Almost Rejected | BXB

51 | Surprise

I cautiously looked over myself in the mirror, or at least I pretended to, truthfully I was just staring. Not really taking in the reflection that stared back at me as I stood deep in thought. For some reason getting up this morning seemed harder than ever, well actually not for some reason.. It's my birthday.

When I had imagined this day years ago, I had imagined the best day of my life. The day I turn eighteen, the day I'd finally be able to feel my mate. How I feel now is nowhere near how I thought I would feel, today.. doesn't feel all that special.

Maybe it's because I've already found my mate, and the hope of one day finding the other half of my soul and eventually growing old with them has been completely stripped away from me, Or maybe, it's because of her..

I forgot just how bad it felt to lose someone, how hard it was to move on, and how easy it was to be pushed right back to where I started. Right back in the middle of that burning house.. that bloody cabin.

When I woke up this morning it was like all the healing and all those sessions had been for nothing. I was right back where I started, but now there was even more guilt, guilt for believing I could move on, for selfishly trying to.

Today reminded me of that guilt, because the fact that she was really gone was once again becoming a reality, the reminder hitting me like a ton of bricks. This is my first birthday without my Oma.

I'm eighteen, if I hadn't ended up mated to an alpha, this would've been the start of a new chapter for me, the start of me searching for my soulmate.

Honestly, a part of me never thought she'd make it here anyway. She was getting worse. Savannah had stopped giving her medicine years ago, because it just wasn't helping anymore. We were all aware of that, we knew.

We knew that she was dying, hell she was the first one to say it out loud, and the first person to push us into accepting it. I tried, because I thought if I did, it would hurt less when the inevitable happens.

I thought I had come to terms with the thought but slowly, I think I had unknowingly started to convince myself it wouldn't happen.

She was getting better.

I know she was.

She couldn't walk well, and neither her hearing or sight seemed to be getting any better but... I could feel it, she was getting better. She would've made it. Maybe that's why the fact that she didn't l hurts so much, even now.

How do you prepare for something like this? No amount of prior warning could prepare me for this, for that gruesome scene I walked into... How do you move on from that?

I don't think you can move on from something like that. I don't think I can. Waking up in tears is only one of the many examples I can give that proves exactly that.

A part of me feels stupid for crying, for once again grieving someone I had just started to come to terms with losing.

But, it was all so fresh now that I was alone, in a room that isn't mine. And now that I'm not being woken up by her off-tune singing, or Savannah's even worse singing. I thought the reason I felt about the reminder was just because I was tired, but now that I'm full awake, I've realized it wasn't. All I feel for today is dread.

I dread the thought of going to school and pretending like everything's okay, pretending like today is just like any other day, and like the only family member I had left isn't currently missing one of the most important days of my life.

Goddess, this feeling... it's so much worse than I remember. It's so much more suffocating. I feel like I can't breathe, like I'm drowning in my very own pool of grief, and the more I try to swim up the further I seem to sink. It's unbearable, I can't—