by Hettie Ivers
I winced at the stupidity of my own words, as startlingly truthful as they were. “Though I have far less cause to believe in you than not … I do.”
“Milena,” he breathed, “I swear I’m trying …” He licked his lips, his hand rubbing absently against his chest, as if it ached. “If you’ll just give me more time, I know I can be better than who I’ve been. Please?” He took a step closer. “It hurts so much anymore to disappoint you.”
“Then don’t.” I took a step back, not trusting my she-wolf—or myself—to be able to respond appropriately to the way in which he was looking at me.
He nodded after an uncomfortable beat, looking utterly crestfallen. “If you need me for anything … anything at all, don’t hesitate to contact me, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed, while trying to tamp down the inexplicable inner panic I suddenly felt, sensing his imminent departure.
For a mad second I desperately wanted to ask him to stay, my mind racing as I tried to think up any manner of excuse I could conjure as a reason for him to remain in my presence for just a little while longer. But my prideful, rational side prevented it, stubbornly sealing my lips in the final moments that he stood surveying me expectantly.
“I’ll be sleeping right outside tonight,” he added quietly. “So if … if you need anything …”
I nodded, hoping my strained smile offered some reassurance that I was going to be fine as it occurred to me I might actually need a lot of things from Alex. Things I could hardly express, much less ask him for.
***
I slept fitfully, my chest aching continuously. On top of that, my head was throbbing. Several times I woke up feeling like someone was knocking on my skull with a hammer. As the night progressed, it seemed as if they were growing more impatient, and therefore less gentle with their incessant banging.
I knew Alex was faring no better, as each time I awoke, I heard his wolf baying outside my open window below. I suspected he was somehow sensing at least in part what I was feeling, and I felt a little guilty for making him suffer too.
After several hours of tossing and turning, I’d just managed to fall into a reasonably comfortable, light sleep, when a painful burning sensation seared sharply straight into the back of my head like a laser, and I screamed myself awake. Awakening the entire house in the process.
Alcaeus was the first to burst into my bedroom, leaping cat-like onto the bed to crouch overtop of me, naked but for a white sheet tucked haphazardly around his lower torso.
I was still screaming bloody murder, sitting upright and clutching my head, when he grabbed my face in between his hands and tilted it back for his inspection.
“Shh-shh … stop, stop, stop, Milena,” he crooned. “Shh—it’s gonna be okay, just calm down so I can have a look and fix whatever is wrong, all right? Relax and let me in, please, sweetheart?”
He must have hit me with a powerful punch of his calming mojo then because my entire body sagged back down to the mattress, and I was so relaxed I barely even registered the sounds of crashing downstairs, or noticed when an anxious, shirtless Kai barged into the room next, flipping the lights on and crowding over me in the small space that remained next to Alcaeus on the left side of the bed, demanding to know what had happened.
They exchanged quick words in Portuguese and then I felt them both gently probing around inside of my mind. The pain was gone, and my eyes had just fluttered shut when I heard more panicked voices filing into the room. My absolute favorite scent wafted over me, accompanied by the sound of Alex and Guadalupe quarreling in Portuguese.
“She’s fine!” Alcaeus announced to the newcomers, his tone distinctly annoyed. “We were handling it, Alex. There was no need to break my front door down.”
“Handling it? She’s been suffering discomfort for hours, Al! What the fuck took you so long?”
“I was sleeping. I’m a heavy sleeper.”
“I know! That’s what fucking scares me!” Alex pushed his way through to occupy the scant remaining space on the bed to my right.
Alcaeus cursed and relinquished my inner head to Kai, who I sensed inspecting me still, diligently checking for injury.
“What happened?” Alex demanded. “Scratch that, who happened?”
“Who do you think?”
“Fucking imbecile!” Alex groused. “Did he manage to cause any harm?”
“No, she’s fine,” Kai confirmed, withdrawing from my mind.
