Gabriel's Protégée : Guided-Provided-Protected-Loved(Forever Bound-2)

Chapter 4

SONG OF THE CHAPTER: How Deep Is Your Love - Fifty Shades Darker

"Change doesn't happen overnight. There's no button

that's pushed to magically alter everything.

Change happens little by little.

Day by day.

Hour by hour.

It's the ticking of a secondhand, moving painstakingly, as it makes its way around the clock. You don't realize it until it's already over, the minute gone forever, as you're thrust right into the next one, the time still ticking away, whether you want it to or not.

Before long you have a hard time remembering the world as it once was, the person you were then, too focused on the world around you instead.

A world full of promise.

A world full of excitement.

A world full of Gabriel.

I can't fathom a world any other way.

I'm not sure when it happened, which minute it was that drove me to the brink, pushing me over the edge and making me feel like I can fly without wings. Time consuming turned all-consuming as the man became the beat of my heart and the blood in my veins, stealing the little piece of my soul I always kept tucked away. He crashed through my defenses and knocked down my walls, and all it took was ticking seconds, one after another, slowly altering it all.

And everything happened his way.

Life was hard and dolorous and confusing and messed up in a thousand different ways. I was a smile living in a frown, hiding my somersaulting emotions through polite veneers.

Love is a complicated entity. Love is the worst affliction imaginable.

I'm no longer myself. Love changed me.

I'm no longer happy. Love ruined me.

I'm no longer alive. Love killed me.

I'm no longer breathing. Love consumed me."

When salt water droplets flicks on my eyes I flinch closing my eyes. Blinking them open, I rub my eye harshly and put the journal down on mat I'm lying spread on the sandy beach. I sit up, one arm curl on my bent knees and the other braced on the mat.

I look at the houses lining the beach. The two story pack house and fifteen personal villa that sprawled along the coastline glows with golden warmth spilling from every window. Everything here belongs to my pack from the ground to the sky and this Island is the safest place to live for a gesturing Omega. At least away from the city's chaos and commotion, it is also very healthy. For me it's a win-win because he loves the sea.

A sudden sea breeze snaps me out of it while I hear a female scream and giggle.

"No.... No...No..." Rose shriek running down the beach, her hand fly up in an lost attempt to hold her wide-brim hat but the wind takes it away. Eric feet fly in the soft sand after Rose. His arms branded her waist from behind before lifting her up in his air. "Oh my god put me down... put me down...put me down." Rose yells though her giggles kicking her bare feet in the air when Eric spins around laughing.

My gaze is immediately pulled to the melodic sound of another laughter.

He is standing knee-deep in the water and has his back to me. He is laughing, watching Hunter run along the shore with a dry broken branch in his mouth.