*** Preston ***
I am taken by surprise when Amber pulls up in front of the pack house in Aiden’s car and my Alpha comes thrashing and tearing into the main entrance.
“Which cell is he in? I am going to rip that stupid fucker’s throat out with my bare hands,” Aiden yells. His eyes are wild and filled with unspent aggression. I give Amber an inquiring look, hoping for a clue about what has happened.
“His human mate just flipped on him and told him it's all his fault and she wished she had never clapped eyes on him. We didn’t find the little girl,” she calls to me over Aiden trashing the entrance hall of our majestic pack house.
“Alpha. Come on, she will calm down, we just have to find the little girl, do you have any more leads on where she could be?”
“She’s right though, this is all my fault. Ellis might have done this but if she had never met me, she would be happy with her daughter.” He looks up at me as angry tears fill his eyes. “You should have seen how she looked at me, Preston, she hates me. I don’t know what I am going to do.”
I feel helpless but he is my Alpha and best friend and I do what I can to comfort him. “Aidy, let's go up to your apartment, we can have a brandy. Then you can tell me what happened properly, and we will make a plan to get this kid and win back your Luna.”
I can see the fight going out of him as he acquiesces and follows me to his apartment.
Amber lets us in, and she goes into her bedroom while I pour Aiden and I a glass of brandy in the living area. Aiden sits on the sofa with his head in his hands. I have never seen him like this, especially not over a woman. After I give him the short glass with brandy in, I take a seat facing him.
He knocks his drink back in one, and this time I bring the bottle over. I fill Aiden’s glass and set the rest of the bottle down on the coffee table between us. He takes another big swig before telling me what happened. Towards the end of his account, Amber comes and sits on the same sofa as me but the other end. She has changed into pyjamas, the little, short ones that drive me to distraction.
“If I can find her daughter, maybe she will give me another chance, Preston.” I nod at him; that might work, but I don’t commit overly much because it could just as easily not work too.
“Or you could reject her and take a chosen mate instead, Aidy. The longer the child is missing, the harder it will be to find her. She could be dead by now.” Amber's voice pierces the lull I had temporarily created.
In a flash, Aiden is towering over Amber as he bellows at her. “I will not reject her, she is mine. I want her and I need her. I would rather die than concede harm has befallen her little girl. I have to win back her trust.”
The good thing that comes from this is that faced with rejecting his mate, Aiden is filled with determination. He starts to pace as he formulates his plan, and then he decides he has to shower and freshen up because ‘Shortie’ will need him in the morning.
Once Aiden is out of earshot, I turn to Amber. “You are one cold, unfeeling bitch, do you know that, Amber? I didn’t realise how deep your contempt for the mate bond was.”
I start to stand so I can leave but she jumps in my way. “I have never lied about how I feel about the mate bond ,Preston, and I am actually looking out for my brother. She is human, she doesn’t get the bond and how it works. It's better for him to reject her now before the binds become too strong, it could kill him.”
“Before the binds become strong… what, like ours?” I throw back at her. The hurt, the pain, the frustration of the past seven years all comes pouring from me like poisonous venom.
“That’s different, and this isn’t about us.” I see the panic rising in her beautiful eyes, the eyes I have longed to look at me with a touch of admiration. She will run from me soon, like she always does. She’ll try to run before it gets too real.
“Of course it’s about us, our bond is strong and yet you continue to mock and disregard it, to disregard me and what I want. What I need.”
I am going to have to run from her this time. I can’t take it any longer.
“It's time for you to make your choice, Amber. I can’t do this anymore. I will leave Onyx River for one lunar cycle, and when I return, I need you to make a choice. Are you going to reject me or mark me as yours?”
“Don’t do this, Preston, please don’t do this.” Her trembling voice is almost enough to get me to backtrack, but I know even though this is hard, it’s the only way I am going to be able to move on in life.
I walk towards her and take her in my arms, inhaling her sweet scent. “I’m sorry, Amber, I have to. I can’t live like this anymore. I want us to be together properly. I will see you in one month.”
I hear her tiny sob as I walk away from her and I can’t look, I can’t look back because I am not strong enough to carry through with my plan and her needing comfort from me will be my undoing. I shout out to her as I leave. “Amber?”
“Yeah?” There is a bit of hope in her voice, and it kills me inside to dash it again.
