#kaida walker

It burned like nothing else she had ever felt before.

The blood was boiling as it poured down her cheek, splattering onto the ground and her hand in abstract patterns. She tried to flinch away from the sheer volume of it sticking to her skin, hitting her head on the tree behind her as her ears began to ring. Everything was muffled, voices shouting with no meaning in the words, and Tessa brought her hand up to her eye to try and staunch the bloodflow, doing her best to ignore the pain radiating through her entire skull; on instinct, she shut off the nerve-endings, as few as possible because she knew that they would be a bitch to wake up again, but enough to clear her head enough to think.

She had been launched to the entire other side of the courtyard from the force of the blow, and it definitely felt like it. She would be amazed if there wasn’t anything broken or shattered. Her chest was heaving with every breath, but she still tried to look across the way and see the person she had just thrown herself in front of.

“TESSA!”

Her ears didn’t stop ringing, and she could hear the others yelling louder as the Wolf Clan moved in. Propped up on her elbow now, Tessa had a much better view of what was going on. There was a blur of black and blue moving to Nya’s side and covering her, and Tessa could see well enough to know it was Noah, and she watched as he desperately tried to fight through the soldiers and get to her. His spear was flashing from the light of the blood moon, twirling in sync with Nya’s as they covered each other’s backs, and Tessa realized that Nya was also fighting to get to her. Everyone on the battlefield was fighting to get to her, including Jay on the far side where the hostages had once been, but there was one person missing—

“TESSA!”

And suddenly there was someone kneeling in front of her, hands on her shoulders and trying to push Tessa onto her back. Tessa didn’t have enough energy to resist, although upon spotting the Wolf armor she activated her powers and shoved as hard as she could, strength leaving her as quickly as the blood gushing from her eye and landing in the grass. The other person didn’t give in or flinch away, and she finally stopped shoving when she realized that the person wasn’t wearing a Mask.

“Tess,” Kaida said breathlessly, “it’s me, okay? You know it’s me.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Tessa groaned, trying to keep her little sister from seeing the extent of the injury. First Master knows she had already seen enough of Tessa knocked on her ass. “Kaida, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Well, I am, and I’m the only one, so get fucking used to it,” Kaida snapped, and Tessa yelled in pain when Kaida forced her hand away from her eye. The loss of pressure was immediate, and Tessa panicked when she felt the blood rushing down her face and into her mouth, the taste of copper lingering on her tongue as she did everything but swallow it. Kaida tore a chunk off of the only clean parts of her clothes left, covering the eye that Tessa couldn’t see out of and putting pressure around her eye socket. “Jay and Noah are coming, okay? Just keep breathing, you’re fine.”

Blood still coated every inch of her mouth, and she forced herself not to vomit. “Yeah, yeah, fine, totally,” Tessa flinched when something started hitting her cheek, and she was startled to see that Kaida’s eyes were beginning to tear up. “I’ll be fine, kid. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Do not lie to me right now, Tessa,” Kaida said harshly. She looked back up at the battlefield, and Tessa saw the desperation in her glowing eyes. She wasn’t sure if the other girl was using her power or not. “Goddammit! Aren’t you people supposed to be superpowered ninjas who can do anything? Does anything include not being useless?!”

“You can at least try to be nice to me right now,” Tessa wheezed, vision blurring like a shifting kaleidoscope. Kaida’s face was quickly becoming nothing more than a swimming sea of colors, darkening around the edges as Tessa’s body fought against staying awake. Blood continued to drip down her face, having long soaked through the cloth Kaida was using and leaking out from the pressure seal she was trying to make. She couldn’t feel the tips of her fingers, and her hands started to shake as her chest heaved for air. Every broken rib protested the movement, the bruises in agony.

Kaida gritted her teeth and lightly tapped against her temple. “Stay awake. I still have to kick your ass in training, you need to stay with us, Tess.”

“Trying,” Tessa answered honestly, putting every bit of strength she had left into keeping her eye open. She gripped at the sleeve of Kaida’s uniform, trying to keep herself grounded, feeling the familiar sensation of dissociation setting in as the pain compounded on itself.

“Why the hell would you take that hit?” Kaida asked, breath catching on the last word. She increased the pressure around Tessa’s eye, her gloves starting to stain with the blood. “Jay would’ve been fine!”

