Chapter 3 - Damian
Ten years is a long time.
I never thought I’d see her again. But Poppy Barnes is right here, in Fort Smit, in the Nightclaw Pack, where my brother is the alpha.
She’s right under my nose, and she’s probably been here this whole time.
How could I not have known about this?
At first, I thought I was imagining it—seeing her walking into the pack center and disappearing when I went inside. Lunch was served by the pack members wearing the same uniform she did when I caught a glimpse of her, but none of them were her.
I deduced that I was losing my mind, even when that pull kept tugging at my heart and inner wolf as if to alert me that what had been missing for a decade had returned.
But despite trying to ignore it, even after visiting Dorian and spending time with Damita, that incessant awareness remained humming beneath my flesh.
It was so intense that it forced me outside, and I followed an invisible breadcrumb trail that led me to an isolated cabin in the southern part of the village.
That’s when I saw her—the woman who disappeared from Valley Walker ten years ago.
I realize my eyes hadn’t deceived me after I’ve been standing here for the past two minutes, and she hasn’t disappeared again. She’s not the ghost that numbness stopped from haunting me.
She’s real.
Poppy Barnes is real, and she’s standing on the porch of a cabin in Nightclaw territory.
My jaw has been dropped for the past few seconds, and I can’t tell whether my heart is still beating or has stopped. The pulse feels unnatural, faintly moving like a wave flowing back and forth, and I have no idea why I’m feeling this way.
Connor, Dorian’s beta, is standing outside her porch, looking up at her when he suddenly places a hand on her arm resting on the rail, and this time, I’m sure my heart has stopped.
What the hell is happening to me?
A surge of anger and pure, red-hot jealousy consumes me, my inner wolf clawing at the insides of my skull, roaring to be let out.
To go forward and intercept anyone who dares to touch my—
My mate?
The realization is what prompts my heart to beat again, as if fate itself is responding to that question.
What’s worse is the suspicion, coupled with the mere fact that she hasn’t been in my arms for ten years.
Unable to watch her speaking to someone else, unable to bear the sound of her joyful laughter when someone else causes it, I turn my face away, dumbfounded.
The wound she left me with when she abandoned the pack opens up and swallows me into its dark abyss, until the only thing I can do is disappear back into the shadows from where I came when I was drawn to her.
My wolf takes over when my heart can’t bear it anymore, but this larger form doesn’t stop the pain from slipping into every fiber of my being.
That’s when I run. Craving fresh air. Craving distance. Craving anything that could stop this pain from choking me.
It can’t be.
It’s not possible that fate could be so cruel.
My fated mate?
There is no way.
She wouldn’t have left me all those years ago. I would have stopped at nothing to find her. I wouldn’t have given up my search after one month. That wasn’t long enough to pursue something written in my destiny.
How could I have been so blind? So stupid?
And how could she have left me?
I growl when I’m close to the edge of Nightclaw territory, somehow finding myself in the wilted part of the forest that had only been discovered this morning. I only stop myself from howling at the top of my wolf lungs because I don’t want to draw attention. I don’t want to cause a scene.
What am I going to do with this revelation, anyway? Confront my brother and ask him what my fated mate is doing in his pack? The pack he left his birthright in Valley Walker for?
How am I going to explain that because he walked out and left me to carry the weight of being the alpha there, I lost the most precious thing in my life? The woman I loved?
The woman who walked away because she didn’t even recognize me as her fated mate.
But neither did I.
I’d been so caught up in my responsibilities that I allowed her to slip through my fingers.
Ten fucking years.
I race ahead, cutting through the shriveled vegetation, wanting to go home, wanting to go back to the one place where I’m not reminded of the past. Where I’m able to be as numb as I have been for the last decade.
But as I run ahead, as I put more distance between myself and Fort Smit, the harder it becomes to keep going. An invisible force stops me, and actual, physical pain gnaws on my heart, my chest pulling tight until I can barely breathe anymore.
My paws halt in the dirt, and my wolf drops to the ground until I’m curled up in a fetal position that probably looks more pathetic from the outside.
I feel pathetic, an alpha wolf who cannot control his emotions. Can’t even make sense of them, or control the one emotion that overwhelms me.
