Lost

HARPER

~Levi, slow down, you’re running so fast.~

~Mom? Mom where are you?~

~Here, slow down, I can’t reach you.~

~Mom, please find me, I need you.~

~Leivon? I’m coming, just slow down.~

~Mom? Mom? MMMOOOMMM!~

HARPER

“Fuck.” That was the worst dream I have ever had in my life.

I sat up heaving for breath as my eyes slowly adjusted and began to focus. I ran my palm over my face, noticing the sweat that drenched my skin, was I dreaming so bad that I broke out in a sweat?

~Far out, I need to stop watching movies, they are starting to really affect me.~

~That and the fact I dreamed Spencer is a wolf, whoa, classic.~

My entire mouth was dry and the ache in my head resembled something close to what I would presume felt like bulls had stepped on it continuously.

I groaned as I looked up, only my sight landed on something I thought I would never see.

There, sitting on all fours, just eerily observing me, was a big…furry…scary-looking…wolf. His coat was pitch black but had a slight sapphire sheen to it when the light reflected off of it.

His large black orbs leering, penetrating but familiar all at the same time, I eyed him with just as much cautioned curiosity as he eyed me.

~No, no, this is a dream, no…it was all a dream.~

“Harper?” A sweet soft voice pulled me from my confused staring war with the curious wolf and my head snapped sideways.

“Patty? Not that I’m not happy to see you but…what are you doing in my room?” She chuckled as I began to look around, noticing this was in fact, not my room.

“Oh love, you are at the pack house, not your room.”

I could feel my eyes widen in surprise, the wolf moved and I jolted, falling backward over the side of the bed and flipped head first onto the ground, taking the blankets with me.

“Harper!” Patty exclaimed.

With my ass in the air, folded in half and my knees on either side of my head, I flopped onto my side with a groan as the wolf barked from the bed above me.

“Ouch,” I groaned out, scrambling to sit up straight again.

“Spencer,” Patty growled at the wolf.

I could feel the trepidation rising within me, my breathing quickened as I slowly scuttled back into the corner of the room, shaking my head in disbelief.

No, this is not happening right now, no, she didn’t just call that wolf beast Spencer, this was a dream, no.

“Harper love, there’s no need to be afraid, it’s still him, just a different form.”

“FORM?” I screeched, “You’re all fucking insane, I need to find my son and we need to leave, now. In fact, leaving this entire town is not such a bad idea.”

The wolf’s whimpering could be felt in my heart like my words had hurt it…him…that thing.

“I’m afraid you can’t go anywhere. We need to find cowboy.”

“I-I I’m sorry, D-d did you”—I cleared my throat, surely she was mistaken?—“just say, f-find cowboy? As in m-m-my cowboy?”

My voice cracked as tears pooled in the corners of my soft browns, it was just a dream, right? It was just a dream.

As the wolf and Patty sympathetically looked between one another and then at me, the revelation of my dream being an actual reality was strikingly difficult to swallow.

“I’m sorry, love,” she whispered.

My breaths turned into difficult pants, ragged and strangled as I gulped back air. I began to wave my finger in the wolf's direction.

“T-t th-th that’s r-r really Spencer…isn’t it?” I finally managed with a heaving chest.

“Yes love, he’s your mate and a wolf.”

I threw my head back, banging it hard against the wall, amplifying the thunderous throb in my skull as I drew my legs close to my chest and my jaw trembled while tears crawled down my face.

“Harper, before you passed out, do you remember what happened?”

I shook my head furiously, unable to open my eyes, and the pain constricted around my heart once more. This was not a dream, this was reality and Levi—my Levi—was gone.

I felt the bile rise up from my stomach with brutal, fiery force, and I rolled over onto all fours as my mouth filled with saliva.

My abdomen contracted, and with a wave of cold sweats and then a gag from my throat.

My whole body quivered as it retched up acidic clumps of yellowish gunk, landing with a splash on the timber floorboards.

Droplets of vomit hitting my hands as I heaved up my entire stomach contents, no relief found when the sickness stopped.

I sat back against the wall again, wiping away the remnants left behind with the back of my hand.

I could not stop the sobs of torturous agony as my soul shattered apart, curling my body into the smallest ball I could muster, at that moment, my suffering was the only noise that could be heard.

After what felt like hours on that cold and hard floor, the sobs had finally subsided.

Patty had cleaned up my spew some time ago, but the throbbing pounded like a drum inside my tightening skull.

Spencer’s wolf form had managed to crawl closer without me noticing.

I guess he was trying to give me comfort, but when I felt the rough tongue lick my hand, I pulled it under me, not wanting any slight bit of anything from him right now.

This was too much for me to handle.

The wolf whimpered, and what looked like tears escaped his pure black orbs.

I was completely numb. I had no sympathy left, especially not for a liar and a deceitful ass-wipe that couldn’t find five seconds to tell me the truth of what he actually was.

“Harper, I have the shower running and the stuff you need is on the bathroom bench. Let me help you up?”

She ushered me to the bathroom where she undressed me and helped me under the water.

