Page 20 of Her Reborn Mate

“You need to come upstairs so I can stitch you up,” I said, holding Will by his arm and helping him climb the stairs.

“Thanks for saving my life,” Will said.

“Well, thanks for saving mine. I’d have been dead if you hadn’t dropped from the skylight,” I said.

“All I ever wanted to do was protect you,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what to say and how to go about pretending that things were normal between us. All I knew was Will’s chest hurt, and by extension, so did mine. The only way I could rid myself of this pain was by patching up my mate.

Chapter 8: Will

My wound not healing itself was humiliating but not as humiliating as the beating I had taken in front of Alexis. But those were not the wounds that were the cause of my pain at this moment.

It was seeing her like this, intently staring at my naked torso with no interest in my physicality except for the mechanical impulse to sew up my wound. It seemed to me that to her, I did not exist as her mate any longer. What worsened this emotional injury was the knowledge that she had sought another man. As opposed to before, when I felt wrong for having said Ariana’s name in my death throes, now I felt wronged. But I did not know how to broach this subject, at least not without causing another fight. A fight that I didn’t want to have.

“You know I can hear your thoughts, right?” she asked, putting the final sutures on my chest.

“Then you should know that I’m hurting,” I said.

“It’s not even that bad of a scratch. It’s going to heal in a few hours,” she said, now putting the needles and stitches back in the kit.

“If you can truly hear my thoughts, you know that’s not the pain I’m talking about,” I said.

“I was hoping you’d not put me on the spot about this.” There was an aching in her eyes. She looked at me like she was a helpless, injured bird fallen out of its nest. This was not a façade that she was putting up. It was genuine agony.

“I was hoping that you’d mourn me a little longer before going out with some guy,” I said, my eyes reflecting the same pain. There it was, that unsaid thing that had been lying heavy in the air like some pungent smell, making it impossible for us to look each other in the eyes. But not anymore. Now we were looking into the abyss of each other’s creation, unflinching.

“The reason I went out with him was because I was mourning you,” she said. “You think I am like this? Drunk? Reckless? A mess? I have always toed the line, even when it felt like the world around me was going to hell. I abided by the rules. I never did anything with him. We just talked. Now I realize how foolish that was. He was just trying to get me to lower my defenses.”

This time around, I said nothing in response. I was searching myself for the rage that had possessed my body ever since I had escaped from Edward’s prison. It was simply not there. This was a different emotion. This was some distant relative of betrayal and pain.

“Jealousy,” Alexis said.

“Huh?”

“That emotion that you’re thinking of…it’s jealousy. It’s what I have been feeling ever since you died in front of me, taking her name. Now you know how that feels. And that’s when I didn’t even do anything with him. Imagine how I must have felt,” she said.

“And what do you think I did with Ariana? I never so much as touched her either,” I said calmly. “Nothing happened with her, either. Do you at least understand that now, having had your own similar experience?”

“I guess I do,” Alexis said, her face deep in thought. “For all it’s worth, I’m telling the truth. Lawrence, the drinking, moving to Bangor—I was mourning you, Will. All of that was my way of processing the pain.”

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore,” I said. “Not with any thoughts of retroactive jealousy, not with any jealousy of my own, and most of all, not with any of my issues. Just as you can read my thoughts, I can read yours. I can see the traumatic footprint of my behavior etched on your psyche.”

“Being with you was like being underwater,” Alexis said. She was not looking at me. Her attention was on all the mess created by the fight between Lawrence and me. The room was in shambles. Broken glass lay scattered everywhere. The cabinet and the bed were broken, with splintered wood jutting out of them. The dressing table mirror bore massive cracks. “When I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t have any surface to escape to. But there were things that you made me see, beautiful things like coral reefs and underwater cities like Atlantis, that made me treasure our relationship. And then a storm would arrive without warning, and I’d find myself in the middle of a maelstrom, drowning. And right when I felt like I was drowning, you’d serenade me with the cold blueness that’s so characteristic of the sea. I’d feel like I was floating, with not a single worry in my mind. It was the wildest thing but also the most viscerally wonderful experience. You never stopped giving me that strange combination of emotions, even when you were dying.”

“What are you trying to say, Alexis?” I was not one for long-winded metaphors, and the one that she used was so ambiguous to my already tired mind that I felt like I was grasping at straws.

“I’m saying, you being alive and you saving me from Lawrence doesn’t change things. At least not for now. I’m still hurt, and I’m still mourning. The trauma needs processing. I need to know who I am, which direction my life is headed, and what values I embody. All these things are very crucial to my existence right now. Most of all, I just want to feel safe. That cannot happen when I am with you. There’s always danger wherever you are,” she said quite calmly.

“You’re right,” I replied in kind. “For what it’s worth, I agree with you. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. The worst thing we can do is be careless with each other. Let’s not do that. Let’s give each other space and remove the obligation from the equation.”

She gave me a reproachful look, then said, “You’re just being fake-nice.”

I shook my head. “That’s just the thing. I’m not. I, too, am processing things in my way. If you think you’ve had a rough go of it, try being injected with a serum that momentarily kills you and sends you into the afterlife, then try regaining consciousness in your grave. And to top it all off, try clawing out of that grave. When you have done that, try finding the person you love, only to discover that the person you hate is now in charge of your pack. So…yeah, I’m not being fake-nice. I’m being empathetic. But it’s not a competition of who is suffering the most. I understand we’re both suffering. The least I can do is give you your space to process things on your own. I should leave you to it and get out of your hair.”

“Wait!”

“What is it?”

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