His Cursed Mate

Chapter Seven

Ren's POV

It had been three days since we'd brought her back to Estabrook, and she still hadn't regained consciousness. I'd spent my days visiting her, spending as much time as I could within her vicinity. I wished desperately that she would awake, but she never did. I blamed myself for everything that had happened to her - if I had just left her alone instead of selfishly chasing after her like a fool, then maybe she would have been okay. I hadn't even been able to learn her name before she'd fallen into her deep, injury-induced slumber.

I was sitting in the chair opposite to her bed, reading Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It had always been one of my personal favorites, with its whimsical mysteries and reminiscent love story. Every time I read through it, I found myself growing increasingly more impatient with Gatsby. Sure, Daisy had become more shallow and ruthless as a person in the time since their relationship before the war. But Daisy had undeniably been his person, and he'd let her slip through his fingers, time and time again, even knowing that she was in a toxic relationship with her husband. In the end, he was killed by George, the husband of a woman that Daisy had hit with Gatsby's car. He willingly took the blame, and truly expressed his love for Daisy in the most poetic way, thus sparing her from a vengeful death at the hands of George Wilson. Some might hate Daisy for toying with Gatsby's feelings and leading him on, but I always liked to think that she truly and deeply felt his death, and wished things had ended differently for the two of them. After all, she was a woman in the twenties, looking out for herself in what, at the time, was considered to be a "man's world". The way I looked at things, there was no reason to fault her for her quality of self-preservation.

Before I could get too engrossed in the book for what had to be the hundredth time, a steady knocking came from the door to the room. My father quietly opened the door and looked at my mate, presently laying in the bed with a solemn expression plastered on her sleeping face. His gaze turned to mine as he offered a soft smile, stepping into the room and leaving the door slightly ajar.

    "I know that you're concerned about her, but maybe you should take a small break and let
Mari take over your shift for you..." he said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I shook my head and sighed, turning my head back to the girl. I couldn't leave her alone. After all, I had made it my personal mission to keep her safe, and that meant that I couldn't afford to leave her side.

    "I can't leave her alone, Dad. I have to be here for her when she wakes up. She needs to
know that I'm not going to hurt her, and that I'm here for her." I responded, my tone grim
as I reverted my gaze back to his.

His eyes softened as he gave me a knowing look, squeezing my shoulder lightly.

    "Renzo... After all that she's been through, I wouldn't be so sure that you are the first
person she'll want to see when she wakes up. You haven't done anything wrong, and I
know that your heart is in the right place, but there is a reason that she was trying so desperately to escape from you in the first place. If she is a human, like your mother was, then she might not fully understand what's going on, and the last thing you want to do is further provoke her into running away before she's fully recovered. All we can do is assume that everything regarding werewolves and the supernatural is unfamiliar territory for her. You can imagine that as a human, the mate bond feels entirely strange and unknown, right? Humans don't typically tend to fare very well with the unknown; it's something that frightens them, and we don't want for her to be frightened of us, now do we?"

His words made sense as he spoke to me, my mind processing them clearly, but my body refusing to acknowledge that he wanted me to give her the space that she needed. I clenched my jaw, staring at her for a few moments, before closing my book and bringing myself to a standing position.