Normally, I would have been hesitant about someone undressing me and washing my body, but right now, I was incapable of doing anything. I felt…lost.

Once I was cleaned up, thankful for the minty freshness that stripped my mouth of the regurgitated vile vomit, I was shown back to the bed where Spencer—human Spencer—sat.

His hair was still dripping. I guess he had a shower when I was washing.

“Harper, I—”

“Don’t,” I croaked out, “just don’t say anything.”

I closed my eyes as I slipped under the blankets and turned my back to both of them.

I wanted nothing to do with either of them right now. I just wanted to be left alone to wallow in my torment and the loss of my only child. Levi was gone and all that was left was an empty shell.

The hours slipped by as I lay there with my eyes closed, not actually sleeping, just praying for some way for this to be a hellish nightmare and not actual reality.

Spencer and Patty both came in to check on me, but I paid them no notice. I didn’t care, after all, they were nothing.

I had lost my son. He had been stolen from me, and this was all my fault.

If I hadn't moved here, if I hadn't gotten involved with Spencer, if I had just kept him inside, he would still be here and he would still be safe.

I was a weak mother. I was not worthy of life. I was a failure and not fit to breathe air.

Self-pity was now the gorilla on my back, the guilt I carried, the shame.

This was my doing, and this is why I had kept him so close. Because deep down I knew, I didn’t deserve to have an amazing child like Leivon.

I didn’t deserve to be happy. I should have paid attention to the signs, so many signs, and I was selfish to think I was entitled to more than what I had been given in life.

As I stared numbly up at the ceiling, lost in my self-hatred thoughts, I hadn’t realized Spencer had even entered until I felt the bed move.

I didn’t pay him any attention though. He wasn’t the one I needed. He wasn’t Levi. He was some sort of shape-shifting beast from horror flicks, a predator and murderous monster, but he was also the man I loved, and that was a poisonous pill to swallow.

“Harper, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I put you in danger, I’m sorry I fell in love with you. This is my fault, I will fix this.”

I could hear the crack in his voice, feel his torment, though I don’t know how. “Please, sweet cheeks, just look at me, please, I need you, please.”

His begging stabbed at my chest and I focused on his sapphire blues that hovered above me, glossed over and dripping with wet tormented tears, the battle he was waging in his own heart was obvious.

He blamed himself and I blamed me, we were both in a vortex tornado of suffering. “You’re a wolf?”

He snorted through his sadness. “Yeah, I tried to tell you, I did, I wanted to so many times but could never find the right words.”

“Who took Levi?”

“Hunters, wolf hunters. Bad humans, the ones we’ve been hunting. They don’t know anything other than eradicating our kind.”

“How do I find him?”

“We’re trying to locate him now, I-I I’m so sorry… I-I…”

I just lay there, numb, complete inability to feel anything, just watching as this grown man, this beast, this wolf, cried above me.

He grabbed my face, pressing his forehead against mine, his teardrops splashing my cheeks. “Don’t leave me, Harper, I will fix this I promise, say you won’t leave me, say we aren’t broken up, say we aren’t over…please, please don’t leave me…I love you, I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you and cowboy…please, please.”

The mention of my son sent a new wave of tears to the forefront of my completely shattered mind.

I did love Spencer, but damn did he have a lot to answer for and if anything had happened to Leivon, I would close the book on us, on our love, I made that promise hours ago.

Hunters sent to exterminate wolves were responsible for my son being taken. I will see them burn in hell for touching my child.

Spencer collapsed on top of me as his body shook violently from the sobs that thrashed wildly at his soul.

He was in his own torture now, just as conflicted and guilty as I was for putting my son in this situation.

The harrowing wound inflicted was open and oozing and both of us needed direction.

“I love him, Harper, I even got the paperwork ready, I was going to ask if I could officially adopt him. We were going to be a family. I was going to ask you to be my wife and him to be my son, I had it all planned out…and now it’s gone. How can you love me after what I’ve done? Please…just say this isn’t the end, please, please.”

There it was, out in the open, his fear was my fear, he did carry just as much guilt. “Please, Harper, you are my soul mate…please, don’t leave me, I love you, I love you.”

I relented, I gave in. In my moment of weakness, I surrendered.

Placing my heavy arms around him, my fingertips stroking the back of his neck as he whimpered against my chest, my shirt soaking up his affliction that bled like a river from his broken heart.

He had lost his son, his son? Oh God, how stupid could I be?

Spencer did think of Levi as his, he cared for him as if he were his own, he spoke about him as if he were his own, and he loved him like he was his son. I really was a fool.

“I will fix this…,” he promised through his pain, “you’ll see, we’ll be a family, I will find him and I will bring him home and never let him go.

I will be the best dad to him, Harper…” he struggled to breathe, burying his head further into my chest. “I love him, I love you, I will fix this.”

As unbridled tears crawled down the sides of my face, I held him just as tightly as he held me.

We had both lost our child, blood meant nothing, he was his just as much as mine and we both were in mourning.

I believed every word he promised, I believed every emotion that came from him. Spencer was finally telling me the truth and all of this hurt beyond any words my vocabulary was capable of describing.