Devoted To You

fourteen

"Darling" -Beautiful Chorus

     From the first moment Wendy saw him, Adam was something she couldn't describe with mundane words. The beefy werewolf man made her feel something she only ever read about in books or seen on the little television.

     Bo, nor her father, had ever brought up the discussion of mates. That there was truly a person out there who inhabited the other part of your soul and that you could, one day, find them. Wendy knew that the handsome, Adam Murphy, was the other half of her lost soul.

     She knew she wasn't a whole person, not until he showed up bloodied and bruised and gave her that weak smile of his. He begged for her help and called her his mate. Wendy was weak in the knees from both fear of the stranger but also the low timbre of his voice that seemed to crawl its way through her skin.

     The one thing that came to mind, as the man laid bleeding on the pullout couch in her living room, was the story of her parents meeting for the first time.

     Her father was a kind man. 

     He went the extra mile for people, even for some he didn't know. Her father never put himself first, always protecting and serving others. He had lost hope in his late twenties when he still hadn't met his soulmate like he and his kind were supposed to.

     He became acquainted with a tall, tan, and blond woman who was in the same shoes as he when he reached the age of thirty-five. They both agreed to marry and then have a son, Bo. On his son's sixth birthday, he met his soulmate.

     The story goes that the birthday cake for Bo was made at a grocery store in town, miles away from the Colorado pack's grounds. Inside, he found a disheveled woman trying her hardest to look inconspicuous while trying to steal a loaf of bread. The human manager of the store caught her, scaring her with threats of the police.

     Wendy and Bo's father, who had watched the scene, jumped into action the moment a fat tear rolled down the woman's dirtied cheek. The manager continued to assault her, grabbing onto her roughly as he spat insults and threats into her face.

     Her father, when retelling the story, would make his daughter giggle when portraying the manager's voice as squeaky and weak. The story went on as her mother was dramatically thrown out of the store but, her father couldn't keep his eyes off her. He bought two loaves of bread, a jar of strawberry jam, and two jugs of water.

     When he made it outside with the groceries and birthday cake, she was gone. Her father wasted no time in jumping in his truck and sped down the road in search of her, only to come up empty.

     The town of Silverton was a small town but his mate seemed to not have looked to be staying in any motels. So, searching for her was going to be a challenge. He turned around to head back to his son's birthday party with only three things on his mind. 

      He was late for the party with a melting ice cream cake, he found his mate. How was he going to keep his mate but, his family as well? He loved his son more than anything and his wife was one of his closest confidants. He would tell himself that he loved her but it was of the platonic kind. 

     The man could only truly love one person, his mate. 

     Wendy remembered how, when retelling the story, he felt enormous guilt for how things had turned out. He never said it, but he was guilty for creating her. He had a secret family that did not to be kept as one. He should have waited for his mate but he would never regret his son.

      He had found her though, his mate. Just on the outskirts of town, closer to the pack lands than he anticipated where she was in the thick woods on the side of the main highway. He briefly saw her on his way back, tracking through the snow of Colorado.