Taking her tray of food to the table where Heather and James had ended up at back of the crowded cafeteria, Kaycee set down her plate and went to grab a jug of orange juice and milk for the table to share as James grabs a tray of glasses. As they take a seat, Devyn arrives with a few cups of silverware.
As Kaycee began eating James looks up at her to sheepishly ask, “How is my dad?”
Looking up at him Kaycee swallows quickly “He’s finally stable. I was able to sleep outside of his room two nights ago and didn’t go in at all yesterday.” James nods with a soft smile as Heather and Devyn look back and forth between them. Kaycee just raises an eyebrow before she continues eating.
“Okay. Spill. Why the hell did you go over to the pack’s medical center?,” Devyn spits out, pissed that someone else had known where Kaycee had been but not her.
Heather just shakes her head at Devyn’s comment before turning to James, “Why didn’t you tell me your dad was sick?”
“Kaycee needed to do her Omega thing and I wouldn’t have been able to see him even if I had known soon enough to go with her. Worrying you would’ve been pointless since if I couldn’t go, neither could you.” He tells her kissing her cheek between bites.
Another Hunter, a six foot man with sandy colored hair, cut military style and no visible aura, sat down beside James, his plate with human size portions. He swept his blue eyes around the group before landing them on Kaycee who was pointedly ignoring Devyn in favor of eating as the redhead glares at her. “Okay, what did you do this time Kaycee?” he asks before pouring himself some milk, his almond scent wafting around him softer than the supernaturals at the table.
Kaycee rolls her eyes at his comment, “It wasn’t my fault this time Hector.”
“Sure” another Hunter retorts as she inserts her five foot nine frame with purple aura into the chair beside Kaycee. Her white blond hair was pulled back into a braid revealing her slightly pointed ears, purple eyes flashing in amusement as her nutmeg like scent complemented the scents of breakfast, “like we’d believe that.”
“It wasn’t Megan” Kaycee snaps in annoyance, causing the table to slightly shake. Instinctually the others grab their plates and glasses as Kaycee takes a deep breath, calming her emotions as the table stills once more.
“Damn, it must have been a bad mission for you to be losing control again,” Hector says as he goes back to eating, earning a glare from Kaycee.
Devyn touches Kaycee’s shoulder soothingly, her previous annoyance gone. “What happened?”
Kaycee sighs, looking down at her plates and taking a mouthful so she could gather her thoughts before she swallows to speak, “James’s dad, Cappa William was brought into the pack’s medical center showing signs of the Manic stage of Rogue Syndrome. Alpha Mason asked me to immediately come and try to relieve the symptoms. I spent the whole week working with William to even get him to a point the pack’s doctors felt he was stabilized.”
The table went quiet with Kaycee’s explanation, everyone looking between her and James who both shared a look before choosing to begin eating rather than face their friends stares. Memories began to swirl through Kaycee’s mind once more as she glances up at her friends, awaiting their questions with trepidation. Coming out of her shell with the efforts of Devyn and the other children meant she had regained some of her normal personality of causing trouble, but it had been much more subdued than before. While she enjoyed setting up pranks and pushing the rules, her joy of playing in such ways had felt forced to the young girl. Kaycee’s nightmares of the attack had kept her awake at night and her growth in powers had made it difficult to keep some of the less magically inclined children from feeling safe around her. Only Devyn, Megan, Heather and Hector braved her mood swings as she struggled to cope with the loss of her family.
After the food fight, Kaycee had started to speak while living with the Guild, but refused to talk even to her new friends about the details of her past. Even the good memories had been tainted by the tragedy that she had faced at such a young age. Maira had tried everything to convince the young hybrid that it would help heal her soul to talk about it, but Kaycee had refused, the pain building within her until on her eleventh birthday her wolf forced her to shift for the first time and her Omega powers had awakened, calling the nearby pack to her like a beacon. Dozens of Cappas had come running into the Guild compound, rushing to Kaycee and forming a ring around her to keep the Hunters at bay. Even their presence had not soothed the terrified and suffering young wolf. It had taken the appearance of the local Alpha to calm Kaycee into shifting back into human form.
