by Casey Morgan
I shiver into myself, feeling tears of panic begin to overwhelm me, along with the first strains of my lungs beginning to hyperventilate. Never come back? I curl into myself. Into the dark, brutal parts of my head. If he never comes back, I won’t be able to survive without him. I won’t be able to just wake up one day and forget about him.
I remember how different my eyes looked in the mirror. I saw how different my face is now. I’m like him. I’m a werewolf. A creature who will not just die because I ignore my true nature. The memory of shifting will never fade from me. The wildness and rage will never be gone. The agony of being without my pack and my alpha will eat me up like a burning fire.
But then I don’t think Cole would be satisfied with that. He’d want me to keep on living without him. I grip myself tighter, realizing there’s no saving myself from the storm. No sanctuary from the desolation inside of me. What he’s suffered for however long he’s been alive, he wouldn’t want to watch me do the same. And this time from heaven or hell, wherever he ends up. I’ve made a mistake, and there’s no going back from it. There’s no fixing it.
My phone pings at me again, just as someone throws on the stage lights, and begins to put the first backdrop up behind the curtain. I don’t care to look at it. Something tells me it’s more bad news. Something else letting me down. Someone else, though I know the biggest letdown is myself.
Even as I stand there, watching my creation come to life, I feel like it’s already ended. And I want nothing more than to take it all back. Then to invite Cole to my home, not sending him away into the darkness. Away from me. Away from any chance at being whole ever again.
It’s just now seven-thirty p.m. A little less than half an hour before “The Wolf Who Saved Christmas” is due to premiere on our stage, in the middle of a glowing, happy and alcohol-induced Christmas audience. Music and lights are ready, as are the stagehands.
But despite the cheery atmosphere and the gathering audience, tonight keeps getting worse and worse for me. And that bearer of bad news happens to be Sarah, who’s just materialized out of some dark part of the theater, a deep scowl on her face. “Get my text?” she asks.
I did, but I didn’t read it. Which ends up being the same thing as not getting it in today’s world. So, I just nod my head “no,” and decide to take whatever comes.
Her frown deepens, and I know it’s not good. “Well, I guess I don’t have to wonder why Big Sexy Boy isn’t here with you tonight.”
I raise my eyebrows at her, having no time for riddles. Especially when it comes to bad news, which I know she’s here to deliver.
“He wouldn’t be the only one being a no-show tonight,” she clarifies, the edge of her mouth darkening. “Our leads, both actors have quit.”
It takes me a long moment to fully understand the implications of what she’s said, and it shows on my face.
“They’re not coming,” she says again. “Neither of them.” She emphasizes this, as if I don’t understand the magnitude of the apocalypse descending on us. “You know what that means, right?” She puts her hands on her hips. “It means we’re out our star players. Unless you think you have it in you to act worth a damn, and you don’t mind me, I don’t know”—she waves in helpless anger at the whole situation—“ putting on Edward’s suit and pretending to be a werewolf pretending to be a man, we’re about to have a showstopper right here, and the show hasn’t even started.” She moves her hands from in front of her, to her hips.
In this all, I still can’t comprehend the ruin that’s come to my dream. To my opening night. First Cole. Now both of my main actors. The heart and soul of my show. It’s all too much. For a second, I think about throwing in the towel. I think about running away from all of this. Retreating to my apartment and thinking about ways to close down my defunct dreams.
But, before I can take that too far, a deep untamed part of myself begins to rise up. It begins to claw at my weakness and my desire to be rid of it and to make different choices.
“I guess we’re going to do what it takes, to try to save the show.” The way I’m speaking, the deepness of my voice surprises me, as does my conviction. Even if this play flounders and dies in the stage lights, I’m going to watch it try to live and move around, for as long as it has. “I’ll play the lead. Dora. You play the alpha. We’ll make it work, though it’s going to change the tone.”
