Chapter 74: Inseparable

Daphne

It was always nice to come home, to be surrounded by the familiar scenes, scents and sounds of family, but still, as I lay in my childhood bed, in my very purple bedroom, I found it hard to relax, and impossible to fall asleep.

All I could think of was Nate, that last glimpse of him standing on the steps, the security light streaming down on him like a halo. It had felt so wrong to walk away and leave him behind. My wolf wouldn’t stop whining, and the pain… the pain was real.

But how could that be? Even if there really was a mate bond between us, it wasn’t like I had marked him. It wasn’t like he could mark me with his human teeth. Oh, he could bite, and leave a scar, but he didn’t have the venom in his saliva that would truly bind us together into a being that was both spiritually and biologically connected.

To my knowledge, only marked and mated wolves felt this kind of separation anxiety when they were away from their mate.

Just because Nate and I had sex, that didn’t make us mated.

I tossed and turned into the first light of dawn, and then I finally fell into a fitful sleep. A vision wove its way into my dreams like fog rolling off a warm river on a cold night. Nathan was there, looking as handsome as ever, wearing only a pair of jeans that hung low on his hips. He had a bow slung over his shoulder. Not a long bow, but one of those fancy compound bows that can fire an arrow with almost as much volocity as a bullet. He was pulling a blood arrow out of something, something I couldn’t see because of the fog swirling on the ground. It made a sickening, squelching sound as the tri-tip arrow head tore free of the flesh. In the distance there was the long, keening cry of a woman, mingling with the howl of a wolf.

The cries set my hackles up, and made my wolf growl and pace frantically. I began to run toward Nate, but the faster I ran, the further he seemed to be. There were still twenty yards between us when a wolf stepped out of the shifting mists, bigger and more regal than even my alpha brothers. It stared at me with a strange look of expectancy, like it was waiting for me to say something, to do something, and I felt torn.

Did I go to the wolf, or did I go to Nathan? Nate saw the wolf too, and without hesitation, he knocked an arrow into that crazy contraption of a bow. I think he thought he was protecting me.

“No! No don’t shoot him!” I shouted, but the fog seemed to swallow up all the sound. I ran again, trying to put my body between Nate and the wolf. Surely, he would see me, surely he wouldn’t release the arrow, he wouldn’t hurt me.

And then it all happened at once, it all happened so quickly. Another figure appeared from the swirling mists, the blue-haired woman, her face contorted with rage and tears. “You killed him!” She snarled at me. “You killed my mate!” With a speed that was almost too fast for the naked eye, she flung a silver knife, and it found it’s mark in Nathan’s jugular.

Nate, in shock and surprise, released the arrow, which might have been meant for the wolf, but zagged off course to plant itself in my belly. I cried out as the burning hot pain ripped through me, and I looked down in shock at the shaft sticking out of my middle, blood ooozing out, running down my belly, wetting my thighs. I looked up again, just in time to see Nate falling, crumpling on himself. His eyes were looking at me with sad accusation. His gaze seemed to say, you did this. This is your fault.

I felt coldness seeping into my my body, and that big, beautiful wolf turned his nose to the moon and howled again, howled as if his heart was breaking forever.

I jerked awake, and found that I had kicked away all the blankets. The room was cold and crisp from the open window, and the sounds of the pack house greeting the morning flowed to me, muffled by the walls, but not muted. I could hear the baby babble of my nephew, Liam, and the low hum of my brother’s voices somewhere down the hall.

I sat up slowly and ran my hand over my belly, half expecting to still find an arrow shaft protruding from my gut. Finding nothing but my own smooth, firm skin, I sighed, and swung my legs over the side of the bed. My feet had barely touched the floor when there was a timid knock on the door, and Bella’s head poked in.

“Hey you,” she called softly, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, but the single syllable sounded weak and shaky. “Yes, Yes I’m fine. Didn’t get much sleep that’s all. Are you just back from training? You are all sweaty!” Her long, oddly colored hair was up in a pony tail, but pieces had worked loose to stick to her sweaty face and neck. The heather grey tank top she wore was stained with sweat in unflattering halfmoons around her neck, under her pits, and beneath her breasts.

“You know your brothers,” she said, with a roll of her eyes as she stepped inside and shut the door quietly behind. “They insist I get up at dawn to go for training, even if I was up half the night waiting for you.” She walked over to me and pulled me clsoe to plant a kiss on my cheek. “I’d hug you, but I’m disgusting.”

“You are, a little,” I agreed.

“Gee, thanks. I won’t tell you your breath smells like rotten woodchuck, either. I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out with me after breakfast.”

“Shopping?” I asked hopefully. One would think, with a killer-assassin-bear on the rampage that I would have better things to think about than shopping, especially considering that Bella had once been kidnapped from a mall during one of my famous shopping marathons. I didn’t mean to be insensitive to her trauma but…

Shopping sounded like a soothing balm to my tattered nerves. Maybe I could forget about Nate while perusing the outlets?

“Nope,” Bella said, shattering my hopes. “I thought maybe you would like to go to Liam’s swimming lessons.”

“Swimming?” I asked doubtfully, “The kid can’t even walk yet.”

“Yeah, but he’s already learning to swim, it’s the coolest thing. Did you know babies are born knowing how to swim, instinctively? Anyway, please say you will come?”

“Sure, okay,” I agreed. It wasn’t shopping therapy, but surely some quality time with my adorable nephew and my favorite-best-friend-sister-in-law would be an excellent distraction from a certain tall, dark and handsome roommate that I had left behind.