Chapter One Hundred and Thirty Eight
When I walked down the hall, I was dead set on ending it.
I was determined to walk in and talk to Sebastian even if he got mad at me, even if he hurt me, even if Jasper was right fucking there, I was going to walk in and tell the truth. I was going to tell him everything, consequences be damned. Every part of my being hummed with it.
My limbs tingled as I walked over to the door, grabbed the handle, and opened it without knocking.
I immediately froze.
My heart, battered and bruised, was ripped out of my chest then and there. Agony, grief, shock, horror, revulsion, and so many other things smashed into my gut so hard that I was actually surprised I remained standing.
I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Being stabbed and cut. Wolf teeth tearing into my shoulder. Broken bones. Hitting my head on the concrete, concussed, legs catching on glass. Being punched, and clawed, and abused. Being betrayed by my first love, thrown around like a rag doll. Replaying every bad thing that had ever happened to me. Feeling, watching, holding my sister as she'd died. Having my memories, my life, thrown into a fire out of sheer spite and hate.
All of those things had hurt.
The worst quality about those moments, though, was how unexpected they were.
A wolf's teeth slicing your skin open isn't a familiar sensation for most people. Neither are claws ripping your flesh, or getting stabbed, or having broken bones. I couldn't prepare myself for any of those pains, not only because I hadn't had the time to prepare myself, but because I'd had nothing to compare them to. Those instances were unique. Individual. Peerless.
This situation, however, over all the pain I had ever been through in my life... over being abused by my mother, over being attacked and nearly killed by my first love, over being tortured emotionally, physically, and psychologically by Bash in the beginning, and then his damaged werewolves after, over being left to die by Cassidy, over Richard throwing my photos into the fire, even over my sister's death... or perhaps, because of my sister's death... it was the final crack that shattered me.
You see, I had expected to see Sebastian lying on the bed reading or watching television the way he always did when he wanted to relax. What I saw instead made me want to vomit.
Jasper was straddling him, completely naked, riding him. Two familiar dark-skinned hands gripped those pale hips as he arched, powerful white back covered in a sheen of sweat, pleasuring himself on my man.
I stood there, feeling my insides and my heart and my mind completely self-destructing.
Frozen, every single part of me going numb, prickles shocking me from my toes to my scalp.
Jasper turned, looking over his shoulder, eyes glazed and a look of wanton lust on his face. The world slowed to a crawl as his black eyes met mine, as smug as they were determined—and then he smiled and made a show of it, raising his arms behind his head. Arching. Smirking as he watched me shatter.
I couldn't see Sebastian's face... he wasn't making a sound, he wasn't even moving, and maybe that was better. With every movement Jasper made, every grind of his hips to join himself and the man I loved in the most precious of ways, I felt the severing of our connection the way one feels the breaking of a bone: visceral. Personal.
With a burst of such severe pain my thoughts went dark, and blank, and empty. One moment I was there, all determination and seething pain and yearning—and the next I was gone, leaving naught but a gaping hole in the fabric of my soul to suggest I'd ever been there in the first place.
I'd never felt so lonely before.
Never in my life.
I sagged and slowly turned around as if moving under water, unable to think or feel beyond the sense of raw vacancy inside my soul. I walked. Down the hall. Staring straight ahead, every part of me slack, unsteady but moving without knowing where my feet were going.
I probably would've been angry if I didn't feel so empty inside. It was like a part of me had been removed, lobotomized—a part of me I hadn't realized before then was so utterly important. I felt cold. Cold, like the vacuum of space itself had lodged beneath my breastbone.
Down the stairs... one step, two steps, three steps, four...
More steps. Five... six... seven.
More of them, eight... nine... ten... a turn and then I was on the first floor, heading who knew where. I saw someone out of the corner of my eye as I slowly passed the hall leading to the front doors. I heard someone call my name, but I didn't respond, I just kept walking, one step, two step, three...
A hand snagged my arm.
I felt nothing, even when I was turned around by force.
Oh. Richard. Hello.
"Aerin," he muttered, looking at me with narrowed eyes. "Aerin, what the hell happened."
I blinked, blank, not sure what he meant.
Oh, nothing. Jasper's just fucking my boyfriend. No biggie.
"It's over," I casually said to him, as if commenting on the weather. "It's over, Richard."
Maybe I was too addled, too numb to see what really happened for certain. All I knew was one second I was being scooped up in his arms and the next the world was blurring. I was carried outside, wind roaring in my ears and sending my hair flying, and then we stopped.
I hung lax, head back, staring at the stars. Oh... the stars. They were so bright. I wondered dazedly if Kim was up there.