I grit my teeth, hating that my vision has to adjust. My message has to be tweaked, all because the people who needed to show up didn’t show up. But I release it. I let it go, knowing there’s nothing I can do.
“Get prepared,” I tell her, as I take out my phone and decide to right another one of my mistakes. Before I add him to my list of eternal regrets, I decide to call Cole. If he doesn’t answer. I hope and pray that he gets my message and decides to grace me with one last visit. One last meeting, even if I’ve already pushed him too far away. “We’ll make it work, Sarah. We’ll make the show happen, even if it doesn’t happen the way we thought it would.” With this, I turn and go to walk away.
When Sarah asks me where I’m going and interrogates me about it, for fear I’m going to just disappear again, I tell her, “I’ll be right there. I just have to get in touch with someone. I have to fix something I didn’t mean to break or push away, before he really leaves forever.”
With that, I dart into a less-peopled area, and call Cole. He doesn’t answer. I work up a reply to his call. I speak furiously and fearfully, hoping it isn’t too late, but knowing in my heart and soul it might already be. I feel him escaping me. He’s lifting away from me even as I talk, but I still don’t give up. I can’t.
Even if he doesn’t get my message in time, even if he decides to ignore it, toss it away like I did to him, I’m not going to run away. I’m not going to refuse to show up for myself anymore. I’m going to say how I feel, even if it doesn’t get me what I want. From tonight forward, I’m going to live my life without regrets.
I hang up, vowing to myself that even if I live a thousand nights after this, at least I can say I was honest. I was brave and didn’t allow myself to go silent or fade into the background. I won’t allow myself to be forgotten, even by a werewolf who might already be miles away, zooming across the night sky.
Chapter 18
Cole
She refused me. She wants to live without me. Despite all my best efforts, all my promises to myself and her that I would be there to support her, walk her through her changing life, I abandoned her. These thoughts cloud my angry mind as I finish purchasing a plane ticket back to Louisiana.
Originally, my flight out here had only been a one-way. I wasn’t expecting to have to go back. But now that she’s abandoned me, there’s no point in feeling guilty. No point in thinking that can I help her or be of any value to her. I click “purchase” on the screen in front of me, reminding myself that I should be angry. I need to be angry and heartless toward her, since that’s what she was with me.
She’s the only reason I’m going home to Louisiana at all. She’s the reason I’m going to find some retired monster hunter to put me out of my misery once I get there, forever putting to rest my soul. Maybe then it can be Ava who cycles through life looking for a mate, but never finding what she seeks.
I hate to admit that I enjoy imagining that kind of hell for her, since it’s been that kind of hell for me, until recently. Until I thought I might escape it with her beside me, as my mate, but I was wrong. Hell is not something I’m destined to escape, apparently.
From purchasing my plane ticket at the local free computer at the library, confirming my arrival time at the airport—6pm to get on my plane back to New Orleans by 7:30pm—I turn the computer off and look at my phone. Part of my wants to see a notification for a voicemail, something, anything from her calling me back.
I remember the voicemail she sent me a little more than thirty-six hours ago, the message in which she’s over the moon at the prospect of my help. And I can’t let her go that easily. I cal
l her. No answer. I sigh, and I begin to let out my feelings into a voicemail. I know it’ll hurt her. It will mock her in the worst way, just as it’s already doing to me, but I’m beyond caring. If she doesn’t want me in her life, she should expect nothing less.
I speak it fiercely and briefly, my reply. My response to all responses: “Given how you feel about me, what you have to say about me after all of my time and effort, it’s clear that I will not be needed by you today. For the rest of your event. Don’t bother trying to pay me or offer any kind of compensation. I will take the insults and injury you’ve given me with me, and they will be enough to repay my stupidity. My misplaced generosity. You think you know pain. You don’t. You never will. You don’t want me, I don’t want you.
“Maybe when you’ve lived through enough life, lived through enough sapping, torturing time, you’ll realize what loneliness does to a man. How it makes him into a beast, a craver.
