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REINER
This wasn’t my first time watching someone’s memories: still, I felt a little wobbly as I landed
in Becky’s mind.
–
I was in our bedroom, back at the pack house and low laughter and moans were coming
from the bed.
I remember this, as I saw Becky and me (did I really look like that?) kissing and cuddling.
A lump grew in my throat – f**k, I missed that. I missed the intimacy, both physical and
emotional, of those moments.
After a while, though, we separated – I saw myself getting dressed while she got ready, and in the meantime, we made plans for lunch.
We needed some time just for ourselves, I’d thought back then, just before asking her out. I saw myself walking into the bathroom, kissing her on the cheek, and leaving.
Goddess, it was alienating to see myself from another set of eyes.
Suddenly, Becks rushed to the toilet, puking – and after she was better, I saw her taking a pregnancy test from the drawer, led by a strange pull.
Oh, Goddess.
A few minutes later, that test turned positive.
—
had I
It’s the twins, I realized, as tears of happiness and regret filled my eyes. Few minutes stayed with my mate just a few minutes more, we would have shared that beautiful moment, and everything would have changed. It’s them.
I felt all of Becky’s shock and uncertainty – I felt all of it as I saw her making her way to her car to go to my sister’s office, briefly stopped in her tracks by my mother…
And I cried with her at the very first picture of those two little brats.
We need to call Reiner!, Izzy exclaimed.
No!, Becks said. The two of them were the picture of happiness – my girl was holding her still–flat belly as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
And it was.
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It has to be special! I can’t tell him on the phone!
I followed her into the mall as she browsed through various baby items – already talking to the babies in her, asking them what should she get Dad to tell him they were on their way. In the end, her choice had fallen on two white onesies, decorated with a little wolf on the chest, and a couple of pacifiers.
He’s gonna be so happy, she whispered, cradling her belly. We’ve been waiting for you guys for
so long…
I watched her driving back home, excited for our date, for the surprise she was about to make
me…
And felt all of her confusion as she parked in front of our pack house, met with an eerie
silence.
I felt her searching for our packmates – feeling their fear, and then worrying whether
something had happened to me. I felt her trying to reach for me failing to do so.
—
It must be after Sheila told me all of that, I realized. She got me out of the house first.
f**k.
But… I didn’t feel her trying to reach for me. I’d never left the pack lands – I should have felt
her.
Strange.
Then my mother walked out of the house, with a grin on her face that was so unpleasant, so creepy, it made me physically sick.
Stunned and horrified, I watched, helpless, as Sheila blackmailed my mate with the same video she’d shown me telling Becky it was a deepfake she’d asked someone to make, and
that I’d believed it.
—
I saw her crying as she tried to change my mother’s mind, begging her to not do this to her, to me not to take away our children from me… but my mother had turned those words on her. Pushing her to sign the divorce papers to avoid hurting me more and forcing me to kick her out in front of everyone.
I wanted to vomit at every word that b***h spat at her- but especially when she put in my
mouth words I’d never said.
I don’t want to see that cheating slut ever again.
I closed my eyes.
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That was why Becky was holding back from touching me, from getting too close, despite the bond telling her to do the opposite – she thought I saw her as a slut and was afraid of giving me the wrong impression. I knew how her mind worked: if that was what she’d experienced, if that was what she’d been led to think about me, she probably thought I was being affectionate with her just to get into her bed.
Oh, no …
Becky put a hand on her stomach: the trail of her thoughts was obvious on her face.
Either he’ll think they’re not his, or he’ll take them away from me.
I saw the exact moment that fear kicked in. She had the very same look on her face that she’d
had when she’d seen me again at Madison Square Garden.
Sobbing, she signed the divorce papers with shaky hands… and all of a sudden, she was
again in my arms, crying.
I must have snapped out of her memory.
I didn’t bother to keep my tears at bay as I held her as close as I could. I physically needed to
feel her body against me, every curve and hollow I knew so well: I needed to feel she was truly
there with me, that she was real.
All of a sudden, through my tears and my sadness, I began to laugh.
REBECCA
Reiner was not well.
In fact, he was sincerely worrying me.
For at least five minutes – ever since he had left my mind and the memory I’d shared with him,
he’d been laughing and crying incessantly. I didn’t think it was possible – laughing, crying, and
sobbing at the same time.
I’d woken up in terror, and had spent an indefinite amount of time completely at the mercy of
my deepest and most terrible emotions, unable to completely snap out of them but since he
had laughed like that, I’d become incredibly lucid with worry.
“Reiner?” I tried to call him after a while, daring to brush his arm. “Are you okay?”
Another laugh – this one with a more … liberating hint.
…
Then, completely unexpectedly, he took my face in his hands and kissed me, pressing his lips,
stretched into a smile, to mine.
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It was so absurd, so sudden, and so quick, that I didn’t even have the time to properly register
what was happening – much less respond.
“Definitely, my love,” he smiled, panting. “Goddess… baby, I thought you had been raped.”
Did I think I was shocked before? I was much more so now.