The increased pressure made Tessa cry out, but she kept the rest of the swears and curses she wanted to let out contained. “Because I did, okay? I didn’t want him to lose an eye! Or you to get hurt!”

“Yeah, mostly because you want him to lose his fucking head instead,” Kaida spat, but Tessa could tell that there was only a little bit of heat behind it. She also ignored what Tessa had said about her getting hurt. “Can you stand? We’re gonna have to fight, I can’t protect you by myself.”

Absolutely not, Tessa thought, but decided to make an effort anyway, already reaching for all of the nerve endings to shut down. She nodded to the other girl, pushing herself up with one arm and bracing with the other, reaching for the sword that Kaida had brought with her once she pushed off her knee. Kaida was still decked out in all of her wolf armor, mask missing, kurisagama laying on the ground before she quickly grabbed it up and held it out in front of her. Tessa held the sword up, electrifying the blade and feeling the lightning writhe under her skin, and Kaida took up the place on her blind side as the wolf warriors descended upon them like a pack fighting for prey.

It had been a while since Tessa had fought with Kaida, but they still worked like a well-oiled machine; Tessa would slash upwards and send shocks through a warrior’s chest, armor reverberating, as Kaida covered her back, and then the blond would duck under as Kaida rolled over her back to keep up the attack. All of her senses were electrified, working overtime to keep Tessa aware of everything on her blind side, but she could sense that Kaida was doing her best to cover.

Her bad eye was pulsating, pain shooting straight through her head and to the back of her brain before exploding from the inside-out, even with the limited pain receptors. Gritting her teeth, Tessa pushed through it, at least until she realized that Kaida had disappeared from beside her. Whipping around, Tessa caught a glimpse of brown hair ducking under the warriors and rushing to Jay’s side, who was doing his best to fight through Cinder with Lloyd and get to Ras. Ras was chanting the ancient spell written on his scroll, the words lost to the wind raging around them, and Tessa panicked at the realization that she had no one to cover her blind side anymore; her stomach dropped, already hearing an enemy behind her.

“Kaida!” She yelled, before a wolf warrior successfully landed a blow to her knee, deep wounds slashed across the kneecap. Her knee folded almost instantly in protest, skin screaming, and Tessa’s palms scraped against the hard stone as she fell down. She threw her head back, trying to get a gauge on the person attacking her with her working eye so she could counter, but she could already feel the whistle of the wolf warrior’s metal claw coming down towards her head—

Until a spear landed squarely against the warrior’s chest and it was thrown backwards, the spear quickly circling back to who she knew was Noah behind her. His hands were quick to help support her as she tried to stand again, and Tessa turned her head to look at her brother, struggling with the effort and leaning on him heavily. Even just the small amount of lightning she used made every nerve she hadn’t deactivated come alive with sensation, and the feel of her brother’s gi made her want to hurl. 

In stark contrast to how Tessa currently felt, Noah was smiling with a face smeared with dirt and dust, a bruise forming on his cheek and hair tousled to the side. It struck her yet again how much he looked like Jay when he smiled, and Tessa was quick to return his smile with a small one of her own and fistbump his hand.

“Looking a little rough there,” he commented, hands on her face and rubbing a thumb under her eye wound, and Tessa hissed and pulled away in response. Noah’s eyebrows furrowed in concern, pulling his hand away, his left one covered in her blood. “Damn, hurts that bad?”

“Shut the nerves off. Can’t see out of it,” Tessa admitted, and Noah looked alarmed. “Come on, it’s not the first time this has happened. I’ll be fine.”

“Tess, you know you can’t do that anymore. It’s dangerous.”

“It was fine when Dad did the same thing. I’ve got it, Noah.”

It felt different from the time Dad injured her eye, and they both knew it, but Noah didn’t fight her on it. Instead, he grabbed up his spear, and his face hardened. “Sora and I are gonna protect you, Tess. We still have a job to do.”

“I do not need either of your protections,” Tessa growled, the sound hurting her throat, but Noah only chuckled as a strange shape formed in the corner of her good eye. Panic flooded her body, activating the adrenaline rush for a third time as the lightning came alive.

She reacted almost instantly, throwing up her sword and barely stopping herself before she sent the blade straight through Sora’s abdomen. Even just the slight movement made all of Tessa’s muscles scream in protest, and it took everything in her to not fold like a fucking lawn chair in pain.

Sora had her hands up, smiling sheepishly. “Hey there. You, uh, mind lowering that for me?”

