Rogue

5: Unrequited Burdens

I never realized the weight of Alex's presence on my shoulders until I was free. It was like living my life underwater when really I should've been flying high in the sky the entire time.

My first few days of being Rogue was mainly spent in my wolf form, running freely and hunting and wrestling with Chris. I was doing all the things I never got to do because Alpha Elijah wanted to keep my abilities hidden.

And now that I think about it, that never made sense. Why should I have to stay hidden? What was so wrong with being different from everyone else? It wasn't like I was going to, or even could, challenge the authority of the Alpha. I could've began my training to become a Warrior, like my dad. I could've made friends. Alex..well...that started very early in my life so who knows what would've happened with him.

But it didn't matter. I was free. No one to stop me from freeing my wolf. No one to isolate me. No one to ignore me.

At first Chris didn't understand my behavior. He didn't know my history, so of course he wouldn't know that it was my first time feeling the wind blow through my fur as I ran full speed. My first hunt. My first kill. It was all new to me and I felt alive.

Chris however made significant effort to prove himself to me. He hadn't yet shared his story and why he had to go rogue, but he showed me the birthmark that proved he was a Goddess blessed Beta. I didn't know how to be an Alpha, so in many ways I was relying on him to kind of show me the ropes. It was just the two of us so things were fine, but I had plans.

I wanted my own pack.

A pack of rogue wolves that were shunned and mistreated by their pack, left with no other option but to run. A pack of wolves kicked from their homes for being imperfect. We would have our own pack name, a structure, and build our foundation.

But that was later. All I cared about now was enjoying my freedom and the taste of fresh meat off the bone.

Fate of course had different plans.

It started almost a month in. I couldn't run as far or as fast as I could before. And it seemed like I was growing hungrier by the day but I was throwing up every morning. At first I thought it was just a weird bout of homesickness. I was feeling a little depressed and, even though Chris was wonderful company, there was a Blake-shaped hole in my heart that would never be filled. For the last two years all I could think about, all of my hope, was my Mate. Finding out it was Blake, someone I grew up with and felt like I knew well enough, was bittersweet. Having to leave him hurt on a level Alex could never reach.

Sometimes I got randomly horny. Like aggressively so. It was all I could think about some days. I went from having relatively regular sex to getting zero. And I will admit– Chris and I messed around a few times.

I never really cared about settling down anywhere in particular. Unless it was raining, we just slept wherever. But one day I woke up and absolutely needed a safe place to settle down and make ours. Most rogues were loners but a few grouped up for safety and made some areas a part of their territory, so we headed farther and farther away from our original packs. I had no clue how far out we actually traveled, but one day I was hunting down a deer that led me right to a system of caves that absolutely screamed perfect. Well, it was perfect to me anyway. Chris thought I was crazy.

Most of our kind kept away from areas that certain types of predators liked to hang out around. We couldn't communicate with them and some, like bears, were too dangerous to fight. The place I found was a small connection of tunneled caves, which was like a bear magnet. But fortunately the stench of bear was quite faint, meaning there weren't any mother bears nearby that wouldn't take well to two wolves being in her nest.