Had it been any other Alpha and Kaycee may not have shifted back, but fate had been favorable for her. It had turned out that for the last six years she had been living but a fifteen minute drive from Alpha Mason’s pack, the Guild actually sitting on the border of the pack lands. Scenting Alpha Mason’s blend of smoke, rain, pine, ozone, vanilla and clay that came from her own hybrid background, being both Were and a rare Elven-Fae that has mastered all the basic five elements, Kaycee’s wolf had shifted the eleven year old back to human form. She then surprised the Hunters by rushing into Mason’s arms, crying for the first time since her rescue. Mason, for her part, had been overjoyed to see the girl, happy that the news of the possible death of Mason’s favorite troublemaker was false. After soothing the emotional Kaycee to sleep in her arms she had talked to Maira and the Guild Master about all of the ordeals Kaycee had faced before and during her time with the Guild.
Concerned for Kaycee’s mental state, Mason had ordered her Cappa’s back to their duties and chose to spend time watching Kaycee’s interactions with the other children and trying to get the eleven year old to open up about the attack, deciding not immediately contact Kaycee’s uncle about her appearance until Kaycee was ready to communicate with the man on her own. Over a month of Mason inserting herself into Kaycee’s life in the Hunters Guild, the young girl had finally began to open up about the attack, her mood swings and why she didn’t want to open up to the Hunters, but only to Mason, Maira and the Guild Master. Mason, thinking that coming home to the pack would help the troubled girl, had taken Kaycee on a visit to the main pack house. Kaycee hadn’t been able to walk through the door, her wolf once more triggering the Omega powers as Kaycee began to panic on the front porch. Mason had returned her immediately to the Guild and elected to send a few wolves of Cappa and Delta rank and their families to help the young Omega learn to control her powers better. Having already started Wiccan based control training with the Wiccan Hunters at the Guild, Kaycee had melded the two disciplines together, allowing her to gain control quickly.
Maira had still pushed for Kaycee to work through the panic induced with the pack by insisting that if the growing girl wished to see Mason that she needed to go to the main pack house. Visiting Mason had proved to work as the Alpha only pushed her to enter as far as Kaycee and her wolf had been ready for each visit. When Kaycee could travel through all of the buildings on the pack lands seven years later, Mason had her pack members living at the Guild return to the pack house.
Only James, one of the younger wolves that had followed his parents when they came to help Kaycee learn control, had stayed, having found his mate in Heather, who had not been willing to leave as she had still four more years of training with the Guild’s medical program. Once she graduated a year ago and they completed their mating, they had decided to stay on at the Guild with all their friends since by then the six of them had show to be an extremely strong team for the Guild to send off on missions. Since the Guild was mostly on pack lands he was allowed to stay provided James spent most of his time on his pack’s side of the compound.
“Was Mom able to be with him at all,” James asks, pulling Kaycee back to the present. Kaycee shakes her head sadly, receiving a tight smile and nod from James, who turned his focus back to his food.
The others, having finished already, watch Kaycee and James finish their food, deciding to wait to question Kaycee further. With his final bite, James turns and kisses Heather’s head before grabbing his, Heather’s and Kaycee’s empty glasses and plates to take them to the one of the dish bins. Hector moves to grab the plates and glasses Megan and Devyn have emptied stacking them on his own, following James to the bins to allow the girls, who all three worked in the medical center when not on missions, a chance to focus on reasoning out what questions Kaycee was likely to be able to answer before meeting with the Guild Master.
Heather finally breaks the silence leaning forward to place her arms on the table, “Was it actually Rogue Syndrome?”