With a sigh, Tessa did so with an absurd amount of effort, and all three of them turned to face the gathering crowd of wolf warriors stalking them, but they hesitated to attack after witnessing Wyldfyre thrashing other members within an inch of their lives. The dragon-raised girl yelled, drumming her hands against her chest before getting down on all-fours and fighting ten at once, making her way to the group and shooting off heat blast after heat blast.

“Did you call,” she paused, backflipping over a lone warrior and kicking him into the forest, “WYLDFYRE?!”

With a whoosh she was gone back into the crowd, fighting her way back to Arin and Lloyd. The three of them were safe for now, the remaining warriors and Cinder caught up in other battles, and both Noah and Sora supported Tessa on both sides. Kaida had finally reached Jay, and Tessa watched as the both of them located Ras, making a beeline for the black tiger at the top of the stairs.

Tessa watched in amazement as the Ninja fought vehemently against Cinder and his Shatterspin, with Kai finally getting up across the courtyard and launching into Rising Dragon, throwing Cinder to the ground. The yells and shouts were starting to blur together, becoming a giant cacophony of noise, and she started to get dizzy from the stimulation. Kaida and Jay were moving as one to get to Ras and Jordana, both close to the entrance of the Dojo, and they were almost there—

Before the sky itself began to rip open.

A bright orange light ravaged Tessa’s vision, black spots dancing across her one eye as she ducked her head, Noah’s arm thrown out in front of her only blocking a bit of the blaze. The wind raged through the clearing, ferocious and biting, much stronger than it had been just a minute before. Tessa tried to peek through her fingers, getting a glimpse of the large portal now looming over the courtyard, shedding small sparks of fire that left ashes on the ground where they fell and shining brighter than the bloody moon above them. Despair tried to make a home in the center of her chest but she wouldn’t let it, instead filling the void with some of the supposedly patented Walker Determination that came with her bloodline.

Ras had succeeded in opening the portal, but they still had a chance. The hostages were freed, all they had to do was hold out until the Blood Moon was over.

They could do that, right?

But in order to do that, they were going to have to do something big.

She was confident that they could, even with her injuries, and she yelled before unleashing a large lightning bolt into the middle of the courtyard with a slash of her arm. Everyone, friend or foe, flinched away, some of the warriors fleeing in terror and the Ninja staring with wide eyes in her direction, but it worked well enough as a deterrent. It took much more out of her then she was expecting, her wrecked knee shaking with the effort of holding her up, and she was quick to lean on Sora as the blowback hit her. Her hands were quivering as she dropped her sword, shudders starting to rock her frame and her nerves on fire from the strain of keeping the lightning from striking around them. Noah kept saying her name, trying to get her attention. Blackness started to set in her vision but she fought through it, forcing her eyes open, and watching as Jay and Kaida finally reached Ras.

And both of them were caught almost instantly.

The tiger whipped around at lightspeed and threw a punch at Jay, who took it head-on and flew backwards off the stand. Kaida had frozen, shocked at how quickly her father was taken down, and it gave Ras enough of an opening to grab her by her chestplate and jump to the center of the courtyard with her in hand. Cinder paused in his assault, wicked smile splitting his face in half as he watched his master hold up the struggling girl. The Ninja also stopped, worried that they might hurt her if they tried to press Ras. Her kurisagama was on the ground, useless, and Noah laid a hand on her shoulder in support, spear in front of him and at the ready. Everyone was frozen, watching what Ras would do, Kaida’s hair whipping around with the wind and somewhat covering the look of terror on her face. Her bun had come undone, and her hair was longer than Tessa was expecting, reminding her of what hers had once looked like.

“Let her go!” Jay yelled, getting up from where he had fallen behind one of the stone pillars.

Ras didn’t even turn to look at him, just scoffing in disgust with his eyes closed before opening them again.

With a growl, Ras examined Kaida in his hand, turning his head to the side and chuckling before snarling. “Traitors, the both of you. You lose, child. I hope you enjoy having a greater purpose than anything your father could give you.”

And he chucked her towards the portal as hard as he could, Kaida yelling out a curse as he did so.

Jay shot forward with the speed of a rocket, catching the girl’s hand and crashing into the stairs before he found his footing and braced, but the portal still threatened to swallow both of them whole.

