She's Golden

Phase Forty-Nine: Láng, pt, 3

Author's Note:  By the way, Láng means "wolf" in Mandarin/Cantonese if you didn't already catch on ;) 
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"M-Mo...M-Mom?"

George felt her mother's presence, yet everything else seemed so far away.  She heard the other voices in the room, faded and fuzzy, ebbing away with each passing moment - much like her life was.  Everything was a blur, a cluster of warm lamplight that grew more dim with every passing moment.  

The stillness of her wolf was the only thing that unsettled her.  Once so energetic with a belly filled with defiant fire, it now rested, lying still, its quick and shallow breaths slowing down.  It was just as wounded as she was, weakened and without its motivation.  How funny that while the two souls were in discord for most her life, they finally be united in her hour of death.

"Georgie, oh Georgie...baby, no..."

Even as her eyes began to shut, she couldn't stop the tears from flowing.  Julian - her sweet mate. If she knew then what she knew now, she would have never pushed him away.  She was so damn stubborn, insisting on protecting herself by staying unmated.  She let her unfounded fears get the better of her because she refused to endure the pain of heartbreak and loss all over again.

The loss of the man she believe was her true mate.

And the loss of her parents, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It didn't matter if somewhere in her heart she knew that Chris wasn't the right man for her.  It didn't matter that the loss of her parents was completely accidental.  

It didn't matter that Chris could have never been prepared for her transformation into that beautiful white wolf.  He was only human, conditioned with a rational view of the world.  How was he to know that werewolves really existed?  He couldn't have, and it was too much to expect him to accept such a radical revelation.  She never really begrudged him for it - maybe in the beginning she did, but as she grew older, she understood.  She just hated how much his rejection hurt her, how it broke her heart into a million little pieces.

They warned her, too.  Her parents knew it all along.  They tried to tell her and they tried to make her understand.  Chris couldn't have been her mate - he just couldn't.  But she refused to believe it.  Her teenage understanding of the world was hardwired for a "happily ever after" with Chris - to hell with her instincts.  Her parents were wrong - they had to be.  Parents weren't infallible, and she had every intention of proving that.  

So she disobeyed their orders and ran off into that fateful night.

They weren't supposed to freak out about her being missing.

They sure as hell weren't supposed to track her down in wolf form.

And they especially weren't supposed to get to close to a nearby farm owned by a paranoid old man with an itchy trigger finger.

As if a human could distinguish between a natural wolf and a werewolf, anyway.

He thought he shot wolves who were getting too close to his livestock.  Instead, he shot two innocent people who died almost instantly.  When he saw the blood-soaked naked bodies of her dead parents, his heart couldn't take it.  He died in hospital the next morning.

So much pain and suffering over misunderstandings.  For the longest time, she wished she were the one to die instead of her parents.  After all, it was her misunderstanding that lead to their demise - at least, that's how she perceived it.  If she hadn't misunderstood her raging hormones as the mate bond or her parent's concern as interference, all would be well with the world.