The Beginning
It’s been thirteen days since Colton left me in the forest and I don’t think I have the will to keep trying anymore, I’m tired of life and everything has become so mundane. Everything I thought I had experienced before that day is nothing in comparison to how I have been since. I feel like my family have died all over again and I am bereft and inconsolable. I have no more tears because I have cried so many. I am nothing, but a numb hollow shell and the sunlight has withdrawn from my world.
I tried to stop the spiraling depression, I fought hard to beat this feeling of being sucked free of all life, but the fates don’t play when you deny them. I’m not even living anymore. Such is my empty continuous state of nothing.
I robotically move from my room to kitchen, from kitchen to chores, from chores to my room, day after day. I have to nothing to say, nothing to add to the conversations around me and nothing to do or think about beyond focus on this eternal emptiness that I drag around day after day.
I was never this girl. I survived the loss of so much more, yet I don’t know how to fight this. I have read books in the library that blame the severance for my worsened state. Cast free, set afloat by a rejection of this level…it messes with you more than just the rejection of a normal union. Wolves can pick mates; it’s not always fated. And normally both parties get a choice, so you have to be pretty sure to shackle your heart to someone if you are going to ask them to be mated for life.
Scenting’s happen…that’s when the mate you are most likely to bond with can smell out your scent among the many and identify you easily. Mates should and can smell one another no matter the distance or the crowds. So rejecting someone who syncs with your scent can be crushing as it is. Rejecting someone who imprints at the hands of the fates…there is no recorded outcome. No one has ever defied it, because quite simply…no one fights the union. Its all-encompassing ‘instalove’ and a need and hunger stronger than any bond in the land. Imprinting is soul mate lore. Unbreakable, pure and powerful. No one wants to deny that kind of obsessive connection and walk away to find another mate…until us.
I can confirm, rejecting from that kind of bond is like dying, only not actually letting the body fade out to black when the soul leaves you. I’m a walking shell. Zombified and unable to do anything about it at all and death right now is starting to look a hell of a lot better than this.
I don’t even know if this is how Colton feels because sometimes, the rejector, they have very little in way of backlash in the way the rejected does. They made the choice and for some reason, the fates let them away with crushing another soul. I guess that’s why choosing a mate is not an impulse thing and marking someone you have been dating can sometimes be a choice of many years. I mean look at Carmen and Colton. Two years and he still hadn’t marked her, even though he told me he had made the choice to mate up with her. Even he wasn’t ready to commit in case she turned him down and everybody knew how much she loved him.
I have tried not to wonder over the past two weeks if they have rekindled their love affair, but I guess I would know. We are bonded, so I would feel it if he had sex with anyone else, whether I want to or not. Hell, I will feel it if he even kisses anyone. Even with a verbal renouncement, from what I have read, it should make no difference to my being able to know when he betrays the fates and chooses to procreate with another. The only balance to that is, he will feel it if I do too. Whoever ordained this bullshit, they need therapy because someone up there has a twisted sense of what’s right.
I jump out of my skin when the door slams behind me and brings me back to reality with a bump. I had been daydreaming again while folding my laundry and flinch when Vanka strolls in smoking a cigarette and fills our room with the putrid choking smell of her bad habit. We are supposed to have a house rule against smoking but it’s not like Vanka ever does anything she is ever told.
“Do you mind?” I snap at her bitchily, waving my hand in the air as the smoke curls towards me. Trying to stop it invading my newly heightened senses and stifle a cough as I get hit in the back of my throat.
“No, not really.” She blows a fresh wave right at me as she strolls past, sashaying her hips and hits me with a sneer as she goes. I just bite on my lower lip and ignore her before this turns nasty. She has always been quick to aggression and left me with some pretty bad bruises and scrapes over the years. I know better than to start another fight with her.
I sigh heavily and just go back to what I am doing, folding clothes on my bed, wanting to have this done before lights out in a few minutes. There aren’t many house rules for the likes of us, but our guardians have a very strict lights out and locked doors rule as soon as the moon comes up. It goes back to the wars and the fact the vampires can only come out when the sun goes down. The only time we have an exception is the full moon every cycle for the ceremony on shadow rock. We don’t have packs to protect us, so we don’t get any leeway in our freedoms living here.
Vankas eyes are boring down on me and reluctantly I look up and penetrate her with a questioning stare. She wants something, that’s obvious but it won’t come as a polite request, it never does.
