Profound Devotion

Chapter 14

July 25th
Monaia

  Sweat beaded across my heated skin. My blanket, usually a soothing comfort, now weighed me down like chains to secure me to this one position. My pillow was as hard as a rock, and the once chilly air was now humid and stifling my breathing.

  I managed to convince myself to try and lay down to sleep, but the minute my eyelids closed, thoughts of that night came flooding back like a stream of haunting memories.

  I somehow managed to wake up before his teeth sunk into my skin, my cheeks stained with rushing tears and an ache in my chest that refused to go away.

  My body was empty, like some part of me was missing, and in its place was a raging fire of pain that crept beneath my skin and clawed to be set free. The hurt was bone-deep, and I could feel myself getting weaker the longer I dealt with the rejection.

  As I drifted off again, the same visual of my wolf being tackled to the ground appeared, but it was different now. Jackson's mouth moved, but none of his words lined up. It was as if I was becoming disconnected to both reality and whatever this was that I constantly found myself trapped in.

  He appeared before me now, his wild brown hair disheveled and a crazed look in his hollow, empty eyes. It was nothing like how I remembered the incident, but it felt so real—like he was actually standing here and not just a figment of my nightmare.

  "Hello, Monaia." My name rolled off his tongue like acid. It may have brought me desire in the past, but now my skin crawled in disgust, and I begged to finally be free of his hold over me. "I'll be with you soon. I'll make sure of it."

  His cracked lips lifted at the edges to expose his elongated fangs. They dripped with blood, and as he backed away, I was shown a new visual; I was sprawled across the ground in a pastel purple dress. My eyes rolled to the back of my head, blood pouring from a gaping wound within my chest.

  I was dead and, judging by the way he now loomed over me with the deep red liquid staining his skin, it was no mystery how.

  His chin raised, and the intensity in his stare froze me in place. My body ran cold, and my heart that was once racing nearly stopped completely.

  "I'm coming for you."

  I awoke with a gasp. My body racked with sobs of fear, and I muffled my terrified screams with my hands as my shoulders shook.

  It felt so real; it was real. He was coming for me, and he won't stop until I'm dead.

  The revelation somehow made me cry harder, my consciousness begging for each tear to wash away the nightmare that was my life and allow myself to wake up in the morning never having met him.

  I just wanted to go back to the way things were before; before our mate bond snapped in place, and before he'd rejected me and swore I was nothing more than a useless obstacle he needed to hurdle.

  None of this was how I expected my life to go. As a young girl, I always dreamed of meeting my mate, falling in love, and living the rest of my life the way my parents had. We would return home and fall into each other's arms, and I would be safe and protected from the world around us.

  Pairing me with Jackson had to be some kind of sick prank the moon goddess chose to play on me. How could she think we were meant to be together? She should have known we would never work.

  Had I done something truly heinous to make her punish me in this way? Maybe then I could make it up to her, and she could rid me of this wretched curse I was destined to have ruining the rest of what was likely to be a very short life if he had any say in it.