Tessa watched on in horror with her one eye, scarcely breathing, loosely being held up by Sora as Noah rushed through the warriors to Kaida. Kaida was barely hanging onto Jay’s hand, the portal looming behind the both of them with swirling and angry oranges and whites as the wind whipped her hair to the side. Her leg was screaming in pain, all of her hard work shutting off her nerve endings coming undone by the second, and she yelled when she tried to take a step forward before her knee buckled under the weight. Sora caught her before she could fall to the ground, but Tessa still watched the tears rolling down her face land on the ground, turning the dirt to a different color before her head shot up at the sound of someone screaming.

Noah was running full speed towards their father, dropping his spear as he went. He yelled Jay’s name, and Tessa was nauseous as she watched how Jay lost his grip on Kaida’s hand finger by finger. Four, three, two, Noah was still running…and then it was just one finger, Jay’s index to Kaida’s thumb, and Noah wasn’t close enough. “NO!” she screamed, and she pushed off of Sora, sprinting through the invigorated warriors and threading the needle as best as she could with one eye and a bum leg.

It was only a few seconds, but it felt like hours. Tessa activated the lightning she had left, pushing it through her veins despite the pain as Jay’s hand began to tremble, and she sobbed as his hand finally gave out and lost its grip on Kaida. Riyu, who Tessa hadn’t seen since before she went down, tried to fly towards them but failed, the wind too strong for his untrained wings.

Jay was thrown backwards from the force and wind, crashing straight into Lloyd in the middle of his fight with Ras, but Tessa kept her focus on the portal in front of her. Every step felt like someone driving a stake right through her knee into the ground, but she kept running. Head pounding, chest heaving, legs screaming. She had no idea where Noah went. Almost there, almost there, almost there—

A hand shot out from the side of her vision, grabbing Kaida’s right as her foot started to get within range of the dark void. Noah quickly braced his feet against the ground, and Tessa poured on the speed when she saw his footing start to slip despite bracing against the stairs. Kaida was getting closer and closer to the portal, even with Noah’s help, and the boy whipped his head back at the sound of his sister screaming his name.

Tessa couldn’t see past the hair flying into her face, her good eye focusing as best as it could on her brother and sister as the blood fell down her cheek from her injured eye. Noah looked horrified to see her booking it across the courtyard towards them, one of his feet finally coming off the ground as Kaida was swallowed up to her waist. “No! You need to go!” Noah yelled, forcing his foot back onto the ground. “You need to go! Jay still needs you!”

“Fuck him!” Tessa spat, almost tumbling to the ground as a wolf warrior collided with her side. She didn’t fall, but her momentum was broken, and the pain made her knee spasm as she cried out. “I need you! Hang on, I’m coming!”

She was too far, she already knew that. She wouldn’t be able to pull them back in, her strength was already waning and she could feel the darkness trying to shutter her vision, but at least they would go through the portal together. They would have each other.

Finally, finally, their hands connected as Tessa’s leg gave out, but the warm feeling of Noah’s hand in hers numbed every bit of the pain. She braced on the bottom stair with her good leg, forcing the lightning to rush through her arms. Blood covered her left arm, some of it getting on Noah’s gi as he held fast to her hand, grimacing from the static causing his hair to stand up. His hand was still slick with her blood, causing their hands to slip dangerously.

“Tess, you need to go,” Noah said, some of his words getting lost to the wind, or the ringing in Tessa’s ears was too loud, “Jay and Nya need you, you need to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you and Kaida,” Tessa gritted her teeth, trying to pull, before a huge spike was driven into her skull and her vision went white with the pain. The barrier on the rest of the nerve endings had finally broken. Noah was crushing her hand hard enough to break her fingers, shouting her name as everything started to clear, her tongue tasting like coppery sludge as she threw up blood onto the pavement. It burned her throat and caused her ribs to scream in protest, and Tessa let a single sob from the pain out before locking it all back up.

Kaida was fighting to get a better grip on Noah’s arm, grabbing parts of his gi and panicking as they started to rip from the pull of the portal. “All of us need to get out of here! Now PULL goddammit!”

And Tessa tried, with all of her might, to pull her siblings back from the monstrous hole ripped into the sky. Her lungs were screaming, her eye pulsating from the pressure of lightning rocking through her body, and she was expecting her ankle to snap under the weight of all three of them. Both of her hands were clenched onto Noah’s sleeve, and both of them pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled—

Until a weight crashed into Tessa’s right side, and suddenly her hands were empty.

