The Mate Inside Me

Chapter 8

Unedited. Could've gone better. Ugh, I hate this. I had too much workload and this just didn't end up the way I wanted it to.

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“You can’t transfer the crest to me now. You’ll die without the crest and if you die, so will I.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of a rash decision you’ve made in the heat of the moment?”

I was leaning over his casket. Blood was running down my chin, a few drops had already found their way down my neck as I breathed heavily while staring longingly at Erebus’ lifeless corpse.

“I couldn’t let you die.”

I said this under my breath as I gripped the edge of the table so tightly my knuckles turned white.

“Why couldn’t you? If I had been successful in transferring the crest to you before, I’d have died that day and you would have still been mateless. Why are you so averse to the idea now?”

He was right but he wasn’t looking at this scenario the way I was.

“Things would have been different then.”

“But the outcome would still be the same, Thea.”

His tone had turned impassive. The usual gentleness he held in his voice while talking to me was gone. He didn’t seem like a mentor or friend in that moment. He felt like an elder scolding a child, and I didn’t like that.

“No, it wouldn’t. Because then I would’ve never met you!”

My voice was followed by complete silence. It felt like I had said something that I wasn’t supposed to say out loud, but I couldn’t stop now. I needed to tell him how I felt. I needed him to understand.

"If I had the King’s Crest since the time of my birth, things would have been very different for us. I would have been raised to believe that I could never have a mate, but that’s not the case now. Is it? I don’t know if it’s unnatural or stupid but I can’t turn my nerves to steel in the span of three months for the sake of becoming a king. I just couldn’t let you die and continue living normally while deep down I would have always known that the base of my success was resting on top of your grave. My heart couldn’t handle that.”

By the end of it, my voice had turned into a small whisper. He, on the other hand, still remained silent.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

I said that while staring helplessly at his body, half hoping for it to spring back to life and answer me.

“Let me shift, Thea. There’s someone else in the house.”

I didn’t have much time to react to his statement because as soon as his reply resonated in my head, the familiar pain of my chest being torn wide open started coursing through my body.

The shifting process didn’t last long this time. My back crashed into the table on which Erebus’ body was resting as I fell back from the pressure while a large black wolf ripped itself out of my body.

“So you’ve marked him.”

I whipped my head to stare at the doorway created by the opening in the bookshelf. There was someone standing there. Erebus’ wolf had wasted no time in leaping in front of me in a defensive stance. He was hindering my vision but I didn’t have much difficulty in recognizing the silhouette standing before us.