Somewhere in Canada….

A slender wolfblood girl with hazel eyes trudged up the walk to a two-story brick house. She opened the door as her parents greeted her with as much encouragement as they could.

"Hi Maddy. How was school?" Emma said. Maddy plastered a smile on her face.

"It was…school…but, um, it was great. Just really great." She carefully kept the neutral expression over her face like the perfect mask. Maddy trudged upstairs to her room, shut the door quietly. She flung the rucksack in the corner. She fell back on her bed. She closed her eyes and only then would she let the tears flow. Just quiet sobs, none of that all-out balling like she used to do. She'd gotten smarter about that. Not that it would help. Keen wolfblood hearing saw to that.

Downstairs Maddy's dad was stocking the pantry with fresh supplies, humming quietly to himself. Emma poked around the corner to see what he was doing exactly. Her eyes bugged out when she saw the pantry stocked floor to ceiling with rows and rows of tissue boxes, enough to fill an entire shelter.

"Daniel! Aren't you a little out of control here?"

Daniel threw her a pointed look as Maddy's sobs continued unabated in the background.

"At this rate we'll need a lifetime supply. It's been how many months? Don't blame me for being practical."

Emma scoffed as Daniel accidentally bumped into the base of the stack. Daniel cried out as an avalanche of boxes buried him alive. Emma slammed the door on him with a sigh, mumbling "Serves you right for focusing on the wrong things Mister!" She walked into the living room, eased into her favorite armchair and tried to open up a book to distract her worries.

The wolfblood mother tried and failed to start her book at least fourteen times before she gave up. She slammed it shut and put it aside on the radiator. A rueful smile tugged up her lips despite everything. She knew that Daniel was trying, really trying, in his own ineffectual and misguided way. He loves our daughter so much, but when it comes to this sort of thing he's complete bollox. It was like asking a gigantic ogre to tie a mouse's shoelaces. He just wasn't built for it. Daniel didn't know how to comfort their daughter in her grief at losing all her friends, and especially that troubled wolfblood boy—Rhydian.

How, Emma? Why didn't you see it coming? Emma still asked herself those questions and more. And she still couldn't put one scene out of her mind. Rhydian kissing her daughter and Maddy's passion every bit as forceful as she kissed him right back, on that day they said farewell near Stoneybridge.

There was something miraculous, and yes, amazing about love. It was like a flame that could grow from a single ember into a prairie-wide wildfire in a space briefer than the quickest heartbeat. Somehow, some way, Rhydian had gone from being Maddy's friend to being her best friend—to being that confidante without equals. There were some who claimed that a boy and girl could never be friends first on the way to becoming something more, but in Emma's reckoning it was just the opposite. Love, true love, as one famous advice-giver once wrote, "…is friendship which has caught fire." And if that was the case, Emma mused, then Rhydian and Maddy's friendship was burning as brightly as the sun. She put her hands on the radiator for a moment, relishing the heat as it seeped into her fingers. Emma then got up and walked upstairs, standing quietly outside her daughter's room as the sobbing intensified.

She almost threw open the door and broke open the secret then and there…it was just too tempting. To flip Maddy's suffering upside down into anticipation was so, so what she wanted to do right now. The thought of wiping all that pain and hurt off of Maddy's face was just too much.

Daniel pounced on her from behind, covering her mouth with one hand.

"Don't you dare."

He was just dragging Emma back towards their bedroom when he somehow lost his footing. The two stumbled backwards down the stairs, each of them grunting and groaning like a pair of zombies. Luckily Maddy was too steeped in her own sorrows to wonder why in the world her parents were making so much noise.

As Daniel lay beside Emma at the foot of the stairs, their arms and legs splayed at odd angles, he gave her a stern look. "We are not spoiling the surprise. You agreed to this! Emma, don't even think about it."

Emma frowned, biting her bottom lip. "But Dan….Look, she's suffering so much. I hate to see her like this. If we tell her—"

Their voices snapped back and forth at each other like hissing reptiles. Maddy kept crying, her chest feeling like someone had carved out a jagged hole in it and left the wound to fester. She stayed completely unaware of the surprise that lay just around the corner.

The Next Day….

Maddy came home from school that Thursday as normal. She trudged about as enthusiastically as a captive sent on a death march, up the same cobblestone walk and into the house, into the family room. Before she could make a beeline for her bedroom though Emma motioned her over to the kitchen.

"Come here for a bit, pet. We need to talk."

The pretty wolfblood girl groaned. "Mum…I'm tired from school. Just let me go up to my room!"

Emma folded her arms and cocked her head in a 'You don't want to escalate this' gesture that Maddy knew like the inside of her rucksack.

"Okay, okay," she huffed out. Maddy sat at the kitchen table. "Mind telling me what this's all about?" Maddy had a feeling it involved her sudden bouts of sadness. She was doing all right in her classes—after all, she wasn't a total wreck. Her parents just needed to stay off her back. They didn't understand, anyway!

A tear spilled down her cheek as she thought of Rhydian again. UGH. I have to stop thinking about him constantly! Whenever she did, that ache in her chest became a fierce throbbing, and the fierce throbbing became a black hole. Pretty soon, she felt as if her very life force might just implode from the heavy weight pulling at her heart. She caught the tear with her finger and flung it away.

"Sorry Mum. I…."

"You miss him, pet. We know." Emma stood up and opened the back door. "Which is why we thought, since we couldn't bring you to Stoneybridge, perhaps we could…." She let the sentence slide into the abyss as a handsome young man with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes stepped through the entryway. His scent hit her as a breeze snuck in through the open door. It felled her like a tree, so overpowering she forgot to breathe. She looked at him, her mouth slack in shock as he smiled, flashing those white teeth.