“NO!” she screamed, throwing the wolf warrior to the side but still falling, her leg unable to catch her anymore. 

Kaida was swallowed up almost instantly, finally out of sleeve to grab onto, and she disappeared into the portal with a cut-off yell. A sob broke out of Tessa’s throat when her body collided with the hard stone floor, but she kept pushing, forcing herself back up and throwing her hand out with as much force as she could muster to grab Noah. She may not have been able to save her sister, but she could still save her brother.

A memory flashed through her mind from their childhood; she was maybe six years old, right outside of the monastery in the courtyard. Noah was still little, shorter than her for once, and crying. Dad had passed by them, running into Noah and knocking him to the ground before walking into the monastery, slamming the door behind him. 

Tessa remembered being angry that her Daddy hadn’t said sorry, but was more concerned with her crying brother. She held out her hand for him, his eye still swollen with a black eye from them trying to play catch at the bottom of the mountain. Noah was still crying, trying to stifle his tears, but he still took his sister’s hand. The warmth of the memory filled her with too many emotions to count, and Tessa vaguely registered that tears were falling from only one eye.

She blinked, and there was no more monastery, just the gaping portal behind her brother as his foot finally slipped, and he was being sucked in.

But her hand was there! It was there. Noah could reach out and grab it, save himself, take her with him—

Noah did none of those things. Just as their fingertips touched, bloody and swollen, he pulled his hand away. He made no attempt to take Tessa’s hand.

“I’m sorry, sis,” he said softly, and Tessa sobbed as her left hand flew uselessly to the side from the wind blowing. “I love you, and I hope you get it one day. See you on the other side, Tessa.”

Tessa screamed, watching as her brother smiled large enough to make his eyes crinkle at the edges. He looked like Dad, in the photos kept around the monastery. And the smile never waned as his arm, then his legs, then his body, and finally his head disappeared into the portal. 

Noah and Kaida were gone.

She had nothing.

The force of both of them disappearing into the portal threw her backwards, and the world started spinning as Tessa rolled across the courtyard, bringing her arms to cover her face but unable to stop her head from smashing into the stones again and again. She finally came to a stop against one of the stone pillars, but didn’t get up, the adrenaline draining away like sand through a sieve and the lightning finally ceasing to power her nerves. The exhaustion set in, wearing on her bones like barbed wire with its pins and needles, and she was helpless.Even the roaring pain of her ruined eye wasn’t enough to activate her energy reserves, her newly broken ribs each complaining as she kept breathing against their will. She was done. If one of the wolf warriors or Ras or Cinder wanted to finish her off, they could, and there was nothing Tessa could do about it.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure if she would want to do anything about it now.

The wolf warriors all turned towards her, almost as if smelling her weakness as she lay against the stone, and they started to run towards her. Light glinted off of their sharp claws, the glow of their masks startling against the dark of the night as the Blood Moon started to wane at long last. Tessa tried to channel what little power she had left into her fingertips, forcing herself to her feet despite her destroyed knee, determined to at least try and make a stand…

And she watched in horror as someone jumped out of the portal, the wolf warriors ceasing their pursuit and turning to look at one of their true masters. They all went onto their knees, looking down at the ground as their master looked to the sky and laughed.

Nokt was free. And Noah was gone.

Her stupid fucking knee was the only thing keeping her from rushing the masked master, who was quick to lock eyes with her, still chuckling. Tessa’s ears were ringing louder than before, holding her fists in front of her and breathing heavily, and someone caught her from the side before she could collapse onto the ground yet again. Pain shot through her side and her hand clenched at it, feeling yet more blood ooze from a fresh scratch carved along her hip.

“Rest,” Nya said softly, helping her down to sit on the ground. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Noah,” Tessa stammered, pushing against the hand that Nya tried to press against her forehead, “Noah’s still in there, I need to—”

“There’s nothing we can do for him now,” Nya said gently, and Tessa sobbed when she saw a single tear form at the corner of the water ninja’s eye. “So rest, and we’ll take it from here.”

“I can’t, I won’t,” Tessa argued, and Nya sighed. She nodded, taking away the gentle touch, and Tessa mourned it as soon as it was gone.

