Page 33 of Torn Mate
Saint
Elijah approachedme after Zara kicked us out of Galen’s place. I honestly only went over to see Ada. I wanted to see her before she went to the wedding. I didn’t know why, I just had to. I tagged along with Noah, who wanted to see her too. Knowing that Zara was going made it easy to just turn up.
“Hey, I have to ask you before I bring this up further with your dads.” He pulled me close to him. “Were you outside Ada’s house last night, or do we have a real problem?”
I stood back and looked at him. Fuck. How did he know? He shook his head and groaned, his hand running down his face.
“Dude, really? How long has this been going on?”
I shook my head and walked away. He wouldn’t understand, I didn’t even understand myself. But Elijah wasn’t going to let me just leave. He chased after me.
“Hey, stop. Talk to me. I’m confused is all. I didn’t think you were into her anymore. Noah told me you hadn’t spoken to him this week at all. You have been avoiding him, me, the pack. I’m just trying to understand why you would be outside her house, man, that’s all.”
I shrugged. I needed to work out what I was going to do. Maybe I could move to another pack, like Pack Bardoul with Callum. I deserved worse than what he got because if Alaric, or hell, Maverick, my best friend, found out my secret they would kill me. I knew they would, and I deserved it. What I didn’t deserve was to be inlove.
I didn’t let Elijah catch up to me a second time. I stripped my shorts off and shifted. I grabbed them in my mouth and ran… and kept on running.
I ended up in the one place I had avoided for the past six years. The place where all my troubles began and the shame I had, the secrets I held that ended with someone I cared for murdered.
It looked like any part of the woods, nothing different to any other trees, dirt, grass. I used to come here when I first shifted. I would skip school and think I was tough as shit now I was a full shifter. Puberty hit and I thought I was smarter than everyone. I was just a dumb kid.
Maverick was a year younger than me, he hadn’t hit puberty then, so he hadn’t shifted. So, I was on my own. Jett and Mekhi, they were my age but they had formed their packmate bond as soon as they shifted, and they often went out together to run and I wasn’t invited.
So I would come out here alone, far from the pack so I wouldn’t get caught skipping school, and try out my new skills. It was fun, jumping off the logs scattered in the area, bouncing off the trees, and seeing how far I could leap over the small creek that ran through this part.
I was young, stupid… I thought I was invincible. Just like Huxley’s brother. Except what I encountered, I survived. Not completely, but I didn’t die that day. No, someone else did.
I shifted back and stood there naked and breathing heavily at the weight on my chest. Looking at the tree, the one they tied me to. That tree was once covered in my blood, now washed away. But the pain still ached in my heart. The things they did, the bone breaking, the bites. The panther shifters I thought I could beat, the vampires who told me they always wanted to play with a little wolf. All those memories bottled up, the ones I tried to forget, came flooding through.
I tried to fight them, in human and wolf form, but it was no use. Day-walking vampires were old. The two panther shifters they were with were younger, in their twenties. They caught me early that morning. They wanted to know where Alaric and the other alphas were. Alaric had killed their friend and it was time for payback.
I didn’t want anything to happen to Alaric, he was my alpha, but he also wasn’t home. I knew that he had gone with my fathers that day. So I told them, thinking they would leave. But they didn’t. They tortured me for hours, warned me that if I told anyone they were there, that they would come and kill my family. I could heal faster, but not that fast. I limped home. It took me hours and was dark by the time I got there. I hid in my room.
I didn’t tell my dads when they returned that night. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened in the woods. I was so scared they would kill my dads, my big brother… my mom, that I covered my wounds and pretended everything was fine. It wasn’t and it would never be fine.
But when I was so scared, I went to tell my dads, but it was too late. They had already found Laura Lovell. She had been killed by a vampire. They broke in and killed her while I was limping back home. They didn’t care about finding Alaric, they wanted to know he wasn’t home so they could kill someone important to him. I didn’t know that was their plan all along.
My alpha’s wife… the mother of my best friend. And I knew that day, I could never tell the brothers the truth, that I helped in the death of their mother by telling those vampires that Alaric wasn’t home.
I broke down, crumpling to my knees. I held the dirt between my fingers. My chest was ripping in two, longing for the life I should have had, and the one I got because I decided to skip school that day. I never missed a day of school after that, I never came back here, I didn’t run far without someone with me. I just couldn’t or the memories would come back. And when Maverick shifted for the first time, I went with him on every run. I couldn’t be his packmate, he would know. He would feel that I wasn’t being true to him and I didn’t want the heartbreak of not only losing my best friend, but losing a packmate, the second strongest bond other than a mate bond.
That was why I couldn’t be with someone, why I couldn’t have a mate. I couldn’t protect even the alpha’s wife. A mate would mean they would have something to take from me if they ever returned.
Alaric and the other alphas never found them all, they disappeared. That was why Galen was brought here: to protect the packs. The thing with vampires were, they lived forever… until they were killed. These were so old, they had lived a long time. One day they might come back and I couldn’t risk it, I couldn’t have a mate. I saw how much it broke Alaric when Laura died.
That was why my wolf had to stop wanting Ada. I had to give her up, or risk being exiled from the pack. But wasn’t that better? Better than the life I was living now, at least. I couldn’t continue like this. Every day I lived like it was my last. I was tired, exhausted from it all. Tomorrow I would go to Alaric. I would tell him the truth and await my fate. It was time to let it out and accept any punishment the alpha gave me.
My wolf itched under my skin as the sun started to set. I needed to find Ada, I had to see her one last time before I had to leave. I shifted back, my wolf eager to see her. I grabbed my shorts once again and ran.
I ran all the way to Rawlins to see her.
