Nikolai
I forced my eyes to stay open as I swayed on my feet.
My vision was blurry. My forearm was one fire-not the kind I was immune to. It felt like it was on fire. It burned like hellfire. My whole body hurt.
The unusually huge snake that I was fighting was relentless. It didn’t need oxygen to breathe and fire didn’t affect it. Simply put, I was left to fight it with my strength and wit. Both of which had taken a severe hit. It was venomous and I could feel the poison spreading through my body every second and the pain I was feeling along with it. I could barely think straight. Hell, I could barely see.
But a fucking snake wasn’t bring me down.
I am Nikolai Volkov.
And I need to get back to Ava. I need to beg for her forgiveness. I need to tell our children how much I love them. I need to go back to Jivan. I need to find a way. I need to do so many things.
The snake slowly started shifting into… a dark human-like figure. It was crouching and I could barely see anything properly.
No… it can’t be. Snake-humans don’t exist.
I rubbed my eyes. I was most probably hallucinating.
And then it rose to its feet. It’s yellow eyes glowed and his snake tongue hissed loudly in warning before it began running towards me.
I let out a growl, ready to fight it to death. His death, not mine of course.
I extended my claws and began shifting into my wolf but I phased halfway but my legs couldn’t hold me up and I fell down before shifting into my skin again.
I looked up.
I could see the hunger in its eyes. Hunger for my blood. For my life.
It was seconds away from me. It let out an ear-piercing hiss that kept ringing in my head.
The pain I was feeling in my body intensified. It hurt too fucking much. I could taste my own blood in my mouth. I had several wounds all over my body from fighting such weird creatures every day for so long. I was fighting death since a long time.
This was it, wasn’t it?
The big bad alpha wolf brought down by a snake. I wouldn’t be able to see Ava for a long time.
It let out another ear shattering hiss and then all I could see around me was light. A soothing gold coloured feathers.
“Dadda!”
My eyes snapped open and looked into the worried blue eyes of my daughter.
“Were you having a bad dream?” She asked biting down on her lip, reminding me of Ava.
I nodded. It was a nightmare. One that easily could’ve been my reality if Valerie and Fiyona hadn’t found and saved me.
She wrapped her arm around me in a hug, “don’t worry, Dadda, I’ll save you.”
“Thank you, Princess,” I whispered, taking a deep breath. I looked at the clock. It was three thirty am.
These nightmares had become a recurring thing for me. But it was the first time when I woke Tori up. They were usually silent or maybe she was just a heavy sleeper.
“I always tell Mama when I have a bad dream. She makes them go away. Do you want to go and tell Mama?” She asked, her voice sleepy but caring.
I smiled, “no, baby, she must be sleepi-actually, yes.” I had taken away a lot of Ava’s nightmares. It was about time she did the same. And it was my touch that reminded her of our love and crack her ice. It was about time I started melting her.
She smiled and automatically picked up her blanket and Wolfie- the same one I had given Ava on her date but Tori had fallen in love with it and couldn’t sleep without it. At least someone liked it.
As we walked to her bedroom, I began doubting whether or not this was a good idea.
Yesterday, I caught Valerie crying. She didn’t say much so I just sat there with her till she cried her heart out. When she was finally feeling better, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked me if she was a good mother.
I told her that she of course was. There was no doubt in it. And then she looked so heartbroken that she started crying again. She didn’t offer me any explanation but I had an inch that she had tried talking to Ava and it didn’t go well. I suggested her to go to the Fatum Dimension for a while and spend some quality time with her parents.
She agreed, gave me a hug, thanked me for everything before calling Fiyona who took her home.
The Ava I knew would never hurt her mother, she would never make her mother cry.
My Ava would also not make me doubt myself on a daily basis. She wouldn’t keep me at arm’s length all day and only talk to me when it was absolutely needed. She would not make excuses to distance herself from me. She would not tell me that she hated me every single day. She would not accuse me of stealing Tori away from her. She would not purposefully cosy up to some man and kiss him in front of me again and again just to make me jealous and miserable.
Remembering all of this wasn’t doing me any good. I needed to persist through the bad times and focus on the bigger picture. This hardship was temporary and the future was forever. What was love without a little hurt anyways? And Ava was worth it.