Walking Away from Hope

SYN

My hand clutched at my chest as if the intense pressure would ease the aching there.

It was hard for me to breathe, though I wasn’t sure if that had to do with the fact that I was struggling between seeing past the red of my anger and holding back the sobs that wanted to escape.

Terrin had found himself a mate, but that wasn’t what destroyed me.

His declaration that he had found the perfect match meant nothing to me. Hell, I had ~expected~ him to use the excuse of a mate to get me to stop hounding him.

I had been fully prepared for the day he would announce it, ready for the day I’d have to strengthen my resolve and try twice as hard.

I had been prepared for him to parade her around and gloat, to kiss her and flirt with her in front of me like he did with all the others.

I had been prepared for his fake love and care for some female he liked enough to keep around for a little while. I had been prepared for his excuses and his cruel words.

What I hadn’t been prepared for was what I had heard.

I hadn’t been ready to hear him gush about some female with so much excitement and joy that he couldn’t stop talking.

I hadn’t been ready for him to want to introduce her to the pack, for him to care about how we viewed and accepted her.

I hadn’t been ready for him to ask for Cleo’s approval, to desperately want it. I hadn’t been ready for him to be…in love with someone other than me.

I was utterly destroyed because that was supposed to be me.

It was supposed to be me he gushed about and fawned over. It was supposed to be me he introduced to others as his mate. It was supposed to be me he wanted to share affection with, share a mating bond with.

It was supposed to be me he loved.

I collapsed against the wall, gasping through sobs as tears flooded my eyes and rolled down my cheeks uncontrollably.

It was supposed to be me.

My arms were quivering as much as my legs.

The cold stone of the wall was biting into my skin. I desperately wished that the cold would seep into me and make me numb to this pain that I felt in my head and my heart.

My legs failed me, and I slammed to my knees. I put a hand out to keep from smashing my skull open on the floor.

It was meant to be me.

My shoulders slumped in defeat, and my head bowed in surrender.

I turned my body so I was sitting on the floor, my back against the wall, my head tilted back toward the ceiling, my eyes closed. My shut lids did nothing to stop the stream of tears.

It had to be me.

Because I couldn’t stand him being in love with someone else.

Not when I loved him.

With a strangled gasp, I buried my face in my hands, my fingers digging harshly into my scalp, gripping tightly at the strands of my silver-gray hair.

I was hopelessly in love with my asshole of a mate, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

The worst part of it all was that I couldn’t even blame it on the bond, not when I knew deep in my soul that I had accomplished such a stupid, useless thing all on my own.

Trailing after Terrin for years—even if I had kept my distance for some of them—had allowed me to see everything I needed to fall irrationally, unprecedentedly, unavoidably in love with him.

We had hardly exchanged words beyond insults and pleadings, but I hadn’t needed Terrin to tell me about himself. He had shown me.

I had seen him at his best and his worst, his darkest and his brightest.

I knew his favorite thing to do was to sit someplace quiet and enjoy the sun without words or people to distract him.

He always seemed to find places that met all of his requirements no matter where he went. I had followed him countless times to these places. I would stand there and watch him as he sat with his eyes closed.

Those hazel eyes had beautifully accented the sandy blonde hair he used to have before it had faded to a dusty brown in the last few years.

His hazel eyes were beautiful all the same, the flecks of green and gold holding a maturity to them even if they were sometimes lit by a childish, defiant glint.

And I would always come so close to just walking over and lying down next to him, not to say anything but just to be by his side so he wasn’t alone.

But I never did, knowing this was a safe place for Terrin and the last thing he needed was a mate he didn’t want trying to worm their way into his life.

He hated when it stormed. No doubt the weather reminded him of the blizzard and avalanche that had killed his parents, leaving him alone.

He tried to hide the way he flinched every time thunder boomed or lightning flashed, but he couldn’t hide it from me. Just like he couldn’t hide his obsession with plants from me.

He had a plant in every room, on every table, and I knew it was because he missed the Forest Kingdom where he had grown up.

Now, living in the heart of the Old Kingdom, he didn’t get to experience nature outside his window, so he brought nature with him.

I knew the plant beside his bed was the most important to him.

He had made a trip back to the Forest Kingdom and had returned after a week with a little sprout, which he had raised into the healthy plant he doted on like one would a child or a pet.

He had even named the damn thing—“Sappy”—and had written the name on a little piece of wood in his horrible penmanship so everyone else would know its name too.

While those were some of the sparks of light in his life, he had dark spots too. Days when Cleo would forget about their lunches or traditions because she was helping Hakota run their massive combined kingdom.

Days when he couldn’t help but feel swallowed by loneliness and so would wander through the busiest streets to try and comfort himself.

I knew the first snow was always the hardest day for him, the white substance a reminder of why he had been alone for so long.

As for his tastes, I knew he enjoyed elk jerky and would buy it once a week for Cleo because it was some sort of tradition between them that the rest of us were unaware of.

