HER Young Mate (Completed)

Part Sixty- Five: The Night We Met

I was dreaming about the first time I met her again.

It's the single most often reoccurring dream I have.

I'm running through our forest towards what is now my home, but as my feet burn and ache- and I run for my life- I can't recall my home. I know it, but I can't remember that I live there now, or that I have her, or that I am Alpha- none of it.

My lungs are feeling like they're going to burst, and my ribs will break with the pressure at any moment. My lips are so dry I can feel them peeling back.

Flashes of my mother's dying face flash before my eyes, and I'm crying hot tears into my dry lips and they sting, but I hardly feel it. I only feel emptiness, sadness, loss. I can't remember my sisters as they really are, and I just see flashes I made up as a child. Images of my baby sisters staring up from lifeless bodies, like little dolls. And I pause, only to puke at the image, the image that haunted me the most, because I was never really sure what happened to them.

I'm about to give up, when I feel a wave of relief wash over me, despite my legs searing in pain, and my chest feeling like collapsing. Suddenly the warmth in my lungs feels comforting, and despite my head spinning, and feeling like I was about to join my family, I push forward.

I hear my mothers voice in my mind.

Run Danny! Run! Don't look back. I love you- don't look back. You're almost there!

I ran faster, not feeling the cuts or bruises forming on me, taking place with the others. Passing trees cutting into me, my feet getting swollen from pounding over rocks, my ankles sore from rolling in the loose mud. I run as fast as I can. Until my feet won't budge, and I'm stumbling to move forward, to get another few steps out. I can hear drums, and people, and music, and it all sounds chaotic. My head is thumping in pain, and I feel like it's going to explode- between the sound of my own blood in my ears, and the loud noises of the gathering ahead- I can't take it.

Until I hear her.

I don't know it's her, but I do. I faintly remember the way she is now, but it disappears, and I'm confused and terrified again. My heart is pounding, and then it's aching, as if it were being stabbed. As if it were changing somehow. It sends my head into another spin and I cough and stumble towards a light at the edge of the darkness. Trees like tall hooded figures are black against the bright glow of the party, just a few feet away, and they terrify me so much, that I'm almost afraid to leave the edge of the forest. Afraid to get too close to those trees, but I hear my mother again.

Goodbye son.

Three more steps and I'm at the edge.

And then I see her.

She's running.

She's running like her life depends on it.

A chair falls as she bounds over it, and then she's pushing past people, and then running over another chair, and through more people.

And I think she's an angel.

I see wings fluttering behind her black hair.

Her hair looks like silk, and her fearful eyes look like honey, against her smooth glowing skin.

All I smell is the ocean and flowers.

My heart is pumping harder than ever, and I'm sure I'm dying, and she's an angel, and she's going to take me to see my family. I was certain she was flying, not running, and soon she'd fly me away to my sisters, and my parents.

I gasp in pain as I grab my chest, but suddenly it stops. And instead of the pounding of my heart in my ears, I suddenly hear another heartbeat. I look around at the people, the people who haven't noticed me yet, and wonder if I'm a ghost already. There were some people staring at her running, but she's the only one  I can see looking at me.

I stumble forward, trying to meet her, and the sound of the heartbeat gets louder.

I'm falling- I hardly realize what's going on, but I fall- and she catches me, before we fall to the ground.

I'm almost gone, when I see her eyes looking into mine, the honey colors dripping through to my soul, her tears falling on me like stardust.

And I feel like she is suddenly my whole world.

That I can never take that back.

I hear my mouth mumble a sentence or two, but I can never recall what it is I say to her.

And then the horrible images of my family dying are back. And I'm screaming. And I try as hard as I can to remember her. I can only remember the angel running towards me though. I can't remember why she means so much to me, but I fight to find her comfort in the chaos. To see her eyes instead of my dying mothers.

Suddenly I'm screaming though, I'm screaming as I see the house getting smaller out the back window of a car. I'm crying out her name. They had told me it, and now I was screaming it, as they took me away from my angel. I'm crying, and shouting, and the woman adopting me is trying to comfort me.

"Cora!... CORA!!!"

"Coralie!" I feel my lips moving.

Then I'm jolting awake, her name just leaving my lips, and I feel her tiny hand shaking my shoulder.

"Danny?" She whispers my name soothingly in the dark, and as I blink my eyes- my head still resting on my arm, against the side of her bed- all of the memories since then flood back in. I'm aware again of who I am, not that scared child, but a man, not all alone, but with her. She's here, and she's running her fingers through my hair, and she's mine again. That hole in my heart is gone again. I rub my eyes as I sit up.

"Sorry love. Nightmares." I say quietly as I look up at her and stretch. The only sounds in the hospital are nurses talking at the end of the hall, and a heart monitor on in the room across the hall, beeping steadily as its occupant sleeps.

She looks worried about me.

"Come up here, you can't sleep in that chair all night." She whispers as she pats the bed. I shake my head. "No-come on, I won't let you sleep like that, or on the recliner. Come up here." She says, and I can tell she is trying to use her Luna ways on me. I sigh, stand up to close the curtain around the bed so we won't get in trouble, and walk back to crawl on her hospital bed. "Was scouting bad tonight?" She asked. I shook my head. She had insisted I go back and scout tonight, because I had been gone long enough, and she was awake now. I came back A little over halfway through though, and I was glad she was asleep when I returned, so she wouldn't be upset I came back so soon. "You were making noises in your sleep, like you were scared..."

"I- I was remembering the night we met." I sighed, as I laid my head on her chest, and put my arm over her hip, below the stitches on her stomach.

"Oh..." She said quietly as she ran her fingers through my short hair, the feeling soothing me to the core.

"It was one of those ones where I can't remember you're my girl already. The ones where I can't remember you, like this, wanting to be my wife, wanting my children. I'm just a scared boy, and all I know is I need you."

"Did something happen that reminded you of that...?" She asked. I nodded, but didn't say anything at first. "What was it...?"

"You have that look in your eyes again today..."

"What look?"

"Like... Like you were free... Like you were all fire."