I have always feared finding my mate. Having had little to no control of my life for most of it, I didn’t want to think of someone else choosing who I was going to spend the rest of my time on Earth with. Even if that someone is our Mother Goddess. Like we told Meredith last night, she-wolves were seen as inferior. They were meant for few things, and each of those things were in service of their mate. Many were treated as slaves, created to cook and clean for their mate and to warm his bed at night. The matebond wasn’t even that sacred in our pack. Many of the men frequented the pack whorehouse, the place where all she-wolves from 16, when they got their wolf, until they found their mate were taught how to “please a male.” The only reason that I had escaped that particular cruelty is that Slade had made it known that Chloe and I were his favorites. His father allowed him to keep me for one year without having to share with the other wolves. Had we not left, I would still
Case and I follow Rin out to the bonfire pit. I’m so full of misery right now. I can’t imagine not being with Rin. She’s gone from the little red head that held so much fascination for me when I was a child, to my teenage best friend and confidant, to my mate, to the mother of my pups, to the cause of my torment. I have literally shared every aspect of my life with her. Every major event, every minor detail, everything has had her in it. And now there’s the possibility that it’s over. I mean, I know that over the last couple of days, I decided that I was willing to walk away. Believe me, the irony isn’t lost on me. But, I thought that it would be because we couldn’t get it together. I thought that I would be leaving out of anger or self-preservation. I thought that I’d have some kind of righteous reason to be like, “Hey, I tried. And it just didn’t work out.” Never in a million years did I think that it would be like this. This is calm. Rin seems almost happy, not an
I wake up to see Chloe fussing with some of my bandages. She doesn’t register that I’m awake and I take a second to study her. Her face is blotchy and tear-stained and her eyes are red. It’s obvious that she’s been crying, though I’m not sure why. Her hand goes to the bandages on my chest and I place my hands on hers. “Hey. What’s wrong?” My voice is stronger and actually has some intonation in it. She blinks back some tears and gives me a fake smile. “Oh, you’re awake! That’s great! How are you feeling? Think you might be ready to sit up and have something to eat? I brought your protein shake with me.” “I’m feeling better. If you can help me sit up, I think I could hold the drink myself. You can supervise me while you tell me what’s up.” I give her a meaningful look. She snorts as she turns away to put down the bandages. “Not gonna let it go, are you?” “Not in my DNA. Ask Sev.” At the mention of Sev’s name, I see her tense and she freezes for a minute. Huh.
We start to go outside, but see that Rin is still out there, talking to Kesha now. Slade and Meredith are nowhere to be found, but it feels weird to have this conversation out where anyone can hear it. “You guys want to come to my room? We’ll get some privacy there.” There’s no ignoring the tremor in Chloe’s voice as she says this. As much as all of our minds are in turmoil with everything that’s happening, our bodies have no difficulties understanding what they want. The thought of being in a room alone with her, a room that is covered in her scent, has my adrenaline spiking, along with my breathing. “You sure, Chloe?” Sev asks. I can tell that he’s having just as much trouble fighting his body as I am. “Yeah. I mean, we’re just gonna talk, right?” Her words are confident, but her eyes are looking everywhere but at us. Honestly, I think that we have a snowball’s chance in Hell of keeping our hands to ourselves, but I’m gonna do my best. It won’t be hard if she doesn
Case and Sev leave to go talk to Chloe. I hope that they all accept each other. Honestly, it would be a huge weight off of my shoulders to know that they had found someone that could make them happy when I couldn’t. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for them, for them to be happy. I’m not stupid enough to think that I ever could give them the happiness and carefree life that Chloe could. There’s too much history between us. And I just don’t know that I’m strong enough to try and make it work. Even though Meredith said that we could eventually repair the bond, could eventually make the love and the sparks and all the good stuff come back, it would take years. And shouldn’t love be easy? I know for humans that it’s harder. Love is something that they have to strive for, fight for. But for wolves, it’s supposed to just click. You’re given your mate and that’s it. You automatically love them. You automatically have no other feelings for any other wolves. They are the other part
Case and I sit in two chairs in Chloe’s room. She’s surprisingly neat for her age. I remember my mom yelling at me every time that she came into my room when I was 19 to clean my room. I never really got the whole cleaning routine down until we started to move from pack to pack, with barely anything to carry with us. We had to be ready to go on a moment’s notice, in case the pack figured out that we were a trio. It keeps you organized, whether you want to be or not.I missed being that young and carefree, having someone else worrying about the big stuff. Really, I just missed having parents that cared for me. Parents that loved me. Too bad that they didn’t try to reason with Case’s dad. Didn’t stand up to him when he threw us out of the pack. Thinking about my new mate, she never had that as a pup. One of the many reasons that I’m glad that we destroyed the Black Night Pack, but also a reason that I wished that we had made their deaths take longer.If she’ll let us, I’ll giv
I can’t believe the clusterfuck that my life has become in the last six hours. Not only have I lost any alliance that I could have possibly had with the wolves, now my coven’s inner circle knows that I can’t have children.What those damn demi-gods said was true. With a barren High Priestess at the helm, the coven will wither and die. We’d seen a recent troubling trend of pregnant witches having complications with carrying their babies, which has led to a couple of stillbirths. The next step would be come spring when the animals started to get pregnant. There would be a rash of miscarriages, still-births, and animals that just couldn’t get pregnant.The Mother aspect of Hecate is the goddess of fertility. That is supposed to be my power. But if I’m barren, my entire coven will be as well. It was half the reason that my mother had kept her alliance with Julian’s pack. We all knew that he was psychotic, but he would willingly give us what we needed to complete the potion to make
Case kneels in front of me on the floor. “Chloe, we love you. Always have. More than as a friend or the little sister that Slade and Kesha see you as. More than as the protector that Rin sees herself as. We love you. We want you to be happy. If you think you’ll be happy with us, we will spend everyday for the rest of our lives making ourselves worthy of that choice. If not…” Case turns to look at Sev before looking back at me. “If not, we’ll complete the rejection.”My heart is hammering in my chest, making it difficult for me to breathe. The thought of being with them scares me half to death. I can’t imagine having that choice taken from me, having someone else decide what will make me happy. But the thought of being without them is even worse. The second Case says that, it’s like my heart stops beating in my chest. I desperately look back and forth between the two of them, begging them to say something else, to stop the pain that’s burning in my chest.Sev stands, putt