I knew he hated vegetables even though he needed to eat them if he ever hoped to compete with the other lycans. I was proud of Twiggy for growing up and filling out.

I wasn’t as worried about him getting swept away in a windstorm anymore. Twiggy was hardly an appropriate nickname for him now, but I couldn’t bring myself to let it go yet.

It felt like the one special thing of Terrin that only I had. He had given everything else away.

I knew I had no right to get angry about it. I wasn’t one to judge—someone as used and dirty as me could never chastise another for sleeping around.

And maybe I always stopped short of truly fighting for him because I felt unworthy of him due to my past. The brothel I had been subjected to for decades and the patrons of that brothel had ruined me for my mate.

The dark reminder only had me crying harder, no longer caring if everyone in the castle could hear me. This pain wasn’t something I could conceal any longer.

The red haze that had been getting harder and harder to push away threatened to consume me entirely.

“You’re a right mess,” the last voice I had expected to hear cut through my wallowing.

My head snapped up. The blurry form of the object of all my woes and sorrows was standing above me, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his shoulders scrunched up to his ears in a sign of discomfort.

His eyes, though, couldn’t hold my own, and he averted his gaze, looking away in guilt. “Listen, Syn. I didn’t mean for you to hear any of that.”

I blinked, half expecting him to disappear.

Instead, he kept talking. “I guess I should know by now to watch my words considering you’re probably skulking around.” He laughed awkwardly and scratched at his head. When I said nothing, he sighed and dropped his hand.

“Look, Syn, you had to know this day was coming. I don’t know how I could have been clearer that you and I”—he gestured between us—“was never going to happen.”

I let out a broken laugh. “Yeah, well, it could have happened had you swallowed your pride and given me a chance.”

“Oh, come on, Syn. Why doesn’t anybody get it? Trying with you would be a waste of time! I don’t feel attracted to you. Nothing would ever come of our relationship. I’m sorry that I’m a male, or that you’re a male, but—”

“Stop looking at me as a male, and start seeing me as a person, Terrin!”

I desperately wanted to leap to my feet, but I knew my legs weren’t up for that yet, so I settled on a frustrated glare, which I had to direct up instead of down like I often did.

“I don’t want you because you’re a guy. I want you because of who you are,” I said.

He snorted and rolled his eyes, muttering something along the lines of “Goddess, that was cheesy” before raising his voice and saying, “You don’t even know anything about me, Syn.”

And for some reason, these words infuriated me more than anything else.

How dare he think that I’d spent years chasing after him without an inkling of who he was? How dare he think that I wanted him solely for some stupid bond and not because I truly knew him and wanted him all the more because of it?

I slapped my hands on the floor, the sound echoing through the hall.

“You hate when Cleo lectures and chastises you. You feel like a child especially when she does it in front of us.

“But I know a part of you is grateful for it—thankful that she cares enough to pay attention to you and want to keep you safe.

“I know you hate being alone with Roshan the most out of all of us because of the way he stares at you but never says anything.

“I know you are envious of the relationship between the twins, the older ones and the pups, because you’ve always wanted a sibling and Cleo is the closest you’ve ever gotten.

“I know that no matter how many people you surround yourself with, you always feel the dark pit of loneliness in your gut.” Terrin’s eyes widened as I recited only a tiny fraction of what I knew about him.

“I could go on forever, Terrin, but honestly, I don’t think it would change your mind.”

Steadily rising to my feet, I leaned slightly against the wall, making it look intentional and relaxed, but in reality, the wall was the only thing keeping me upright.

“You may have never bothered to learn a damn thing about me, but don’t you ever dare accuse me of not paying attention to you.”

“Syn, I—”

“Why did you come here, Terrin?” I demanded, so tired of this game we played.

The back-and-forth retorts and insults were getting old, and I was done. “If you came here to repeat what you said in that room, don’t bother. I got it, okay? You don’t have to worry about me anymore. I’ll stop.”

“Why?” Terrin narrowed his eyes suspiciously at me.

“Because while I had no problem chasing after you before, things have changed.

“I will not subject myself to that anymore in hope that one day you might give in when I know now for certain that you won’t.” Exhaling heavily, I pushed off the wall and started walking away. It hurt to look at him.

“I don’t want to be a scapegoat for regret and excuses again. I am tired of being in the middle of relationships. Moreover, I am done with always being the ‘other person.’”

I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look back at the werewolf who had turned his back on me, on our potential for a love greater than anything imaginable.

“I want to be ‘the only person,’ but you’ve made it clear that I will not find that with you.”

“What changed?” Terrin prompted from behind me. “I’ve been telling you this for years, so why do you believe it now?”

I halted, turning my head slightly to the left, but not enough to see the male behind me, “You fell in love, Terrin.” I then turned my chin forward and proceeded to walk away.

Away from my mate and away from the werewolf I loved, completely abandoning hope for our future but holding on to the love that hurt me more than it healed me.