His Wolf

Forty-Five

She was aware that what she was doing was wrong. She knew the pain that awaited the wolf once he got her back, but she was also aware of the pain that awaited her if she didn't do what he had asked her. It was hard to live the way that she did, but she knew that it could always be worse. At least she had protection in exchange for a few favors here and there. They never asked for anything big, just small things that rarely even required her to tap into her power. This was the biggest favor that he had ever asked her to do for him.

She refused at first, but he held her existence over her head like a sharp blade, ready to come down and cleave itself through her skull. It was a game of survival, and maybe that made her weak. To turn on a creature who has never done her any wrong, who has only known pain its whole life just so that she can live in poverty and hide in peace.

Maybe she was weak.

But that raw power that ran though her veins with a fire so hot that it almost burned her form the inside out, that power is what kept her form laying down and accepting her kinds end. That power that pulled and bucked at every tether she tried to tie to it. That power reminded her that she was more than the last of a dead species, that she was more than a pawn. Yes, she was more and one day she would become more. Her power demanded it of her.

But before than she had to play the game of survival.

And she had to win.

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There was an emptiness in my chest.

A hollow space that throbbed with a loss so great it still wept with red. The pain that sat around the edges of the hole radiated an ach throughout my whole body. My shoulders curled inward, under the invisible weight it that pressed against them.

They felt thin and weak. Small compared to the crushing grief that settled itself deeply into my muscles.

And then there was Max.

The little shifter who brought this filling down on me in the first place. Yet every time my wolf and I laid eye on her that raw rage and pain was a just a dull throb in the background of noise. It had hurt to lose my mate. It burned when I felt Matt die. Nothing in this world could compare to the inferno that ate away at my insides, clawed up my throat and rushed back down only to crash against my soul like the wave of a tsunami.

I thought that killing the wolf responsible for the burning would douse the flames, but I was wrong. The moment my wolf stormed into that room and pulled the creature out from under the bed, the anguish and hate seemed to freeze in place. They took in the same sight my wolf and I did and they relented. They dwindled back down to just a simmering that was tolerable.

I was confused, but soon I saw why my wolf dropped her hunt for vengeance. She helped me see the downcast look of the wolf, the hunched shoulders and shaking frame. She pointed out the tail that was tucked tightly underneath the shifter. Helped me smell her fear.

It was suffocating. It snuffed out the flames to my hate and replaced it with a longing to help. Help make the terrified wolf in front of us become what she was supposed to be. I didn't know what that was, but it was something more than what she had been reduced to.

It wasn't just a want that my wolf demanded; it was a seeded of need that had been planted into us.

It was that seed that had caused an unsettling feeling take place within us. Something wasn't right. And it was because of that feeling that I was walking thought the hospital halls so late at night.

Austin had left Max and her parents alone to talk, but as I strolled passed the cafeteria I saw them sitting at one the round tables off to the back. I paused for a moment, wondering if I should keep going or go over to them. I looked down the long hallway and to the elevator that sat closed, waiting. I than looked back at the Lycan couple and saw the despair in their faces. Quickly, I made up my mind and crossed the length of the cafeteria, my feet clapping softy in the white linoleum flooring. The bright lights cast a harsh glare off them and back up at me.