Chapter 158
After James leaves-and I am left sitting there startled by the reminder of who I am to the pack-1 force myself to get up and dress
I go upstairs to my old room where my clothes still are, to pick out something comfortable, yet stylish-jeans and a softly knitted sweater. It seems silly to worry about clothes when my life feels like it got put through a blender.
I glance around the room as I dress, remnants of both the child and the woman who grew up here, confused, alone and desperately dreaming things could be different, easy to see in the pictures and books and splashes of color.
I feel like a completely different person now, like I don’t belong in this space any longer.
Like everything that happened in the warehouse that night-dying, turning, mating, losing my child-has rebirthed me into someone I don’t recognize.
Maybe it’s not for the worst.
That girl loved a man who refused to love her back. A man who treated her in extremes. Worshiping her body in one moment, being guardedly possessive the next, then acting like I didn’t exist, disregarding my feelings, flaunting Jessica in front of me, yet at the same time, teaching me everything I needed to know to thrive in this world, but then finding ways to use it against me like when he had me trick my own father….
That girl lived in a maelstrom of chaos.
That girl had no idea what was coming for her.
This girl is going to learn from the past.
This girl is going to be strong. For herself. For her pack
I leave the room and head down to Aaron’s office.
The normality of the house after everything that’s happened is almost jarring.
The chef is in the kitchen preparing a meal, another pack member is doing some routine cleaning, my newly sensitive hearing picks up the low tones of James talking to another couple of guys somewhere within the house.
Of course, for them, months have gone by and apart from Aaron apparently not being here, I guess things quickly returned to
normal for them.
They haven’t been through life changing traumas like I have.
Inside Aaron’s office, I have to pause for a moment.
In here, his scent is everywhere.
Not only his cologne and the soap he uses, but the earthier undertones that are simply him.
A visceral wave of longing goes through me, stronger than any lust I experienced as a human. It’s almost crippling, and I have to sit down as I realize this is what a wolf longing for her mate feels like
It’s something we’ll have to get used to feeling, because I don’t plan to go running after Aaron any time soon. And after the way he walked out on me not five minutes after I woke up, I get the feeling he won’t come looking for me either.
That hurts.
Eventually, I make myself get up and go over to my old desk, the one Aaron had set up in here so I could spend days looming,
2/2
and later working with him.
There’s a brand new laptop sitting on my desk, and curiously I turn it on.
It loads quickly, and I find it’s been cloned from my old laptop, so everything is arranged and organized the way I’ve always kept
However, there’s a new folder on the desktop that wasn’t there before, simply titled For Leah
I open it to find a scrolling list of all kinds of documents, in number order, I assume of how I’m meant to read them.
I click on the first, and suc k in a breath at the words that meet my eyes.
Aaron has made me Luna-of all three packs.
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: Bad Love: An Alpha's Regret (Leah and Aaron)