever had made her so upset.

It was confusing as hell and Fidelia preferred things to be simple, so she tried her best to comfort Jade.

“You know, I heard that if you…um…share your problems, sometimes just saying them out loud will help you feel better.” She tried to convince her.

‘Smooth.’ Blake said sarcastically.

‘Shh.’ Fidelia scolded, waiting for Jade’s response.

“Talking about it won’t fix anything, so what’s the point…” Jade mumbled miserably, not even bothering to turn from the window.

“Maybe not…But I’m still willing to listen, if you wanted to share…” Fidelia tried again and actually got Jade to turn and look at her this time. “So, what made you like this?” She asked again.

There was a long silence that followed and Fidelia found herself gulping more than once as she waited for Jade’s reply. Maybe she had offended her by asking her to share? Were you supposed to push to get them to share with you? She didn’t know, she’d never done this before and it was all so new! Emotions and feelings were so messy!

“Have you found your mate yet, Fidelia?” Jade suddenly broke the tension filled silence and asked Fidelia abruptly.

Fidelia whipped her head around to see if she was actually being serious and from the look on her face she could see that she was. There was no amusement or even a smile on Jade’s face, she was all business. It was a look Fidelia had never seen her wear before and it made her squirm a little.

“No.” Fidelia answered, facing the road again. If she was being honest she had never put much thought to her mate like most wolves seemed to. It always felt like there was just so much going on in her life all the time, that finding her mate didn’t feel like her top priority.

“I found mine.” Jade answered her own question and Fidelia glanced at her briefly confused. “But I can’t be with him.”

There was another uncomfortable silence that filled the space between them as Fidelia contemplated the information she had just been given.

“Why not?” She asked, keeping her eyes trained on the road.

“It’s a long story.” Jade sighed, looking down at her hands folded neatly in her lap.

“It’s a long drive.” Fidelia pointed out, almost immediately. “Plus, I think something's wrong with the sound on the radio.” This surprisingly made Jade laugh and it wasn’t the false high pitched laugh Fidelia was used to hearing, it was deeper and more earnest.

“Yeah, that’s true.” Jade finished laughing. “Are you sure you wanna hear though? I know I’m not exactly one of your favourite people.” She glanced nervously up at Fidelia.

“Would I ask if I wasn’t interested?” Fidelia flashed her a smile. “And who knows, maybe if I understand you more I might warm up to the idea of you a bit more.” She smiled again when she heard Jade laugh genuinely again.

“Really? I don’t know, you might think I’m a bit pathetic…I still think I am…” Jade said sadly.

“I won’t know until you tell me.” Fidelia said, her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. She wasn’t Jade’s biggest fan but she was a big fan of people not self-doubting themselves and she didn’t like the way Jade was being awful to herself at that moment. “Start from the beginning.” She instructed.

“Ok.” Jade laughed.