Rejected Mate and Following Fate novel Chapter 47

"Are you okay, my dear?" The doctors voice waves at me from what seems like a very distant distance away and I realize how in my own head I've drifted in my state of numb. We're still rumbling along this dark makeshift path, carved through the dense forest, and I was so zoned out in my own mind I completely faded to dark. My cheeks are damp with the tears that sprung out of me and I'm staring blankly ahead, in a state of disconnect, ahead, like everyone I know suddenly died a horrible death, again, and I had to watch.

"I can't be one of those…. those…. creatures. They killed everyone in the orphanage." It's a soft, pitiful whispering tone, and I can't bring myself to look at him. My head so full of confusion, pain, and questions, and I keep picturing Colton's face, his dimpled smile, and those deep dark sexy eyes, and what he's going to think when he finds out… Meadow, the sub pack. How will they look at me now?

I'm the enemy, and I've been among them this whole time.

"Alora. Those beings were not always the blood thirsty wolf murderers you view them as now. Vampires serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things too, and their kind has as much validity as the wolves. There are those among them, much like your kind, who are peaceful and land loving as some of the wolves are, they don't even hunt humans and very much never wanted for the battles and wars to happen. A feud so ridiculous the history books fail to record it properly, and no one really knows why the species raged a war against one another in the first place. It's a forgotten cause. You are not a creature, and this does not change who you are inside. You are the same fearless girl sat before me that you were ten minutes ago."

I break down and sob, falling forward to cradle my face in my palms and try so desperately to catch my breath, to calm the storm of feelings hitting me hard and twisting me up inside. It isn't fair, and why do I get to be so lumbered with every kind of bullshit the fates can throw at me. What did I do to deserve any of this?

"They won't see it that way. Don't you understand?" I sit up snapping to face him with fresh tears rolling down my face, dripping from my chin as my heart breaks all over again. Soul ripped wide open. "The pack can't ever accept me if they know, and Colton …. He'll be disgusted with what I am. He fought them, he killed, and survived that war too…. He hates them with a passion that's unmatched." That much was obvious when he ripped the head off the one who had me in its clutches and threw it high over the orphanage wall. I feel nauseous even trying to conjure up how he's going to react, or even how he's going to look at me. I can't bear to pull him into my head and see his face change from that cute boy, cheeky happy, into something hateful and Deacon-like. Seeing me as some crude mash up of vile parts. Disgusted by my existence.

"Dear girl, you said the boy imprinted on you. That means you share the purest kind of love there is, so special, and I'm sure that means he'll accept it as part of who you are., especially if he takes after Sierra. It doesn't define you… you are that same girl. Besides, he has to figure out he's half witch and I know from wolf lore that's as bad and he might have to get over that with a little more effort than your news." The doctor shrugs at that as if to point out Colton will probably have bigger issues, and I shake my head at him.

"Why me?" It's not really a real question, more of a verbal despair and I sink back against my seat, lifting my head to stare at the ceiling above us, and try so hard to pull myself together. Sniffing back the emotional break down to stop crying like a vulnerable idiot. None of this is going to help our current situation, and as much as I want to scream and rip that part out of me, I need to put it aside and focus on the now and our bigger issue.

We're in need of protection and I need to link Colton to get it. I don't even know what to say to him, or how, especially now with this foremost in my head. Scared about how that's going to go, and I don't even know if the link will work. Or that he hasn't blocked me on his end too.

"Maybe because you're important and being part vampire gives you something that adds to the prophecy. Your fates always have a reason, isn't that what your kind say… maybe there's a reason you are that, and Colton is half witch. Imagine the tribrids to come from your union. Your children will be three strong species, combined, if your body allows them to come to fruition. That's simply mind blowing. I don't think there's ever been such a breed." The tinge of excitement in his voice inevitably pushes that knife he's stabbing me in the heart with a whole lot deeper.

"There's going to be no children and no god damn union! Colton marked another, so that part is over!" I snap it, alarmingly hostile, sitting up poker straight to glare at him as that extra searing pain rips through my chest at a speed of noughts. Reminding me of all the reasons I was mad as hell at that asshole in the first place, and why I haven't reached out to him since I left.

