Alpha & Luna

Chapter 26

I run without rest. 

I don't turn around to see if anyone is following me. I don't look back to see if Sebastian is following me. I don't want to see him now. I don't want to see my mate that betrayed me.

At the thought, my wolf whines pitifully in my head. She too is in tremendous pain but more so than me. She's an animal and therefore she doesn't understand the ways of man. She can't fathom her mate's ability to betray her so. Her mate's ability to disregard the beauty of the mate bond. She doesn't know what I know. Which was that I should have expected this. I should have known that this was too good to be true. I just don't have that kind of luck and it was my own stupidity that put us both in this situation.

On second thought, maybe I'm in more pain than she is.

The cardigan I have on from earlier does little to protect me from the icy wind as I run in human form. I want to turn to wolf but I can't. If I were to give back control to my wolf, no doubt she'd turn us around. She'd want to go back to her mate. She wouldn't understand that our mate doesn't want us. 

That we can't go back. 

Not ever.

I've been running for hours now and have long crossed Sebastian's border. Now, it's just me. Alone in this dark forest. 

Belatedly, I recall the threat of rogues but I quickly brush the thought away. Even if there were rogues about, there was no way I'm going back there. Going back to him.

No I'm going home.

Back to where I used to live with my father. Back to my childhood home. Back to the place where I lived alone and in mourning for a year.

But no matter. Anything was better than where I had been.

It was foolish of me to associate the word home with a person. To think of home and in the same thought think of Sebastian. To remember the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around me and to think that there was nowhere I'd rather be. Nowhere I'd ever feel safer than in my mate's arms surrounded by his quiet strength and love.

How naive and stupid of me.

I run and run until dawn breaks and I can hear the birds in the sky. They wake up to sing to the forest. To proclaim to the world that it is another day and they are happy to be alive. 

I hate their song. 

It's not long before I reach my former pack's territory and I run by without anyone stopping me. 20 minutes later I'm standing in front of the cabin where I grew up. It looks just like I left it.

Brown and wooden. But somehow lonelier than I remember it to be. I close my eyes and take deep breaths hoping to regain and remember that sense of serenity I used to get from this place. But I feel nothing. Nothing at all. My cabin doesn't remind me of home any more.

Instead, that title has been replaced by my mate. 

Tears of frustration well up in my eyes and with my eyes close I cry silent tears. Why was God doing this to me? Wasn't my father's death enough? To make me love this man-

My thoughts are interrupted when the cabin's door creaks open.

My eyes open of their own accord and I'm stunned by what I see. 

With suspended breath, I watch my father walk out the door.