Page 9 of Broken Bonds

Instead, I’m here alone, preparing to plan a funeral.

Four funerals, actually. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.

They’re all together, but I’m left here to grieve their absences.

It’s usually said that the reality of the death doesn’t set in until the person is in the ground, but it was real for me before I understood what had happened.

I felt it when our bonds to each other fractured, before completely being snuffed out when they each took their last breaths. I experienced a range of emotions through our bond before it faded away.

Dread, grief, agony, love, and resignation.

Each of them cycled through those feelings before it was all over.

I remember how hard it was to breathe before it all hit me at once, and I blacked out at the kitchen table from the overload.

I had been looking into the top strategies for being a mom of multiple children. Absolutely no chance was I going to go in without being prepared. I had expected to have one baby, not three.

It was Jillian who found me and woke me several hours later.

She lived in a cabin close to ours and spotted the police at my front door. We’d built it for her when I told my guys I wanted her to stay. They didn’t hesitate, just asked me what needed to be done.

I’d stared into her tear-filled eyes as I felt the void inside of me deepen. It was a freezing, dark abyss in the place of what was once a tangle of shining gold and silver. I’d gone frantic when I searched and fuckingsearchedinside of myself for those threads to the guys, to tell me they were okay.

Instead, all I found was a chasm of nothingness. I was just… empty. And I knew. I knew they were gone before she even said anything.

The news of the death of my alphas made me collapse with grief.

The police said it looked like brake failure. They were on the curve on Hawkins Lane, not far from the road that leads to our private drive. I’ve never liked that damn curve, and Van was always going too fast around it when I wasn’t there to keep him in check. When they tried to brake, it failed, and Van must have panicked. The car collided with the big oak tree situated on the bend and they were gone before help arrived.

That’s when it comes to mind. I have to go to the morgue at some point.

I shudder, another round of silent sobs wracking my body. I’m almost at the point of breaking. The sight of their lifeless bodies could cause my mind to shatter. It’s something that no one else can do, though. It wouldn’t be right to ask Jilly, so I won’t do that.

They belonged to me.

I promised for better or worse when I took them for my own. That meant seeing them breathing and fucking happy, and now lifeless and gone. I will see them off this plane of existence and fuckingpraythat I meet them again on the next.

I’ve never been one to pray, but I will now. They are forever a part of me. They have been since I was eighteen.

It doesn’t make any sense to me that all of them said in my dream that I’ll find love again and to embrace it. There’s no way I could love someone else. Nor will I be looking for anyone.

I’ll raise our babies on my own, and I’ll make sure I tell them all about how amazing their dads were. It’s going to be hard, but I’ll have Jillian here to help pick me up when I stumble.

I eventually cease crying, my eyes feeling both dry and irritated. I’m empty inside, yet I still feel like I want to cry. My body trembles violently as I bathe myself in a rush, the water having gone cold after being in here for such a long time. If Jillian brought my clothes in, I didn’t hear her while so lost in my thoughts.

Once I’ve washed, I turn the water off and grab the towel, drying myself and draping it around me. As I step onto the bathmat, I spot a stack of clothes near the door by the sink. As I suspected, she snuck in here during my internal struggle. I hope my tears went unheard by her. I know it’s in her nature to help me and calm me when I’m in distress.

I dress as quickly as I bathed, avoiding the mirror for as long as I can. Once I’m all dressed, I clear away the condensation from the mirror and observe myself for the first time since early yesterday.

I suck in a breath at my swollen, red eyes and the dark bags underneath. The ordinary vibrancy of my green eyes is now gone, replaced by a dull hollowness.

Ollie would regularly say my eyes were his favorite feature of mine. In his opinion, they shone brighter than emeralds, the prettiest green he had ever seen. He was fond of sketching images of my eyes. They always appeared so real, too.

The dryness in my mouth has caused my lips to become chapped and cracked from the lack of moisture, a split appearing in the center from my gnawing and picking at it.

Rule was always fond of my lips, saying that they were so soft and pouty that they made him want to take a bite every time he looked at them. When we would kiss, he always had the habit of lightly nibbling on my lips, and even randomly throughout the day, when he was feeling playful.

Wet, limp strands of honey blonde hair are draped across my shoulders, the soggy strands sticking to my skin.

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