Nya turned back to face the wolf warriors, going on defense to protect her daughter (when Tessa couldn’t even protect her brother), and both of them watched as Nokt attempted to do Shatterspin, slamming his foot once, then twice, and starting to spin—

Until a shape threw him right to the ground, and Tessa sobbed as she saw Jay pull his fist back and clock Nokt straight across the face.

“You SON OF A BITCH!” Jay yelled, smashing his fist into Nokt’s face again before Ras shoved him off with a roar. There was a deep cut under Jay’s eye, and he went toe to toe with the black tiger as he pushed the former lightning ninja away from Nokt. “Where are my kids?! Where the fuck are my kids?!”

Tessa’s vision was already starting to blur from exhaustion, but she forced herself up yet again. She would not die lying down. If they were going to take her life tonight, then she was dying on her feet, as a Ninja. It’s what her father would’ve wanted.

Jay didn’t last long before Nokt wrestled himself free and appeared behind him with inhuman speed, slamming his forearm into Jay’s abdomen and throwing him backwards off the stairs. Nya ran forward to catch him, both skidding backwards, and he stood back up, only looking slightly dazed as the two of them stood against Ras and Nokt, and Tessa was struck by how similar they looked to the one photo Uncle Kai kept in on his nightstand of the younger Ninja, Nya and Jay standing side-by-side. She stood, feeling little sparks fizzing under her skin, and she looked up at Ras with the same withering look that she saved for her father.

Lloyd and Kai stood off to the side with Riyu, weapons drawn and every wolf warrior knocked out behind them. Sora and Arin were on their other side, both poised to use their elements against the tiger and the wolfish man. Wyldfyre roared from her own section, powers on full display and showing no signs of the leg injury she had. Ras was gritting his teeth, ears flattened against his head, putting his hammer in the harness on his back before cupping his paws and yelling to the sky for his master to help.

The lights suddenly flashing around them were too bright for Tessa, slamming her eye shut and looking down as her ears popped from the pressure of all of the enemies disappearing into clouds of shimmering light, knee slamming against the stone as her body gave out for the umpteenth time. She didn’t know when she started sobbing, but couldn’t contain it anymore, the sounds lost to the wind as it roared even louder.

When she could finally look again, the entire dojo and the portal was gone, Ras and Nokt nowhere to be found and Cinder’s unconscious form missing. The Ninja were staring in horror at the empty spot where the Dojo stood, but Nya and Jay both whirled around at the loud sobs that wracked Tessa’s body. She could see Uncle Kai out of the corner of her eye, shock spreading across his face as he saw the sheer volume of blood on her face and down her gi.

Hands were on her in seconds, Nya’s keeping her steady on one side and Kai trying to push the hand now clamped around her eye away. Tears were falling hot and steady down her cheek, and she couldn’t taste the salt through the blood coating her tongue. “I need to take a look, okay?” Kai tried to soothe, and Tessa could barely hear him over her sobs. “Tess, honey, please. I just need a look. I need to see how bad it is.”

Jay was standing off to the side, Tessa’s blind side, and she could tell that he was hovering over her, the electrical signals from his nerves telling her that he had his arms extended without touching her. The hole forming in Tessa’s stomach seemed to be endless, every emotion she ever felt falling through and disappearing into the void, but the despair never stopped stabbing at every organ in her body with spears sharper than the edge of a knife. She could barely catch her breath between the pain bursting throughout her abdomen and the choking sobs forcing themselves out of her throat.

It happened before she could think about it; boiling anger filled her up from top to bottom, feeling hotter than the lightning that had been running through every nerve in her body, and before Tessa could stop herself she threw her fist out to the side and caught Jay’s knee.

“It’s your fault!” she yelled, turning so he was in the vision of her good eye. She didn’t knock him down, he barely looked like he felt it, but that just made her angrier. It was comforting to feel, to allow herself to feel, numbing the burning pain and replacing it with a colder fire. “It’s your fucking fault!”

To his credit, his stupid fucking credit, he did look guilty, perhaps more guilty than Tessa was expecting. “Kiddo, please—”

“Don’t fucking call me that!” She seethed, letting the words loose when she normally would’ve done anything to keep them contained. She had been waiting for this for years, for Dad to make just one slipup, one mistake that she could correct him for. It was his turn to finally feel it. “You don’t care. You never fucking cared!”

“You need to sit down before you pass out, Tessa—”

He was right, and she hated it. She hated how weak she felt, how little she knew it would take at this point to take her out. And that he wasn’t doing anything. “I don’t give a flying fuck! I took that hit for you! Can’t you be fucking grateful?!”

