Chapter Two Hundred Ninety–Nine
GRYFFIN
After hanging up the phone with Paul, the sound of Gayle’s bed slamming against the wall upstairs drives me out of the house. The moment Cane returned from Tacoma, my sister pounced on him and not in a good way. But it would seem, he was able to turn her anger around for his benefit.
Fuck. They need their own place.
It’s unheard of, though. A lion pride sticks together and, as I am their lender, it is my duty to keep them safe. However, Cane is turning out to be so powerful in his own rite that building a little house behind the villa just for the two of them to enjoy might not be the worst idea.
Stepping out onto the porch, I saunter down the long winding driveway to light up a cigarette and gaze out at the openly darkened sky. Winter is here, and the rain will be getting heavier, bringing back memories of times I’d prefer not to revisit.
But as the drizzle begins, wetting my smoke enough to deliver the wrap from its filter, I gaze down at the tiny scar on my hand. The cut I made once with a particularly ancient silver blade. One that my father carries on him at all times. One marked with runes for banishment and stained with the blood of regret.
With a deep breath, I welcome the sudden rain drops on my head, closing my eyes and tipping my head up toward the sky. They are like tears of the past and I fucking deserve to drown in them.
Sometimes I wish they could wash me away and take me somewhere that I might find what I gave up.
But they never do, and despite my yearning for a second chance, I know it will never be with the girl that I long for. The one I threw away.
Everyone keeps telling me that I need to get out there and find a mate, but they don’t understand. They just don’t get it.
I don’t deserve one.
Because… I had one. And I let my father rule me. I let him control me.
I never even really got the chance to get to know her, but at the same time, I did.
She was that pair of eyes on me in the hall. The silent cheerleader that watched me from afar. The one being in this world that would have forgiven me anything and everything and loved me just for me. No matter what.
So why couldn’t I be the same for her?
She probably would have given her life for mine just for a shot to be with me, and as it turned out… she did.
When I was in high school, I had a lot of chicks. Humans, all of them. My father was always bitching about my playing around with them. He said there had to be something wrong with me for having that tendency. Like it was some weakness that he could just stamp out.
I should have known I was destined to be mated to one.
But… I never would have guessed it was going to be her.
Adelle.
The quiet little mouse that hid behind her large horn–rimmed glasses and never spoke to a single soul that wasn’t her brother.
Kyle and I had been friends. We weren’t close by any stretch of imagination, but he played sports and so did 1. He was one of the few humans that was any good at them. All of us shifters played back then. Dom, Quinn, Goose… The fact that we were stronger, faster, and
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Chapter Two Hundred Ninety–Nine
fucking indestructible in comparison to the humans in our school was never something we chose to hide. We reveled in it, loved being the center of attention. But sometimes, when all you can see is your own glory, you lose things.
Strike that. Not sometimes.
All times.
But in my case, I didn’t just lose something. I threw it away.
No one tells you that rejecting your mate will stay with you forever. No one speaks about the pain you will endure with every dragging breath, or the sadness that comes just with the thinking about finding someone else to take their place.
I put a curse on my head that day, and for what? So that my father could attempt to make me into the heartless bastard that he, himself,
turned out to be?
Well, the jokes on you dad because it’s been five whole damn years and I still can’t get my heart not to beat.
I still can’t get her heartbroken face out of my head.
The glistening tears in her ice blue eyes, the quiver of her sweet heart–shaped lips.
The catch of breath that spoke of her absolute desperation for me to take it all back. To make all the pain I’d just cast on her heart simply disappear.
The way she still stood there even an hour after she thought I’d left… as if waiting for me… pretending I hadn’t really done such a thing as I’d just done.
She’d cried there all alone and I had watched her from halfway up the mountainside. Steeling my heart and wondering when the torment of rejection would stop and recovery would begin. Thinking for sure that any minute it would stop. That in a moment, she’d curse me and
stomp away.
But she never did. Instead, she’d called my sister because I’d left her standing all alone in the middle of the woods and not only was she
scared, but she was destroyed.
I had done that to her. Me. The guy she’d apparently been crushing on for half of her life. The same one who had never given her the time of day until that night he asked her out just to tear her to pieces.
When Kyle showed up that day, a couple of months after the rejection, and told me that she was dead… that she had taken her own life… I almost begged him to kill me. I almost told him what I had done. The whole thing, not just the lie he believed was the truth – which was bad enough – but the who, the why and the what I was.
I wanted to be dead too.
The fucked up part is sometimes… it feels like she’s still out there waiting for me. Begging for me to apologize and tell her the truth. Watching me as I go along without her, my life creeping along without so much as a kiss to remember her by.
Sadly, she’s not out there… how could she be?
But what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and notice her in the classroom. Or maybe smile at her and ask her out on a date. If I could do it, if I could go back? I’d take that fucking silver blade and cut my father’s heart out of his chest… instead of using it to reject my destiny.
Now… I’m alone and I will remain that way.
Even when they stole my venom and everyone said finding a mate might solve my problems, I couldn’t find it in me to save myself from her memory.
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Chapter Two Hundred Ninety–Nine
From the loss of her.
No. I would have gone on like that forever, just as I will go on now… Alone in the woods just like I left her.
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