Bleeding Heart

5

"Mother, how long until I can find my mate? I'm so blasted lonely. Even that idiot has found someone to be with. Why am I being punished?" Linda says to the moon as she wipes tears away impatiently.

Linda is pulled into a hug, "Kelton has found someone and you are lonely?" The goddess is hiding her feelings but Linda gets the feeling that her mother is less than pleased.

"Yeah, he keeps calling me by her name. I've told him over a dozen times that my name isn't Mai, but he won't listen and then he gets mad when I don't bother talking to him." Linda is less able to hide her feelings and her mother can hear her bitterness.

"Has he hurt you?" Linda thinks that she hears anxiousness in the words, but isn't sure.

"No, he's gotten angry but hasn't done anything other than clench his fists. Usually because Mai comes and distracts him from me."

Her mother looks at her closely, "Does that bother you at all?"

Linda snorts, "Hardly. I am jealous, but not of her with him. I'm jealous of the closeness between the two. It's like they are mates or something like that. It's how I've always wanted to be treated with a guy."

"I'm sorry, love. Soon I think, I'll be taking you to find your mate." Her mother pulls her close and gives her a hug. The other two vampires are oblivious to the presence of their goddess as they make out.

"Hey, Linda!" Kelton calls to her.

Linda stops short as her mind is flooded with images and memories. She falls to her knees as she's overwhelmed.

Kelton stops by her side and helps her to stand up. As soon as she can Linda jerks her arm out of his grasp, "Don't touch me you bastard."

Now it's Kelton's turn to have memories flood into his mind of what he is to Linda and what he did to her and her rejection of him. He turns white or at least as white as a vampire can turn.

"I knew there was a reason I didn't want to talk to you. I reject you, Kelton. Enjoy life with Mai. That's the one you want the one you've always wanted." Linda manages to stagger away.

Kelton tries to stop her, but fails as his hand comes into contact with an invisible wall. "I warned you, Kelton. This was your last chance. You made your choice. You and Mai are now mates." The goddess says and Kelton wants to howl in agony.

He can only watch as the goddess takes Linda away and leaves him behind. Even Mai coming up to him and holding his arm doesn't help the pain lessen any.

"I'm sorry, Linda. I had to give him another chance to redeem himself." Linda glares at her mother. 

"Explain to me how he merits another chance at making my life hell? Does not my happiness mean anything to you at all?" Linda demands, she's beyond hurt at this perceived betrayal of her mother.

"He needed a chance to redeem himself. I know you don't understand and I can't explain it to you. He truly is the best person to be your mate, if he could take his head out of his ass any way." Linda's mother grimaces at how well things have turned out for her daughter.

The way things are going she almost fears taking her to her secondary mate.

She hesitates, "Are you ready to go meet your mate?"

"I've been ready for more than two years. I'm still waiting for the promise you made to be kept." Linda's harsh words make her mother wince.

She takes them back to the town they had left when Kelton was given his second chance with Linda.

Linda is starting to feel sick. "Mother, please tell me one of the twins isn't my mate."

"Okay I won't. It's not one of them it's both of them." Her mother says much more hesitantly than she's ever been before. She has a sinking feeling this isn't going to go well.

"I reject them both." Linda says immediately.

"If you do that you will never be happy," her mother tries to get her to reconsider.

"Do you have any idea what they did to me while I was here as Kelton's mate?"

"No," her mother replies faintly. This is worse than she bargained for.

"They helped beat me. They kicked me. But it wasn't just physical abuse they gave me. It was sexual as well. I don't want to have anything to do with any of them: Kelton, Rick, or Seth. I'd rather be alone for the rest of eternity than have any of them even touch me." By now there are tears running freely down her face.

"If this is your idea of things being good and me being happy, do me a favor and kill me." Linda has never been more serious than now.

"I can't stand the thought of being with any of them ever." Linda looks at her mother with a look of betrayal and leaves.

"Now what can be done?" Her mother says softly to herself.

No vampire has ever had three chances at finding a mate, but not even she can fault Linda for rejecting them all. Even when she was supposedly Kelton's mate the twins should have felt protective of her since she was their mate and they ignored it. They hurt her just as much as Kelton did.

Linda doesn't know where she's going she just knows that she needs to get away. How could her mother betray her like this? Her promise means nothing, not if her answer is to give her to the twins. The very thought makes her nauseas. She's glad that she hadn't eaten yet that day or she'd be losing it now.

Now the very idea of eating makes her gag.

Finally too heartsick to run anymore she falls to the ground and just lets out all the pain she feels at her mother's betrayal. How could she do that? She knew that the twins were with them when Kelton abused her. Didn't she think that the twins would've partaken in the beatings?

"Sleep, Linda. I made a promise to you and I will keep it. The twins are no more worthy of you than Kelton. There is one last possibility. But he won't be easy, you will be his second mate. His first mate died."

"Those whose mates die aren't sane anymore." Linda says drowsily.

"He is, but he doesn't like to be around people. You will have a hard time convincing him that you should be with him."

Linda shakes her head slightly, fighting her sleep lethargy. "No, either he wants to be with me or he doesn't. I don't want anyone that I have to force to accept me or even my presence."