Revenge of the Luna Queen

Chapter 28

Aislinn was standing before the bank of windows, the sun was just beginning to break over the treetops. It was late in the day, they had been up all night discussing the ramifications of everything that she had discovered and that Alpha Rainer had revealed, but it still felt like dawn. She stared at the explosion of golds, reds and oranges that were lighting the sky aflame and silhouetting the towering mountains and sprawling forests below. The tundra illuminating like a river of flame as the warmth of summer gave one finally breathtaking display.

She felt him enter the room, even without her wolf, her body and soul so aware of him, so connected that she thought she would be able to sense him no matter what. She felt the throbbing darkness in her chest when her wolf didn't stir at his appearance. The aching emptiness threatening to pull her under. She felt it growing, the despair and emptiness. She didn't think she'd survive without her wolf much longer, she wasn't whole and more and more bits were falling away, leaving nothing behind.

"Will you ever forgive me?" His voice was strained but soft.

She didn't turn, her arms remaining wrapped around herself, an attempt to hold herself together a little longer. To hold off the creeping blackness a little more.

"Please my love, will you not even look at me?"

She closed her eyes, her breath leaving her heavily.

"You are mine Aislinn. You are mine and you can hate me, and you can ignore me, but that doesn't change that you are mine." Kaiden growled stepping closer to her. His voice determined, as he stared at her stiff back. He hated the silence. It wasn't like before, it wasn't like when he had first found her and she didn't speak but he could feel her. Could feel the life and connection that had hummed between them. Could sense the women he would come to love more than his own existence, alive and dwelling just under her icy-demeanor. No now, he felt nothing, sensed nothing from her. She was a stranger that he could not reach. The bond was silent, her presence nothing but a shadow of what it once had been.

His heart-leaped as she slowly turned. Her eyes were hollow and dead. Her face sunken and shallow, Kaiden's breath hitched as he stared at her. His mate that had been so alive, so full of fire and passion, spun of ice and steel, now an empty husk standing before him.

"I am not yours." She said.

Kaiden growled, his hands lifting to reach for her. Flinching as she stepped away from his touch. "You are mine mate!"

Stepping back again from him, she shook her head at his words. He watched as her hand reached for the collar of her shirt. His wolf pacing anxiously in his mind as he watched in confusion as she slowly peeled the thin black material to expose her shoulder. His eyes narrowed at the deep bruises and cuts that still adorned her, his wolf growling dangerously in his mind at those that would dare to harm HIS mate.

Then as if a bucket of ice had been poured over him, he realized what he was seeing. What he was looking at. Her shoulder, exposed to his eyes - and bare.

Bare of the mark that should have been displayed so proudly and explicitly claiming her as his.

It was gone.

Her shoulder was bare.

His horrified eyes rose to meet hers. The pain and grief he saw was staggering.

"You see?" She asked tiredly. "I am not yours."

"How?" He asked weakly his gaze going over and over to the spot where he had sunken his teeth, where he had claimed her, to the now empty and unblemished skin that was mockingly staring back at him.

"Does it matter?" She asked. Her hand falling back to hold herself, letting go of the material and releasing it to once more cover her shoulder. "Ciera knows, as does Richard, you'll need to inform the others." She said, turning back to look out the window. The world was so still. So beautiful. Looking out she could almost believe it was a place of hope and love. A place where she might be happy.