Eclipse Child |✔|

|51|

I push back the image of Henry's face, guilt making me not want to dwell on it.

We continue walking in silence until Rex grunts out a question.

"I didn't know you had a mate."

"No?"

He shrugs, limp becoming more noticeable now as we walked deeper into the forest.

"The rumors I heard around you all said you were a...mmmhh...lone wolf?"

"In a way that's true."

Rex smiles, "well we each have our personalities."

Rex stares forward into the woods, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Why are we going into the woods again?"

I shrug. Rex had been all too willing to help me in my "request" until he heard the travel that entailed behind it. Then his complaining had begun. It grew as I kept details out. I didn't want to explain why we were going into the forest. Why I would find what I was looking for there. Why it was there in the first place.

Rex, however, had been persistent.

"We'll go further in, but then I need you to stay in place for a couple of hours."

"Hell if I am Alpha."

"I'm not going to run."

He eyes me with mistrust. I feel the irony that this was the same male who was asking me to lead his pack.

"I promise," I said, holding my hand up in a show of my pledge.

He continues to side eye me until I sigh and stop.

He stumbles at the abrupt halt.

I turn to him, startling him back a few steps.

"Look Rex. In that forest-" I point to the woods, "is my mate. I'm going to try to convince him to come back with me-," my voice breaks at the last few words. Rex's eyebrows raise in astonishment at the show of weakness but I ignore it.

"I want you to stay away because when I see him I plan to beg, cry, plead- anything I can think of to make him come back to me."

Rex is still, his eyes wide as if he is seeing me for the first time.

"Why did he leave?"

It's an insensitive question. Rex is an insensitive person though. He only wanted facts and reason.

"Because I made him."

He raises a skeptical eyebrow. I turn away from him and exhale, feeling that same bleeding wound upon my heart as I whisper, "because I took away the one thing he wanted."

I turn back to his baffled expression.

"But that's where you come in. The pack I mean. I think it can- I can- we can-," I stop my rambling.

Rex shrugs then. He steps back and spreads his arms forward.

"Alright then Alpha. Go and get him."

The next hour I walk alone in silence.

Occasionally I look behind to make sure Rex was not following. I would raise my face to the air, letting the breeze carry the different scents with it. I knew where they were. I had known for several hours now. It was faint but there, the underlying trace of the wild coming from the roots to the ground up.

The steps of the animals imprinted such a lingering smell upon the earth. I knew but still took a roundabout way, trying to push off the encounter.