“You hear that, Lupe?” Alcaeus called over his shoulder. “She’s fine, you can go on back to bed.”
I hadn’t managed to catch so much as a glimpse of Guadalupe with their three hulking, shirtless forms crowded over me. In my state of lassitude, their combined heat and scents were quite overwhelming. Alex’s fingers were combing through my hair, dragging along my scalp. I could feel my whole body warming—every inch of my skin flushing, my belly tightening.
“Fuuck,” Alcaeus swore, his hazel orbs glazing over as he stared down at me. “I can’t … oh, Jesus Christ, that scent …”
Covering his nose and mouth with his hand, Alcaeus backed away from me and off the bed. Alex moved into the space he’d vacated directly overtop of me, and after he directed a not-so- subtle territorial growl at Kai, Kai abandoned his spot on the bed as well.
Alex’s concerned features dipped closer, his knuckles stroking lovingly along the sides of my face. “You okay, baby?”
“Mm-hmm.” I smiled thinly, delighting in his nearness and his scent.
“Anything still hurt?”
I shook my head minutely, fighting to keep my droopy eyelids open. “Don’t yell at Lupe,” I scolded, my voice barely carrying. “She’s my only friend here.”
His brow pinched. “Milena, I’m your friend,” he said softly, the hurt in his eyes expressing more than his words.
Was he my friend? Alex was definitely my … something. But what that something was I couldn’t readily define.
“I’m much more than your friend,” he contended. “I never stop thinking about you,” he professed, his voice turning to warm silk as the meaning of his words wrapped around me. Black eyes searched my bleary blues. “Did you know that?”
I hadn’t. And I was helpless to prevent the lazy, goofy grin that stretched my mouth in response.
He beamed back at me, his face transforming with a measure of undeniable happiness I’d never before seen him display. “Do you want me to stay?” he asked gently.
I did.
“You are not staying!” Alcaeus’ hard, booming voice decimated the glorious bubble of bliss that had all too briefly encapsulated us.
I watched the giddy grin falter and slide from Alex’s face. Slowly, he turned from me to his brother. “Al, you heard her. She wants me to stay. She needs me.”
“She’s exhausted. She doesn’t know what she wants.”
“And you do? She had to scream her head off before she finally got your attention. Seriously, how did you not know she needed help when you’re the one who has free fucking access to the inside of her head?”
Alex crossed the room to confront his brother. “Goddamnit, I should be the one inside her head. You have absolutely no clue what she fucking needs!”
“Oh, don’t even start this with me,” Alcaeus warned, sounding weary and exhausted. “I’ve been trying to give her some fucking space and privacy, Alex. Concepts you wouldn’t understand! She’s a big girl, perfectly capable of communicating to me when she needs something.”
“But she didn’t!”
“Well I couldn’t have anticipated that!”
“But I would have!” Alex roared, rattling the window frames.
Shit. Even drowning in Alcaeus’ calming essence I could sense Alex’s rarified rage building to its inevitable crescendo.
“Because I feel everything that she feels!” Alex proclaimed. “Every fucking goddamn emotion, regardless of how small and insignificant, or how profound and great.”
He did?
“Since the very fir
st moment I laid eyes on her I’ve felt them. And it is positively fucking maddening having to feel her emotions now and not be able to know the thoughts and the circumstances surrounding them!”
“Well, it is a bit conventional, but you could always try asking her what she’s thinking,” Kai suggested drolly. I had almost forgotten he was still in the room.
“Shut up!”
“And yet she trusts me over you,” Alcaeus threw right in his face. “Her very blood didn’t trust you and blocked you out the first moment it could, Alex. What does that fucking tell you?”
“Damnit, I admit I’ve made some mistakes with her. But she needs me now, and I can help her. I feel what she feels! And I can protect her. You have to let me. Please?”
