Page 4 of Meeting Her Mate
Despite my weakened state, I lifted my other hand and gently held her other cheek, my faculties still in disbelief at the occurrence of this binding—in here of all places, with her of all people, and now out of all the times.
A gentle wind blew around us as our bond strengthened. Silent leaves slithered to life and sang a symphony of nature, serenading the cementation of our link. Moonlight fought past the darkness and sought our forms, lighting our bodies in a celestial glow.
And then, that fantastical moment was over. The forest went back to being a quiet forest, devoid of light and air. The charge I could feel upon touching her skin quickly simmered down, leaving only the soft sensation of her warm cheeks under my coarse hands.
“Holy shit,” she exclaimed. “What just happened?”
“Does it need to be any clearer than it is? My Ariana, at long last, we have bonded as we had always desired. I am your fated mate, and you are mine,” I gasped, unable to believe the very words that were coming out of my mouth.
“You keep calling me Ariana. I hate to break it to you, but I’m not Ariana. She died like fifty years ago,” she said, stepping away from me as if I was some sort of deranged madman.
I groaned in despair as my knees buckled, and I collapsed on the floor. My hands dug into my hair and tugged of their own volition, deriving pain all over my skull. Ariana? Dead? Dead for fifty years? A gut-wrenching moan escaped my lips, quaking through the entire forest. Tears followed soon after, hot billowing tears clouding my vision.
“If…” I stuttered. “If…if Ariana is dead…” I couldn’t even believe that it was true, even as the sentence left my mouth. How could it have been fifty years since she had died? How could I have been gone for so long? “If Ariana is dead, who is it that I have bonded my soul to?”
“I’m Alexis. Ariana was my grandmother.”
During my time in captivity, I had syringes that were thicker than my index finger pierced through my body. I had scalding irons clapped to my back in an effort to make me shift into a wolf. Liquids that burned like molten lava poured down my throat while I was chained in barbed wire that tore deep into my skin. My captor would prod me with an electric stick that would send jolts of volts burning through my system. When feeling especially frenzied, he would tear off a chunk of skin just for sport, leaving me thrashing in agonizing pain as I bled in my cage.
None of that hurt as much as hearing her say that Ariana had been dead for half a century did. My legs were the first to give away. Upon collapsing on the floor, I could feel consciousness leave my body like the last tendrils of night, fleeing the sky at dawn.
The girl knelt beside me as weakness took hold of my body. Darkness perforated my vision till it was all I could see any more.
“Who are you?” the girl inquired as she tugged my frail body. “Where did you come from? Why did you save me? Hello?”
The barrage of questions triggered my incredulity further. Yet, before blacking out, I managed to whisper, “Wilhelm.”
And then, I knew no more.
The sweet nothingness of unconsciousness was a welcome refuge from all the madness that I had gone through. This would be my respite from the pain, the agony, and the saddening news that, somehow, the woman that I had cared for had died long ago.
A sharp pain permeating through my chest brought me crudely back to awareness. With a sharp breath that served more to ache than rejuvenate, I opened my eyes to the strange sight of the girl bending over me, her hands pumping rapidly on my rib cage.
“Stop it, damn you! You’re going to break my bones!” I groaned.
“Listen up. The odds are stacked against us. You’re in no shape to be alive, and I’ve got a bad foot that’s making it impossible for me to walk. We’re going to have to work together if we’re gonna get out of this forest,” the girl said in rapid bursts of jumbled-up words. It was as if her syllables were crashing into each other.
“Leave me be. There’s nothing left to live for,” I said, misery taking hold of me. I closed my eyes and sighed dejectedly, feeling each muscle strain as I lay there limply.
“What are you talking about, man?” she asked. With my eyes closed, I could swear that it was Ariana speaking to me. This only worsened my melancholy. “You’re frail like a
skeleton. Don’t you want to go back to the commune? Where they can take care of you?”
“Who’s going to take care of me? Who? You say that Ariana has died not one or two but fifty years ago. It should make sense that everyone I knew should be dead as well.”
I could feel her hands closing around mine. She squeezed my hand in her gentle grip and tugged at me, beckoning me to open my eyes.
“Look, you say your name’s Wilhelm, right? As in Will Grimm, the pilgrim? The pioneer pack alpha who traveled with the Grimms from Germany to America during the Second World War? I’ve seen the old-timey pictures, those black-and-white shots of you, my grandma, and the elders. You’re Will. And somehow, you’re still alive. Still young as the day you were when you disappeared around seventy years ago or so,” she said softly. Her words only confirmed my worst suspicions.
“You say that I’ve been gone for seventy years? It only seemed like a few weeks to me in that godforsaken cell,” I said.
“Cell? You were captured?”
“Aye. I was. By a most malevolent occultist who went by the name of Edward Beckett. He is the devil incarnate. Or, at least, was. Until I killed him and freed myself,” I said. It all started coming back to me slowly. The cloud of daze began lifting from my memory, recalling horrible torture.
“My point is, Will. You’re somehow alive and in one piece. It’s almost like a miracle. Would you like to give up now? After all you’ve been through? That doesn’t seem fitting for the bravest wolf of our pack,” she said.
“Is that what they say about me?” I chuckled. “That I was the bravest?”