“But that’s asking too much from you. That’s asking for too much kindness and loyalty. Something you will never get from me again.”
I don’t bother to say goodbye or address her by name anywhere in it. I just send it. I click it away from my life, telling myself it’s what she deserves.
But, even as I do that, even as I try my best to harden my heart in all its soft, vulnerable places, hope dares. Hope fights through some of that, crying at me to be wise and patient. To not make the same mistake as she’s doing.
But it’s already sent. It’s already done, and even when my heart and soul shriek and crumble under the rejection I’ve just given my mate, I don’t take it back. I just get up and away from the computer I’ve borrowed and prepare to wander my way deeper into the airport.
I have hours to wait, and no hope of rest. Only more time to think about where I went wrong, and how never to go that wrong again.
After running through town, I wait for hours in the airport. Unlike a human, I’m not physically tired. I’m not aching from sitting, stiff feet or legs. Though my heart is a different story. For the entire walk through the airport, the spilling darkness and rising moon, I’ve felt nothing but regret. Regret and fear about what could’ve been between us, what change has already been wrought in Ava, and what her future is, now that I’m not going to be a part of it.
Now that I’m not going to be with her to guide and protect her as she lives her new, second Life. Her human life is now taking a backseat to the wild, werewolf life I’ve awoken her. I’ve cursed her with it, when I was only hoping for it to be a gift for her, for me.
But, as I claim my ticket from the man behind the desk, who is surprised I’m going anywhere on Christmas, I accept that this plan was nothing but folly. It was nothing but wishful thinking on my part, as well as selfishness.
From the ticket counter, I make my way to my terminal, the waiting room for my plane, having yet more time to think. Over and over, my thoughts return to my mate. The way she shouted at me. The way she looked so hurt. I relive her anger, her tortured expressions flooding me.
As I sit there in the only occupied chair in my terminal, the blue and tan carpet stretching out under my shadow, I lament my bad luck. My belief that she could be the perfect mate, the savior of my life. As I start to get angry and resentful at her not measuring up to my expectations, not showing herself to be worthy of my commitment and loyalty after all, something else dawns.
Like a smoldering fire in a dark abyss, I suddenly understand why she was so angry. I never got to know her as a person. I was driven so much by my desires and my inner wolf, that I never saw the woman she already was.
This realization slams into me, obliterating my anger and my arrogance. My belief that any and all of her complaints were simply that. Complaints. Inconsequential, unnecessary fussing. They were important. She wanted me to love her as she is now.
I frown, allowing this reality to sink in. The possibility that I’ve been a complete and total idiot sinks in. I’ve been a buffoon, who alienated the woman he loves by dredging up too much of his expectations.
By fixating on and insisting that she be what I wanted, I never saw her for who she is. I hang my head now, feeling completely and totally unworthy and undeserving of Ava. Of anything other than this horribly tragic result, and by my own hand. By my own ignorance. Woeful and pervasive to the point of masquerading as arrogance.
And that’s when another realization hits me. She’s had people overwrite and overlook her her entire life. She’s had them not really see or care for her as she is but overlay something that they can like or love or care for. But it was never really her, it was what they wanted to get out of her. What they wanted to take from her. My heart squeezes, replaying every moment I spent with Ava forcibly taking, forcefully projecting my desires onto her. Which makes me no different. The worst offender in the end.
I get up from my seat, the announcement just coming through that the plane is boarding. As I walk out of the airport, across the tarmac and toward the fairly-empty plane (nobody is dying to travel tonight), I send my apologies to Ava. I send streams of heartbreak and regret toward her, knowing I don’t deserve her.
I don’t deserve to make her my wife, after I was no better than everyone else in her life. Just another selfish person making her into something and someone she’s not, forgetting to see and love her for who she is. For her own mind.