His expression hardened, but the fear at seeing the familiar face did nothing to deter Tessa’s anger for once in her life. “I never asked you to take that hit.”

“And I never asked to have a father like you,” Tessa snarled. The stretch of her mouth caused more blood to fall onto the stone below. “I never asked to be here! I never asked for another sibling to protect, and I never asked for you to lose the one person I had left!”

“I just lost my daughter!” Jay yelled, taking a step forward.

“I’m your daughter too!”

Silence settled over the group like a pile of bricks, only broken by the sounds of Jay and Tessa both breathing heavily. Both from emotion, and one with shattered ribs threatening to rip holes into her lungs. She was startled to see tears form at the corner’s of Jay’s dark blue eyes, mirroring hers, and they started to slide down his cheeks and fall onto his clenched fists. The anger was leaving, and it was the last leg that Tessa had to stand on. “I’m your daughter too,” she said, still angry, “and Noah is your son, but when did that ever matter to you? We were supposed to have each other. You always had me, but I…I never had you. I never had you. It didn’t matter what I did for Nya, or how many times I helped Kaida, none of it fucking mattered.”

“Tessa—” Nya tried to say, a hand going to her shoulder, but the girl shrugged her off.

“You’ve spent so much time sitting in your own self-pity, worrying about yourself,” Tessa clenched her fist, ignoring the spikes of pain radiating from her arm. “You are just like my father.”

“What?” Jay whispered, and the tears on his cheeks grew.

“Dad wouldn’t have cared about Noah getting lost either,” Tessa let out a single sob before forcing herself to stop. “The only thing he would be worried about is how it affected him, because he couldn’t possibly lose another person. It was always about him, and about how he felt, and how he would have to deal with it. It wouldn’t have mattered that there was another kid standing right there.”

She was expecting Jay to slap her, hit her, hurl words with sharper edges than their swords until she finally caved and admitted that he was right about everything, but to her shock none of the above happened.

Instead, her body began to shut down, finally spent and allowing itself to rest. Tessa knew that she wouldn’t be able to catch herself, fully expecting to hit the floor with no cushion and neither Nya or Kai being able to hold her up. The floor was getting closer and closer, and Tessa closed her eye to brace for the impact.

Arms wrapped around her middle, holding her close and lowering her down before cradling her against a large chest. Tessa started sobbing again, her good eye pressed into an armored shoulder as tears started falling, and Jay’s tears landed on the top of her head as he quietly shushed her. He cupped the back of her head, keeping her close, doing everything in his power to not aggravate her injuries.

“We’re going to fix it,” he whispered, and Tessa pounded a fist on his wolf warrior chestplate in objection. “I mean it. We’re going to fix it, Tess, and we’re going to get them back.”

And I’m going to make it up to you, Tessa heard him whisper, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She didn’t say anything, feeling Nya’s hands on her other side and Uncle Kai’s hands finally examining her face.

Ebb (the oldest): Ebb is the biggest and the oldest. Her tusks and hair have already started to grow in and are more prominent than her siblings. She’s very calm and likes to sleep. She also enjoys eating anything in sight… Ebb really doesn’t have a preference to any person in particular. She does tend to stay around Finn and Quinn more however.

Flash (second oldest): The only brother of the group. He’s a gremlin. He throws his weight around, especially with O’Hara, and occasionally gets put in his place. He’s the fastest which earned him the name of “Flash.” He dislikes being pet but regularly makes exceptions for Kaida, who he favors. He mimics Kaida’s behavior, even going so far to butt Jenna’s leg sometimes (bro really thinks he’s badass)

Huracan (Second youngest): Huracan is incredibly curious and agile. She regularly gets stuck at the top of cabinets, an occurrence that baffles everyone. Huracan will accept pets from everyone, she does not discriminate. She likes to be around Sparky, since he’s kind of the unofficial mediator for the piglets. Huracan also likes to be around Noah, Tessa, and Fynn since they’re more likely to give her food.

O’Hara (youngest): The runt of the litter. Being the smallest, her tusks have barely grown in. She and Flash wrestle a lot, but she loses most of the time (jokes on him, she ends up being bigger than he is). She’s fairly shy and prefers to be around her mother than humans. O’Hara has a fondness for Ethan though (youngest sibling bonding fr).