Chapter 130

Ryan

"Damn this weather," I mutter.

The storm has yet to let up and in fact, I believe it's started pouring down harder, with more vigor, and still shows no signs of slowing for my benefit.

"Have you tried linking to the healer?" Olivera asks, his antsy attitude not helping my worried state right now. "I mean, if you can't reach through the link to her, she might just be asleep and everything is okay—that could be possible, right? I mean, if you think about—"

"Hush," I beg. "You're rambling again."

"I'm sorry that I'm flustered," he grovels. "I'm just trying to keep calm."

I raise my brow, trying to stay focused on my mate but I can't seem to shake this infatuation Olivera has had for my mate. I should ignore it, as I have in the past weeks, but something about being stuck in this small cave with him has my mind tethering off too many emotions at once.

"Enlighten me, please," I sigh, shaking my head out at the storm. "What is this weirdly possessive, sympathetic binding you think you have with my mate?"

I see the corner of his lip twitch, amused. "Lover boy jealous?"

"No," I say, very sure of my mate's affection. "Alyson loves me dearly, as I do her. We have been through a lot together. Too much to overlook for the sake of some rogue that kidnapped her from me."

I shoot him a daring look and he only shrugs, over our qualms of the past.

"You might be right, the Luna does love you, and you may have been through a lot together, but you won't ever know her like I know her."

"What do you mean by that?"

My wolf is ready to rip his throat out but seeing as there is no other entertainment out here to wait for the storm to pass, I have to be subjected as an audience to this rogue and his pitiful attempt to relate to the love of my life.

Olivera kicks back, as if to simulate relaxation but I see the worry still fresh in his eyes. "The blood pet, she's not a difficult Luna to figure out."

"Don't call her that," I bark.

He waves me off, uselessly distracted in his imagination. Maybe there, deep in his dark mind, he actually thinks he loves my mate. I would love to do nothing more than to tear down that puerile dream but something stops me, maybe my wolf, and I allow him to meander on with his babbling.

"I know that girl. She's got a will like none other. She fought me every day, until the day she decided to fight for me. That's when I saw it. That's when I noticed the impending doom written all over her pretty, light eyes."

"What are you talking about?"

"She just can't stand a story about a wolf locked up, being used and wounded, it reminds her too much her first mate, from her first life." He shakes his head, sickening me on the fact that he tells this story with such a lighthearted attitude. "She went through a lot, sure—"

"She suffered!" I snap.

"We all suffer!" He barks back, his voice deathly deep. "We all have our tribulations but that girl is different and I saw it with my own eyes. She isn't special because she fought, she's special because she came back and continued to fight!"

"She had no choice but to."

"Senseless Alpha, I'm almost jealous that you don't understand."

I shake my head, ready to tie of this conversation and hang him with it.

He continues, anyway. "And what if she gave up? What if she met the most powerful, the most sought after being in the whole world and told the moon goddess that she didn't want to come back to this horrible world? What if she saw what her sister and that tasteless Alpha did to her and decided she was better off dead?"

I swallow hard, my heart aching as I think of what would have happened if she truly did give up. If she decided her one attempt at life was over and that she didn't see any need to return to this world. I wouldn't have her now, I wouldn't be expecting pups, I wouldn't be the Alpha I am today if it wasn't for her.

"She fought to live, just like my mate," Olivera breathes, speaking under his breath.

"Alyson has mentioned her before," I mutter.

Olivera looks discant. "Yes, well, someone should. I try not to speak of her anymore." He stands, pacing to the back wall, his wounded forehead still bloody and causing him frustration. "I lost my mate to that damn virus. I lost my mate to something she couldn't fight but if she could have, she would have. That's who Beth was."

"It's hard to think of losing Alyson," I groan, the words so surreal. "I won't lose her."

"And what if you do?" he snarls. "What if you still lose your mate, after you were headed straight to a perfect life of love and pups and an endless future together? Then what do you do? You go after the ones who took her from you, who wouldn't even let you see her when she was dying of that damn virus… I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE WITH HER!"

My pulse spikes, same as his.

Mine is fueled by shock, while his bleeds with agony.

"Alyson is strong, she can hold on until I get there," I say, mostly to myself, staring outward at the flooding downpour. I glance over my shoulder, the rogue crumbling under his own despair. "You have done right by your mate, don't you think?"

He shakes his head, doubled over on the floor of this pathetic, humid cave. "I have done nothing worth forgiveness for not being by her side. She needed me and she couldn't fight; she fought for so long, too. She fought to be with me, so much so that I was the one who decided we should be rogues, that we were better off without a pack, and when she got sick, I allowed her to leave our home and be taken—"

"The elders would have helped her if they had a working cure at the time," I say, sure.

"Whether she lived or died by the illness is nothing of use to me. I can't speculate on the unknown. All I know now is that she needed me to be by her side while she suffered. While she fought. I can't take that back." He turns quick, staring me down intensely. "That's why we have to get you to your mate. She needs you right now."

I glance to the river, the path home on the other side of that raging, angry rapids.

"I am no use to my mate if I die trying to jump that river," I remind us.

Olivera pushes beside me, eyeing the river that is far too wide for either of us to simply jump over, and the run to go around it's treacherous tumbling's would take longer than the storm to ride off away from this land.

"You have to be with her," he says, nodding firm.

I shake my head but there's no denying that if I need her this desperately, I cannot imagine how terribly she needs me. Olivera presses a hand to my shoulder, giving me a lasting, brave look before he shifts and I follow soon after. I eye the creek, seeing it flow so quickly that one wrong step and I'm plunged under the water's edge, held there until to my death.

Olivera snarls, sparking me to run. I do so, furiously lunging toward the rapids, every fiber of my wolf daring to fight, needing to see my mate, and as I jump outward and stretch toward the opposite of the creek, I can only see my mate.

My front paws hit the grassy path, my claws digging into the ground and prying me upright, slowly failing as I try to lift myself up. I'm shocked though, Olivera's daring wolf leaping just a few inches away from me, his claws stuck to the side of the edge as well.

He lifts his shoulder, pressing my back paw into his back, lifting me up just enough so that I climb the rest of the way to the surface. I turn, reaching out to grab for the rogue Alpha but when I do, I see a detrimental sight.

There's no wolf, no rogue Alpha, and no sign of him anywhere in the rushing creek.

You have to be there for your mate.

His last words wound me, the rain drenching me, and the will to be with my mate unwaveringly clear. I run like I've never run, dodging lightning, hell and exhaustion to be there for the one wolf who never stopped fighting to be with me.