I start to climb the foldout stairs into the plane. As I do, I send out one last apology. Forgive me, Ava. I truly am a beast, unworthy of your beauty. Unworthy of calling myself your alpha, let alone your husband. How I thought I was ever worthy enough to make us into a couple, I don’t know. But I am clear on one thing: I deserve my loneliness. And your wrath.
The stairs into the plane begin to collapse, disappear into the belly, illuminated only by the bluish, lonely full moon.
My phone (something I should’ve turned off before boarding the plane) goes off. It chimes with a notification for a voicemail. The moment I hear it, I feel a swell of emotion. I feel a surge of energy, and even though I’m being corralled to my seat by a very impatient, stern-looking flight attendant, I stop. I look at my phone.
A missed call. A reply to my reply. I listen quickly, even though the hostess/flight attendant has really started to nag me. She gets after me about holding up the boarding process for myself and other patrons. I hear her, but I don’t. My mind is consumed by the words in the recording. Words said by Ava.
Her message is sweet, but not all that short. She says: “Cole. I know it may already be too late. I know you might already be on a plane on your way home. But I can’t let you go, I won’t let you go, until I tell you I’m sorry. When I said I didn’t want anything more to do with you, I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what possessed me to say and do all those horrible things. I don’t know what made me push you away like that, after you’ve been nothing but loving and helpful.
“All I know is that I was afraid. Angry. I wanted to feel like I was actually, legitimately loved by someone, for the first time in my life. For the first time in my life, I felt that a man enjoyed my company. That you found me to be good company in my own right. In my own way, and I was afraid and angry when you kept telling me to obey, though I know that’s what is expected by an alpha.
“You’ve not only changed my life, you’ve changed my play. You’ve changed me. I don’t know what I am now, or what I will be without you. But I do know that I want everything to do with you. I want to be with you. Even if that means I get on a plane right after tonight’s failed show (both of the lead actors are MIA as of right now, and that has left myself and Sarah to play roles that were meant for other people) and come find you. Hunt you down the way you did me.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t want me anymore. It doesn’t matter if I spend the next one hundred years looking for you, I will come find you. I will search for you until I do. And then I will apologize enough for however many years have passed in between now and then, and never leave your side again. I will gladly be your wife
and your mate, Cole. If only you’ll have me. If only it’s not too late for you to come back. To let me say I’m sorry, and to keep being with me, not send you away. Please come back, Cole.”
I finish listening to the message and push my way back through the aisle of the plane. I move back towards the flight attendant/host who has told me for the millionth time to sit in my assigned seat and prepare to take off.
I’m preparing to take off, all right. Myself, off this plane.
I hurry out of it, not caring that I practically jump out of the plane as it’s beginning to tax down the runway. Even at a gathering speed across the asphalt, it doesn’t endanger me. Not even in human form. My reflexes are just that good, as is my luck. I fly through the air for a few crisp, breezy and dark seconds, before landing on the asphalt. On my feet, like some kind of oversized cat.
I bolt across the runway and tarmac, transforming into my gray wolf form and running as fast as I can toward Ava. I dash toward the theater hosting the Christmas play, and the stage where she is now more than likely trying to act her part. A play I’ve decided I’m going to play a part in too, not just observe.
Chapter 19
Ava
I check my phone for a reply. Against all expectations, I’m hoping that he’s replied to my voicemail, come to his senses, or at least taken pity on me. But it seems he’s done neither. My inbox is empty of any communication from Cole, just like I asked for before. Just like I thought I wanted, but I’m all out of time to mourn my stupidity and loss.
The play’s started, and it’s my turn to get out on stage. Sarah, playing the role of the Edward, has just had her beginning soliloquies. Her beginning scenes, which were written to establish her love for me, and her dominating character. Sarah does fine enough playing the part of a boy; her voice is deep enough for the gathered audience.
Slipping my phone into some dark part of my clothes under my costume of a rough dress, I give up hope on seeing Cole or on hearing anything from him.