Eva.

I got exhausted after forcing myself to pretend I was alright while spending time with Thomas today.

Everything felt like it was slowly weighing me down, bit by bit, as though each passing minute was adding something heavier onto my chest that I could no longer ignore or push away. I kept acting fine, kept pretending I was fine, but deep down, I was breaking in ways I couldn’t even properly explain.

I was still stuck between making two choices. The doctor had already explained them earlier, clearly and carefully, but I had been too afraid—too overwhelmed—to truly let the words settle in my mind. I heard him, yes, I did, but accepting it... that was something entirely different. Something I wasn’t ready for.

And now, I can’t avoid it anymore.

I just wanted to forget everything he said, to push it far away like it never happened, like it was just a bad moment that didn’t belong to my reality. But reality doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t wait for you to be ready. It just stays there, demanding to be faced.

Because now, I needed to accept the truth—my life was in real danger.

It was either I undergo surgery and get rid of my pup...or I let it continue developing, and risk both of us dying together.

Even though he said there were medications that could help, even though he tried to sound hopeful, my mind refused to hold onto that hope properly. It slipped through me like water through broken fingers.

Still...deep down, I couldn’t believe I couldn’t save my baby.

We needed more tests. Yes. That was what made sense. More tests would prove something different. Something better. Something safer. Maybe the results weren’t final. Maybe it was all just uncertainty sitting on top of fear.

He could be wrong. He had to be wrong.

If I remembered correctly, he said there were signs—it was "showing signs." But signs weren’t confirmation, were they? Signs weren’t facts. They were just possibilities, just warnings, just things that could still change.

It wasn’t certain. It wasn’t confirmed. Not fully and not completely.

"Arrrrghhhhh!" I screamed out loud, the sound tearing out of me before I could stop it. "This is so frustrating," I muttered under my breath immediately after, my voice breaking slightly as I tried to steady myself again.

I stood in front of the mirror in my room, staring at my reflection, and my eyes darkened instantly as if something inside me had shifted.

"If anything eventually happens to my baby, then it’s all your fault, Ella," I said slowly, each word rolling off my tongue with a deliberate calm that didn’t match the sharpness underneath it.

A dark smirk formed on my lips as I spoke her name, as though just saying it gave me a strange sense of control. The words felt heavy in my mouth—carefully chosen, intentional, and cutting in a way that made my chest tighten with something close to satisfaction.

"You can’t blame me then for wanting to get rid of yours." I added firmly.

As soon as I finished speaking, a soft, broken laugh slipped out of me. It wasn’t loud or joyful. It was hollow, uneven, almost like it didn’t belong to me at all. It echoed faintly in the room and died just as quickly, leaving behind a strange silence that pressed against my ears.

"A life for a life," I added quietly under my breath, my voice barely above a whisper now.

I kept my eyes locked on my reflection in the mirror as I said it, as though I was trying to convince the person staring back at me that it wasn’t wrong, that it made sense, that it was balanced in some twisted way only I could understand.

"Isn’t that so cool?"

For a moment, I didn’t move. I just stood there, letting the words settle around me like a fog I refused to step out of.

Then, with that thought still lingering in my mind, a bright smile slowly began to form on my face again. It grew wider and wider until it looked almost natural, as though nothing beneath it was shaking or breaking apart. As if I wasn’t standing on the edge of something I could no longer fully control. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

My hand moved without conscious thought, lowering to my stomach. I began rubbing it gently, slowly, in soft circles that contrasted so sharply with the chaos inside my head that it almost felt like I was pretending to be two different people at once. One part of me was calm, almost affectionate, while the other was restless, dark, and unraveling quietly beneath the surface.

"Don’t worry, baby," I said again, my voice softer this time, almost soothing, as if I was speaking to something precious and fragile that needed reassurance. My fingers continued their slow movement over my stomach, steady and repetitive. "I will send you company to the afterlife."

The words hung in the air for a second longer than they should have, settling into the space around me like something irreversible.

Then, just like that, something inside me snapped into a different rhythm. My expression shifted, and I burst out laughing.

The laugh came out loud, unfiltered, almost uncontrollable, filling the room in a way that didn’t feel normal even to me. It echoed off the walls, sharp and unsettling, as though it didn’t belong to one emotion alone but to many conflicting ones at once.

And yet, right in the middle of that laughter, my vision blurred slightly. A tear slipped down my face without permission. I felt it trace a warm path across my skin, breaking through the expression I was forcing. I quickly wiped it away with the back of my hand, as if erasing it would also erase the weakness behind it. Then I forced my expression again, smoothing it over, plastering a smile back onto my face like it had never been disturbed in the first place.

"You aren’t weak, Eva!" I said firmly to myself, my voice sharper now as I stared directly at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes held onto my own gaze, refusing to look away. "Now, get your mind straight."

I repeated it in my head again, slower this time, as though trying to drill it into myself, trying to anchor my thoughts so they wouldn’t drift into uncertainty again.

And just then, another thought crept in, interrupting everything else. I wondered what he was still doing at that moment. My mind shifted quickly, almost too quickly, from myself to him. Do I need to remind him again to get that simple task done? The question lingered in my head, sharp and impatient.

I had actually thought back then at the hospital that Ella had ended up there because the deed had already been done. That had been my assumption, my immediate conclusion at that moment. It had felt so certain then.

But after I made inquiries, I realised that wasn’t the case at all. She wasn’t there because of that. She was there due to some stupid allergy reaction, something so minor, so irritatingly insignificant that it almost made me angry thinking about it.

And then I found myself wondering why, out of all the hospitals she could have gone to, it had to be that particular one. It bothered me more than it should have, lingering in my thoughts like an unanswered question I didn’t like the shape of.

And those so-called triplets with her...I couldn’t even wait to deal with the thought of them. The mere memory of them clinging around her, standing too close, breathing the same air as if they belonged anywhere near her, already irritated something deep inside me. I already knew—without hesitation—that the next time I met Thomas, I would tell him plainly that they needed to be gotten rid of.

It wasn’t even something I planned to debate. It felt final in my mind, already decided, already sealed. People like that didn’t deserve space near her, not even by accident.

I mean, they could be a stumbling block, if they offered Ella any support.

And Thomas...Thomas would understand. He had to understand.

But even as that certainty sat firm in my thoughts, a quieter doubt began to creep in underneath it. Deep down, I wasn’t entirely sure he would agree this time. There was a chance he would hesitate, or worse, refuse.

Because just before he left, he had mentioned something else entirely—something that had shifted the tone of the conversation without warning.

He said he had an important meeting with someone from the Ironclad Pack, and even now, that detail kept echoing in my head like an unanswered question I couldn’t ignore.

And I still found myself wondering who it could possibly be. Who was important enough for him to meet from there? What kind of connection was he even trying to build?

Why would he ever choose to align himself with them? The Ironclad Pack wasn’t just any group—they were Bloodfang’s sworn enemies. That fact alone made everything about it feel wrong, unstable, and deeply questionable in a way I couldn’t fully push aside, no matter how much I tried to reason with it.