Page 11 of Petals and Strings
Gone again.
Fuck!
I let my eyes close and breathed in deep, biding my time until my mind was my own again.
Chapter Five
Kane
The face taking shape in front of my eyes was heart-achingly familiar, yet haunting. Her amber gaze and black hair had haunted my disjointed dreams for years.
Yet, I still sit here, painting her day after day.
Streaks of wet paint splash across the thin canvas. The colors are muted no matter what I do, my mind seems to go into a state of numbness and when I tune back in it’s the same dull patterns and colors.
The same eyes that send an ache of sadness and longing through me.
Footsteps approach, the slow, methodical steps announcing Theo’s arrival. My stomach tightens into a painful knot as I turn to him.
“Again? Are you sure you’re even a beta? I’ve never seen a beta hold onto an obsession like this… only omegas,” he sighs as if he’s disappointed in me, somehow. They ask me to paint my jumbled thoughts into existence then criticize the outcome. Him. The doctor. The other therapists.
The art therapist disagreed, her eyes narrowing at him but she wasn’t brave enough to stop him.
“She’s all I see.”
“You know who she is, Kane. You just have to face those locked memories.”
“Why is it that every one of them somehow locks their memories down?” One of the nurses scoffs. “Must be a reflection of character.”
Like we’re fucking weak.
As if we chose to be here, with broken bonds and fractured memories. I’d rather be normal. Bitch.
My calm was snatched away, replaced by a raw fury. It flared in the room, singing my scent and vibrating through me with an intensity that stole the breath from my trembling, useless lungs.
“I’m sorry if our fucking trauma is too hard for you to swallow. Some of us don’t have the luxury of ignorance,” I growled. For a beta, this anger was intense enough that she staggered back, clutching her chest as if I shot her right in the heart.
“Remove yourself from the room, Kane,” Theo ordered, putting himself between us like he was dying to be a hero.
I could surely make him a martyr. It would be so easy. The anger made me feel stronger. More in control even if it was a smoke screen.
“Go,” he ordered again, this time his voice hard as his hand rested on the device that would activate my bracelet.
I’d die before letting them drug me again. The threat was enough.
“Fine,” I bit out as I stood, knocking over the canvas and stalking past the nurse. The anger faded as quickly as it came, a serene smile taking over as I quickly forgot what had brought it on in the first place.
A flash of memory hit me, the ghost of an omega in my mind. The dream girl with piercing, amber eyes and a frown on her face.
What put that look there?
Did I?
That chased away the sudden chipper mood, replacing it by a melancholy that drenched my bones in lead and weighed down every step, each breath, even my thoughts turned sluggish.
Ansel was the only one in our common area when I arrived. He looked up from his own sketchbook with curious eyes. He nodded once at me, the most he ever does.
I collapsed into a chair across the room, eyes fluttering closed as I tried yet again to pull the fleeting images in my brain to the front so I could examine them closer.
