31

ELEANOR
My eyes widened in shock, jaw-dropping as the reality of the situation dawned on me. My torturer, the one that has brought nothing but pain and misery with himself from the very second he stepped into my life. The one I was ready to dedicate my whole life to ending was my mate. Everything suddenly felt too much, and I was staggering backwards as I had nothing to hold my weight coupled with the weight of the realization.
My back hit the wall, and I was now practically wheezing as I struggled to get air into my lungs. I continued to choke on nothing other than my own misery and the thought of what this could mean for me.
Everything came rushing in, the supposedly unexplained anger he felt when he found me with Easton, the anger that resulted in me being punished, his words back then, his insistence on me pretending to not know about something he was sure I knew of, his threat to my friends just to ensure I stayed and not run off with someone else. All that was because this cursed human was my mate.
“Breathe, Eleanor, breathe, human… just breathe,” I heard Alpine say through the mind link, but I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to, I was not able to. Everything, leading up to this point, Zane buying me for a supposedly huge amount, how I was able to keep getting away with being consciously rude to him, how he’d lost control and ordered for that guard to be beheaded for leaving a mark on me, the conversation he had with his supposed Luna where they called me ‘the one’, all those were conscious or unconscious decisions he took knowing he was my mate.
His words of how he would continue to break me until all I could feel was him, how he intended to imprint nothing other than himself on my body and my entire sorrow all came rushing in.
My legs finally gave way, and I crumbled to the floor, my whole body trembling at the thought of that I had Zane, that monster, for a mate.
It all felt like a nightmare, an all too real nightmare that I would give anything to wake up from, but it looked like my whole life was the nightmare and there was no running away from it. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like an immovable weight was sitting on my chest, growing larger with each passing moment until it breaks through the Earth’s core and takes me under with it. I began to scratch at my throat and chest, the inability to breathe began to catch up with me and now that I regained a little sense of consciousness, I felt the wetness on my cheeks whenever I brushed against it.
I had to leave. I needed to get out of here, away from this and away from him, but my legs were too weak to move, and my whole body did not seem to catch the memo either as I continued to heave and whimper on the floor.
I heard the horribly amplified sounds of footsteps drawing closer and on looking towards it, I found the object of my misery closing in on me and the first thing my terribly overstimulated brain supplies was a loud, terrified scream as I struggled to get away from him and that succeeded in stopping him in his tracks at first.
I was scared. For the first time in my life, I was absolutely petrified at the sight of him. I still couldn’t believe this was what fate had in store for me. I felt every ounce of resistance drain out of me as helplessness and hopelessness began to set in. The universe really does hate me, doesn’t it? What exactly could I have done to deserve this?
A lot was going on in my head at the moment, and his presence was not helping in the slightest. I was reminded of the reason I was here in the first place, how brutal and rough he gets whenever he forcefully has his way with me. How is it possible that he was my mate when he enjoyed seeing me in pain and miserable more than anything?
I continued to grasp and hit at my chest in an attempt to unclog my airways so I could finally breathe, but it seemed my body only took it as a signal to release more tears and just when my vision was starting to get blurry and I started to feel dizzy at the lack of air, giving me the mock feeling that I was going to be dead soon, -and I welcomed that thought so much, maybe everything would be better if I was dead, atleast I wouldn’t have to be constantly punished by whatever higher power there was-, I felt a harsh grip around my wrist.
On lifting my head to look at the source of interruption from the sweet relief of death, Zane’s face was there, all close up and staring intently at me. A pained, wet cry escaped my lips again as I was hit by a thousand emotions at the point where our hands met. I could feel everything, the tingling sensation, the pull of the bond trying to force me into crawling closer and just be buried in his scent, making me cry out in a weak form of protest.
Through my blurry eyes, I could see Zane’s confusion disappear, rapidly replaced by something more like him, something sinister, and I got my confirmation in the form of a loud laughter that bubbles out of his throat before he lets go of my hand and rises back on his feet. He claps his hands together a few times in amusement before walking away, and I hear the bathroom door shut seconds later.
My eyes fell shut, and I began to claw at the part of my skin that still continued to react to his touch. I didn’t care that my claws were now out and the skin was tearing and now oozing out blood. I wanted that sensation, the one that now felt like a million bugs on my skin, gone.
‘I hate him, I hate him. I’m not allowed to feel anything else for him. I hate him. He needs to die. I have to avenge my parents. I’m not allowed to feel. I hate him.’ I kept muttering to myself, my hands drawing my knees closer to my chest as I curled into myself, my breath growing ragged.
This was a dream. Nothing was real. It was all in my head. No way in hell would the Moon Goddess give Zane to me as my mate. It had to be a mistake or a huge prank by the universe.
This wasn’t making any sense to me. He is someone I would’ve given anything to see dead, but now I feel defeated without even trying. I felt powerless, and every plan I thought I had came crumbling down at the fact that we were mates. This was a cruel move by the Moon Goddess and the universe, a cruel one to torture me and make me go even more insane than I already was because I was close to loosing every bit of sanity I had left.
I yelp when I felt water suddenly hit me on the face and end up wetting most of my body and I quickly lifted my head to see Zane, looking down at me with a wide grin on his face. I couldn’t wait to rip that grin away from his face and leave him in a pool of his own blood.
“Hey. Are you calm now? Are you back to your senses?”
“Yes and you are better off dead than being my mate,” I responded, and in the blink of an eye, I sprang to my feet and my claws were buried deep in Zane’s chest. I kept clawing into his chest until I found the cold, pulseless organ that was in place of a heart and wasted no time in ripping it out of his chest, all while he had an agonized look on his face.
I squeezed his heart tightly in my hands until it became nothing but mush and threw it on the floor before stepping on it continuously. I had a satisfied smile on my face as I watched his body crumble to the floor, going cold.
I busted out laughing, and my revenge was complete. He is dead…. I was free, finally free.