Chapter 1170: Epilogue 2

A Life Without My Mate

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Westin

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Before I had left home, before I had told Reece that I just couldn’t be in Colorado Springs any longer, I had met my mate. Well, I already knew her. It was a little awkward for me really. I had been assigned to Princess Rika when she was sixteen, and watching her for two years before she turned eighteen.

Up to that point, I had never looked at Rika as if she were anything other than my employer’s daughter. I had protected her, and I had made sure that she was cared for, but she was old enough to be left independent at times, so it wasn’t that intense for me. Not at the start anyway.

It was on her eighteenth birthday that everything changed for me. It was on that day that I knew who she was to me. I knew what I needed to do and how things would end up. It was the way that it always happened, wasn’t it?

No. I was wrong. So very wrong. It wasn’t how all things ended up, not even in this type of situation.

I had known who and what Rika was to me when I walked into the castle that morning. I had smelled her scent all the way to the underground garage, and it only got stronger the closer that I had gotten to the Royal Tower. Hell, if I had been using my car rather than one of the loaner cars from the garage, I would have known what was going on the moment that I got in it to drive that morning.

When I stepped into the elevator, I had to stop my eyes from rolling into the back of my head, and for the cat ate the canary grin to stay off of my face. I was just really happy that I was alone in there. Still, there was always someone watching, until you got into the tower, that is. And the moment that the door opened into the tower itself, that scent intensified even more.

I followed the smell all the way to the hallway outside of Rika’s room. I was to wait there for her to come out. I was not allowed to go inside unless there was a valid reason. It was understandable under normal circumstances, even more so now. Still, she had to notice the smell the moment that she had woken this morning.

My scent was outside her door, and in the room next to it from when I slept at the castle. That hadn’t happened often, but it had happened from time to time.

I stood there, heart pounding and palms sweating, as I waited for her to come out of her room. I was her only guard today, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone else seeing us. And because there was an abundance of peace at the moment, I was usually guarding Prince Reagan as well.

They weren’t little kids that ran off or anything, so it wasn’t that hard for us to manage the two of them at the same time. Not to mention, they were still seniors in high school at the moment, so there wasn’t much they were going to get into during the day.

Finally, the moment came. I could sense Rika coming toward the door. It was about to happen. She was going to open the door, look at me in the eyes, and we would be bonded from that moment on. She was meant to be mine, fate had decided it. And now that she was eighteen, it was time for us both to realize it.

That didn’t happen though. There were no mutual feelings. There was no instant connection between us. There was nothing at all. Just a teenage girl that was excited about turning eighteen.

"Good morning, Westin." She beamed at me, but it was no different than usual. "Come on, let’s go. I want to get downstairs." She rushed past me and toward the elevator. I looked after her, awestruck. What had just happened? Sh..shouldn’t she have recognized me as her mate?

Shouldn’t she have realized what was happening?

I thought that maybe she was just a little too excited for her birthday. It would happen soon. Maybe later in the day or tomorrow. Definitely by the end of the week. So, when that snowy December first turned into the second, then the eighth, and then January first, and moving ever onward with no hint of Rika recognizing me as her mate, I started to worry about what was happening.

I had all the classic reactions to her. I was instantly connected to her. I was protective of her, more so than I had been before. I got easily jealous where she was concerned. I wanted to be with her, but I knew that I had to wait until she was able to recognize me.

I just didn’t get it. How was she able to go without knowing what I was to her? What was happening? Was this even possible? I mean, it had to be, because I was witnessing it first hand and all that, but was it actually something that other people have experienced? I needed to know.

I had to find out why I wasn’t connecting with my mate. Or rather, why she wasn’t connecting to me.

This went on for months. As Rika and her brother graduated from high school. While they squandered away their summer vacation. And as they started at the university in August. She never once looked at me as anything other than her guard. The entire situation was heartbreaking, it truly was.

I couldn’t tell her anything though. She needed to realize who I was on her own. If I stepped in and told her who I was to her, and what she was to me, it might scare her away. Not only that, but she might think that I was lying, because she couldn’t feel it on her own.

And then, if the feelings did come, she would question them because she wouldn’t know if it was her falling for me, or if it was my words manipulating her. I was stuck here and there was nothing I could do.

When she started at the university, it was like things had changed. She was a different person. She was interested in the other men on campus and seemed to be actively looking for a boyfriend. She wasn’t interested in her mate at the moment, just a boyfriend. She hadn’t dated once in high school, but now she was interested in finding someone to rectify that situation.

And to my dismay, Rika had found him at orientation. Or the person that she thought was going to fill that gap for the time being. Clovio, a foreign exchange student from Germany, was the object of Rika’s current fascination. And the object of my rage. He didn’t know how much I hated him. How much I wanted to hurt him.

