HER Young Mate (Completed)

Part Eighty-Eight: Show Some Restraint

I watch over the others in silence, my eyes hard and focused, my arms crossed. "Pick it up!" I yell as Owen passed me on his fifth lap around the field.

"Yes Sir!" He shouts.

I keep my eyes focused on everyone as a whole, but I continuously look for Cora, make sure she's not pushing herself too hard, making sure she is safe. I watch Lavender take swings at the dummy Heather rushes her with. "Shorter swings Lavender, don't leave your sides unprotected!" I shout out, causing her face to get stern as she swung shorter and faster.

I've been keeping my distance and leading from afar this past week. A few days after I woke Cora insisted I lead the pack again, she's slowing down- because of the babies- and wants me to take over. I agreed, but my anger and worry are still proving to be an issue. Everything and anything that doesn't go with my wishes angers me. Every time someone shows weakness I seem to think the worse. I can't let Cora out of my sight for too long, I still can't sleep, and if any males even get close to Cora my wolf tears at the inside of my skull and claws for a way out- causing me to growl and snarl openly.

We are no longer welcomed in the gas station in town, because I growled at a human man for spilling slushie on Cora's shirt.

It was not a great car ride home.

I sigh and fold my fingers over the top of my head and let the weight of my arms press down on my skull and my tired brain, that I seem to have no relief from.

Not even in my dreams.

I keep dreaming of the face of the man who shot me.

They had found him dead down river some time after I was pulled from it, while I was still comatose. They told the cops he was a hunter and that he had accidentally shot me while we were hiking past the river, and he had went into it to save me. Since the rogues ran they had no reason to investigate with that many witnesses on our side. I don't know why he still worried me, though, when it's all said and done... He still haunted me. I felt no guilt for his death, though I had pulled him into the river with me, because he shot me- and he didn't die at my hands. He died of the same blunt force trauma that knocked me out as I hit boulders in the river.

Yet there he was.

He was in my nightmares, in my thoughts, as I raged out on others- and why?

It's as if he's haunting me.

I feel darkness creep in all the time now.

I smell the fire from my dreams when it creeps.

I smell the blood of my enemies.

I hear the cracking of tendons- the ones I pulled from Wade's throat.

I see the man who shot me again.

I hear the loud bang and then the smack of the rivers surface as it hits my face.

I growl as I try to clear my thoughts again.

I shake my head and cover my ears.

I try to will the color red from my mind.

"Danny?" Cora says my name as she rushes towards me in her own panic.

I smell the flames.

The red bleeds through my eyelids and my vision speckles with checkered patterns, and flashes of the red color that haunts me.

"Danny?" She says my name again and I put my hand up, keep my eyes closed, try to think of something else, something other than the red, and the pain.

I see the image of my children on the ultrasound screen the other day; for the first time I see them each, as individual little bodies and minds, and I see the smile on Cora's face.