“You’ve made more than just a few mistakes!” Alcaeus scorned. “Are you listening to yourself? You’ve felt everything that she’s felt and yet you purposely did things to upset her and to hurt her,” he charged. “You ignored her feelings, denied her things you knew she wanted. Why? Because you felt so fucking castrated and out of control being impacted by and beholden to her every little desire and emotion, didn’t you?”
“You don’t know what I felt!”
“I know better than you know yourself half the time, Alex, and I know damn well when you feel cornered and scared.”
“I was confused!”
“You were scared shitless! You thought that somehow you could overpower or outwit the mating bond,” Alcaeus accused with a mordant chuckle. “And when that didn’t work, you decided you could overpower and outwit her, thinking that if she just did what you wanted you’d regain some sense of sanity in your life and semblance of control. Well, falling in love doesn’t work like that. It’s pretty much a guarantee that you will never feel sane or in control ever again!”
“Al, please?” Alex begged. “Please don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to her!”
“You did this to yourself. I’m tired and I’m out of patience, Alex. Now get out of my house before I blast you out on your head.”
“But he’ll try again. Next time he could really hurt her!”
“I’ll cast a shield. She’ll be fine. Get the fuck out!”
“Al, she’s my mate!”
“Not until she says so.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Don’t let anyone tell you who or what you are or aren’t meant to be.”
I startled in my uncomfortable plastic chair, looking up from my history book. Mom’s eyes were still closed, her face expressionless. For a second I thought I’d only imagined she’d spoken, until she continued.
“Doctors said I was born barren. Did y’know that?” She managed to peek one droopy eyelid open at me before letting it slip shut again. “Pragmatic ’ole Grams never hid it from me either. From as early as I can remember, that was always my fate. I’d never be a mother.” A weary, sardonic smile tugged her lips.
This was new. This story I’d not heard before. What was she even talking about?
I knew they’d given her something to help her rest and to ease the pain and I wondered if she was hallucinating now. Perhaps they’d given her too much? Her words were a bit slurred. I set my textbook aside and was about to call for the nurse when she abruptly chortled.
“Ironic, isn’t it? Gahd was that woman old school or what?” she snorted. “Groomed me to be smart and fend for myself in life, ’cause she feared no man would ever want me.” She shook her head. “Idiot. Ya think she knew what century we were livin’ in?”
“Ma, you should be resting—”
“Kamella … now Kamella was purrrfect,” she drawled, her eyes fluttering open. “We may have looked identical to most on the outside,” she professed to the ceiling, “but we were sooo different.”
A sad smile settled upon her lips and her eyes misted over. “I wish you could have known her. She was … lit from within. Special.” Her smile broadened. “So light and fun and … hauntingly beautiful. Sweet and idealistic. Captivating.”
She twisted her bandaged head on the pillow, angling her face and bright blue eyes in my direction. “Everyone adored her. Your grandpop worshipped her.” She giggled in remembrance. “Such a shameless daddy’s girl she was. She was just … radiant. The life of every party. You couldn’t help but want to be around her.”
I smiled serenely, willing my face not to look as annoyed as I was starting to feel. I needed to study for a history test tomorrow. And I’d heard all this stupid crap about my aunt Kamella a thousand times before. She was beautiful. She was angelic. She would always be the preferred twin in my mom’s and everyone else’s eyes.
It was positively nauseating. Not to mention absurd, because they looked identical in every photo I’d ever seen of them. And it pissed me off that my mom had always somehow viewed herself as the lesser twin. I wondered how long I could humor this conversation before my patience snapped.
I’d barely slept in the last week. I was falling behind at school. And I’d wasted all of first and second period arguing with some stupid son of a bitch at the insurance company. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down, to stave off the giant tidal wave of anger, frustration and bitterness looming above, threatening to crash down and swallow all that was left of me as I dangled over the cliffside, my grip slipping as I tried in vain to hold onto some foolish semblance of teenage normalcy … some small shred of my evaporating sanity.
