14

“I can arrange for Sierra to come sit with her, send up some food and give them time alone. She maybe isn’t Luna anymore, but as Rema she still cares for the people and plays a hand in making this home a haven of calm.” I ignore the change in her and don’t draw attention to the fact she’s wiping her hand to remove the feel of my warm touch on her. My brain is firing ahead to a solution for her mom.

I’m sure a little gentle coaxing will have Sierra leave her rooms for a while, especially if like Carmen said, this was one of her friends from the past. We don’t have many of those here. Most remember her only as Luna, her friends were all kept behind by mates or lost in the war.

‘I’m sorry I ever doubted you as Luna…. as worthy. For everything I said or did. He broke me. I was in pain. It was juvenile and I’m over it.” She states coldly, icily harsh in her tone as though overcompensating for the weakness she showed me moments before. In that flash the old bitchy looking, aloof and haughty Carmen stands in place of the lost and vulnerable soul of seconds before, trivializing her love of my mate once upon a time ago, but this time I see through it.

A broken hearted, lonely girl, who lost someone she loved, was left to fend alone in a home she no longer recognized and still harbors a world of agony deep inside. As much as I look back and feel like she once deserved my anger, I don’t think she does anymore. Carmen’s adrift, with no anchor anymore. Her home is gone, her mate went to another, her father’s a betrayer of all she knew and her mother…. slowly slipping away from her as the days pass by. There’s only devastation and fear hiding behind cold bitch, and I wonder what she has gone through in the last few months under Juan’s rule to lose the last ounces of soft she used to allow herself to show at times. I wonder what else our people out there are going through right now too, while here we live in a bubble of general safety and happy.

“The past has passed. Let’s focus on the now and the future and making your mom well.” I utter quietly, but with determination. A need in me to offer her some sort of hope now that I can feel her mood has returned to distant and closed off. It’s like there’s no light in this girl at all and she has become so accustomed to dwelling in the dark that her very warmth has ebbed into nothingness the second she reels it back to her damp cave with her.

“It’s been so long since I felt like we had any kind of real leader, or Luna…. I forgot what it feels like to have someone share the load and make you feel that everything might be okay.” She stares at her feet, a tiny flinch of her jawline and eyebrow and seems to unfocus for a second as a tiny hint of color warms the apples of her cheeks at her own words, and then it’s gone just as quickly. A hint of something, maybe gratitude, maybe real genuine hope, then bam, she closed it back down and swallowed her carelessness once more.

For the first time I think I see what maybe Colton did all these years and why he tried to stay with her before there was us. Knowing him and how he likes to see the best in people, and his hero complex. I see it now. The scared little girl in the midst of the hard-outer shell and the signals she gives off so subtly you almost miss them if you are not looking for them. It’s in glimpses when she forgets to pull her mask up, the tiny wrinkles in her armor, the careless words, or the unintended moments of genuine touch. It makes you want to help her, bring her into the warmth and remove the shackles she has put around herself to keep people out.

The bitch isn’t who she is. The tantrums, the behaviors, the arrogant outer persona, they’re all a mask to shield this right here. More like her mom than I thinks he knows and maybe it’s not so unbelievable that her mother is a weaker wolf with no ability to fend for herself. Maybe that’s exactly why carmen learned to be this kind of way after watching her mother get pushed around for her own flaws.

Carmen is fragile in her own way, yet at the same time so much stronger than I gave her credit for, in a completely different way. She’s more capable than Tawna, less likely to break into a thousand pieces the way her mom seems to, but it’s there alright. The vulnerability. The sadness. She needs a strong mate to give her what she lacks, she needs security, and devotion, loyalty, to find her self-worth and someone who will love her and bring her peace the way Colton has for me. She needs a family that she leans on, instead of them leaning on her and making her the one to shield and protect.

Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s that now I see her in a new light, I truly feel sorry for my part in her unhappiness. The fates disregarded her, cast her aside, and Colton could no longer stomach to look her way when she betrayed his bond. Which I guess, now I even understand why she did what she did to him when he bonded to someone else. I can’t even imagine what that did to her mentally and emotionally when all she had to rely on was him.

I took her place, in his heart, his bed, and the pack, and she was left on the cold mountain, alone. To weather the storm and figure out how to save her mom. She watched everyone slip away and her life was turned upside down while she held together the pieces of the wreckage she was left with. Maybe she has more reason to hate me than I ever hard for her. Yet standing here, I don’t even find a trace of it anymore. It’s like her emotions have died and all that’s left is a need to keep her single lifeline safe or else she has nothing at all to go on for. Her mom.

“You’re home now. We’ll figure this out… as a pack.” I try a brighter smile that conveys ‘it’s okay, we got this’ and push down every other thought and feeling inside.

Carmen’s eyes mist over, and she turns away swallowing hard, and clears her throat, giving off some strong uncomfortable vibes. Unable to produce words she nods her head and wipes her cheek with the back of her hand in an almost childlike gesture so I don’t see the breaking of another single tear rolling down her face and yet I feel her shame and disappointment in herself for letting me see her weak. She just never stops fighting.

“Go sit with your mom and I’ll go see Sierra. I’ll send tea and cake up to your quarters and we can take it from there.” I ignore her behavior and feel somewhat relieved when she moves to walk away from me. Obviously had enough of my company and makes a break for it thus relieving me of her emotions as she gives me space. I’m sort of glad as this interaction has left me kind of screwed up and confused about my own feelings and exactly how and what to do with Carmen now being here. I need some head space to process all of this.

I hope to god Sierra has a way to help her, maybe soothe and heal Tawna to better accept the past and move forward in a new life with us. I mean a femme whose own mate put her in a coma for eight years to keep her silent might be better at understanding the betrayal and hopelessness she feels. Maybe it will be good for them both.

And I need to go find my mate and talk this out with him, because I am sure as hell feeling weirded out that the girl I told him I didn’t want here this morning, is now on my list of top priorities for the day, and I have no idea how that even happened. I still have no clue how I will react when I finally see them together once more in any kind of interaction.