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“Then maybe you should, you know….?” Again, with the rotating finger at his temple and I huff loudly in exasperation, willing him to stop pushing and give me an ever-loving, god damn, breathing space, of a minute. This is hard for me. I erupt, breaking under the pressure. Spectacularly.

“YES! I KNOW!! I’m going to do it! … Excuse me for having a little bit of a mental breakdown with everything I’ve learned in the last six hours and a reminder my fated mate is a cheating asshole. It’s a lot…. A LOT!!! And I’m an eighteen-year-old girl who hasn’t linked her cheating, asshole ex, so called mate, in weeks, since she ran from him. Give me a fucking break already.” I push my fingers and nails through my scalp, pushing my wild hair off my face and gripping it with force at my temples, trying so hard not to self-combust under the extra weight of everything hitting me at once.

“I do say.” The doctor raises his brows at me in a completely ridiculous British way, and then softens his expression and holds out his handkerchief to me in a sort of white flag apology, as more tears roll down my cheeks against my will. Colton always ruins me. I hate that I’m so hopelessly connected to him, that this rules everything I think or feel.

“I’m sorry…. I need to breathe for a few minutes. Colton he’s……. it’s really hard. He hurt me… this, all of this, just hurts.”

Colton is the one thing in my life that has the power over everything else to screw me up with minimal effort. Even finding out I’m some sort of half creature, and my first thought was ‘how will he look at me?’ He’s right in there, deep inside of me, and he can make everything feel so good, or everything worse than bad, that I can barely breathe. Without him I survive, but I wouldn’t exactly call it successful. There’s a need that never leaves me, a longing that never stops calling to him. I miss him, of course I do, and I dream about him, I see, or hear him at stupid points of my day, even when it’s not even related. Reaching out and physically connecting is a whole other kind of torture, especially knowing he’s not mine and never will be now. It was easier to have no contact at all.

I never knew you could both love a person beyond a shadow of a doubt and crave them constantly, while at the same time hating the ground he walks on and wishing I never had to see him ever again. Such is my dilemma.

I need him, yet I don’t want to, and currently I actually physically need him to come and save our asses from this situation. The doc was right, I can’t take on a pack of Santo wolves, especially ones who don’t play fair and use dart guns to subdue my kind. My gifts are worth shit without having the complete control of them. Colton needs to be in this, no matter how I feel, as Sierra is his mother, and I owe him to give her back to him, where she belongs. He can protect her in ways her own pack failed. Her son will never let her down in that way.

“You can have some time; this road is a good long drive to get out of the undergrowth and by my calculations we have three hours minimum, depending on the metabolism of the wolves before they come around in any kind of way. I’m hoping for six, which is probably a human response to the drug, but your kind are always a little more geared to outdoing us, even in an isolation tank. You can take a little head space before you contact him. Just, you know, not too long, as we don’t want to be driving in the wrong direction, or anything.”

The doctor isn’t helping and I turn and stare out the window, watching the trees flash by in the hopes it will numb my brain out with mindless mesmerizing images flashing on by, the light fading with every minute we drive and Sierra is still as immobile and silent as she was.

I need to swallow this, bite the bullet and do it. Like ripping off a band aid, and not sitting pondering and building the moment into something worse. He’s out there, doing god knows what, and the sooner I link him, or even see if I can, the sooner we can figure this out and head for a safe place and all of this no longer rests on my shoulders alone. Some control of this situation, someone else to make the decisions, and I hope to god I’m not being a fool and putting my faith in Colton, only to have him deliver us back to Juan’s hands. I truly believe in my heart, despite everything that’s happened between us, Colton will come through for me. For us.

This isn’t about marking, or obeying the alpha and respecting the laws, this is about his mom and intervening in something bigger than the rules of the packs. This is about betrayal, and what his father has done, and I literally have no idea about how I’m going to tell him. Once he knows, it’ll hurt him the way it hurt me, irreversibly, and I have no idea how he’s going to react. It’s not the kind of thing you can just rock up in his head and say, hey… I have your mom here, and your dad killed everyone I love, do you want to hang out.

How do I tell him about the bigger picture, about my family, the prophecy, the way Sierra was kept and has nothing mentally wrong with her? How do I fit all that in without having some sort of mental freak out, while in a head link with a guy you have been so afraid of linking because of the unbearable pain he can inflict on you? I didn’t only blank him out because I left, and we were done. I closed the door because I couldn’t handle ever being able to link him again and hearing that familiar voice inside of me. That soothing, husky, melody, that can find its way deep down into the most intimate parts of me and warms me from within in the most basic ways. No one will ever be able to make me feel things the way he does, and he has so much power over me, even with his words, at any distance.

Stop Alora. This is bigger than a broken heart. Colton will help, and you’re just stalling.

I catch the doc looking at me, eyes glancing from dark rough road to me, bouncing along this track, and back again, but he says nothing. I think he’s checking on my mental and emotional state and I need to get this over and done with. Stop wussing out, getting over dramatic with my female tear fest, and man up.

I inhale, sit up as though that makes any difference and push my forehead against the glass of my side window. Fixing my eyes on nothing at all and drumming up the courage I so badly need. My insides immediately start tying themselves in knots, my stomach cramping with the tension, and I swallow the apprehensive nausea as best I can. I let my breath out slowly, misting the window with the heat and condensation of the cold dark glass, and draw a heart absentmindedly in the steamy patch before rubbing it out and frowning at my own stupid reflection. Now or never! Rip it off, bite the bullet. Be strong.

I know if I stall, I might lose my nerve completely. I screw my eyes tight shut, conjure up a darkness to clear my brain and mentally slide open that heavy locked door I put between us so many weeks ago. Afraid of the sudden precipice I need to step off and I throw it out there in the hopes he’s listening.

Colton? Are you there? I need your help.