“I love you, don’t forget that,” I remind her just as I close the door on us.
The pain of walking away from your fated mate can rival no other. I race to my own apartment before I fall apart, I am the Beta, I cannot show weakness, but my heart is breaking. My hopes and dreams for the future, my future with Amber, are in tatters. I knew how she felt about the mate bond, I just always had hope that I could win her over. It looks like I was wrong.
*** Eva ***
I cry until I am numb with shock. Where is Summer? What has that woman done with my precious little girl? Salma and Alejandro want to stay with me but I tell them I need to be alone, I can’t keep up this pretence in front of them. I am dying inside and need to be able to just feel this pain, to know I haven’t lost my mind. This is real, my daughter has been taken away from me.
“I will see you tomorrow, Sal, please just go home and get some sleep. I want to be on my own. Thank you, Ale, thank you for everything.” I shut the car door and run to my home before Salma tries to force me into accepting her company.
As soon as the front door is shut and bolted, I hear Alejandro’s car drive away and then I sink to my knees and cry. I have cried like this only once before and the incident that caused my reaction pales in comparison to the loss of my child even though at the time, I felt like I wanted to die.
My miserable state of mind allows me to recall the harrowing incidents of living in Germany with Ryan for the first few weeks of our marriage. I don’t usually allow myself to think of this time because the shame and hurt still affects me.
~~~~~~~~~~
~*~ Flashback ~*~
~~~ Seven Years Ago ~~~
“I don’t want to, Ryan, please don’t make me do this.” The once adoring look of my new husband vanished within days of our wedding. It has now been replaced by a cold and calculated stare and a side to him that I have never witnessed before.
We moved to Germany together two weeks ago and now live in Army accommodation which is drab and run down and really quite depressing. It doesn’t help that I am expected to stay in the flat and be an attentive and doting housewife while Ryan is doing drills, patrols, and training. He persuaded me to come with him by telling me they are always looking for medical interns and, in my haste to get away from my new stepdad, I agreed. No such internship was available and I started to get a horrible feeling I had been duped, but Ryan insisted there would be internships soon and he would ensure my name was first on the list.
I started to feel lonely and isolated; Ryan told me that until we get to know people better here, he doesn’t want me to mix with anyone, not until he checks out who can be trusted. I thought that was excessive, but I knew he was feeling on edge with his training, and it was just easier to agree. It was a few days before I realised he had locked the front door and had taken the keys with him. I was trapped.
When I told him I wasn’t happy about being locked in, he made me feel like I was crazy. He had done it by accident, he insisted, he hadn’t meant to take the keys with him. However, the next day he also took my phone and hid my laptop so I couldn’t contact anyone.
Things just got rapidly worse. Our wedding night wasn’t exactly the passion-filled event I had been promised or expected. As a virgin, I had no experience and I was nervous, but Ryan was my husband now and I thought he would be gentle and caring.
First off, Ryan was drunk and had problems performing, which I had read could be an issue and I had been happy to wait until the morning to consummate our marriage. However, this was the first sign of Ryan’s darker side: he mocked me and said I would need to try and be sexy for him and it was my fault he couldn’t get it up.
“You’re so hopeless, Eva, no wonder my dick is limp at the thought of you. I thought once I married you that you would loosen up a bit, but you are still cold, aren’t you?”
I tried. I put on a pink and white babydoll and suspenders. I even researched ways to make him feel good during sex, little techniques and touches I could use. And despite my nerves, there was a part of me that was excited that I was finally going to lose my virginity. He eventually fell asleep on the sofa in the hotel room and I cried myself to sleep.
I woke up in the night to Ryan on top of me. He had ripped the baby-doll from my body and held me down by wrapping my hair around his hand. I felt frozen to the spot by shock and disbelief. The man I had vowed to love, cherish and obey was now taking me unnecessarily by force when I had willingly offered myself to him just hours earlier.
As he shoved himself into me without care, I felt something tear inside me, the pain was almost unbearable. This wasn’t what I had waited all this time for. I had hopes and dreams of a considerate lover, someone who would be patient and understanding. It lasted for a few minutes and the tears streamed down my face as he callously and repeatedly thrust inside me. Once he came, he climbed off me and I rolled over and held myself together while silent tears rolled down my cheeks.
