Chapter Forty-Nine #2
“Amy!” both of them called as they realized, and I dropped to my knees.
Blood poured from my shoulder and my hip where they bit.
Nix circled. “You are so fricken stupid.” She licked the wound at my shoulder, the one higher up where she got me.
The blood slowed and Megan stepped up, cleaning the wound on my hip.
“I’m sorry I didn’t notice you jumped in.” Megan went back to cleaning the wound.
“Don’t apologize.” Nix hissed. “She knows better than to jump between two fighting wolves.”
The venom in her voice was thick. I pushed her away and stared at her.
“And you should know better than to attack Megan when she was just telling me the truth.” I watched her recoil a bit.
The anger in her eyes surged, and she gave a half-hearted growl.
I just stared at her. “You can be angry at me. I don’t mind.
You were right. But I expect you to also recognize your own shortcomings.
Including the blind spot you have for Erubus.
You can be angry at me, at yourself, even at Megan for being able to not act like a jackass like we were.
But you’re not allowed to attack her for voicing her opinion.
That isn’t allowed. Not only because you’re bigger, but because you are her Alpha, and she did nothing wrong.
Are we just like Vince now? Throwing our position and power around for no reason other than we can? ”
She sat back on her haunches. “You’re mad.”
Megan sat next to me and I stroked her fur. I shook my head. “I’m not mad. I’m disappointed.”
She fell back and looked at me with hurt in her eyes. “Disappointed…in me.”
I shook my head again. “I’m disappointed in us.
” I struggled to my feet. “We are supposed to be one unit. Working together for a goal. But these past few months we have all been working separately. I was trying to train, go to class, learning how to hack, while you two were off fighting magic you couldn’t handle alone.
And then we were forced into a heat, and instead of working together, we separated once again.
Megan was forced to handle the two of us.
She was the only one that kept her head.
” I turned to her. “Wait…how did you keep your head?”
“Because…I’m the only one of us that actually went through a full heat before. It gets easier the more you have.”
I tilted my head. “I never had a heat in my last life.”Megan laid down, and Nix inched closer. “Actually, you did.” I looked over at Nix, who was staring down at Megan. “In our last life, I agreed to mate Brandon, but he wasn’t my mate.”
“I know.”
She looked away. “No, what I’m saying is because he wasn’t my mate, he never pushed me into a heat. But Megan here, she did go through them.”
“Them?”
But Nix pushed on. “But because you didn’t know Megan even existed, you were kept separate.
Her soul never directly touched yours. So during your last life, when you never went into heat and Brandon was upset—saying you were defective like Shannon said—that wasn’t true at all.
It’s just… Megan went deep into the forest to suffer alone while I enforced the separation. ”
“Why?” I turned to Megan. “You didn’t need to suffer alone.”
“I did.” Megan looked up at me with eyes filled with tears. “A human isn’t meant to go through a heat. You can overheat, and that can hurt your organs.”
“But I’m a werewolf.” She shook her head and looked at Nix.
“Our last life, you never shifted. Your body was strong, but not werewolf strong. We leant you our strength, but your body was actually still very fragile. You just never noticed the difference because you were never in an actual fight.”
“So you couldn’t share the heat with me because you were afraid I was going to die?” The two nodded. I dropped down next to her. “I am so sorry you had to go through a heat without me.” Nix snorted and Megan met my eyes and then looked away.
“One?” Nix chuckled. “No, Amy.”
I looked at her and then back at Megan. “If it wasn’t once, how many was it?” She just shook her head. “How many Megan?”
“Please.”
“Megan! Tell me.”
She looked at me with a sad face. “Seventy two before we finally fell pregnant.”
Seventy-two. The floor fell out from under my feet. “How could you face that alone for seventy-two times?”
She sighed. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” I was grasping at straws. “That’s like…”
“Once a month from your eighteenth birthday, when you met Brandon, until we became pregnant. It would have been more, but we made our pup on your birthday. So that year I only had the one.” She answered softly. “We were almost twenty-five when we died.”
The truth hit me like a punch in the gut. She survived so many times, all alone in the forest. “I am so, so sorry.”
She took a deep breath and stood. “They get easier. And I had my mates touch to temper the burn. You both just went through you first without any help other than me. I took the heat, so you had those few breaks to collect yourself.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “You are the strongest wolf I have ever met.”
She laughed. “You’re only saying that because I’m your wolf.”
“No.” Nix came over and sat next to her. “She is right. You are strong, stronger than the both of us. You spent six years dealing with this, and we both failed our first time.”
I scoffed. “We didn’t fail Nix. And I think that is where your anger is coming from.
You’re acting like this is something to win or lose at.
And pining for a male is losing to you. We were poisoned.
We didn’t have a mate to help us through it.
And all we had was the males we like to focus on.
We did better than anyone could expect.”
Nix watched me for a minute before she sighed. “You’re right.” She laid her head down. “I was so focused on you begging Rowan, and ashamed of how I was howling for Erubus that I was…” she trailed off.
“You were ashamed of both of us.” She nodded.
“But I took it out on you. And that isn’t fair.” She sighed again. “Megan is right. I was projecting my anger onto you. And you didn’t deserve it.” She stood and shook her fur out. “The heat took so much out of me, I felt so weak, and honestly that scared me.”
Megan licked Nix’s paw. “You are the Alpha. And vulnerability can be hard. But we are supposed to work together, we balance each other. When you fall short, I can step up. When I fall short, you do. When we both fall short, Amy has us.” I nodded.
“I know.” Nix paced a little, then she turned to me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you pathetic.”
I winced. “It’s okay. I understand.”
“No. It really isn’t. You like Rowan, and I know how much you would love for him to be your mate.
I like Erubus just as much.” She dropped her head a little.
“But after this heat, I think the best thing for the both of us is to distance ourselves from both of them. Instead of looking for him, I should just focus on running with the girls. I think we could learn a lot from running as a small pack in the woods. And you, I think we should focus solely on hacking.”
Megan nodded. “I actually agree with Nix. We are putting ourselves in harm’s way the longer we drag this out.
Look at this last week. We let our guard down and Brandon forced a heat.
If we were alone, we would be mated to that scumbag.
” She snarled. “So distancing ourselves from the very nice, but extremely distracting men until we have figured out who is trying to kill everyone might be the way to go?”
I threw my head back and laughed. She said it so seriously. “Fine.” I nodded. “But I have conditions.”
My two wolves tilted their heads to me. “And…”
I just smirked. “We need to work together. And I know we have already agreed to this, but look at today, we went right back to pointing fingers and blaming each other.” They both sighed and nodded.
“I actually think that we need to get back to meditating.” Megan nodded towards my planter.
“Why?”
“Because since we stopped, your plant stopped growing as fast, and I think when we spent so much time together looking for your power, we were closer. We spent more than a passing minute in each other’s presence.
Talking to each other is great, but spending time together, having our souls bond and connect with each other and our power.
It did more for us. I felt stronger than. ”
I looked to Nix, and I saw her debating it. “What do you think?”
She looked back to the planter, and then to Megan. “She’s right.” She got up and walked over to the plant. “It stopped growing.” She looked at me. “I think we should listen to our Gamma. She is smarter than both of us.”
Megan looked proud, and I smiled. “Then we do it. Every day we will spend an hour together here.”
The bathroom door flew open. “I smelled blood.” The curtain flew back. “Why aren’t you healing?”