He Will Be Mine

Chapter 51: The Notebook

*** Tyler's POV ***

After Aly's mom showed us that Elder Gerard left her a note in his notebook, it becomes my most favorite object in the world for a bit. Not only do I want to know what it says about Matt and me, but now I can't help wondering if he tucked any other goodies in here. So, after she leaves to go talk to her dad, I flip the notebook to the first page and start reading.

Matt is with me, but I don't think he's as interested in this as I am just yet. He still seems to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I get how he feels in a way, but I don't see how it's helpful right now. I'm done trying to fight it out of him for now, though. If he just wants to sit there and stare at a spot on the wall, I'm not going to stop him. I have too much work to do.

The first part of Elder Gerard's notes is about me, from when he conducted my trials. I kind of wish I could remember what he did to me the first day because he seemed to get a lot out of it. I chuckle when I see he wrote, "Alpha Kane terrifies him, but not enough to prevent him from fighting for Alyssa."

All of that is true, or it was at first. I don't know that I would say I'm still scared of her dad after I've gotten to know him a bit better. Actually, yes. Now that I think of it, the way he spoke to Aly during the meeting made my skin crawl. He wasn't even yelling, but there was something about his tone that was utterly unsettling.

I'm also amused at his note that I seem to "suffer from an overactive imagination," and then his comment about wondering what my day-to-day thought processes might be like because of it.

Dude, you don't even want to know. I get lost on so many daydream tangents it isn't even funny. I'm just glad I started having Aly to watch the scary movies with me because she always stays over after, and I like having the comforting cuddles. I mean, I enjoy a good scare as much as the next guy, probably more actually, but I could do without the nightmares.

Later he writes about what he perceives to be my thoughts on werewolves. All of it seems positive, which again he is exactly right about, though I find it interesting when I get to the part about how I appear to view werewolves as inherently stronger, faster, and more capable than humans to the point that I don't seem to think I stand a chance against them in a fight. I mean, aren't they? I feel like I've stood toe-to-toe with them enough just in their human forms to have a pretty good idea of that being accurate. No human can make me ache like that.

I shrug it off, though, because it mostly just seems like he's writing what I think and feel without too much commentary about how it compares to reality. I don't know how he figured this all out, and I get lost in the last pages of his trials notes because he uses a lot of codes and abbreviations that I don't understand enough to make sense of his conclusions. I know the end result was the Elders thinking I'd be a suitable mate, though, so I'm guessing these are all good things.

I do have a moment where I look at all the positive things in the notes and then look over at Matt and wish for just a second that he had never factored into it at all. When it was just me, everything was great. I won over Alpha Kane, the Elders apparently loved me, and if that was that then Aly would be doing the marking thing right about now and taking over as Alpha soon. I realize pretty immediately that it isn't fair of me to be thinking that way, and it isn't what Aly wants anyway, but I think I get it now why Matt is taking this so hard.

"What?" he asks when he sees me looking at him.

It hurts to see how much he hurts, and how he has kind of shut down after the Elders gave us the smackdown. Though I can't help feeling so angry with him for acting like this, I also can't help wanting to make it better.