Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Vivian
Abite of pain in my pinky finger tries to stop me, but I won't. How are there so many fucking weeds in my garden already?!
They're sucking the life out of my beautiful flowers. Literally stealing the nutrients they need to grow and thrive. I've already lost petals and a few are beginning to droop.
How dare these little monsters come in and kill my beauty?!
Just like me. Is this what everyone sees when they look at me? My pack spent so long curating trust and connection by managing my issues, but now I'm being overrun by new ones.
PTSD. Avoidant/restrictive food disorder. Insomnia. Mood swings. Can't handle her.
I am this dying bed of flowers. Like them, the life is being sucked out of me and nobody's fast enough to keep the weeds away.
No wonder Silas tried to act like everything was okay this morning. Who would want to acknowledge that the mate they're bound to for life is falling apart? Nobody would choose to bind themselves to someone as broken as I am now.
It's unfair to them. They didn't sign up for this. Hell, I already felt like a burden before new demons descended on me.
Yank. Pull. Rip.
Over and over again, I dig my hands into the ground, grab the root system killing my flowers, and rip them from the ground. Again. Again. Yet each time I look up, there's still too many weeds to count.
"Get. Out." Grab. Pull. "Get. OUT!" YANK. RIP. I may not be able to fix myself or fight to thrive, but I can do it for the plants my mate was thoughtful enough to buy me. He wanted me to smile. He wanted me to be happy. I failed his one fucking ask.
With both hands wrist deep in the soil, I wrench the roots free. "GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!!!" A steel band wraps around my chest and lifts me off the ground. "NO!" I scream, throat on fire from the pitch in which I cry out.
My legs and arms flail, fighting off the thing keeping me from saving my flowers. I can't save myself, but I can save them. Two have already wilted and died. Failure. Failure. Failure.
As if I unlocked myself from the contraption keeping me from my one opportunity to do something right, I drop to the ground on my hands and knees, then scramble toward the only hope left in my life.
The weeds in my mind wind themselves around my throat.
You can't even fix yourself.
Everyone can see how broken you are.
You're a burden.
A failure.
"OMEGA! Open your eyes!"
Only my alpha's bark can snap the suffocating vine of self-hatred dragging me beneath the surface of reality. It should be a relief to open my eyes and have Kade demand lucidity.
It should be...
It's not.
Scattered around me in heaps of dirt and carnage, lie mutilated corpses of the flowers I wanted to protect. Not a weed in sight.
"NO. NO. NO. NO!!!"