Page 72 of Meeting Her Mate

Pain glowed like embers throughout my body. Where there was no pain, there was numbness. I opened my eyes to the sight of Alexis on the sofa beside my bed. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her forearms were covered with bandages. When she saw me wake up, Alexis came over to the bed.

“You’re finally awake,” she said. “Thank God.”

“How long was I out for?” My head throbbed loudly. All the lights felt too bright. When I lifted myself upright, I became nauseous. “What happened to me?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Alexis. I don’t feel so good,” I said weakly. After failing to get out of bed, I slunk back into the mattress, wondering why all my muscles felt sore. The last thing I remembered was getting in bed with Alexis, happy that we’d be sleeping in the same bed for the first time.

“Something terrible happened last night,” Alexis said. I looked at her inquisitively for an explanation.

“What happened to your arms?” I could see blotches of blood on the bandages she was wearing.

“Will, promise me you are not going to freak out when I tell you,” Alexis said, digging her nails into her palms.

“I promise,” I said. I was far too weak to protest or argue, not that I intended to.

Alexis slowly filled me in on what had happened last night, how I had lost control while sleeping and shifted into my wolf form. She told me how I slashed at her arms while she was still in bed and how I wrecked the house. As she described how she and Vincent found me in my feral form in the woods, I realized why my body hurt. I must have been thrashing and crashing in the trees in my maddened state. She explained how Vincent tranquilized me and how the pack members brought me back to the commune clinic.

“That’s not all,” she said. “Dr. Morris…he said…”

I did not need to hear what he had said to know what was wrong with me. But when Alexis told me what the doctor had said, it confirmed my suspicion.

“Death or madness, huh?” I asked. “Those are my only two options? Are you sure he didn’t slip in a third?”

“How can you be so casual about this?” Alexis glared at me. “Your life is in danger. Something that has never happened before happened last night! You raged and frenzied. You could have killed someone or worse. You could have died. Why aren’t you worried?”

I took a deep breath and slowly sat up in bed. This time nausea did not intervene as badly. Alexis handed me a glass of water once I was upright. The cool water on my parched lips felt like a blessing. Once I’d drunk it and was feeling relatively refreshed, I said, “I will answer the same as before. I have you. I would have been petrified had I been going through this alone. But you’re here with me, in this room, in my life, and I cannot ask for a better mate to share this with. Mates are for life. They share in the best and the worst. Presumably, this is the worst. But I am glad that you’re here with me, even if it means the end of me.”

“After all those long years of struggling, you’re fine with dying?” Alexis asked.

“I am tired. I’m not going to give up, and I’m not going to run away from this. You know that I am not a coward,” I said. “But long before the doctor told you any of that, I knew that the chemicals were working their way through my body, poisoning me, altering my DNA, and slowly killing me. I had my doubts, yes, but who wants to ponder over the likelihood of their death? In the brief time that I’ve had as a free man, I have enjoyed most of it. A lot of it is with you, in fact. If that’s all I get, then I’m happy with it,” I said.

“What about you and me writing new stories? Was that a lie? Did you already know you were going to die?” Alexis asked.

“That was not a lie. That was hope. I want that to be true. If there’s some way that I can save myself, I’m going to try that. As I said, I’m not giving up,” I said.

“Neither are we,” Alexis said, holding my hand in hers. “We’re going to fight this.”

“Thank you for being with me. For everything,” I said. Alexis kissed me on the cheek in response.

“Get some rest. I’m going to be here when you wake up. I’ll make you some dinner,” she said.

She didn’t need to tell me twice. My body felt like it was breaking at multiple points. The moment she left the room, I reclined in my bed and closed my eyes. It was too difficult to stay awake. My body was telling me by way of aches and pains that it was done.

Death or madness.

Those did not feel like the best two choices in the world.

I was not ready to die. Not that I feared death. All my life, I had known that death was just another part of my life. It was a transition to the next realm. Whether that was heaven, hell, Valhalla, or purgatory, it did not matter. It was a journey everyone was meant to take. There was no point in fearing the inevitable. But that was not why I was not ready to die. I had so much left to do. The pack still needed a lot of training. They still required leadership. Vampires were still a problem last time I checked. Then there was the matter of Blair Beckett.

But that was just the peripheral stuff. The real reason I was not ready to die was that I had only just started to live. It hadn’t been that long ago that I bonded with my mate. I did not want to leave her alone.

Madness or death aside, my body needed the rest right now. I felt compromised. As if I could not trust myself anymore. This is what I had been fearing. By keeping a lid on my anger and my mania for so long, I had somehow unleashed an even worse beast last night.

Amidst all these thoughts, I fell asleep. Even that, I had to do cautiously now. There was no telling when I’d turn berserk again.

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