It was at these times I grew so tired and distraught I became irrationally jealous of my mom. Jealous! I knew it was sick, but there were days I just wanted to trade places and be the one hopped up on painkillers lying in a bed all day long. I was a horrible person for thinking it, and I would never tell a soul, but there it was. Further evidencing my eroding sanity.
And then there was Raul. Or more to the point, there still wasn’t. Sometimes I got so angry I couldn’t even let myself think about his absence. For most of my life he’d been perpetually out of reach, but now he seemed to have fallen clear off the face of the earth.
“Lord-y, Milena,” my mom beamed her sappy nostalgic grin at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears, “the world was Kamella’s oyster, I tell you, meant to embrace her and be good to her always. You would have loved her!” she gushed.
Hmm. I offered her a tight smile, contemplating the quickest, most civil way I might put an end to this conversation.
Her brow furrowed slightly. “I know people thought I envied her all the attention she got, but I didn’t.” She shook her head. “I really didn’t. I knew she needed it. Saw how she thrived on it. But not me. No. I never wanted that. I was always content to let her take center stage, where she belonged.”
It took effort to suppress an eye roll.
“No … what I always secretly envied,” she revealed with an exaggerated sigh, “was her uterus,” she cackled. “And those perfectly perfect ovaries!” She squealed it like it was the most hilarious joke ever. “Can you imagine being so selfish and stupid as that?”
I frowned. What was with all this infertility talk? Where had this come from? She’d gotten pregnant with me from a random two-night stand while on a reckless vacation with her girlfriends—and while on the pill! I would never know who my father was because the jerk had given her a false name and a bad phone number. Douchebag had probably been married. She might have been a terrible judge of male character, but she was the antithesis of sterile. What idiot doctor would imply otherwise?
I had to remind myself she’d just been through another surgery three days ago. This was cancer brain mom talking. She was obviously remembering things that weren’t real again.
“Ma, you’ve never been barren,” I corrected her, trying my best not to sound harsh. “You dreamt that up … or fell asleep earlier watching a Discovery Health channel show on infertility or something.”
She looked increasingly perplexed, squinting her eyes at me and scratching absently at the white bandage covering her head.
There went the eye roll. I couldn’t help it. I was too tired.
And I was so angry.
Angry at that look of confusion in her eyes. Outraged it would only get worse as time and treatments progressed. And I was angry at that stupid-looking bandage covering her head, with the doctors and the insurance company, the hospital staff, the endless sea of bills that never ceased pouring in.
I was resentful of my classmates for getting to goof off and enjoy their senior years without a care in the world. I’d begun to begrudge my friends for having all the things I now lacked. Things I’d always taken for granted—like having someone who magically did my laundry and stocked the fridge, juggled all the bills I’d never had to even know about before. They could party and coast through their last semester, knowing there would be someone there in the audience to see them graduate, someone there to help them figure out their future.
But most days I was angriest with myself for not holding it together better. For feeling unsophisticated and useless amidst this whole process that I was helpless to change. And illogical and wrong as it was, I knew I was angry with my mom for getting cancer in the first place. Horrified by how it had already changed her. Furious over how I knew this could only ultimately end.
Part of me wanted to let the anger go. It was so heavy, and it hurt. But I needed it. It kept me going. Some days the anger was all I had to get me out of bed in the morning, to keep me pushing one foot in front of the other. If I let it go, I would fall apart. Still, I didn’t know how much longer I could do this. And the mad paradox of it all was that everything we were enduring was simply to buy us more precious time to endure it!
“Mmm … right … ’Course I’m not barren,” she assented with a shake of her head and a wry grin. “You and Raul are proof of that.”
“You should rest now.”
“I’m making a point here, Milena.”
“All right, all right …” I allayed, even as I cringed internally at the thought of another cancer brain ‘point.’
“You know, I idolized Kamella as much as anyone … maybe more so,” she confessed—as if it were some great secret I hadn’t always known.