Tiger's Mate

Chapter 45

This chapter is garbage writing. I am truly sorry. But my head is so tried, all the time, from doing nothing really - I don't know how to explain depression - and I am very sorry. I'm trying. I really am, as hard as I can. External circumstances have just been very hard lately. But I will be back! Count on it! You guys don't know how much a few kind words a day actually changes so much for me.

•Katski•

I'm really sorry.

I heard it all.

Everything.

Sage and Maia had been surprisingly easy to sneak away from and Ethan hadn't been hard to track — all the way here. Even if my wounds had not completely healed yet, even with sped up healing, I was able to run, just wanting to get to my mate before he did something regrettably stupid. So I thought.

I had made it just in time to hear the end tail of their conversation. It was enough.

'His very presence put our pack in danger...'

'Is it really worth it? Giving up your life...'

That was when it hit me. His life...This was Ethan's life. His home. His family.

Staying with me...it would all fall apart for him. For a single rogue. All that for just me wasn't right.

Everything that was happening...it was all my fault — just like it was my fault someone that mattered so much to me stood to lose everything he had because I was here. It wasn't fair.

Goddess, it wasn't fair.

He would be outcast from his pack, maybe from this town. He would be forced to leave everything he grew up with—

And I knew that feeling.

The last thing I wanted was that for him. He thought he hide it well, but I knew he lived his family, his packmates, his friends, his home. He shouldn't have to lose all that for...for me.

The understanding came to me like the weight of a stinking stone in a cavern of water; slowly and heavily until it came to rest at the bottom that was the pit of my chest.

I was going to run away. Again.

To save what I cared about.

In the most basic of terms...it sucked. Everything about it, it just sucked.

I was just beginning to think everything would be ok after I had left clan, alone for the first time. I was beginning to like it here too. I found friends here — I thought of Cana and how I wouldn't be able to tell her goodbye, and that added another stone to the growing pit in my stomach.

This town may have been full of werewolves, which had come as a shock, but as it turned out, coming to this town was the reason I found my soulmate. He became my everything, he was there, he understood me, I understood him. We accepted one another with all of our strengths and weaknesses, our desires and our flaws.

I loved him.

Of course I still did.

Which is probably why it hurt so fucking much to do this to him. I couldn't even say goodbye, because I knew I he knew my plan to leave, he'd never let me go. And I would be the reason he lost what he cared about.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

A tear slipped free from my eye — before I sniffed and hastily wiped it away with my sleeve. This was my own doing, I shouldn't be crying about it.