“Come here, you’re a woman now, Eva and our marriage is now legally consummated. I’m sorry it was a bit rough for you; your first time is meant to be like that. It’ll be better for us both next time.” He held me tight to his body, praising my long legs, my tiny waist, my pert tits, and he kissed me along my neck and shoulders until eventually I calmed down and genuinely started to believe that was an average first time experience.
However, the next time wasn’t any better, or the time after that. Ryan was callous and selfish in bed. He blamed me for being useless, but the pain associated with sex now made me wary of going near him. There had been a lot of blood the first time which I knew was supposed to be normal, but I was bleeding a lot every time we had sex now.
So here we are a couple of weeks later and Ryan is telling me he wants to try doggy style and he might even try anal. The horror and dread built up inside me.
“I haven’t stopped bleeding from last night, Ryan, you’re destroying my insides. Please, not tonight.” The horrible glint is back in his eyes.
“Ok baby, tomorrow night it is, I don’t want any of this crying and complaining. When I get home, you will be bent over our bed waiting for me, just like you just promised me.” He kisses me on the head before heading out to the pub with his friends, locking me into the depressing flat once more.
I cry all night and all the following day, so much so that one of the neighbours gets in touch with the accommodations manager, who is concerned when I can’t open the door to let him in.
The accommodations manager has someone bring the master keys and opens the door himself. He comments on my trembling and insists on waiting for Ryan to return home. I don’t know what he says to Ryan, but whatever he did say resulted in Ryan not touching me for three months. I was also given my own key so I could leave the flat.
However, within those few weeks I have been married to Ryan, I have become an overcautious shell of my former self. I am wary of others and jumpy, and I start to spend more and more time isolated by myself. Physically I am no longer locked in but emotionally and mentally Ryan has his hold on me which keeps me right where he wants me: at home, at his beck and call.
I lose touch with my friends and family and apart from the nights when he would insist I dress up and attend a dinner or gala with him, I completely retreat from life. I am Ryan’s arm candy and nothing more.
~*~ End of Flashback ~*~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Back then, being sexually humiliated by my husband and then scorned by him caused me to feel like life wasn’t worth living anymore, but that is nothing in comparison to not knowing what has happened to my daughter and facing an eternity not knowing how or where she is.
Ryan is well and truly out of my life now and I will never, ever want or need him again. I stayed shackled to him for far too long for all the wrong reasons. My marriage never failed because of me or because my mother has several failed marriages too. It failed because the piece of shit I married treated it as a joke and made a mockery of every pledge, vow and promise we made to each.
I do shoulder some of the blame. I am starting to suspect I never truly loved Ryan. I married in haste because my new stepdad frightened me, and because I felt flattered by all the attention Ryan showered on me. Whatever it was that drove me to accept his proposal, I tried to give our union my best shot, but he never did and therefore it was always destined to fail. I thought I would fall apart but the relief that I can cut both me and my daughter completely away from him soothes my soul and fills my heart with hope. I just need to get Summer back and then I can start to really live my life.
I climb into my daughter’s bed, it still has her sweet scent on it, and I vow that I will find her. I will be strong and get through this whether it is the last thing I ever do.
As I start to drift off to sleep, I feel a pang about Aiden. I shouldn’t have lashed out at him, he had only been trying to help me and I threw it back in his face. I cringe when I think of the horrible things I said to him. Most of it wasn’t true, I just am not used to being treated as an equal or having someone else to lean on and depend on.
I weep internally at what could have been between us. I felt something almost instantaneously, something I have never felt before. I was drawn to him and yet I wanted to run away because that was the stuff of movies, people don’t really fall in love like that. Or do they? It feels like my heart is crying and whimpering.
“Mate”.
What was that? Oh, my sweet lord, I am hearing voices. I am hearing voices again just like in Germany. I had to seek medical advice when it happened last time because it scared the life out of me; however, the doctor told me it was because of stress. I suppose I am under a lot of stress right now too since my daughter is missing and my marriage has ended. Although my marriage ending feels like more of a relief than another stressor. After Summer, the other thing upsetting me is I have pushed Aiden away; I know now I have pushed him away before he had the chance to push me away.
I don’t know if I will get the chance to apologise to him and I feel so lonely and sad at the thought. Perhaps I am losing my mind, but what if he really was my intended mate for life and I had successfully pushed him away in a day?