Chapter209 Dying Memories

Chapter209 Dying Memories
Patrick POV
I can feel the light in front of my eyes growing dimmer, and Aliya's voice calling my name is getting quieter and quieter. Here I am, lying on Aliya's lap while she's wearing her wedding dress.
It's almost like I'm dying in her arms. If death feels this warm, then I'm willing to walk into it.
My thoughts are racing, memories from my past playing like slides in front of my eyes, each one crystal clear despite the darkness creeping in around the edges.
I never had much family love growing up. I didn't spend long with my mother either, but that warmth she gave me was the only thing I could treasure from my childhood.
When I couldn't handle the bullying, the fights, and the pain anymore, I could only survive by thinking about that little bit of warmth she showed me.
I remember being seven years old, sick with fever, and my mother sitting by my bedside all night. She didn't have much, but she gave me everything she had.
She would sing me old lullabies in a voice rough from exhaustion, her calloused hands gentle as they smoothed my hair. "You're going to be somebody special, Patrick," she used to whisper.
But after she died, there was nobody left to tell me I was special. I became just another kid getting bounced around between relatives who didn't want me. Henry's father took me in eventually, but only as a favor to my dead mother.
I was always "the bastard," "the charity case," "Henry's embarrassing little brother."
By the time I was sixteen, I was getting into fights almost daily. Not because I wanted to, but because the other kids at school knew I was an easy target. No real family to back me up, no pack status to protect me. I learned to fight back hard and dirty because it was the only way to survive.
When I thought my whole life would be like this, just struggling like some nobody in the mud of Shadow Moon Pack, suddenly that warm light from my childhood came back. Aliya.
She was everything I wasn't. Beautiful, brave, intelligent, and kind. I almost couldn't believe that someone like her would even notice someone like me, let alone reach out to help a guy like me who'd been scraping by on the bottom.
She didn't just give me a chance to manage that territory. She wanted to help me become an Alpha.
Me? An Alpha?
Could someone like me, who found out at eighteen when I first shifted that I had a terminal illness, actually become an Alpha?
But Aliya helped me become one anyway.
At first, I just respected her, felt grateful to her. But slowly, those feelings changed. I started wanting to be close to her, to feel her heartbeat, her pulse, to share in her joys and sorrows.
I wanted to know what made her laugh, what made her cry, what she thought about when she was quiet and far away.
I remember the first time I realized I was in love with her. It was during one of our strategy meetings about the territory management. She was explaining something about resource allocation, her face serious and focused, a little wrinkle between her eyebrows when she concentrated.
The afternoon sunlight was streaming through the window, catching the highlights in her hair.
And suddenly I couldn't hear a word she was saying because all I could think was how beautiful she was, and how much I wanted to spend the rest of my life watching her think through problems with that same intense focus.
But she didn't seem to need me the way I needed her. There was already someone else in her life. An Alpha King who was a hundred times better than me, someone who could match her intelligence and strength.
When she was with Nikolai, she smiled differently. More freely. Even when she didn't say anything, I could see the happiness in her eyes when she looked at him.
And that was okay. It had to be okay.
I learned early that wanting things you can't have is just a way to make yourself miserable. My mother taught me that too, in her own way. "Sometimes the best way to love someone is to let them be happy, even if it's not with you."
If I couldn't be with Aliya, then I could at least be the stepping stone on her path to happiness. I could be useful to her in that way.
Marcus's parents and their accusations? I'd handle that for her. The pressure from public opinion, the media scrutiny, the legal battles? I'd take all of that on myself. Let them tear me apart instead of her.
I think about the day I made my decision to confess to Marcus's murder. I was sitting in my hospital room, watching the news coverage of her trial. They were calling her a killer, a manipulator, a cold-blooded murderer. The woman who had saved my life, who had given me purpose and dignity, was being destroyed by lies.
I knew what I had to do. It wasn't even a difficult choice. My time was running out anyway. The doctors had been clear about that from the beginning.
Six months, maybe a year if I was lucky. Why waste those months rotting away in a hospital bed when I could use them to give Aliya her freedom?
When I walked into that courtroom, I wasn't scared. I was at peace. Because finally, after all those years of being useless, of being a burden, of being someone's unwanted little brother, I was doing something that mattered. I was protecting the person who had shown me that I could be more than what everyone said I was.
Now, lying in this hospital bed and watching Aliya grieve for me, it almost feels like enough.
I can feel my strength fading with each breath. The illness that's been eating away at me for years is finally winning. But I'm not afraid. How can I be afraid when I'm surrounded by such warmth?
My wolf has been quiet for days now, too weak to even stir. But I can still feel him there, content and peaceful.
The sounds around me are getting fainter.
But I can still feel Aliya's hands on me, still feel her trying to pour her healing energy into my broken body.
I wish I could tell her it's okay. That she can stop fighting now. That I'm ready to go.
The darkness is pulling at me now, gentle and warm like a blanket. I'm not fighting it anymore.
Aliya, even though I'm dying before I can see you truly happy, I'm still greedy enough to hope that you'll remember me.