"Hey Mads."

She was out of her seat and bolting for him like a survivor in raging seas who'd spotted a lifeboat. She didn't watch where she was going either, and as she moved to rush around the chair, her ankle nicked the chair leg and she toppled…WHAM. Her chin hit the tabletop and then her head slammed into the floor with a resounding WHACK. She felt blood fill her mouth just before she blacked out.

A Little While Later…

"I think she's coming around." Emma's voice. Very accusatory.

"I TOLD you we should have told her. Poor cub."

Daniel made no reply. He knew he'd be sleeping in the yard tonight. No—make that the forest, maybe even the mushroom patch if Emma was feeling cruel.

Maddy was vaguely aware of a cold compress resting across her forehead. She winced as a dull pounding knocked out a steady cadence in her skull.

Her eyes fluttered open and she saw Rhydian sitting beside her while she lay on her bed.

"There's my girl. Awake at last."

"Rhydian!" Maddy tried to surge upright only to feel a little like throwing up as her head throbbed twice as hard.

"NO! Lie back, Maddy. Please be still. Silly girl." He leaned over her, cupping the left side of her face as his other hand pressed the cold pack against her aching skull. "You'll need to keep this on for at least another ten minutes."

Maddy truly did not even care. The pounding in her head went momentarily forgotten as she stared at Rhydian so intensely, drinking up all his features before this figment of her imagination up and vanished, as she knew it had to.

"Rhydian, are you really here? Can this even be real?" Her excitement bubbled up. The wolfblood girl smiled with a joy that could have counter-blinded the sun itself.

Rhydian chuckled. "You got a little too over-eager, didn't you? Yes, it really is me. Now I'm not complaining, I'm glad you're so glad to see me, but can we avoid any visits to the emergency room? I did cross an ocean to see you, and I was hoping we could spend some time together somewhere just a wee bit cozier." Rhydian stroked her cheek as she closed her eyes, just focusing on his fingers caressing her skin, and the scent of him so near. She took a deep, calming sniff of him. The pounding in her head retreated even further.

Maddy couldn't believe it was really him. Then for just a second she felt a surge of anger. Her parents had secretly set this up without telling her! She wanted to glare at them, but they weren't in her field of vision and she knew better than to try to sit up again. So instead she laid back and let Rhydian stroke her face, looking at her with that love so boundless it seemed to fill the very room, like something that could compete with air.

"Kiss me," she whispered, her eyes pleading. Rhydian obeyed, giving her lips a gentle touch before deepening the kiss, exploring her mouth despite the fact that there were two certain wolfbloods not more than a few meters away.

Daniel pointedly cleared his throat when the kiss kept on going…and going…and going. Rhydian finally came up for air, smiling down at Maddy, who had already slipped one of her hands out, entwining her fingers with his.

"I told you I'd find you again, Maddy Smith," Rhydian said proudly. He brushed his thumb across her bottom lip affectionately, then stole one more tantalizing kiss before getting up.

"Wait! Where do you think you're going?" the brunette cried, as if she was on life support and someone was about to unplug her machine.

Rhydian grinned. "Don't worry, Mads. I'll be right downstairs."

Daniel butted in. "You took a nasty fall. The family doctor's coming over to have a look at you and make sure of no lasting harm. There will be time enough to spend with Rhydian later, young lady. Now you just lie still and be a good patient until the doctor gives us the green light."

Maddy squirmed in her bed. She made a whimpering sound. "It's not even remotely fair. Rhydian gets to come here after all this time and now…this!" she said with a frustrated huff. "Can't he just stay with me until the doctor gets here? You guys owe me at least that. Why didn't you TELL ME Rhydian was coming?" she growled, her eyes shooting lethal rays of venom. "You guys are EVIL."

Daniel sighed and looked at his wife. Emma looked away, feeling as guilty as her daughter had intended. "We wanted it to be a surprise, sweetie. We also weren't sure he could come until a few days ago. We didn't want you getting your hopes up."

Rhydian had stepped out, but now he returned with a chair from the kitchen, plopped it down beside Maddy's bed. He took her hand in his, lacing his warm fingers with hers until her whole hand, her wrist, the entire arm tingled with the energy that flowed from his wolfblood veins to hers. It was like she'd been dying of thirst in the desert, and this was the first drink of water to her parched throat. Whatever it was had resuscitated her heart too.

"Rhydian, do you remember what you said to me when we parted?"

The wolfblood boy threw her a dazzling grin. He leaned over, tweaking her nose with that playful, teasing nature that was just pure Rhydian. "I hope that's a rhetorical question. Of course I remember. I said the three words I'll never forget." He gave her a meaningful look, relishing how excited she looked as she lay there squirming on the bed and looking like she would try to surge out of that same bed and jump his bones any second.

"Tell me again…just in case I forgot." She smirked at him as he brought her hand to his lips and gently kissed her knuckles. "I love you, Maddy Smith."

"That's technically five words, not three," Daniel piped up.

"Shove off!" Maddy and Rhydian cried in unison. Rhydian paled, aghast at what he'd just said to Maddy's dad. But Maddy's parents just chuckled as they left the two to have some privacy, their footsteps receding down the stairway.

A/N - I hope you liked it. I have to give a shout-out and thank you to author Darkfire Galaxy, whose stories inspired me to write my first more humor-oriented fic.

If you liked this story you'll probably love my two longer stories: Wolf Bond and Secret Revealed. They're a bit more serious, with a LOT more action and more intense Maddian (because the world will never have enough). Keep up the good work Wolfblood fans :)