“Charlotte?” Finn asked. “What is it?”
She looked at him, her body swaying. “My wolf…” She pressed her lips together and pushed past him and the others so she could breathe once again.
“Charlotte,” Finn said once again when he came to her side. “He’s your mate, isn’t he? That’s why my wolf told me to bring you. Because he’s here…because you needed to be. It’s fate, isn’t it, Charlotte? It’s a twisted, fucked up fate.”
“Fate? You think I believe in fate?” Charlotte took a deep breath then gave a dry laugh. “Oh, Finn. How could I believe in fate? What has the moon goddess ever done for me?”
Finn’s eyes widened, and she wanted to let the tears fall. He’d been through his own hell with the bond between wolf and man, and the bond between him and his mate. Yet she couldn’t think about that, not now, not ever. “Charlotte. You can't say that. You don't believe that.”
“I was born to a monster. Chained to a wall for longer than I care to remember. I watched my sister, now mother, die before somehow coming back. I was the one who told them how to kill my brother, Corbin, though they didn't have the chance. I saw more horrors than you could ever dream of before I even met the Redwoods. And you think the moon goddess blessed me? No. I don't think so. I might have had time with a family I don't deserve, but now what does she do? She gives me a mate that sides with the enemy. She gives me the enemy himself.”
Finn reached out, but she took a step back.
“Don't. Don't try to make it better. The moon goddess, in all her wisdom, gave me a human to love, a human to cherish. That…I could do. I would embrace humanity with all my heart, even if they don’t embrace us. But she didn't just give me a human. She gave me a soldier. She gave me a man who wants to kill us. Who wants to hold us captive and dissect us.” And she didn’t let her have the one wolf who should have been hers.
“You don't know that. He's not the leader, Charlotte. He could be different from the others.”
She laughed, but it held no humor. “Even better. He's a pawn with no steel, no strength. He only listens to those that fear us and want to harm us.” She rolled her shoulders and knew she had to be stronger than she was. “I'm done, Finn. I won't mate with him. I won't listen to the moon goddess or my wolf. He's not mine. He'll never be mine.”
“I'm alone.”
Alone.
Again.
She'd grown up alone. It only made sense she'd die that way, too.