“I’m going out after the guardians go home….if you snitch, I’ll mess you up.” The amber glow in her eyes add weight to the promise and I just eyeroll, no longer intimidated since my power to heal and fight back improved greatly with my turning.
“Why would I snitch? I don’t care what you do. “ I go back to staring at the endless pile of laundry, mostly PJ’s and try hard to ignore her.
“Good. I have a hot date with one of the boys from the Ryleigh pack. Nothing serious, totally slumming it and wants to try it on with a shameful reject. He is a weird one with some serious kinks.” She laughs dirtily, igniting an instant unease down deep in my stomach.
Most she wolves save themselves for the one-day mate, but I guess girls like us don’t have any reason to. Even when we get a chance, they reject us on the grounds of who we are.
“Use protection. An unwanted kid would end up right back here and you would have no choice but to stay.” I warn, more for my benefit than hers. I have been counting down the days when she leaves me in peace, and I can fumigate her rank scent from this room. I have nothing else in life to look forward to anymore, so I may as well have that.
“Whatev’s….. Maybe you should try it and fuck up that pretty little Santo head a little for throwing you in the trash. It’s bound to sting.” She sneers and then laughs at her own devious plan, but I ignore it. As much as he’s broken me, I still love him and wouldn’t want to inflict that kind of pain. Hell, I wouldn’t want to do it to myself, I have no desire to have sex with anyone.
“Tell me…is it true you two were mid screw and ready to mark when daddy walked in and threw your ass out?” It’s the snide catty tone that riles my temper and I throw her a pointed snarl, pinning her eyes with mine as she hits a nerve.
“It’s got nothing to do with you, so shut the hell up.” The insane instant deep growl and scathing tone I elicit scares even me and as her eyes widen in shock and she drops her cigarette right out of her gawping mouth I recoil, wondering what the hell that was. I didn’t sound like me at all and that hostility came from nowhere. My blood riling and heating up in a split second. I guess she really struck a bone.
“What the f….your eyes…..they’re red.” She stutters, visibly shaken and backs away from me a little before realising her lap is burning and starts madly grabbing for her dropped fire stick. Soon as she retrieves it, she backs up and slides by me, near the wall, before escaping out of our bedroom door with a backward glance; a look of unadulterated fear and takes off at speed.
I’m left dumbfounded at both my guttural aggressive response and this god damn red crap. I push off from where I am , stepping to the mirror in three strides across the room and stare at my own reflection before the rage in me calms back to numb. I have to see this.
She’s right…
Colton was right.
There before me, seeing for the first time how I look when my eyes flash with warning that I am on the verge to turn, I am faced with two glowing orbs of the darkest blood red in place of where amber should be. The shock and instant fear that cascades through my veins icily mutes them back to natural green instantly and I fall back, eliciting a yelp as I’m gripped with a sense that something is really wrong with that.
Red? What the hell?
They’re not red. No one has red, never in all the times and notes and books and packs and clans and history of our kind. I have never heard of it and it dawns on me, the elders, they have forgotten about Coltons pointing it out that day. It was never mentioned again or maybe they thought he was mistaken. I mean it ludicrous.
Our eyes are amber. They can’t be any other colour. It’s not a thing…this is not a thing!!!
I start panicking, pulling myself back to the mirror in a bid to force myself to bring them back but that ingrained terror running through me stops it from happening. I don’t know what to do or what it means.
Am I sick? Is there something wrong with me? I have no idea what to think and I pace insanely, flustered and freaking out that maybe there is something really, really wrong with me. I didn’t think anything of it when Colton said it to be frank, I thought he was tripping and not seeing clearly.
I should go to the medic, right? I should call the shaman, maybe he will know?419Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpm7NkPr2SP
MY breathing is shallow, wringing my hands and running my fingers through my hair as I try to self-regulate the insane pounding of my heart. My blood pressure hiking and I start to feel woozy, skin bristling as I lose control.
I need to calm down. If I don’t, I might turn and in a blind haze go do something stupid. We are not supposed to turn if we feel like we can’t control it. That’s when bad things happen, wolves do terrible, awful things to the humans nearby. I have to breathe and slow it down.
Except I can’t. I’m spiraling and I flop down on the ground clutching my head in a bid to force myself to focus on my breathing.
What’s wrong, Lorey. What is it? Talk to me. I can feel your panic and your fear.
His voice renders me momentarily stupefied and I jump up, spinning around , looking for the intruder before sense tells me he is inside my head.
Colton? Why’re you in my head?
