Chapter 113: Big Girls Don’t Cry

NATALIA

“So what are you going to do, Natalia?” she asks.

I shake my head.

~I’m pathetic.~

~I ruined the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened to me.~

“There’s really nothing I can do. I screwed it all up.”

Ariel takes my hand in hers and squeezes it comfortingly.

She’s listened to the entire story of what happened with Chuck, and now she’s looking at me with sympathy.

Although I know there’s not much she can do, it just felt really good to tell someone.

“Look at me,” Ariel says, her yellow eyes staring at me with a fierce determination. “Natalia, you were eighteen! You were young and selfish. But trust me, you’ve changed so much. So don’t judge yourself so harshly for who you were back then.”

I wipe the tears from my cheeks, streaks of mascara coming off on the back of my hand.

~Maybe she’s right…~

~I have changed.~

But there’s one person who’s continually held me back. The one person who’s always stopped me from being happy.

It always comes back to ~her~.

~Mom.~

I pull my hand away from Ariel’s and clench my fist in anger. I stand up and charge toward the door.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about Chuck, but I know exactly what I’m going to do about the person who made me lose him.

“Where are you going?” Ariel asks in surprise.

“To have a little chat with Mom. She’s just as much to blame for this as I am.”

“Wait!” Ariel calls out as I storm into the hallway.

“Let me deal with this, Ariel!”

~My sister is always going to play the diplomat.~

She knows exactly how mom has fucked us up.

But now I’m gonna get some answers.

Something that’s long overdue.

I march through the palace, barely noticing Vivian as she jumps out of my way, dropping a stack of papers that scatter to the floor.

I bang on the door repeatedly.

“Dianne! Open up.”

The door swings open and I see my mom standing there in her silk pajamas. Her eyes are still heavy with sleep, and strands of her greying hair are sticking up in places.

She scans me from head to toe and lets out a loud sigh.

“For Goddess’s sake, Natalia. It’s six in the morning. What do you want?”

“What do I want?” I yell out. “I want you to apologize!”

She crosses her arms. “For what?”

“For screwing me up! Because of the way ~you~ raised me, my destined mate is gone.”

She raises her eyebrows as if expecting this to be a joke. But when she realizes it isn’t, she turns around, disappearing back inside.

“Come inside if you wish,” she calls out. “Looks like I’ll need some coffee for this.”

I slam the door loudly as I follow her inside her suite.

I know I can’t expect my dad’s backup on this one. He’s been staying in a different room for weeks now while they’re trying to “work things out.”

This is just between me and Dianne.

And I’m ~not~ going to let her turn this all back on me like she always does.

I enter the kitchenette as she pours steaming black coffee inside a mug that says ~Royal Mama~.

“So, your destined mate ran with his tail between his legs,” she says casually. “And you think somehow that’s ~my~ fault?”

“If you weren’t trying to mold me into your perfect little princess my whole life, Xavier and I would’ve never happened, and I would be with Chuck right now.”

My mom takes a sip of her coffee and sits down at the table.

“Did I force you to be with Xavier?”

I start to pace back and forth in front of her. “Every step of the way, ~you~ pushed me to be with him.”

“Natalia, all I told you was that if you got mated to Xavier, you would always be taken care of. Sometimes love has nothing to do with it.”

I stop pacing and glare at her as she takes another sip of her coffee.

“Oh yeah? So is that why Dad doesn’t live here with you anymore?” I snap. “You have no more use for him?”

“This whole family always imagines me to be the Big Bad Wolf, I know that,” she continues. “But I only ever wanted what was best for you—even if I failed to make you see that.”

“You really thought Xavier was the best thing for me?” I ask incredulously.

“I never found my destined mate, Natalia. I never felt the special pull of that bond. Only you did. So at the end of the day, you had your choice even then: Charles or Xavier.”

“You taught me to value status over love.”

“Blame me, blame the Goddess…,” she says, staring absently at the mating ring on her finger. “It’s always everyone else’s fault but your own.”

I feel my anger dissipating by the second.

My heart rate slows, the red at the edges of my vision receding.

Suddenly, I feel stupid for barging in here.

I hate to admit it, but Dianne is right…

I tried to blame her for all my mistakes in the past.

But this really is all ~my~ fault.

A silence descends upon the room in the same moment that the golden sun rises over the trees and floods the kitchenette through the small window above the sink.

“Now, if you don’t mind, Natalia…,” she says, staring into the light, “I’d like to finish my coffee and enjoy the rest of my morning in peace.”

ARIEL

I enter the study to find Alex and Dom peering intensely over the massive desk by the window.

Sprawled everywhere are maps of the werewolf realm. Alex traces his finger across a large ocean.

“~This~ is where the navy picked us up from that fisherman,” Alex says. “So if we go back to this spot, we could head back in the direction of Fate’s Web until we see the island. From there, Ariel and I will retrace our steps to the cave.”

“Just you two? Are you crazy? We’ll need to send a squad of our best warriors with you,” Dom says.

I come up behind Alex and slide my arms around his waist.

“No warriors,” I say. “I don’t want to risk anyone else’s lives coming up against Fate.”

