“Sometimes we don’t get to decide, sometimes I don’t get to choose. Sometimes, love kills them,” she said.
I still remember how sad she looked as those words slipped past her lips. And just as vividly as I remember the look on her face and the sadness lacing her words, I remember how that made me feel. Confused. Her words made little sense to me. My mother is the Moon Goddess, how could she lack the answers I sought?
“But you choose the bonds?” I had questioned her. I was confused as to what she meant when she was the one to pair the bonds.
“Yes, but some bonds choose each other. Those bonds can be toxic, those bonds I can’t control because fate had other plans for them,” she replied, brushing my hair back behind my ears and cupping my face in her hands. She then pressed her lips to my forehead, giving me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and appeared forced.
“Well, when I find my mate, he will love me, right, momma?” I asked her.
“Of course he will. Bonds are sacred, but sometimes mate bonds aren’t the strongest love of all.” Those words confused me even more. I thought mate bonds were above everything else.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my nine-year-old brain didn’t understand her words.
“Chosen bonds can love more fiercely than any mate bond Marabella, that is why choice is divine, that’s why it can change fate.”
I wonder now if that look was because she knew back then that I wouldn’t get my happy ending. It makes sense now. Her words, the look on her face, the sadness, it all makes sense.
However, despite her words to a naïve nine-year-old, I still believed a mate bond would bring me a friend and someone who would love me and me alone. I held onto that, for as long as possible, that out-of-reach dream until I hit high school. It was only then that I realized maybe my hopes were too high. Now, I know for sure they were.
Once I saw the fear on my pack’s faces, that image slowly died down. I no longer believed I would find a mate, no longer thought I’d find happiness or the fairytale ending I had pictured in my head. No one wanted me.
Sometimes I wondered if I was more of a burden to my family than the blessing they called us. Since when is death a blessing? We all know what I am, yet they act like it isn’t there. The darkness within me. That everything is fine. Everything… It’s not. Nothing is.
I’m not blessed, but cursed. Cursed to live in silence.
Why I hoped for a mate that would love me, want me, despite the flaws of my existence, is now incomprehensible. I realize I was naïve. Darkness doesn’t find happiness. And I am darkness, darkness incarnate, the grim reaper, the one everyone avoids to get too close to. Everyone is trying to avoid the touch of death.
So why wouldn’t my mate fear me like the plague I am?
I was naïve, but I didn’t think so back then. I thought my mate would want me, that mates had no limits, and that someone would accept me over everyone.
But he turned out to be another person who didn’t choose me in the end. Just another person, who can’t accept the monster I am as someone he could love. Ever.
Someone who has known me for years, and can’t stand me. My very existence repulses him. He hates me. No matter what Jonah says, I can see it. I can feel it.
Kora was hopeful and gave that hope back to me when she came along. She told me that all the years of suffering in silence would be worth it, that our mate would accept us, love us unconditionally, and we would feel different. View things differently.
Surprise, surprise, that, of course, isn’t our fate. No! Why would we ever count ourselves as lucky or special? I never should have even held out the sliver of hope I did. I was foolish!
She was right, in a sense. But she was also wrong about the feeling.
She claimed I would love the feeling, embrace it and hold onto it. Oh, what a lie. I don’t. I don’t like it, and I don’t want to feel it.
Kyan invokes a new feeling, an additional part of me that I’m not used to feeling. Being numb, I can handle, numb I am used to. But anger courses through me now, making me want to hurt him for killing that sliver of hope I hadn’t realized I was hanging onto like it was my lifeline. Instead, I want to hurt him, for wanting him, and hurt him for not wanting me.
Mom said once you recognize your mate, nothing compares to the love you feel for them. That it is blindingly strong. But to love and hate someone, she never told me that one. For years I remained silent, letting my life slip by, waiting for this moment to correct it, waiting without realizing I was waiting for something more.
Silent for so long, waiting for a mate to make me feel whole. Silently thinking that once they came, I would find myself. But now, I want to scream, and I realize my silence is in its own way, the loudest noise I have ever heard.
Screaming for connection, screaming for balance, screaming to be noticed. That is what silence is. Until eventually silence is mute, numb, and no longer caring but accepting of the fact you’ll never be seen. You’ll never be acknowledged. Silence is breaking and resolving the two go hand in hand.
My silence for years was golden, just letting myself slip away with my voice, then it turned deafening as I lost myself in the quiet and became submissive to my life.
I spent my life stumbling blindly into the abyss of myself, waiting for my mate to one day pull me out. No longer living, just accepting, settling for what was normal for me. Comfortably complacent in my misery, until he made my heart beat faster, awakening something I wanted. For once I wanted something, and the fates took that away too. The last piece of hope I had, and they destroyed it by giving me someone who didn’t want me. Someone who hates me more than I hate myself.
Kora whimpers in my head, wanting the feeling to leave, wanting the numbness back, and I hate Kyan for destroying her too. Destroying my wolf, the one person who keeps me going. What hope do I have if she is now broken, too? As broken as me.