Kaycee shakes her head, “No, but until I talk to the Guild Master I can’t really share what makes me say that. Plus I’m not positive as to what the data from the tests will say.”
“Why were you called in if it wasn’t Rogue syndrome. I thought that was the only thing Omegas are called in for,” Megan asked as the boys return to retake their seats.
“Sometimes, if the doctors are having trouble calming a patient an Omega can sit in a corner and their latent powers will soothe the agitated Were,” James explains.
Kaycee nods in agreement before adding, “but whatever William was suffering from mimicked the symptoms of a Manic Rogue. He had attacked another Cappa saying they were challenging him when the Cappa had never even looked at William at all that day. When the others tried to hold him off they noticed the black rings around his eyes and rushed him to medical. The doctors immediately called me to come before asking around his Cappa team to see if they had noticed any of the Aggressive Rogue symptoms at play before this switch. By the time I got there they had already determined that it wasn’t a true Rogue Syndrome diagnosis due to the fact he was more violent than he should have been in the onset of the Manic stage and when he shifted his irises were ringed more so than they should have been, especially since he showed no sign of the iris ring when he went out for a run with his mate the evening before. When I arrived I was able to…” Kaycee pauses trying to decide how to continue without revealing things the Guild master may be against sharing with the whole Guild.
“Your Wiccan gifts kicked in, didn’t they,” Devyn says having seen Kaycee switch between Omega and Wiccan powers as if she had melded the two very different skill sets together, knew that only their group of friends, Mason, Maira and the Guild Master had any idea she could do so. Kaycee nods in acknowledgement, giving a tight grin to her friends before running her hands through her hair.
“Is it at least gone, whatever was affecting my dad?” James decides to ask, pulling Heather onto his lap to calm his wolf as it began to get agitated at hearing his father’s plight.
“I don’t know. They have been running tests constantly, but I haven’t been able to touch base with what they found. Once I talk with the Guild Master I’m hoping he’ll let our team go and help them go over the data.” Kaycee admits sadly.
Knowing that they had hit a point where Kaycee had to see the Guild Master before sharing more with them, Heather smiles softly, popping off of James’s lap and pulling him out of the cafeteria. Megan stands pausing a moment to touch Kaycee’s shoulder with an empathy spell to help sooth the stressed hybrid’s soul, earning a thankful smile from Kaycee in return as she felt the echo of soul magic tingling against her shoulder, before also leaving the cafeteria.
Hector also stood, pausing and looking down at Kaycee a moment. “Will we be travelling between the pack house and the compound or staying with the pack?”
“Staying with the pack, that way if something new occurs we are all together to work through all the data” Kaycee replies, standing up from the table.
“Do you think we’ll be there longer than a month? I’m due soon for the revaccination against accidental turning” Hector questions, getting a shrug from Kaycee before she looks at Devyn in confusion as the smell of sulfur becomes more pronounced.
“Not knowing what the data looks like ahead of time, there can’t be a deadline really for us to return. I’ll make sure Megan, Heather and I pack some or we set up for everyone to drive back over when their next dose is due.” Devyn says reaching out to grab the notebook she had spelled into existence, writing a note about the checking the revaccination logs.
Kaycee grins at her friend, poking Devyn’s side playfully. “You mean for you and Hector right. Megan doesn’t need it since Were can’t turn any of the Fae, and the rest of us don’t need a vaccine since it's too late for us,” She teases as she winks at Hector, causing him to grin as Devyn glares at Kaycee.
“I’m going to be prepared for if we need to expand team members in order to help us thoroughly process the data.” Devyn retorts in annoyance, pulling herself up out of her chair in a huff and stomping out of the cafeteria.
Kaycee watches Devyn leave, before turning back to Hector. “If we go to any of the other packs we’ll make sure everyone has fresh immunizations, otherwise it's not that far to just make sure we send you back at the revaccinations date.” She tells him as Hector nods and joins Kaycee as they exit the cafeteria together.
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