BOUND: Mates at War | 18+

16 Do Your Job

Romans POV

Shifting, I sit on the ground with my head in my hands. My brain burns like it's being torn in two, I feel like I'm being cut apart by a dull knife. I just killed a wolf. I just killed one of my mothers loyal and trusted guards to save her. My mate...

What have I done? Everything around me feels out of focus, like in a dream or, in this case, a nightmare. My stomach lurches and I'm barely able to move to the grass before I'm heaving up the contents of my stomach onto the ground.

My mate.

I drag myself inside, walking down the tunnel to take in the bloody carnage in the dungeon. Cale is wounded but alive, and the rogue we found lurking in our territory is ripped to pieces on the floor.

I stand at the doorway to her empty cell. I let her go.

My hands shake by my sides. I killed a wolf and I let her go. The world goes red, every muscle cramping into a rock hard, trembling knot beneath my skin.

Rage like unlike anything I've ever felt moves from my spine through my limbs, igniting a white hot fury in my blood, boiling me from the inside out. I am going to find her and I'm going to end this. I betrayed my mother, this kingdom and my kind for her. Mate or not, it doesn't change my directive, it doesn't change what she is.

Cale stirs and I link the medics.

I pace through the blood and tufts of fur covering the floor. Wracking my brain for a story, something that will cover my betrayal until I can make this right. Within minutes several wolves converge on the dungeon, the scene is chaos. Guards and medics scramble to assess the damage, and figure out what happened.

"Where are the prisoners? The manifest says there should be three elves here, there is one dead in the back."

"When I arrived there were no elves here aside from the dead girl," I grit my teeth as I lie.

"Why didn't they link anyone else for help?"

"They fucked up and lost control, my best guess is that they thought they could fix it..."

He nods and looks grimly at the deep red coating the floor and walls, "your mother is going to crush all of us."

I nod and let out a shaky breath.

How will I face her? She'll know, she will be able to feel how I betrayed her. I won't be able to lie to her, to cover up the treachery in my actions.

——-

Standing beneath the hot shower spray I watch the evidence of my sins run down my body, the red stained water circling the drain.

Her face flashes through my mind. Bates pinned her, poised to rip her throat open with his teeth and she just... closed her eyes.

She gave up.

She didn't fight or struggle, I could feel her, she was almost serene.

I felt my own life flash in an instant. A deep, oppressing realization that her death would mean my own unending misery. I don't know if I always knew underneath it all, or if it took that moment to understand but there is no magic.

She's my enemy but she is my mate.

I snapped, acted without rational thought, my body moving on it's own. I saved her, I killed Bates to protect her. I always hated Bates but he was a wolf, a warrior, a long standing protector of my mothers.

The air in the bathroom is thick, damp and humid, when I finally leave the shower. I know I need to face my mother, I'm surprised she hasn't sent for me already. I dress quickly and make my way to the medical unit to check on Cale.