“W–what?” I did. “But… why?”
Again, his lips landed on mine, rising almost immediately to the tip of my nose, then to my
forehead.
“Reiner, what the heck… not that I don’t appreciate it, really, but…”
Reiner’s arms tightened around me, taking my breath away and even the ability to speak. Then
he buried his face in the hollow of my shoulder, breathing deeply: his lips rested directly on the mark he had given me six years before, during our first night together – as well as our wedding
night.
Familiar sparks of arousal began to dance along my skin, starting from the mark – a
physiological reaction… but perhaps not quite appropriate in the present context.
Only at that point did I feel his mind approaching mine, trying to invite me in: it was a little
difficult for me to surrender to that invitation, because I was no longer used to it, but when I
did, I fell into a memory.
What I saw made my stomach clench with anger.
That cunt of Sheila had taken advantage of my absence to go to Reiner and tell him a bunch
of bullshit – telling him that I was the one who had left him, showing him fake but
unfortunately all too realistic evidence… including that damn video.
No, no, no …
I wanted nothing more than to be able to interfere with that memory – to unsheathe my claws
and rip that b***h’s throat out, and then to hug my heartbroken mate as tight as I could,
reassuring him that nothing was true…
“This is what I thought had happened,” Reiner whispered. “That you had just up and left and
never returned. Everything was gone… all your things, gone. There was just that note and the signed divorce papers. I was completely lost, and confused…”
…
This time it was my turn to start crying – from sadness, from anger, from frustration.
Sheila had pulled off quite a master plan, there was no doubt about it. She had separated us by making us believe that it was the other who had left first, working to destroy whatever love
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and trust there was between us, with deception and mystification.
“But then you reappeared,” Reiner continued. “And I couldn’t understand why… why you were
still you. I couldn’t find any sense in the way you were acting. I mean… someone who just leaves her mate doesn’t keep his favorite wine in the cell,” he chuckled, his face streaked with
tears. The more I tried to wipe them away, the more they came. “I began to wonder why, and
then I … I found the letter.”
“What?” I did, shocked. Was he talking about that letter, the one I’d written at the hotel?
Of course he is, I scolded myself. It’s not like you’ve written any other one.
And he had read it – my goodness, he had read that mess of scrambled emotions.
I felt a wave of embarrassment color my cheeks.
He shrugged. “Moses dropped it, Violet found it, and it ended up in my hand. It opened my
eyes, but… left me with even more doubts. It was clear you hadn’t left willingly, you were
talking about truth, about not fighting enough, you barely ever let me touch you, and with what
happened the other night… I thought someone had … forced you … and that my mother had
blackmailed you, to make you leave.”
My breath caught short: considering it all, it was logical that he had come to that conclusion.
And inevitably, a relieved giggle escaped me.
“No,” I sighed. “Thanks to the Goddess, nothing like that happened.”
“Thank the Goddess,” he whispered, and hugged me again, even tighter.
For a while, we both remained silent.
I couldn’t believe it: the cat was officially out of the bag.
Reiner had discovered the truth about what had happened four years earlier.
Not only that – Reiner believed me. And he had been deceived as well.
He’d never kicked me out – he had never thought of me as a w***e.
All the things that had tormented me, the lingering resentment towards him… had no reason
to exist.
Because he had never said anything or made any decision.
Goddess. All of this is completely insane.
It must have taken Sheila months, if not years, to put that plan together – to perfect every
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single detail, and to make sure that everything unfolded perfectly and smoothly at the right time. She could not have done it alone, even with Garrett’s help – certainly, several members of the pack had been at their side, and had plotted against us.
Suddenly, I felt a little light–headed.
Of course – the ongoing flu was not helping.
I felt his lips on my forehead again – this time, however, with a more clinical intent.
“It’s going up,” he said. In no time, he had pulled himself to his feet, with me still clinging to him like a koala, wrapped his arms around my waist, and started toward the kitchen.
I enjoyed every single f*****g second of that walk. I’d missed his touch too much – the affection, the love that oozed from every gesture, the gentle strength with which he held me. When he sat me down on the counter, I felt a little sad. Couldn’t he just keep me in his arms?
“Here you go,” he nodded, handing me a pill and a glass of water. I downed it all under his watchful gaze, as well as the cup of tea he prepared for me soon after: I wasn’t particularly thirsty, but I knew better than to tickle his clearly heightened protective Alpha instincts.
His hand didn’t leave my waist, not even for a second: if I, a normal she–wolf, felt the pressing need to have physical contact with him… I couldn’t even imagine how strong that need must be for him, an Alpha – and how hard it was for him to restrain himself from holding me close.
As soon as I finished my tea, he took the cup from my hands and put it in the sink. He had a dark look on his face – anger mixed with something else, which, however, as he was partially turned away, I could not identify.
“Reiner?” I murmured.
He immediately turned toward me: my body understood his mood, his real look, before my brain. I felt my lower abdomen warm and tense.
Hunger – that was hunger.
I only needed to brush his arm for him to pounce on me.
And this time, I was ready.
