Rejected Mate and Following Fate novel Chapter 41

"What? Why? Do you think I'm lying?" The sudden rise of emotion in him has me on edge too, and the panic that I'm scaring my only ray of light to escape away. He appears to be running away, but as he turns to me, to close the door, the tear I catch in his eye silences me and he pauses, taking a deep breath and lowering his hands. The open door between us keeping us a couple of feet apart, but his sadness overwhelms me.

"Eight years of silence… eight years watching her sleep. Eight years hoping that one day the things she said, I'd accept that my friend had lost her mind completely. Eight years…. and I convinced myself that her visions and stories were that of a mad woman, broken by battle which convinced her that her mate was an evil player in some bigger plan, and her confinement here was a betrayal to silence her. Eight years justifying that she was better asleep, than to be tortured by her own illness of the mind." I don't know if he's saying it to me, or to himself, his eyes not on me, just glazed and distant as a single tear rolls down his cheek and I'm so very confused.

"I don't understand. You said she was fine… upstairs…. She's been here longer than eight years…. Colton said nine." Or was that including the war… when he didn't see her in that timeframe because he never saw her when she came home at all. I don't know. Oh god, please don't tell me she really is broken, and this is all for nothing.

The thought crosses my mind, things not adding up to what he said, and going around in circles, unable to piece it together logically. Maybe Sierra really was sick, but then what the hell is he saying? The doctor smiles at me sadly, his pale grey eyes finally landing on mine, and gives me a watery half smile.

"If she was crazy…. then how could she tell me that one day a solitary she wolf from the west would come to save us all from something that was coming. A future leader of her people, joined to her blood by the fates. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it's not. Maybe it's wishful thinking and guilt because I've let her lay there for eight long years. Don't you see?" he's almost babbling, but I pick out the points I think he's trying to connect.

"I came East from where I was, and I'm linked to her son." I repeat robotically, still looking at him with a quizzical expression on my face and trying to figure out what his vague statements mean. He's lost in his own head.

"Tell me…. What does the name Marina mean to you?" He narrows his eyes on me, leaning in as though telling me a secret of the utmost importance, and her name falls off his tongue like a lead rod that stabs me in the heart.

I gasp at the utterance of it on this man's lips, my blood running cold as he says it, and I openly stifle a sob such is the unexpected pain of hearing it. A name that died when she did, and no one has uttered it in a decade.

"She was my mother…." I whisper it painfully, that same rise of heartache anytime I begin to think of her and have to stop my own tears from breaking free.

The doctor clasps a hand to his mouth as though I've uttered something sinful, his eyes widening in alarm and he begins to breathe heavily. Backing away from me as something seems to click into place.

"I can't hear this, because if this is what she said…I've let my friend suffer in sleep for all these years, alone…. and I failed her. I let him convince me she was mad, don't you see. I broke my oath, I broke my promise as her friend, and I'm a terrible person. I need to go…. I don't want to know about any of this!" He pulls away, shaking visibly, beginning to crumble, and avoids looking at me as panic grips him mercilessly. He's clearly distressed, his word falter as he babbles them out and he's once again running from me mentally.

"Wait…. don't go….what about my mother? What do you know? How do you know her name? What did she say about her?!" I'm yelling after him, grasping for something I don't even know I'm chasing, as my own panic rises with being left with nothing but her name. My door slides quickly shut as he departs and traps me inside this chamber before I get after him, because I was too slow to lurch forward. He isn't looking back but scarpering across the concrete floor until he gets mid-way between mine and hers on the way to the elevator.

"I'm sorry… I really am." He cries it at me, as I slam my hands on the glass in a bid to get the door to open, pressing hard against it so I can see him as he runs off to my left.

"I need to know what she said about my mother!!!" I scream it like a feral banshee, my own emotions overwhelming me as so many racing thoughts rush through my head, and I'm consumed with suspicion, and pain, and heartbreak, all weighing down like a house falling on top of me. My breathing erratic and I pound the glass aggressively, in sheer need to follow him. It shudders and quakes but doesn't budge an inch.

I can't calm down, the craziness of that interaction has me all wired and panting as emotion wracks me and my thoughts spiral crazily with so many possibilities on such little information. The mention of my mother, his reaction…. it's made me react in ways I never have before and I start pacing, pulling at my hair as I try to self-calm and focus.

I upset him, so he's run off, but maybe he'll come back, maybe he needs time to process and calm like maybe I do too. Maybe it was a shock, that something she told him now appears to be coming true. He said visions, but wolves they don't have those, and maybe that's what triggered him. A fear that she could, and did, and now I'm here, and I came east, and I'm linked.

Oh god, it's all so messy in my head so I can't even imagine what's going on in his, if this is something she told him over eight years ago. I mean, to us the fates and coincidence, it's a common thing, and we trust in the paths they lay for us with so little questioning of it, but humans… they have a harder time accepting or believing. So many nowadays don't even believe in god, let alone some supernatural higher power that always has a plan. He'll calm down, rationalize, and come back to explain why he knew my mother's name. I mean that's what he'll do, right? That's what I'm praying anyway.

Something strikes a chord in everything I said and now I need to know more. I have to know more. I need to find out what it was Sierra told him all those years ago, that got her sent here and pushed into a coma. Juan is keeping her quiet by convincing people she's crazy, so I want to know what that is. Especially if my mother's name is in there somewhere, and she knew I would come, be linked to her son…. How could she know that? Wolves can't see the future. Only witches and seers and... Oh god!