Just My Luck

21○ Silence

L A N D O N

How utterly complicated and pestelient. Why had I not died as an infant? Why was my mother so caring? She could've drowned me in the bath like my father or brother would've and saved me the idiocracy of the present world.

At the top of the steaming pile of my problems is Veryan. So blindingly stupid. Scratching at my every cell. I've never allowed myself to be provoked by anyone yet every breath he takes bothers me.

I blame this on our mate bond as there is nowhere else to place this feeling of the sheer irritation of him clawing at every crevice of my body. Maybe he's just that annoying.

I put this on myself. I should have turned him away and let him rot in someone else's arms. But my arms yearn for something to hold and I'd rather him perish in my hands than in Torrez's or Xavier's or some other idiot's.

I have yet to make the true connection between Torrez and Veryan, but digging into that would mean learning more about Veryan and I'd rather not.

Forcing him in the dungeon was the best idea but then he said those words.

I need you.

And then I began to perish.

The way he stuttered it out. The reluctance. I reveled in it. Mostly because he was the first one to say it.

The words affected me too much. Suspiciously so. He affected me too much. Too annoying. Too stimulating. Too much all at once. I thought I was going to have a panic attack every time I was near him.

My body just drew to him as if it was an innate feature, being at his side. But being close to him brought with it too many complications for me to be bothered with. The anger he invoked, the other things he invoked, I had never felt it before.

He just raised my anxiety.

And Nicoletta with her whims weren't helping. Bringing an uncanny human in here. A human who in some way was linked to Veryan.

More to think about. More to worry over. More shards being stuck in my back. The further away from freedom I become.

I was spiralling so much deeper. No one would be able to pull me out. All this was pushed onto me. I was barely in my twenties and yet I felt as if I was eighty but none the wiser.

It's all too much. So much presses on me that I can't sleep. And all I desiderate in the night, as I worry about the unsettling future, is the clamor of Veryan's taunts.

Is this what having a mate is like? An additional problem? Additional confusion? I don't want it. I never wanted it. Attachment causes problems. I clearly don't need any more of that.

Pushing him away didn't lessen the bewilderment he caused me. Even from the safe distance I confined him to, he managed to slither his way into the forefront of my mind. My wolf thought about him to much and in doing so I thought about him too much.

And that's why I was ignoring the calls from the irritating old bastards of 'The Council Of Alphas': thinking too much about unimportant things, as well as the cold sweat that breaks out on my forehead whenever I think about talking to some strange idiot on the phone.

So, I switched off any means they could use to contact me and set off to find clarity within my unwanted feelings.

I ended up at my father's room. Behind the door he lays hooked up to a machine, vulnerable and more human than wolf. In his unconsciousness he was able to offer more to me than before.

The beeping of the machines filled the room and I contemplated whether I wanted to pull the plugs. I sat next to him, my chair creaking. This was the only room I allowed myself to clean but dust gathers fast in this house as if it longed to be forgotten.