Page 12 of Her Reborn Mate

How?!

How was he still alive?

I had not been prepared. Never in my life would I have imagined that he’d come back from the dead. I guess, for a man who had outlived all his pack members, somehow survived more than seventy years in prison, and beaten the poison wreaking havoc in his body, coming back from the dead was not an impossible feat. But it defied all explanation—all except one.

I had gone insane.

The nervous breakdown from watching my mate die and the subsequent chase that my enemies had given me from one town to another had finally cracked my sanity and let madness seep in.

At first, I couldn’t compute that he was alive. When he emerged from the shadow and came face to face with me, his face gaunt, his color pallid, his eyes wide, it was akin to witnessing a haunting.

But then he had spoken. He had told me his version. At least, that’s what I thought he’d done. I was so overwhelmed by his presence that my brain had asked all the wrong questions, said all the wrong things, and destroyed what could have otherwise been a very cheerful reconciliation.

I had let my emotions take control of my faculties. When I should have been asking him how he had managed to avoid death, how he was still alive, I cast blame on him for calling out Ariana’s name. I shunned him, revoked him, rejected him, and sent him away.

How was it that I was capable of such ugliness?

Now that was the right question, and I asked myself this question many times as I stared at my messy self in the bathroom mirror. The tears streaming down my face were not those of sadness or emotional anguish as much as they were tears of relief.

Yes, relief. I was relieved to see him alive. In fact, it was only after I had ascertained that it was Will and he was alive and well that I had burst out at him.

The question remained—how was he still alive?

Had he been telling the truth about saying Ariana’s name because he had come across her soul on some immortal plain of existence? As badly as I wanted to believe him, I couldn’t help but think that there was something quite off about him. That he was lying profusely just so he could get back with me.

Some things I had said to him were true, others not so much. I did love him. Even when I was falling from that building with a bullet lodged in me, I knew that I loved him.

I loved him even now, but it hurt to love him.

Could I be blamed for feeling this pain? After I had thought that I had lost him, could I be held accountable for the way that I had reacted when he emerged from the shadows?

Of course, and of course, not.

Perhaps, my cruel behavior was my way of getting back at him for saying Ariana’s name, for dying on me. I didn’t exactly have control over my state at that time. Most of me was in disbelief that he was still alive, and what was left was computing how he was alive.

But during all that, I had said some things I had been thinking in my subconscious but hadn’t the courage to say. And some of the things I said had given me a new direction in life.

Such as the fact that I was done being a werewolf. I could do without shifting into my wolf form again. I could do without being part of a pack. Now that I thought about it, I could do without adhering to some archaic norm that dictated that I was to be bonded with another wolf as their fated mate.

Yes, all of that was behind me.

This was the start of my new life.

Fuck all that. I needed a drink.

There was great furor coming from below. I tried to make sense of all the voices, but they were all saying things in that Bangor accent, things that were alien to my ears.

I went down the stairs, still somewhat in disbelief that Will’s visit to me was real.

The bar was packed from door to counter. All the people gathered were wearing red clothes.

“What’s all this?” I asked Izzie, who herself was wearing a red sweater.

“Our busiest night of the week. The Boston Red Sox versus the Chicago Cubs.”

“Baseball. Yikes,” I said.

“Speaking of yikes, I saw that fella that visited you,” Izzie said now that they were both behind the counter, pouring pints of beer to the customers whose eyes were glued to the LCD screen in the corner.