Always With Me (Book 2)

[3]: Doubt

[Leilani's POV]

        It builds up like a tsunami, drawing up and up, until the crest forms.  Then at its peak, it breaks, and comes crashing down violently.  Destroying everything as it rapidly engulfs everything in its path.  That's how it feels, this anger that grows in me.  It's been building since I woke up. 

        I know that Damien is trying with me.  He has spent more time with me in the last month or so, than he has ever in his life before.  Even as children, he hadn't.  My wolf loved having her mate near.  I could feel her inside of me, prancing about.  Her strengthen growing each day.  Happiness blossoming within her.  But the woman, herself, wasn't so happy.

       Yes, I love Damien.  There is no denying how much I have loved him over the years.  What I had almost given up for him.  At first, the lasting bits of my depression were still all around me.  But as days passed by, it soon became a fading memory.  Now, it wasn't a miracle, and one day I woke up and it was gone.  I still had days where it would hit me for awhile, but it didn't consume like it had before.

        And with the clarity from the darkness that once fogged my mind, came the realization of what I had endured for years.  What I had allowed Damien to do to me.  I had been weak, because I had only ever thought there was one path for my life.  I hadn't even allowed myself anything else. That was it, and no where else to go.  But now, now my path was limitless. With everything I could be, and wanted for my life ahead of me.

        That's when the anger began to build, and build it did.  All the futures Damien had almost taken from me.  All the endless tears his actions had caused to run down my face.  All the the times of misery and pain that I had felt.  Day after day, as he continued on with his life.  Sleeping with that woman night after night, as I suffered it.  I nearly gave up my life for that woman.

        And my dear brother, he wasn't impervious from my anger either.  As much as I loved Alex, and as much as he had done for me and with me through the last two years, I still found myself angry at him as well.  I couldn't have been that good of an actress for him not to realize something was wrong.  If I was, then I would be deserving of an Emmy.  Unless you were a complete imbecile, you had to have known something was wrong.   But he had never really asked me what was wrong, never really cared to dig deeper into my pain.  Always chalking it up to me not meeting my mate.  Stupid man.

        There were times I truly wanted to hate Damien.  Times that I wanted that hatred and loathing to take root into my very soul.  But it wouldn't, because the love I felt for Damien was still there.  I am not sure now, why I love Damien as much as I do.  I question if our mate bond has the impact to make mates love one another.  Forcing you to submit to its will, as it the bond has tentacles that reach into each heart, binding them to one another.  Do I love him because I was forced to?  I had never really thought about it.  But I have the time, all the time in the world, to find out.

        Then there were the feelings of vengeance.  I sometimes wanted to inflict all the damage he had done to me.  And I know that it is not morally right to want that.  But it is like a dark passenger in my soul, wanting to reach out from its depths and share what it knows with him.  I want him to writhe in pain, clenching his teeth, sweat pouring off of him, as he feels the pain of his mate copulating with someone else.  Instead, he gets to walk around none the wiser. And I caught myself seething and growling at him sometimes.

        Then of course there were the times he would call me a pet name he used with her.  Or try and hold me in a way I had witnessed him hold her.  And I would find myself comparing myself to her, over and over.  These are the times the depression and darkness comes back to life.  I find myself constantly comparing myself to her.  Wondering if I measured up to her.  And although he had found out her true nature at the end, it wouldn't erase the five years of good, overnight.  I knew he must miss her, and still have a part of her heart in him.  I just knew it.  No one could just shut off all emotion for someone like that.  Could they?

        So many feelings I had never allowed myself to have.  I had lived so long with just pain and sadness, that these new ones I was experiencing were sometimes very overwhelming.  They bounced around in my head, and I felt them come and go in lightening speed.  It would annoy me, and then I would get annoyed because I was annoyed.  I felt completely cast adrift in this world, and I needed to find an anchor.  Could I depend on Damien to be that for me? 

        I know, all the feelings I have brewing and festering inside of me need to come out.  I can not let this bottle up inside of me.  I need to slowly release it out into the world.  I am afraid that if I don't, what I do with it, won't be pretty.  And I refuse to allow myself to be that type of person.  Ruled only by my anger.  I have never been that person in my life, and I will never be that person.  At least I hope, because if I do... Than what have I allowed this man to make me?