Before I Fall

XXXI

I watched them run around the house. Exile crawled of course, the sight made me happy beyond any joy.

Roy and Reese agreed to watch them while I go exploring with Xander.

Stuffing a blanket, other necessities for what I had planned for Xander today. It wasn't his birthday, or some important mating event, I realized something that we both had in common.

Something I could live without but I felt like he needed.

Being trained for Alpha since you could walk comes with its disadvantages when all you want to do is see the world, explore, be a teenager.

And for one night Xander and I were going to be reckless.

"Going somewhere?" Scarlet asked, peaking into the basket. I closed it. "You are pathetic to think he loves you." She grinned, towering over me. "This is a phase. Give it a week, you'll pass by just like the rest."

"Was it hard giving up your son Scarlet?" The anger that filled her eyes intensified. "Or your mother Mecca." I knew all of them had been following me. "Luca what about your entire family, Hannah your father, Carter your sister."

One by one they descended from their hiding spots circling me.

"You know nothing about Xander. He's the darkness over everything that could ever be light."  Hannah yelled.

"He's ruined lives, families. Leave why you still can  before this destroys your world." Carter barely whispered.

Scarlet stepped forward,"He doesn't love you, why can't you understand. If he killed the rest he'd kill you to."

All I could do was smile because they didn't have a clue.

His dark ways were rubbing off on me and I loved the things they do.

"I am to full of life to be half loved, Scarlet." She agreed thinking I was coming to my sense. Oh darling how wrong you could be, sad to say I lost my mind the minute Xander entered my heart.

I stood up closer to Hannah.

"I love him, all of him. I watched him crawl beneath my skin and into my soul. For how he would glide over my dark fields and leave trails of roses left to grow. He devoured me whole and made sense of all my bones. But most of all for healing my pieces and guiding them all back home."

"You speak so highly of him." She said to me. "Why do you do that? Why do you speak of him as if he put the stars in the sky when all he did was nothing but break you so much that the cracks in your heart were visible through your eyes."

I laughed, "That's the thing about love isn't it? You'll let them get away with murder even if it's your own."

"You'll never understand." Her eyes watered.

"Oh sad girl, I understand." My fingers wiping away her tears. "I too know what it's like to bury demons alive, knowing someday they'll crawl out." 

They all looked stunned as I walked away. Leaning against the doorway of his office I watched him.

His muscles tensing, his eyebrows creasing, the way his shirts always molded his torso perfectly.

"Why are you watching me?" His lips rose in a side smile.

"I have a problem?"

Quickly his side smile fell.

"I have this terrible urge to be reckless." I say, "And Im dreadfully frightened of becoming old and having no memories at all.

And I know climbing forbidden fences is wrong, so I'll stick to falling in love with a horrid Alpha and falling of metaphorical trees. I am just dying to do something worth remembering."

He shook his head, "When are we leaving, dear?"

"Now."

I walked out the house to the woods knowing he was following me.

Stopping in the middle of a clearing, I turned to him. "I think it's time me and Scar got acquainted."

He pulled off his shirt, then his jeans. Closing his eyes, than reopening them. They were darker than usual. Slowly his bones started to crack. His hands now paws. Black fur with the scar still diagonally across his face.

I circled him.

I leaned down into his ear. "Race me Alpha."

My clothes ripped apart as I ran through the woods. The wind wiped through my hair.

"I don't think this a good idea."

I kept running, him behind me. "Don't think." I mind linked. "It complicates things just feel, and if it feels like home, then follow its path."

Stopping at the mountain above the city, I shifted back.

The basket laid with the essentials I packed. Pulling out a white shirt and sweatpants, I put them on.

"Your wolf is beautiful." He pulled on the pants I handed him.

We sat on the blanket.

The city night was magnification, everything below us moving fast pace, the clubs blaring music, people psychotically drunk.

"That's where I want to be." Xander voiced. "Normal. Living like humans. Being something other than this, you know? I try to convince myself about not wanting to see the world, I always find myself lying."

"So let's do it, let's leave. We could pack up tonight, all of us, go anywhere. Let's go to Paris, I've always wanted to go there."

He looked at me like I was the only star in his darkened sky.

And he kissed me like I was the only air that filled his lungs.

"You remind me so much of her." His gaze never leaving my face. "So optimistic."

"So completely unexplainable. I thought you were the good girl but once I got to know you, I realize your everything. Your crazy, funny and honest, and I'll never know what you'll do next."

I could love things just by watching him love them. That's how I knew I was in to deep.

"You amaze me. You didn't leave me, which is the only thing I've  become to fear. What could you possibly do with me?"

"You showed me your scars expecting me to run off." My fingers lifted his chin. "But little did you know I was going to show you mine to."

Xander deserved to be loved as certain dark things are to be loved. In secret, between the shadow and the soul.