A Second Chance

The Ugly Truth

Tomak sat hunched over, staring at the flimsy piece of paper that Naomi had instructed him to read, but he did not want to.

They had returned to the place he was willing to call home. The place Rae should have been.

A rattling snarl escaped him as he thought of how useless he was.

While Rae's friend had been scouring the area for more clues, Tomak had scanned the tracks that led out of the abandoned property. Beside them was something disturbing, a dart.

Observing it and analyzing what was left inside the cartridge, his mask had identified it as a potent tranquilizer, and if the entire tube had been filled with this specific strain there was enough that if it had been distributed to him, it would have delayed even his actions. He could only imagine what it had done to Rae. She had no chance.

He had controlled his initial response to this, but when Naomi had later returned after showing him the chains, he lost his composure. Tears had stained her soft brown face, her small hands clutching a device that had belonged to Rae. Her expression belonged to one who was mourning and it had sent him over the edge.

Much to her dismay, he left suddenly and with great rage. He followed Rae's trail for several miles before it ended abruptly.

At the top of a pine, he bellowed a harsh sound as if expecting his female to hear it and come running. Having spent himself of his energy, he remembered sitting there for hours, his chest aching in the worst way possible.

He then conceived every possible scenario of what would have happened if he had been there. The worst of them was being captured along with her, but at least then he would have been closer to her. He was confident in his skills though.

The truth of the matter was, if he had been there and kept his promise to keep her safe, she would still be in his arms. If he had actually had self control he would have never scared her away in the first place.

So simply put, it was his fault. His mistake. And she was paying for it.

By evening, he had returned to find Naomi sitting on the couch, a phone in her hand as Chase sat curled up in her lap enjoying her attention.

Tomak had only heard part of her conversation. She had been asking for a favor of some kind, her face contorted in fierce concentration, and when he had walked through, she shot her hand out, finger erect, pointing directly at him. Her eyes stared at him pointedly then, the direction as clear as glass. He was to stay right there.

He wanted to growl. What made this female think she could tell him, an elite yautja warrior, what to do?

After ending the call, she turned on him and proceeded to give him a lecture, much to his displeasure, furious about how he left her alone, how she had been forced to drive and then trek alone in the darkening forest with hardly a sense of direction.

Exhausted from his own travels, Tomak had partially tuned her out.

But when she had finished with her tirade, she dropped the folded piece of paper on the couch beside her and rose, forcing Chase to leap to the ground.

"I've got to go, but you better have read that by the time I'm back. I'm not kidding," she dared to glare at him, which only made it more difficult for Tomak to resist snorting mockingly. He would have outright chortled at her version of a warning if he hadn't been so miserable.

But after she left it wasn't for a while that he read it. In fact, it wasn't until the early hours of the morning, when he could not find sleep, that he actually listened to the young female.

Now scanning the beginning part of her message, he felt his shoulders drop further as his mask translated the text.

Tomak, I am so sorry. Please forgive me.