Mishaps and Wolves (OLD VERSION)

Chapter 40 - Broken Hearts Need Miracles

Chapter 40 - Broken Hearts Need Miracles

Roman's head was aching when he finally woke up. His entire body was sore and he could feel his drenched clothes sticking to him. He tried moving and felt two things. One was a shooting pain from his head to his shoulder. The second was running water over his legs.

Suddenly he remembered.

He snapped his eyes open and forced himself to get up. Using his arms at either side, being careful with his shoulder, he pushed himself off of the soggy embankment of the river and slowly managed to sit up. Once he'd sat up, he had to take a moment to fight the wave of dizziness that overcame him before taking a look around him at the destruction that had been caused.

People and animals alike had been flung everywhere. He was on the opposite of the river where he'd been before. Around him some were still out cold. Others were trying to get back up onto their own two feet. Those that had already managed it were looking around and trying to help those they could. But he still couldn't see the one person that his heart was aching to find.

He tried using the mate bond but hit a dead end. He couldn't feel her, which set a cold blanket of dread over both him and his panther. He tried to search again, but again he hit a blockage. At that moment, he hated himself for having not pushed Marissa and shown her the truth from the beginning. Now, because their bond hadn't fully formed on her end, he couldn't reach her or locate her using the bond.

What's the point of having the stupid bond if it isn't useful! he growled angrily as he tried to stand up. His legs were shaky but he just gritted his teeth and stood. Despite having been in the cold river water, he found that he was just numb now, only a burning determination and worry filling him up.

Find her now, his panther cried out to him.

From where he stood, he tried to look around again. The carnage from the explosion was all too clear. Trees had been ripped from the ground and flung far away from the clearing. Shifters were everywhere, some coming out from their hiding places and some still unconscious, but all had cuts and bruises all over their bodies.

There was worry in the voices that called out to their loved ones and gasps of shock and pain as people found them or tried to move. But he still couldn't see her.

He looked back to the last place she had been. The ground was slightly higher on that side of the river so it took him a moment before he realised that the bend in the river wasn't an actual bend but a crater that the river had just broken into and was slowly beginning to fill up.

"Please, no," he whispered brokenly before he was rushing as fast as he could across the river and to the last place he'd seen his mate. He ran as fast as his stumbling legs would carry him across the cold river to the crater that had formed in the ground. When he got to the edge of it, the flash of a dark purple cape had him gasping in pain before he was jumping down to the bottom of it and falling towards the figure that lay in a growing pool of water.

She was laying faced down, her face covered by her wet hair but luckily the water hadn't covered her head. He picked her up into his arms, turning her to face him and raising her above the water completely. Her hair had stuck to her face in partially-wet strands, the red wig gone completely. Her skin was pallid and she was cold to the touch as he traced the small cut above her brow.

"Marissa?" he called softly to her, pain rocking in his chest and squeezing his heart tightly. When she didn't answer or wake up straight away, he just kept trying to call her name and holding her tightly to his chest, trying to give her some of his warmth.

He tried again to reach out to her through the mating bond, pouring his heart and soul into it, showing how much he truly cared for her and how he couldn't survive without the one person in the world that was his world.

"Baby, Marissa, please love. You can't go. I need you. You're too stubborn to go." He held her tighter to his chest and looked up to the sky. The full moon sat at its fullest above their heads, not a cloud in sight to hide the horrible view that lay below of a destroyed forest and a panther calling out to anyone and anything that would hear his plea to save his mate.

"Please, she can't leave. Not yet. She can't go! She doesn't know that I love her and that she's mine. Please!" He called out to the moon. He could hear the heart within his chest shattering, the pieces being flung out as he screamed out for any divine help.

He looked back down at his Marissa. He'd never again see her eyes light up with that fire that was so uniquely her. He'd never see how her cheeks blazed red whenever she was embarrassed or how that blush would darken her eyes whenever he kissed her. He'd never hear her witty, sarcastic barbs or see her in her alpha glory as she corralled their pack into action.

He'd never see her with their own child. He would never be able to kiss her soft lips or feel the love he knew she felt for him.

No, she can't die. She can't! he screamed out from deep within his soul. Help me, please! Save her!

"Marissa," he said, stroking her cheek, "I love you. Come back to me. Please." He knew tears were running down his face but he didn't care. Not when the woman he loved was in his arms and the only thing he could feel was the cold knot of dread and ice begin to form where his heart should have been.

"Anything. I will do anything if you just come back to me," he whispered over her as he held her tightly to his chest, not wanting to let her go.

A flash of light lit up in the corner of his eye at the sound of his final cry of pain.