Adam
On Halloween, laid up for the fourth day in a row from fever and aching joints, I no longer had the willpower to stop myself from reaching out for her. I’d been avoiding the mate bond—oddly still and silent, where it had once been a vibrant presence in my head.
My body hated me, why not make it worse by poking the psychological wounds, as well?
Since my fight with Patrick, I’d been able to steer clear of the pack house. My cabin was one of the few that came equipped with a shower—lucky me—and I could feed myself just fine, too.
Apprehension swamped me. Perhaps because I knew already what I would find.
Still, nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of a soulmate bond looking like shredded string cheese and already beginning to wither away.
It had only been days.
But it hasn’t only been days. You’ve been letting her down for months. She just decided she’d had enough. And now that she’s no longer feeding it to keep it alive, it’s dying. Because you weren’t nourishing it at all.
I could hardly feel her at all beyond the sore, heated presence of the bond. It was like an infection—and my body was responding to it like one. I was suffocating.
Something like panic swelled up in my chest and I grasped at that dying connection like a lifeline. I must have said her name a dozen times, until I was choking on it, until I couldn’t speak past the tears.
Because there, alone, with no distractions to bury my head in, I felt the narrative I’d spun in my head to justify all of it fall apart.
I dug into our tie, clawed at it, seeking the calm reassurance of her presence.
It wasn’t there.
When I focused on her, I was able to parse between the unhealthy substance of the bond and her soul itself. But there was no reassurance for me.
I’d always believed, somewhere in all my ego, that she’d be fine without me; at the same time, however, I’d also relied on the idea that she wouldn’t. That she’d stay. That she’d never give up.
Surely, she had to know I had no choice but to obey. Surely, she understood that I had to do what was best for my pack. What I did was necessary. She had her family at House Gabriel. I’d relied on the idea that they’d keep her afloat while I, with my divided loyalties, clung to her without ever giving her what she needed.
While I told myself I was seeing things clearly and doing what had to be done. While I told myself I was doing my best.
In Nikki’s soul, I saw suffering. I saw her doubt, I saw her loneliness. I saw her questioning, her mind spinning in a thousand different directions as she grasped for some meaning through the pain.
I had done that—I had made her doubt, on a core level, her own worthiness to be. It hadn’t started with me, but in my refusal to step up and claim the possibility of a life that she’d offered me, I’d driven deeper the insidious idea that she didn’t deserve my love, or anyone’s. She looked at the scope of her life and she wondered why she existed at all. Why had she made it to this point?
But beyond that, I saw the first tentative, questing roots of something else.
Her determination. Not only to exist in a world that I was no longer part of, but to shape it. Not to stand on the outside of it. Not to ask permission to be allowed to participate, nor accepting the leftovers.
She was mourning the loss of me, but she was also already nurturing the tender growth of hope. For a life that didn’t have me in it.
Wolves mated for life, but I had never claimed her, had I? No.
Although we were bonded now, although she knew me, nothing would stand in the way of her finding a future with another man who would stand up for her. Who would give her the things I’d told her I couldn’t. Once this link shriveled up, starved of her devotion… it would fade into the background of her life like an irritating ghost.
Nikki was riding the waves of pain and grief that were suddenly drowning me.
She would survive. I had no doubt that she’d even thrive.
Would I?
Sure. I’d live. But I’d live the rest of my life knowing that I could have had everything in the world if I’d just had the balls to step up and seize it. I’d live knowing the universe had brought me a soulmate, this woman who made every part of me light up and stood ready to hold me with all her courage and strength and faith, and I’d absolutely ruined it all on my own. I couldn’t blame Jax for this.
This was my fault.
For long moments, I let that understanding seep into my bones. I wallowed in it.
Until that spark in her caught my attention again. I leaned into her energy, embracing the ache that came with it, and pressed myself into that light. Examining it, tasting it, learning it like I’d learned her.
Nikki was the strongest woman I’d ever met. Steel spine and teeth to match. What felt like a fragile ray of hope in her was the bones of that strength shining through, peering out from under layers of doubt that she’d accumulated over a lifetime.
You won’t go to the root of the problem and just fix the shit… but I guess if you can live without her, then you can live without her.
I sat up, wiping snot and tears off my face.
“Man, you’re fucking sad,” I said aloud. “Did you ever deserve her, even for a minute?”
You ain’t gonna do shit, she’d teased me on our first night together. She’d needled at me with her taunts and then taken me home. Nikki was always challenging me. Now she was challenging me to be better. To be worthy of her.
“Test me,” I muttered, and ignored the pain of my joints as I slid out of bed to find my clothes. “You keep testing me, honey.”
In real life, a soulmate was a mirror. Matched energy meant to reflect your truest face back at you.
What are you?
I’d always known my place. I was pack beta, Jackson’s right-hand man. A beloved son. I was the one that my pack relied on for stability, for comfort, for safety.
But without all of that, who was I?
I was Nikki’s soulmate.
I wasn’t a little bitch about to let my lady go with a whimper and a snotty nose. And I wasn’t going to shame the woman created to be the other half of me by showing her I was worth more to her as a spiritual lesson than a partner.
Running back to her with all kinds of promises wouldn’t fix the issue.
There was only one thing that could set this right. Even if I did it, she still might not accept me.
I cringed at the thought but shoved my foot into my boot anyway as I hauled my groaning body onto its feet.
I’d respect you a hell of a lot more if you’d fight for what you wanted instead of wasting your time breaking the faces of your packmates.
“Fuck you, Eli.”