Chapter 14: The Beginning: Part 1

It’s been thirteen days since Colton left me in the forest, and I don’t think I have the will to keep trying anymore.

I’m tired of life, and everything has become so mundane. Everything I thought I experienced before that day is nothing compared to how I’ve been since.

It’s like my family has died all over again, and I am bereft and inconsolable. I’ve no more tears because I’ve cried so many.

I’m nothing but a numb, hollow shell, and the sunlight has withdrawn from my world to leave me in an eternal cold shadow.

I tried to stop the spiraling depression; I fought hard to beat this feeling of being sucked free of all life, but the Fates don’t play when you deny them.

I’m not even living anymore. Such is my empty continuous state of nothing.

I robotically move from my room to the kitchen, kitchen to chores, and chores to my room, day after day.

I’ve nothing to say, nothing to add to the conversations around me, and nothing to do or think about beyond focusing on this eternal emptiness that I drag around day after day.

It’s like a sack of boulders chained to my back, and I can’t free myself to outrun them.

I was never this girl. I survived the loss of so much more, yet I don’t know how to fight this. I’ve read books in the library that blame the severance for my worsened state and mental decline.

Cast free, set afloat by a rejection of this level, messes with you more than the rejection of a regular union ever could.

Wolves can pick mates; it’s not always fated. And usually, both parties get a choice, so you have to be pretty sure to shackle your heart to someone if you’re going to ask them to be mated for life.

Scenting happens. That’s when the mate you are most likely to bond with can smell out your scent among the many and identify you quickly.

It’s usually how we figure out who we want before seeing them. Mates should and can smell each other, no matter the distance or the crowds.

So, rejecting someone who syncs with your scent can be crushing as it is. Rejecting someone who imprints at the hands of the Fates, there is no recorded outcome.

No one has ever defied it because, quite simply, no one fights the union.

Imprinting is soul mate lore. It’s magical—unbreakable, pure, and potent, defying logic, sense, or reason. It’s all-encompassing “insta-love” and a need and hunger more powerful than any bond in the land.

No one wants to deny that kind of obsessive connection and walk away to find another mate—until us.

I can confirm rejecting that kind of bond is like dying, only not letting the body fade out to black when the soul leaves you.

I’m a walking shell, zombified and unable to do anything about it. Death right now is looking a hell of a lot rosier than this.

I’m in purgatory, only it looks exactly like my life before, yet a whole lot suckier.

I don’t even know if this is how Colton feels because sometimes the rejector has minimal backlash in the way the rejected does.

They choose to end things, and, for some reason, the Fates let them get away with crushing another’s soul.

I guess that’s why selecting a mate is not an impulse thing, and marking someone you have been dating can sometimes be a choice for many years.

I mean, look at Carmen and Colton, two years, and he still hasn’t marked her, even though he told me he chose to mate up with her.

Even he wasn’t ready to commit in case she turned him down, and everybody knows how much she loves him.

I’ve tried not to wonder over the past two weeks if they have rekindled their love affair, but I guess I would know.

We’re bonded, so I would feel it if he had sex with anyone else, whether I want to or not. Hell, I’ll feel it if he even kisses anyone.

From what I have read, even a verbal renouncement should make no difference to me being able to know when he betrays the Fates and procreates with another.

The only balance to that is he’ll feel it if I do, too. Whoever ordained this bullshit needs therapy because someone up there has a twisted sense of what’s right.

I jump out of my skin when the door slams behind me and brings me back to reality with a bump.

I’m daydreaming again while folding my laundry and flinch when Vanka strolls in, smoking a cigarette, and fills our room with the putrid choking smell of her bad habit.

We’re supposed to have a house rule against smoking, but it’s not like Vanka ever does anything she’s ever told.

“Do you mind?” I snap at her bitchily, wafting my hand in the air as the smoke curls toward me. I try to stop it from invading my newly heightened senses and stifle a cough as it hits the back of my throat.

“No, not really.” She blows a fresh wave right at me as she strolls past, sashaying her hips, and hits me with a sneer as she goes.

I bite on my lower lip and ignore her before this turns nasty. She’s always been quick to aggression and left me with some pretty bad bruises and scrapes over the years.

I know better than to start another fight with her.

I sigh heavily and go back to what I’m doing, folding clothes on my bed, wanting to have this done before lights-out in a few minutes.

There aren’t many house rules for us, but our guardians have very strict lights-out and locked-doors rules as soon as the moon comes up.

It goes back to the wars and that vampires can only come out when the sun goes down. The only time we have an exception is the full moon, every cycle, for the ceremony on Shadow Rock.

We don’t have packs to protect us here, so we don’t get any leeway in our freedom living in the orphanage.