Screw you Colton. You weak ass daddy's boy who should have just manned the fuck up and realized this was bigger than us! I was the one, not her. How could you?

I don't really mean it, well almost not fully, but I'm still completely devastated that he betrayed our bond. No matter the reason. Even if it was justified in the grand scheme of things. I don't think I can ever forgive him for wounding me in this way and destroying what was meant to be a perfect union.

"Oh dear. Are you quite sure he ma…."

"Yes, quite sure!" I snap, mimicking his English accent haughtily and cutting him off. Like I wouldn't know that pain hitting me in the chest and almost killing me that day and what it was. Have still not recovered fully and carry that weight constantly like a heavy shroud to eternally remind me I'll love someone I can never have. He's riling a very tender and open wound and it's doing nothing for my mood.

"I see. So, if he has another, how do you know you can…?" he gestures at his temple, locking eyes on mine, making circular motions and implying mind link. I roll my eyes. Exhaling to curb this sudden need to punch things and getting rattier by the second, tension rising, making me all sorts of stiff and uptight.

"I don't, I have to hope." Snarking at him, gritting my teeth, mood getting sensitive with the current topic of conversation. I know it's a genuine concern, given that Colton is key to us getting out of this and surviving, it's just, I'm scared to try now, while everything is so new and raw. I'm out here and all of this has smacked me in the face at once. Add that to the gaping gash of heartbreak he rubbed salt into, and you have one completely irate girl who isn't pulling herself together as quickly as her life is unravelling.

"Then maybe you should, you know….?" Again, with the rotating finger at his temple and I huff loudly in exasperation, willing him to stop pushing and give me an ever-loving, god damn, breathing space, of a minute. This is hard for me. I erupt, breaking under the pressure. Spectacularly.

"YES! I KNOW!! I'm going to do it! … Excuse me for having a little bit of a mental breakdown with everything I've learned in the last six hours and a reminder my fated mate is a cheating asshole. It's a lot…. A LOT!!! And I'm an eighteen-year-old girl who hasn't linked her cheating, asshole ex, so called mate, in weeks, since she ran from him. Give me a fucking break already." I push my fingers and nails through my scalp, pushing my wild hair off my face and gripping it with force at my temples, trying so hard not to self-combust under the extra weight of everything hitting me at once.

"I do say." The doctor raises his brows at me in a completely ridiculous British way, and then softens his expression and holds out his handkerchief to me in a sort of white flag apology, as more tears roll down my cheeks against my will. Colton always ruins me. I hate that I'm so hopelessly connected to him, that this rules everything I think or feel. 

"I'm sorry…. I need to breathe for a few minutes. Colton he's.... it's really hard. He hurt me… this, all of this, just hurts."

Colton is the one thing in my life that has the power over everything else to screw me up with minimal effort. Even finding out I'm some sort of half creature, and my first thought was 'how will he look at me?' He's right in there, deep inside of me, and he can make everything feel so good, or everything worse than bad, that I can barely breathe. Without him I survive, but I wouldn't exactly call it successful. There's a need that never leaves me, a longing that never stops calling to him. I miss him, of course I do, and I dream about him, I see, or hear him at stupid points of my day, even when it's not even related. Reaching out and physically connecting is a whole other kind of torture, especially knowing he's not mine and never will be now. It was easier to have no contact at all.

I never knew you could both love a person beyond a shadow of a doubt and crave them constantly, while at the same time hating the ground he walks on and wishing I never had to see him ever again. Such is my dilemma.

I need him, yet I don't want to, and currently I actually physically need him to come and save our asses from this situation. The doc was right, I can't take on a pack of Santo wolves, especially ones who don't play fair and use dart guns to subdue my kind. My gifts are worth shit without having the complete control of them. Colton needs to be in this, no matter how I feel, as Sierra is his mother, and I owe him to give her back to him, where she belongs. He can protect her in ways her own pack failed. Her son will never let her down in that way.