I press my hands to my head and slump back down, trying to regulate my breathing once more, confused why he linked after the two-week silence of rejection I have just endured.
I told you. I can feel you freaking out. You’re afraid. What is it? Tell me. If you need me, my help I need to know where you are. What’s happening.
The sob that bursts from my throat as he says the words I have been longing to hear since I last saw him break me all over again. I blurt out my worry and break into over emotional tears.
My EYES are RED!! I think there is something seriously wrong with me.
Jesus Christ. I thought something was actually happening to you. Don’t do that to me! Stop Crying!
The sharp alpha tone of dominance winds me as I instinctively obey, and I choke and then cough on a tear that had been mid flow when he hit me with that crap.
Don’t use that tone on me! Don’t tell me what to do!
I snap back, forgetting myself as anger bursts forth, stunning me into immediate silence as I clasp a hand over my mouth despite saying nothing verbally. He’s not my mate anymore but a dominant in our lands and talking back like that, could get me seriously messed up if he saw fit. It’s disrespectful on so many levels.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.
I backtrack like a total coward and start to whimper as tears begin to freshly fall all over again. A combination of my previous panic setting in and the sheer devastation of talking to him like this once more. It hurts more than I can bear.
It doesn’t matter. Calm down, I’m sorry I just needed you to stop…listen to me, Lorey. I knew about your eyes, remember. There is nothing wrong with you. The shaman, he’s been researching all this time. Just try not to let anyone see in the meantime until I know what it means. There have been others, but none you will find in the history books. The shaman doesn’t know why but you just have to keep it under wraps and stop freaking out. Do you hear me? You almost gave me heart failure coming through like that.
I wipe my face and try to pull myself together, sitting up and inhaling heavily to try and get myself together. A little soothed by what he said, enough to rationalise and stop acting like a complete idiot.
I didn’t mean to project on you. I swear. I wasn’t trying to reach you; I know how things are between us.
This wasn’t you. We’re bonded. When you are afraid to that extent, hurt, anything like that. I will still feel it, no matter what we do. Just try and be rational. Hold it together.
What if I’m sick?
You’re not sick. I would know.
He almost chastises me as a paternal tone takes over and I try not to picture his face as his voice surrounds me. It already hurts enough to hear him; I don need a visual reminder on top of that.
Then what if I’m cursed and this is how you know.
I point out , a real ounce of possibility in that.
According to our kind all of you in that home are cursed…are their eyes red too?
I swear that was a hint of sarcasm, but I let it slide.
Okay, then what if I am not really a werewolf and I’m something else?
The silence that stretches out between us makes me shudder and the panic once again soars.
OH my god, that’s it isn’t it?
I squeak, unleashing a god-awful noise in the process and jerk upright , eyes widening as that fear hits me low in the belly once more.
NO! No…no, okay. I was just considering it but that’s dumb. There are no others like us so it’s not that.
How do you know?
I push, voice strained and fear no longer abating.
We imprinted; pretty sure two different species can’t do that. Fate wouldn’t allow that. It’s insane. You’re the same as me, Lorey, trust me. We will figure this out.
It’s not your job to figure this out. There is no we.
I remind him sullenly, that familiar ache I have been carrying for weeks comes back to nestle in my chest and my fear subsides, overpowered by my longtime companion – heartbreak.
Lorey……
He doesn’t get to finish whatever it is he was going to say when a deafening scream, so loud, so high pitched, blood curling in its sound, tremors through the house, my head and the surrounding forests in such a way my whole body turns to ice and catapults me out of my own head.
It’s the loudest, most painful sound I have ever felt in my life and the overwhelming nausea and agony it inflicts on my body in that moment sends me reeling back and I flat out on the floor banging my head in the process with a massive thud. It feels like something physically swept through the walls and rendered me useless.
What the hell was that? Lorey? Lorey…answer me?
Colton’s panic-stricken tone dances through my brain but I am still reeling from the vibrations left inside of me from that god-awful noise. My body twitching and I just don’t feel right at all.
It’s done something to me, I feel weak and unable to move, turning slowly to lay flat on my belly and I try to crawl for the door. My head is pulsating with the after effects of whatever that noise was.
Colton…. something’s wrong…. I can’t get up.
I gasp for air, trying so hard to pull myself up but I’m wracked in pain and have no strength to fight it. I’m powerless and as the effects of whatever that was have rendered me completely useless, I lose the ability to link to Colton, feeling him drop out of my head just before darkness hits me smack in the face and I pass out.
ns 15.158.61.54da2
