Forever Mates

Chapter 26

I skipped dinner that night because my stomach kept churning at the thought of blood on that note. I remembered it smelled rusty, metallic, and most importantly human. It wasn’t the actual blood that had me queasy but the thought of someone hurting another to write it. Why did wolves like that even have to exist in society? My stomach did another queasy back flip and when my mother came up to tell me it was dinner time, I didn’t go down.

Mom tried to make me feel better about the whole mate thing. She put her worries aside and gave me the world’s biggest hug to smother the pain. It felt good but it didn’t help. Only Declan could ease my heart ache.

Once she left I got up and went into the bathroom. When I caught a glimpse at my reflection I think my heart nearly stopped. If I thought Declan looked bad when I ran into him earlier, he probably had a heart attack seeing me. My eyes were sunken in and framed with dark circles and bags. My normally shiny brown hair was limp and dull and slightly matted. I looked terribly pale with hardly any color in my cheeks and I looked anorexically skinny. I know I wasn’t eating much anymore but seeing how thin I had gotten was like waking up from a bucket of freezing water thrown at your face.

My eating habits weren’t at the top of my list right now. I was just too distracted with recent events to actually sit down and consume anything (as crazy as that sounds). Fear can be a really good substitute for food as well as a pain in the freaking ass.

But despite seeing how unhealthily thin I was, I couldn’t go down and eat anything. The bloody note with the words I’M GONNA GET YOU popped up in my mind again and sent my stomach churning while successfully cutting me off from all thoughts of dinner.

Is it even possible to get nauseous on an empty stomach?

I don’t know, and to be honest, all this thinking was draining all my energy. I suddenly felt very tired from the day.

My fingers stumbled around with the alarm clock before finally setting it up correctly. When I was fully satisfied with everything it didn’t take me long to slip under my covers in a tank top and shorts, and fall asleep.

I looked around gasping as I realized I was once again in that dark room from the last dream. But Julia wasn’t here with me.

I tried calling her name to be sure and fell silent when I didn’t hear her respond.

Don’t ask me how I knew I was in the same room as before. I really couldn’t be sure how……but I just knew. Every cell in my body could confirm it. Of course, this time, things were a bit different.

For starters a little light was given from the moon to chip away a tiny portion of the unending darkness. I was able to have the luxury of making out a few things.

One, there was a darkish tint on the wall. I think it was originally white but got stained over the years. The tint was red which could only mean one thing. I’ll leave it to you to guess what it was. Here’s a hint, it isn’t fruit punch.

Two, the room reeked. And I mean the old egg salad sandwich that you find in your lunch box a year later kind of reek. Dead animals littered the floor like trash and calling them rotting corpses would be a major understatement.

Three, I could barely make out the shape of someone on the floor. It was hard to tell but when I looked closely on a particularly small body I realized it was human and not animal. I couldn’t see them clearly because the moon wasn’t enough to give me the luxury of making out their face but I knew they were there.

Four, this person was in pain. It was obvious when they let out a muffled moan two minutes after I noticed them. They were drastically hurt and even at the corner of death.