The Queen's Conquer

Chapter 6 : To Breathe Again

Metanoia • [meh-ta-noy-ah]
The journey of changing one's mind, heart, self, or way of life; spiritual conversion.

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~ Samuel ~

I've become accustomed to those that I care about most walking out of my life by now—leaving me in the dust to handle everything alone. That's why I never considered the fact that I would eventually need someone by my side through my darkest days as Alpha. And she was that someone. My parent's death didn't take me by surprise, but her disappearance did.

I want to blame my sleepless nights on the distant bond between us. I want to blame this fucked up situation on my own selfishness. I pushed her away. I caused this. There's no other explanation, no other way around looking at it.

It's been two months of agony—two months without her here and sixty days spent struggling to wake up every morning and continue with my responsibilities. I refused to admit I had lost her that day—I wanted to stay in those goddamn woods until all of eternity if it meant she would come back.

The first month was wasted ordering a barrage of search teams to search those endless ancient woods for any signs of her. I was so furious with myself that I demanded they didn't stop until the entire westward forest had been picked over. Every inch of it. The pack leaders continued to tell me that it would take a lifetime until we would find her—that it was a waste of supplies and men that could go towards the war. But I didn't give a shit.

Then, with the rise of tensions the war brought came a significant decline in the number of parties I would send out. It was either my people—my pack—or the person I cared for most in this cruel world. It ripped me apart to make the painful decision to pull warriors from the search. It frustrated me that the war's inconvenience had interfered with such a thing—that she couldn't be in my arms any sooner over bloodshed.

My priorities became skewed, and soon enough, I was drowning in the pressures of working with the pack leaders on ordering supplies and shipments for the frontlines while preparing my warriors to be sent out to the battlefield. And as time passed more quickly than I was prepared to face, the thought of her slowly faded with it. I became numb to my feelings, unable to sense the tug of our bond anymore. I had lost hope. I had lost her.

But now, I stand in utter shock at a pack meeting underneath a large tent in one of our camps not too far from the frontlines. Gawking down at my phone, I reread the message Liam just sent me over and over again, unable to grasp its realness.

We found her.

Shock is the reason it takes me a moment to render that someone is attempting to grab my attention. "Sam? Hello?" Isaac repeats himself from where he sits across the circular table.

I glance up at him from the screen, standing with such stillness at the other end of the room. The other pack leaders stare at me with confusion, not able to understand what has cut off any and all thoughts regarding our meeting.

"I, um..." I mumble, lost for words as I stare back down at the text. Please tell me this isn't some kind of sick joke, Liam.

Where? I shoot the text back without so much as a second thought.

I remember Liam and Sterling briefly discussing taking a pair of young warriors out to do some more searching this morning for the sake of their training—but I didn't think they would be successful, let alone, find her. Every other search team has returned without any evidence or clues regarding Anastasia's whereabouts. She left no trace of herself behind, and it forced me to wonder if she even wanted to be found at all.