Alex rolls up the map and hands it to Dom. “I agree. We’ll continue this later. Update Vivian and General Dave, will ya?”

Dom sighs. “Always you two against the world, huh?”

Gathering a few more things from the desk, he gives us a small nod and leaves the room.

Once the door closes, Alex turns around and pulls me in for a kiss.

“I thought you were gonna get some sleep before you started on this,” I say softly.

“I tried,” he says, his hands resting on the small of my back. “But I just couldn’t drift off without my queen next to me.”

“Sorry, it took longer than I thought. Chuck left Natalia last night. She just really needed someone to listen.”

“Damn, I was just starting to like the guy.”

He pulls me toward the sofa and I follow, letting myself crash onto the heavenly cloud of pillows. I melt into his big spoon.

“They were destined mates who loved each other,” I say. “I just don’t understand… How could it not work out?”

His arms pull me in tighter and our feet intertwine.

“I’ve had a destined mate ~and~ a chosen mate,” he says. “Yeah, Liv and I were fated, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t ~decide~ to be together, too.

“What do you mean?”

“We’d been in love with each other since we were teenagers, and I would’ve chosen her regardless of destiny.”

I listen to Alex’s steady heartbeat as he continues: “So even though we were destined, we still sat each other down and made a promise to be honest and commit everything we had to the relationship.”

“Just like we did,” I say.

“Right,” he says, kissing my shoulder. “Commitment.”

Suddenly, horrible memories of Xavier flash through my mind.

Xavier is proof that destined mates don’t mean anything without commitment.

He rejected me on the spot in the beginning, and has spent every waking moment since trying to get me back.

“I just want to help Natalia be happy,” I say. “After everything with Xavier, she deserves to be loved.”

“I know you do. But all you can do is listen and give her advice. She’s the only one who can choose what she wants.”

I nod. He’s right. I feel this need to just take Natalia’s pain away, especially before my sister starts to think that the next bottle of moonshine can make her as happy as Chuck did.

I can’t make her see her own worth.

She needs to overcome her fears and actually decide if she wants to spend her life with him.

But, maybe I can give her the push—or kick in the ass—that she needs.

Fate might pull the strings, but she can’t make us dance.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, pecking Alex on the cheek and jumping up off the couch.

“Where are you going?”

***

I burst into Natalia’s dark room.

~Just like I feared.~

She’s lying in bed, wrapped tightly in a cocoon of blankets. The blinds are shut tight, and I can hear breakup music blasting through her earbuds from across the room.

~Shit.~

~She’s slipping into breakup mode.~

At least there isn’t a bottle in sight.

Yet.

I jump up on the bed, and Natalia glares at me, annoyed.

“Go away,” she murmurs. “I just wanna be alone.”

I bounce up and down on the bed, motioning for her to take out her earbuds.

She rolls her eyes at me and pulls one out. “What?”

“I’m not letting you give up like this. No way.”

She drags the blanket up over her face, muffling her voice. “Ariel, thanks for giving a shit, but can’t you just let me wallow in this for a little while?”

“Natalia, you can still go after him! It’s not too late. I’ll help you.”

“Ariel, even if you still had your healing ability, this isn’t something you can fix.”

“Why would you give up on your destined mate like that? Why are you just letting him go?”

I bounce up and down on the bed even harder, and she sits up, throwing her hands up in anger.

“Because he deserves so much better than me!”

I stop for a moment, shocked at her vulnerability. It’s just so…unlike Natalia.

Normally, she always lashes out at everyone else when she’s upset.

But this gives me some hope.

“You can choose to make it up to him,” I say. “You can choose to change!”

“Fine. If I have a choice, then I choose lying here until I forget all about him.”

I stop bouncing.

It breaks my heart to hear that, but deep down I know my sister. She won’t have a change of heart because of anything I say.

I step back down off the bed, feeling defeated.

~At least I tried.~

“If that’s the way you feel, I can’t help you.” I sigh.

She slides back under the covers, grabbing her earbuds.

“Natalia, I’m leaving soon to go back to Fate’s Web with Alex. Just promise you won’t do anything stupid until we’re back?”

Her head snaps toward me in interest.

“You’re going to see Fate?”

“Yeah, I—”

She throws the blanket off and springs up out of bed.

A familiar fire returns to her eyes.

“Well, then I’m coming with you. Just because she’s a fucking goddess doesn’t mean she gets to give Chuck to me and then take him away.”

“What? Nat, no, it’s way too dangerous!”

I almost let out a laugh at how absurd her idea is.

~No way is Natalia coming with us.~

She throws off her sweatpants, not listening, and starts rummaging through her closet.

“Ariel, you’re not the only one who has a bone to pick with that spiteful bitch. I’m coming with you and ~that’s that~.”

“You can’t be serious,” I say.

“Of course I am,” she says, tossing clothes over her shoulder. “I just gotta find the right outfit first.”

“Natalia, this isn’t a game!”

She turns around, looking at me with grave seriousness. “Ariel, Fate has taken a lot from me too.”

She takes my hand.

“So we’re gonna face Fate together, or not at all.”