Although, I couldn’t. He was human, and that meant that he was off limits to me. Dammit!

As time went on though, things started to happen. Rika was being duped by that asshat, that piece of shit, Clovio. Him and his friends were Jaegans. They weren’t using the name that they were born with, they were using fake names that were given to them when they moved to the states. And now they were trying to get closer to the King and Queen.

Clovio and his little friend Warrick were using Rika and Alyssa to do this.

And that day that I got the call that Rika had run away from school with this man, that had been a straw that I didn’t expect. It broke me though. I was so furious with her. I couldn’t believe the danger that she had put herself into. The other men that had surrounded them, while human, did not smell right at all. They were evil.

They were mean. And they wanted to hurt my Rika.

When I got her back home to the castle, after she had had her world turned upside down by the revelations from those men, I wanted to tell her what I was to her. She had been so hurt, so lost and broken. I wanted to be there to put her back together again. I wanted to tell her that she was mine and I was hers.

There was no reason to look anywhere else, and that I would hold her and make her feel better.

"Rika?" I called out to her as she sobbed alone on her bed.

"Westin? What are you doing here?" She had been crying so hard that she hadn’t known that I was there.

"I wanted to check on you. I was worried about you. Are you OK?" Just looking at the pain and heartbreak in her eyes had nearly broken me. It was so hard not to rush to her side.

"I..I’m fine." She buried her face in her knee and tried to ignore me.

"You don’t look fine, Rika. You look heartbroken and destroyed. And I just want you to know that I am here for you if you need me." I wanted to say more, to tell her all of it, but I just couldn’t. Not while she was feeling like this.

"You’re here for me?" She snapped at me. "For what? To ridicule me and my decisions? To make me feel like a worthless piece of shit that isn’t worth your time? To make me feel like every decision I have ever made was the wrong one? What exactly are you here for, Westin?

What is it you want from me? What do you want me to do?"

"I just want you to be happy, Rika! That’s all I want, dammit! Why are you like this? Why are you so blind to everything around you? Why can’t you see what is right in front of you?" I very nearly told her right then and there, at least I hinted at it.

"Like hell you want that." She rose to her knees on the bed as she glared at me. I knew that she was angry, I just didn’t understand why. "You are always being mean to me. You are always acting like you can’t stand me. And now I am supposed to believe that you want me to be happy. That is bullshit.

You are probably happy that I got my heart broken. You’re probably happy that all of this happened to me." It was at that moment that I realized that Rika had noticed that I had been acting different. And she had noticed how much more protective I was of her. She had misinterpreted it as me being mean, I had not been expecting that at all.

"I am not happy that you are upset, but I will not lie to you. I am happy that you are no longer with Clovio. I don’t want you to be with him. I don’t want you to be with anyone else." Before I could tell her that I wanted her to be with me, that I needed her to be with me, she cut me off with another angry shout.

"You’re just like my parents. You want me to be a child forever. You’re treating me like a baby. You’re treating me like I meant for things to go wrong or something."

"I am not." I growled the words at her. "I am not happy about any of this, except that you are not with him anymore. That is the only thing that brings me joy. And Rika, the reason for that is I l-."

"SHUT UP!" She snapped angrily and cut me off once more. "I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say. Go away! Leave me alone! I don’t want to see you ever again." I knew that she meant it.

She couldn’t feel the mate bond. She couldn’t tell that I was the one that she was meant to be with. At least, that was what I had thought it had meant. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

After that night, I spoke to Reece and told him that I was having issues with my mate. I told him that she was in love with someone else, which wasn’t really a lie. And I told him that I needed to get away for the time being. I was a feline, and not part of the actual pack. I would be able to leave if he allowed me to take a break from my duties. Thankfully, he had agreed.

It wasn’t until after the battle was over. It had come to a head not long after that night with Rika in her room. I didn’t see her again at all until I left. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She had told me that she didn’t want to ever see me again after all, so I was going to make sure that I gave her what she wanted. At least for a year.

Or nearly that long. I would come back next year, when she should have had enough time to settle down.

My only truly horrible compensation in this whole thing, was that when I left, I was sent to Wales with Clovio of all people. It had taken everything in me not to kill that man the moment that I saw him. He didn’t deserve my Rika, or the pain that she had felt over him. I was going to truly enjoy making him suffer while we were there.

He would deserve all of that. He would deserve anything and everything that I could think to make him do while we were at the Alpha’s home for that pack. I wasn’t here as a punishment, not like him, so I wasn’t limited in the way that he was. That was going to be another upside as well. He was going to be my bitch, my dog, my grunt man that did anything that I told him to do.

I spent my entire first night there planning some of it out. That had been some of the first happiness that I had felt in a long time. Knowing that the man that had tried to steal my mate away from me was going to feel more miserable than I was. That would be the true ultimate win for me.