Her torturers

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Salem's POV

Caleb had left with our soldiers an hour ago and I was already restless and needed her back to show the destruction that she had caused. I knew that I no longer could simply accept her back into my life. She would have to beg for me to take her back because I no longer had any trust or care for her. But I was already feeling broken more than I could possibly imagine.

I knew that I was probably looking like a complete mess because of Alice's choice. I couldn't stop myself from pacing around my office, feeling like I was slowly losing my mind with every second that she was gone. I cared about Alice. No, I loved Alice and she simply threw that away and left. I knew that she thought that she had reasons that were good enough to allow her to leave. But if she had simply told me that she was leaving and why she would be leaving then at least I'd have been able to try and convince her that she didn't have to leave and that I could help her fight whoever and whatever it was that she thought was threatening her and everyone she cared about.

But no... That wasn't how things happened and I would never be able to accept it. I would need to show Alice how destructive her choice had been. Finally needing something to try and distract me a little, I headed to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. Gathering a little bit of water in my hands, I splashed it on my face and felt the cool and refreshing feeling against my skin. As I looked up, I saw something in the mirror that I couldn't recognize. I knew it was myself, but I looked nothing like I used to. My bright green eyes were no longer bright green. They had dulled, and I had huge dark spots under my eyes. And they were completely empty of any happy or even neutral feelings. I no longer wanted to live and right now the only reason why I hadn't already tried to kill myself was that I wanted to show Alice what she had done to me. I had already thought about how I'd show her. Yet I had so many ideas of how to show her the sadness, emptiness and complete lack of happy emotions that she had caused me. I no longer knew if I would be able to lead the werewolves to strive for greatness and survival. I just hoped that if I ended up taking my own life, that Ashley would be able to get through the loss of her last living family member and take up the mantle that I would leave to her. At the moment, she wasn't ready, but I hoped that Caleb would be able to help her get there. I also knew that her steps into motherhood would help prepare her for the mantle as she would in a sense become the mother and guardian of all werewolves if I ended up dying.

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I don't know how long I had been pacing my office before the deadly silence that had enveloped me was broken. And by one of the only people, I would allow near me right now. Hayabusa.

"Hayabusa. What are you doing here? I thought you had gone back home" I said a little surprised and a little nervous because he never did anything without a reason. Which meant that either he knew about Alice leaving before she left, or he had an idea of where she had gone. At least I hoped that those two options were the reason he was still here.

"I'm here because I feel like I need to be here. Like there is something that I am supposed to do here yet the actual task keeps eluding me. So, since I can't figure my problem out right now, I decided to try and help you" he said calmly, so calmly that I for a second thought that he was one of the people that would have made Alice leave. That was until I remembered that he was one of the only people on earth that ever actually tried to help her. Even when I still tried to capture her and make an example out of her.

"What do you mean 'Help me'? there is no one that can help me. I'm broken, destroyed and in complete chaos since she left. I will never be whole again. She broke me!" I yelled at the end. Angry. Sad. Broken. Useless. I felt all these things. All these things and so much more.

"She tore my heart out, held it in her hands and threw it to the ground before stomping on it and making it nothing but a smudge on the floor!" I yelled, my eyes tearing up more and more because I could no longer contain the pain that my heart was experiencing. I had loved before. I had tried to find someone that could make me happy if I never found my mate. But all of that had changed the second I had seen Alice. She had become my everything. She had become the air that my lungs screamed for every day. She had become the blood that pumped through my veins. She had become everything that made me who I was and now she was gone, and I didn't know if I had done something wrong or if it really was because she had been threatened by someone from outside of my castle.

"You aren't broken. She never allowed you close enough to break you. You aren't destroyed. You never allowed her to build you up. And you aren't in complete chaos. Because you never had order in your life. At least not until she showed herself and even then, you still didn't have order as your life together wasn't even created" Hayabusa said, continuing the same calm and wise tone that he usually always spoke in. Sometimes I really hated him for it but at the same time, I admired him for always remaining calm.

"Then what am I? Who am I?" I asked quietly, completely unable to understand what he meant by saying those goddamn cryptic words that I never could understand.

"You, Salem, are you and you shouldn't strive to be something that you aren't," He said as cryptically as ever. And goddammit he was right once again.

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Question of the chapter: What is your weirdest habit?

My answer: My weirdest habit is maybe that I overanalyze everything that happens in my life.