Anger.
An anger so deep that it insists I go back where I saw her.
I have to see her again, and it’s that very thought that pulls me back to my cushioned paws, trudging into Fort Smit again.
Her cottage is shrouded in darkness and quiet as if she’s already asleep, but I can feel her.
In wolf form, I sense her heartbeat behind the walls, and like a predator circling its prey, I walk around the small wooden building and stop at the bottom of the porch.
Lowering my head, I inhale deeply through my sharp, pointed nose, letting her scent fill my airways like an answer to a prayer.
I shift into human form, clenching my fists at my sides and opening my eyes with determination fueling every step I take toward her front door. I lift one hand to knock, but then decide against it when my inner wolf reminds me that I don’t have to ask for permission.
Not when Poppy Barnes is my fated mate.
She is mine.
That’s why I turn the handle and step inside the darkened room, the sweet scent of her appealing to my wolf, to its rightful claim that she is my fated mate.
A growl rumbles deep in my chest, filled with anger, with a territorial claim unlike anything I’ve felt before. Not even taking the position of alpha in the Valley Walker Pack made me feel like this, like it belonged to me.
A birthright I can’t escape from. I don’t want to escape from this. I know what I need to do.
I need to have her.
Marching through her cabin, every step I take fills my airways more intensely with her scent—a scent I’d known before, a scent I could pick out from a mile away, the scent of the woman I loved back then—and now, each trickle of that distinct fragrance dripping like honey through my veins only means one thing.
Mine.
It’s a primal declaration that surges through my being, setting fiery determination into my steps and in my resolve as I anticipate a confrontation with Poppy Barnes. I don’t care what she has to say, and I’m ready to make it known.
If she thought running away to my brother’s pack would keep me away,, she has another thing coming!
I push at her door, only to find a heap on the bed covered with a thick blanket. Advancing into the room, I round the bed, and I’m about to grab the blanket and yank it off her when I stop, my chest tightening.
She’s sound asleep, her golden blonde hair rippling across the satin pillow behind her.
Her face, one side cast in a soft, silvery glow from the moonlight filtering through the lace curtains, appears elegant.
Almost regal, as if her flesh is carved from ivory.
Darker, sharper brows tug as if she’s dreaming, or maybe she’s having a nightmare, because her nostrils flare.
How can such beauty cause so much destruction to one man?
How could she have caused me so much pain just by abandoning the pack? Abandoning me?
Because she’s your fated mate, my inner wolf replies, and there’s not much room for denial when the evidence is right in front of me and in the way I feel.
Even though she’s asleep, there’s an undeniable pull in my chest, my senses running in overdrive, hands clenched with the staggering need to touch her. Hold her. Claim her as mine.
The restraint is almost sickening. My inner wolf is on the verge of losing its mind with need, and no matter how much my mind tries to resist, my wolf wins in the end.
How can she not feel my presence?
How could she have been here this whole time without me knowing?
Unless…
Was she hiding from me?
The question plagues my mind, awakening a new sense of anger, a new purpose.
This is not about confrontation.
This is about taking what’s mine before it disappears again.
I won’t bear it a second time. And that’s why I have to do what needs to be done. I have to claim her as mine before she slips away again.
I’m walking out of her cabin with renewed purpose, prompted by my inner wolf’s insatiable, reckless need to claim Poppy as my mate. There’s only one thing left to do, and I find what I need to implement my plan in the Nightclaw Pack clinic.
There’s a part of me that knows this is foolish, but the animalistic part calls the shots now, driven by anger, by need. I grab a syringe and a vial of sedative that belongs to the pack healer, and return to Poppy’s cottage, where she’s still asleep.
Ten years of not having her by my side.
Ten years of pain diluted into numbness and passed off as duty.
Ten years of living without my fated mate.
This is a culmination of all that anger, that rage, and the possessiveness that comes with that realization. As I stick the needle into her arm and inject the sedative into her veins, I know that this is the right thing to do for my inner wolf, even if it might be irrational.
There’s nothing rational about this bond—a bond that has been empty for a decade.
It’s the only way I will ever know peace—if I claim my fated mate and keep her where she belongs.
In Cedar Valley, as my luna.