The DarkNess Within Him | ✔

Chapter Thirty One

“What’s bothering you, Mikayla? You aren’t sleeping.” Matthew says as he shifts on the bed, turning so he can look up at my rigid sitting frame against his bed head. I look down at him at the same time he pushes his very messy hair back and stretches into his pillow. His thigh brushes my leg beneath the sheets as he does so.

“Everything’s bothering me, Matt.” I say in a hollow voice, the dead of night fervent in its arrival.

“You think too much, Kay. Yet, you share nothing.” He replies in a drowsy voice as he yawns, looking at me with tired black eyes and half-closed eyelids. It has me feeling weightless and I can’t help the way I slip down against the bed head until I’m lying flat on my back in his bed and my eyes are trained on the ceiling as we lie side by side.

In the dead of the night, my senses are even more alive. I can hear the rise and fall of I and Matthew’s chest as we breathe in unison

“I used to think that he’d kill me in my sleep.” I breathe out slowly, my lips starting to tremble as I voice out my thoughts “That I’d go to bed next to him one night and never wake up. That he would strangle me in my sleep. After he started to hurt me, there was never a night I went to bed before him. No matter how tired I was. Never a night.”

Silence is drawn as the air becomes increasingly heavy but then he takes in a very sharp breath while I shut my eyes as I pull the comforter up to my collarbone with shaky fingers.

“I will never understand why you stayed with that man for as long as you did.” is all Matthew says in a voice so low that if our space wasn’t fostered by dangerous silence, I would not have heard him “five months is a long time.”

I stiffly exhale.

“Nobody wanted me, Matt. No one has ever wanted me. I’ve always been a burden to all around me except maybe my mother and Carter. Who would I have left Jayce to? Who would have accepted a mistake like me? A problem like me? My father hated me, my brother sold me and my pack shunned me. Who would I have gone to? Carter would have been a dead man if I went to him and so would my mother. It’s different when you have someone to protect you than when you have no one and you're alone. I’ve always been alone.”

It’s numbness that greets me when I utter the last words. At this point, I don’t even feel pain anymore to admit that. It’s a bitter truth I have come to accept. Something that no longer hangs in my throat when I say it. Something that feels as true to me as breathing.

“You’re not alone anymore.” He says, finding my hand from under the sheets as he begins to caress it with calloused fingers “I don’t know about before but now, alot of people really do care for you and they would fight for you until their very last breath.”

“That’s a funny joke.” I reply with a low scoff, still keeping my eyes shut. I hate that I’m sounding insecure, that I’m projecting myself as weak and letting myself be vulnerable to a person but for some reason, I just can’t help the words coming out of my mouth. 

“Do you really believe that you’re a mistake?” He asks, still caressing my hand when he turns to my side, his body heat engulfing my space within the sheets even more.

“No.” I answer honestly “It’s not my fault that my father desired a woman that wasn’t his when he had a Luna and son at home. I don’t believe I’m a mistake but others do and just because I know my existence isn’t a mistake doesn’t stop the fact that no one ever really wanted me.”

“You’re extremely gorgeous, Mikayla.” He rebukes me instantly “Trust me, alot of people want you.”

“In their bed.” I correct sharply “They want to undress me, to touch me, to fuck me. They want me to entertain them. I’ve always been seen as either a vessel of pleasure, an oven for heirs or a pawn in so many games. Games I never wanted to be any part of. Ploys and plans to obtain more power. It’s never been about me. They never wanted me. They just want the rewards that come with me. The pleasure, the successors and the power. These three things are tied to having me. I may be a mistake to others but I’m a very useful mistake nonetheless.”