Vanka’s eyes bear down on me, and reluctantly, I look up and penetrate her with a questioning stare. She wants something that’s obvious, but it won’t come as a polite request. It never does.

“I’m going out after the guardians go home… if you snitch, I’ll mess you up.” The amber glow in her eyes adds weight to the promise.

I eye-roll, no longer intimidated since my power to heal and fight back improved dramatically with my turning.

“Why would I snitch? I don’t care what you do.” I go back to staring at the endless pile of laundry, mostly PJs, and try hard to ignore her. No energy for this at all.

“Good. I have a hot date with one of the boys from the Ryleigh pack. It’s nothing serious, totally slumming it. He wants to try it on with a shameful reject.

“He’s a weird one with some serious kinks.” She laughs dirtily, looking for a reaction, igniting an instant unease deep in my stomach.

Most she-wolves save themselves for their one-day mate, but I guess girls like us don’t have any reason to. Even when we get a chance, they reject us based on who we are.

“Use protection. An unwanted kid would end up right back here, and you’d have no choice but to stay,” I warn, more for my benefit than hers.

I’ve been counting down the days when she leaves me in peace, and I can fumigate her rank scent from this room.

I’ve nothing else in life to look forward to anymore, so I may as well have that—room to myself, space to call my own.

“Whatevs. Maybe you should try it and fuck up that pretty little Santo head a little for throwing you in the trash. It’s bound to sting.” She sneers and laughs at her devious plan, but I ignore it.

As much as he’s broken me, I still love him and wouldn’t want to inflict that kind of pain. Hell, I wouldn’t want to do it to myself; I’ve no desire to have sex with anyone that’s not him, as stupid as that sounds.

“Tell me… is it true you two were mid-screw and ready to mark when Daddy walked in and threw your ass out?”

It’s the snide, catty tone that riles my temper, and I throw her a pointed snarl, pinning her eyes with mine as she hits a nerve.

I erupt furiously, without restraint, and it comes out so fast, I can’t counteract. “It’s got nothing to do with you, so shut the hell up.”

The insane, instant, deep rumble and scathing tone I emit scares even me, and as her eyes widen in shock, she drops her cigarette right out of her gaping mouth.

I recoil, wondering what the hell that was. I didn’t sound like me at all, and that hostility came from nowhere.

My blood riled and heated up in a split second and forced out what I assume was my wolf growl. I guess she hit a nerve.

“What the fu… your eyes… they’re red,” she stutters, visibly shaken, and backs away from me a little before realizing her lap is burning and starts madly grabbing for her dropped fire stick like a mental person.

Soon as she retrieves it, she backs up and slides by me, near the wall, before escaping out of our bedroom door with a wary backward glance, a look of unadulterated fear, and takes off at top speed.

I’m left dumbfounded at both my guttural, aggressive response and this goddamn red crap.

I push off from where I am, stepping to the mirror in three strides across the room, and stare at my reflection before the rage in me calms back to numb.

I have to see this. It’s a stirring memory of Colton’s words, and I blanch when I see the evidence for myself and gasp in horror.

She’s right.

Colton was right.

There before me, seeing for the first time how I look when my eyes flash with a warning that I am on the verge of turning, I face two glowing orbs of the darkest blood-red in place of where amber should be.

They are almost satanic in their fire and sparkle, making me look insane or demonic.

The shock and instant fear that cascades through my veins icily mute them back to natural green immediately. I fall back, emitting a yelp as I’m gripped with a sense that something is really wrong with that.

Red? What the hell?

They’re not red. They can’t be. No one has red, never in all the times, notes, books, packs, clans, and history of our kind.

I’ve never heard of it, and I realize that the elders have forgotten about Colton pointing it out that day. It was never mentioned again.

Maybe they thought he was mistaken, or they were so preoccupied with the fact he almost marked me right under their noses that it was a far more pressing issue. I mean, it’s ludicrous.

It’s not a thing; this is not a thing! Our eyes are amber. They can’t be any other color.

I start panicking, pulling myself back to the mirror and trying to force myself to bring them back, but that ingrained terror running through me stops it from happening.

I don’t know what to do or what it means. Am I sick? Is there something wrong with me?

I don’t know what to think, and I pace insanely, flustered and freaking out, heart close to popping an artery as it thunders in my chest.

My brain is spinning nauseatingly that maybe there is something really, really wrong with me. I thought nothing of it when Colton said it, and to be frank, I thought he was tripping and not seeing clearly.

Somehow with all the chaos, the drama, the heavy emotions swirling around, he saw red because of his own rage and mood at the time.

I should go to the medic, right? I should call the shaman. Maybe he will know?