Chapter 82: Chapter 82

Getting up, I followed her. Her skin was clammy as she ambled to the sink basin to rinse her and brush her teeth. Leaning on the door frame, I watched her, and she wet her face before wetting the back of her neck. She stopped beside me when she went to leave, and I stepped aside, letting her pass. By the time she got back to the bed in front of the fireplace, her teeth were chattering. Goosebumps covered every inch of flesh as she huddled beneath the blanket.

Lying down, her mind was churning. I could feel it, feel her confusion yet also curiosity but also her fear of knowing the truth. Her pain writhed through the bond, the cramping, nausea. One thing I am glad is long over and gone for myself. It’s just the initial shift, your body preparing itself. Your first shift always sticks with you; it is excruciating. Hers made worse by our sabotaged bond.

“It makes no sense,” she murmurs, barely audible even to my ears. I roll on my side, peeling the blanket back. She was bundled in like a human burrito. “What doesn’t?” I ask her.

“If it was true, why would she take me? Why not k**l me?”

“Unfortunately, not everything makes sense, Ivy, and I don’t think I want to make sense of that woman’s mind; if it made sense, we would be like her if we shared her mindset,” I answer.

Ivy sighs, and her big cerulean blue eyes peer up at me. “And if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not. I was the first time; I am sure this time, Ivy,” I answer.

“But if you are?”

“Then nothing, you’re still my mate, and you are not your mother,” I tell her. She snuggles down in the blanket, only from her nose up peeking out from the blanket.

“My body heat will help regulate your temperature. The bond calls for it now. It recognizes me, Ivy. Don’t suffer just because I was a p***k. You have me and the bond; use it. I won’t force you to do anything unless you ask me to,” I tell her.

“Why would I ask you too?” she says, like I am absurd.

“The calling, Ivy. I know you don’t like me using it, but there is a reason male Lycans were gifted with it.”

“Yeah, to rape the women,” she says with a roll of her eyes. She was half correct. It is barbaric when you look at it from that perspective, but not the main reason because it only works on your mate or the person you marked as your mate.

“I would never rape you. Do you think that little of me?”

“I don’t think much of you when you use it to get what you want,” she says. I sigh.

“It’s not used just for getting you to submit. It helps calm the bond. Calm your bond to me, Ivy. Yes, it can be used in a sense as an aphrodisiac or calm you, which is my only intention to calm our bond, forge it,” I tell her. She clicks her tongue, and her eyes flit away. She shudders, and her teeth chatter.

“If you mark me, you would be able to feel me better. Once the bond is forged for Lycans, we can even get a sense of each other’s thoughts. It goes beyond just feeling each other’s emotions,”

“How so?” she asks.

“I can tell when you’re hurt, like your hand. For example, mine hurt too. I can feel your curiosity to know if I am right about you being Azalea. Yet your apprehension at also knowing, I can tell that I scare you,” I admit before swallowing.

“But I haven’t marked you?”

“No, but I have marked you. Once you mark me, there is nothing you would be able to hide from me, Ivy, I will feel and sense everything when it comes to you, but that goes both ways. You will also feel everything lyrics feel.” If she didn’t mark me, she would be in for a long night, yet I doubt I would convince her.

“Marking me will strengthen you,” I tell her in a last ditch effort.

“I don’t want strength, Kyson; I am sick of being strong. Sick of biting my tongue, sick of answering to someone, sick of the mold everyone put me in, I am tired. Strength? Strength isn’t physical; it’s enduring.

Enduring of everything when all you want to do is nothing but crumble and let it go; it becomes too heavy. Abbie and I were each other’s strength, each fighting to hold on for the other; I don’t need strength, Kyson. I need peace,” she says with an exasperated sigh.

“More than my life?” I whispered to her, and she nodded. I knew it had to have meaning because they always said it to each other, though I was curious about how it started.

“Yes, nothing means I love you more than my heart is still beating for you; we stopped living for ourselves. Instead, we lived for each other. You go, I go, so you keep fighting because you can’t bear the thought of leaving the other behind.” Ivy answers.

“Like a pact?”

“Yes. We made it when we were 15,”

“What happened when you were fifteen?”

“Abbie went missing. She didn’t come up from the cellar. She was supposed to be cleaning the mop buckets, so I looked for her. I found her in the cellar, her tunic torn, her thighs covered in blood. Abbie was standing on a chair with a rope around her neck. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I knew.

She told me to leave, but I grabbed the other chair and climbed up beside her and loosened the noose, wrapping it around my neck too.” Ivy answers, her eyes getting a faraway expression like she was trapped in some memory. The fear through the bond made me clench my jaw. That pack had so much to answer for.

“I told her more than my life. Mine wasn’t worth living either if she wasn’t in it, that we would go to together because her life was worth more than mine,”

“And she got down?” I asked, the calling slipping out at her distress, and she lifted her eyes to mine when it washed over her.

“Helping?” I ask her, and she sighs but nods.

“So obviously, she didn’t k**l herself,” I tell her, wanting to know what happened as much as what I was hearing sickened me. It was distracting her from the fact she would be shifting.

“No. We both jumped, but the rope didn’t hold our weight,” Ivy said, and my stomach dropped before Ivy turned her head and lifted her hair. The back of her neck has a scar it was faint, and that spot didn’t grow any hair through the scar tissue.

“Abbie has a scar behind her left ear where the rope cut into her. Instead of d***h, we both got a headache when our heads collided.” Ivy chuckled. How she could laugh at something so horrific, like it was nothing said enough for what those two girls endured.

“And that’s how it started?” I asked. Ivy shrugged.

“Afterward, Mrs. Daley started singing for us to cook dinner. Abbie didn’t want to go up, so I helped clean her up. I swapped her tunic for mine, and we went to cook dinner.” Ivy says before pulling her face from the blanket so I can see her better.

“I got 12 lashes for that ruined tunic, but what it cost Abbie was worse, so for her, I wore it. Then we cooked dinner. We saw Mrs. Daley get paid by the butcher who hurt her. After that, where Abbie went, I went, where I went, she went, more than my life. If she were to endure it, I would too,” Ivy says.

I needed to get Abbie away from Alpha Kade, but it explained why the pair of them were so close. They were dependent on each other. I chewed my lip; Mrs. Daley was lucky to be alive. She would never walk again after the lashes she received, yet that was even too kind. She won’t be left breathing when I send Gannon back for her. And g*d help the butcher when Gannon learns his name.

Silence fell over both of us, yet she didn’t rebuke me using the calling. Yet as the night dragged on and her pain got worse, she moved closer before letting me under the blanket with her. Her legs kicked as her pain worsened, yet it was taking forever. It wasn’t until the early morning hours that I struggled to handle seeing her like that as she rolled and turned, trying to get comfortable.

“Ivy?” I called to her as she turned over closer to the fire. Her eyes blazing brightly like jewels, her pupils fully dilated with a silver hue through them. She groaned, kicking off the blankets, her skin heating, and I knew she was close to shifting; I would never forget the burning sensation that enveloped beforehand.