The Sea Witch's Alpha Wolf

Calm Before the Storm

It’s been exactly two weeks of utter bliss. Ari is here and she and Mike are very much in love. The girls are angels like always and life has been going by smoothly for the time being. Asher and I have reached some sort of unspoken agreement that while we have feelings for each other defining or talking about it is out of the question. Sure I see the way he looks at me and how he never passes up a chance to touch me even if it’s just brushing my fingers with his but that doesn’t change the fact that soon, very soon I’ll be forced to leave. Today is the day Ari is going to have to leave. Grand-mere’s pull is becoming too much for her to resist and she’s starting to feel the effects. She almost passed out last night from it but thankfully I was there to lessen the pull for her. I can’t do that forever though and her time here has finally come to an end if only for the moment. She’ll be able to come back once I’m gone.

“Am I doing the right thing, Echo?” Ari’s voice cuts through my melancholy as I turn to face her.

Sighing I put down the book I’ve been reading and beckon her over to sit with me, “Why wouldn’t this be right? What’s causing you to doubt?”

She sits next to me and curls her legs up so that she’s holding legs in her arms, “Is going back and pretending everything’s okay right? Will Mike understand why I left without goodbye? Should I go without saying goodbye? Can I really allow you to go back while I get to return here?”

I laugh and shake her shoulders, “Relax Ari one at a time! This is the right thing as long as you don’t let your doubts eat away at you! Do I think not saying goodbye is the right thing? Hell no! You need to go and show Mike how much you love him and tell him that you’ll be back. If he loves you he’ll understand and he does love you. When I go back things will be different because I’ll be in power and I’ll make them different because that is what I was born to do. My destiny is to save our coven from the past and bring us into the future no matter what I have to sacrifice to do it. This right here is my last chance to be selfish and free. Soon it’ll be time for me to go back and do what’s right – what I’ve always known is right. Not today, and not tomorrow but someday.”

“How are you so brave?” Ari looks up from the ground and meets my eyes. The look in her eyes is one of incredulity and wonder. She looks as if she’s never seen me before.

I grin at her sadly, “Hope. I have hope that one day things will be better. I am simply a cog in fate’s machine. Now go and tell Mike how much you love him and that you’ll be back!” While my words aren't exactly a lie they aren't exactly the truth either. I don't find myself brave at all. All I strive to do it what I think is right. And hope. I've always had hope that tomorrow will be better than yesterday and sometimes that's all you can hope for... a better tomorrow.

“I’m going, I’m going! Sheesh!” Making a face Ari stands up and after dusting her shorts off she goes off in the direction of the house leaving me in sweet silence.

I bask in the sun and feel the warmth on my face when a twig snaps behind me. “You can come out you know I’m alone now!” For a few seconds the silence remains until I hear more rustling as whoever it is comes closer to my hiding place. It’s not that I’m deliberately hiding I just needed to be alone and the cliff near the ocean is the perfect place.

A heavy body drops besides me and an arm snakes around my waist pulling me against a warm chest, “How the hell did you find this place? It’s in the middle of freakin’ nowhere!” =

I laugh and snuggle against Asher, “It was by accident really but now I find myself here all the time. Somehow I find the sound of the sea mixed with the dangerous of sitting on a cliff soothing.”

His arms tighten and he pulls me onto his lap so that I’m sitting sideways. “Yeah well don’t sit too close I may swim like a pro but the sea is a power even I don’t want to mess with. But to save you I would.”