Page 29 of Her Reborn Mate

As we came to the precipice of the forest, I filled the women of the pack on the events that had taken place in Beckett Tower, not mentioning the part where Will said Ariana’s name. I did tell them that I escaped to Bangor for a little while and what I did there. The women of the pack patted me on the shoulder and thanked me for helping them come out of the culling fields.

“I must go back and see if anyone needs my help,” I said once we had left the forest. “I trust you all can head back safely to the commune on your own now.”

The older women nodded, the children grinned at me, and the girls waved their hands at me as I headed back into the forest one more time. This time around, I reached the culling fields quite quickly, as I already knew the way and was certain that there was no more danger lurking around.

I hadn’t exactly gone there to see if anyone needed my help, as I had said to the women and children. The truth was, I wanted to see Will again. Seeing him in battle and watching him take that feral form had stirred something in me. Something that I was too afraid to admit.

It was love. Despite the pain and tragedy that I experienced, I could feel my love for him resurfacing. I didn’t want to fight it anymore. I wanted to go to him, embrace him, greet him, and share the joy of killing Ralph. Most importantly, I just wanted to see his face.

The face of a man who would do anything to protect his pack.

If he’d apologize to me again, I would accept it. If he’d told me that he never meant to call out Ariana’s name and that he was not in love with her, I would believe him. Eventually, I would let my love for him conquer any other conflicting feelings and forgive him for everything.

The bond within me throbbed ecstatically as if realizing that I had finally given in to my feelings of affection for my mate. I let it have its moment, not fighting the urge to calm it down.

But the real reason I wanted to go back to the field was to show Will that I had not abandoned him or the pack. I needed to tell him that I had come back, even when my feelings were on the line. That I deeply cared for the pack and this town despite all the things that had happened to me in the past.

I wanted this reconciliation to be a public matter so that everyone would know that we were still mates.

Once I had reached the clearing, I tried to take a step forward, to go into the moonlight and meet Will, but I found myself unable to move. This was not some paralysis brought on by the sting of some venomous snake or a scorpion. It was an emotional paralysis caused by sheer conflict.

Upon seeing Will standing there with the men of the pack, talking and laughing and patting them on the shoulder, I felt like an outsider. Even though I had joined in the fight and had rescued the women and children, I couldn’t help but feel that I had been selfish when I’d run away to Bangor. If I had been here, Maurice would never have had the gall to take anyone to the culling fields. I could have alerted everyone to what Maurice had been doing. This entire thing could have been averted.

With all these negative feelings resurging, I could not gather the courage to go to Will.

Did he even want to meet me? With his strength returned tenfold and with such a victory under his belt, would he want to apologize and make things right with me?

My heart sank as I realized he would not care to see me anymore.

Chapter 12: Will

“Where are all the women and children?” I asked, casting a glance around the clearing in the forest and seeing no signs of them. The men, who were all helping me in the field, turned their heads and shook them.

“It seems that they’ve gone back to the commune,” Vincent said.

“Hurry up, men. The sooner we flatten this field, the better,” I said. It wasn’t that we had an obligation to bury all the bodies, even though the bodies belonged to our enemies; it was that if any unsuspecting passer-by would come through the forest, they’d see an unnatural clearing with dozens of dead vampires strewn about. They’d alert the cops, the cops would come snooping by, and before anything else, there’d be a whole investigation that would eventually unravel the truth to the masses—that werewolves and vampires were real and walked amongst them.

Besides, vampire bodies made a hell of a stink if left unburied.

It wasn’t much work. The ground was already quite soft and only had to be tilled a couple of times after burying the vampires to ensure that no one would accidentally unearth them.

During this, the men talked amongst themselves and helped each other. It was grueling work, having to grab the entrails and ripped off body parts of the vampires and bury them deep into the ground, but they did it with pride and heart.

Vincent stood by me as we watched the men clear the field. I could see from the corner of my eyes that he was studying me quite intently.

“You know, no one has been able to shift into the wolf within for almost a hundred years,” he said. He spoke in a very devoted manner, as if he was talking to some celebrity. Every word he uttered had awe attached to it.

“Vince, you tell me if any other wolf has been through so much toil as I have been in the past hundred years,” I said. I didn’t say that to show off or boast; I just wanted to emphasize that it took a lot of sacrifices to be able to shift into this form.

“You’re right, but you have to understand what I’m saying. The wolf within is such a rare form that most werewolves think that it’s just a story people have been telling each other for thousands of years. No one actually expects to see a wolf within with their own eyes. We’ve only ever heard that this wolf or that wolf managed to attain the wolf within. Who knows if that’s true, even? But tonight, all the pack members witnessed a miracle when you took that form. I could see no other way that we would have won tonight if you hadn’t taken that form,” he said, still in awe, still mesmerized.

“That’s simply not true,” I said. “I trained every single werewolf of my pack well enough. I knew that even if I were not here, they’d somehow win. I trust this pack. More importantly, I trust you.”

“You’re being so modest right now,” Vince said, grinning widely. “Come on. You can take the credit for it. You know that was pure fucking awesome, right? The way you just came up from the crowd and made Maurice piss his pants. He couldn’t even believe his eyes. And then the vampires attacked! I bet even you didn’t know that you’d be turning into the wolf within, did you? How did that even happen?”

I put my hand on Vincent’s shoulder as we walked toward the path heading out of the clearing. The rest of the men, now finished with their work, followed us. “What do you think of all this?” I asked.

“You want my in-depth nerd version of things, or do you just want me to give you a one-liner?” Vince asked.

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