I heard voices of concern all around me but I didn't pay them any mind, I simply looked up at the endless reaches of the dark, brilliantly speckled sky and marveled at the vastness of space. It hit me, in a moment of clarity, that this world I was on was so strange. There were likely so many other planets out there, with aliens and creatures that existed all on their own, and yet here on earth I could only live at night. I couldn't ever see the sun, I was doomed to stay in the dark for the rest of my existence, however long that was.
"Aerin," someone whispered, and a familiar face framed by blonde hair obscured my view of the stars, dark eyes concerned. "Aerin, come on, snap out of it, honey! Come on!"
I looked at her, at the thick lashes framing them, wondering at the pain I saw there.
Then it all came back and I self-destructed again, my insides imploding. My sight darkened, going grey, fading, and a red haze blinded me. I looked at her with my heart in pieces and reached out, grabbing her hair, feeling it, the silkiness, the only thing I knew was real. Safe.
No hurt. No pain.
"Home," I somehow whispered, not able to force it out of me any louder. "Wanna go home."
Her eyes were wide, I saw them through the pulsing red, and she shouted something before her head flew up, mouth moving. I couldn't hear her. Weird. My ears were ringing and it was getting so hard to see, so hard to figure out why I felt busted, why it all hurt...
Oh.
Right.
Jasper and Bash.
Fucking.
I immediately felt sick, so sick that I curled up against the chest of whoever was holding me. I sensed a bit of movement and then my hair was in my face, but I couldn't feel the wind whipping my skin. I couldn't feel anything at all anymore, my body was just prickling, prickling, prickling...
A flash of Jasper's wicked smile came into my mind. My teeth ached and I jerked, wanting to tear into something, to bite, to rip.
I'd never been prone to violence. Never been in my character. But in that moment, I knew something in me had shifted. Something way deep down, in the most primal part of my soul, wanted to taste Jasper's blood. The urge was as specific as it was tangible, and if I'd been in a better frame of mind I was sure the degree to which I wanted to hurt him would've shocked me or even scared me.
As it stood, I hardly cared about my sudden change of heart. All I knew was Jasper deserved to suffer, and badly, and I wanted to carry out his torture personally. I wanted to hurt him as much as I wanted to breathe, sleep, or even get Bash back to me, where he truly belonged.
I wanted to flay the skin off the bones of the man who had taken my love from me, the man who had turned me into a vampire and taken my memories away. I wanted to kill the bastard who had torn my world apart, not just once but twice.
I couldn't do it, though, because it would hurt Sebastian. Even as I was, seeing that sight, knowing that the most precious act of intimacy between us had been tainted by that fucking leech, I didn't want to hurt my beloved. I knew he was already going to be hurting like crazy inside if he ever came back to himself, but even that realization couldn't stop me from being ruined.
From breaking.
Or maybe I was already broken.
I couldn't tell anymore.
All I knew was that Richard was holding me and the world was was a blur, wind as cold as my skin sending my hair in every direction and whipping my face.
I looked up at that black beard, at the scars marring his skin, at the flaming white eyes glaring into the darkness. He was the only constant to the speeding world, everything else coming by and then going. I reached up, touching his beard, fisting my hands in that scratchy black bush, and his eyes flitted down to look at me for a second.
"Drop me," I begged, and his eyes snapped wide; he skipped in his steps before resuming his sprint, catching his balance with an experienced posture. I clung to him. "Please... drop me."
"Never! Shut up!" he snarled over the howling wind and the ringing in my ears; trees zoomed past us as he carried me down the highway, leaping high into the sky and causing the world to drop away as we sailed over an oncoming car. My body grew lighter than a feather as we began to descend.
I felt nothing.
Normally I'd have been screaming my head off, but not now. There was nothing left to be afraid of. That knowledge made my soul shake and boil and twist in on itself like delicate origami in a trash compactor.
How the hell was I supposed to cope with this? Where the hell was I supposed to aim the white-hot rage building to volcanic pressure under my breastbone? How was I supposed to move forward when every last fiber of my being wanted so badly to get even?
I wanted to kill Jasper. I'd never felt the urge to kill someone before that moment, not really, not in a concrete way, but now the urge to fucking murder his ass was completely undeniable.
There would be no explaining my emotions away. No rationalizing them, or making them look anything less than exactly like what they were. I wanted to kill—but I had no prey, because doing it would hurt the one person deep down in my heart I knew I never should.
I couldn't take this anymore.
My hands trembled as I curled up, mind collapsing, red taking over everything, covering my mind and my senses and everything, all of it just turning red and hurting and festering like a wound. Arms tightened around me, arms that gave me no semblance of comfort.
And then, just like that, the wind suddenly stopped and Richard straightened. He continued walking, taking me up a familiar driveway towards a big red barn before turning and walking through the door of a pretty cabin. I smelled Woody and Tiffany and I went limp.
Home.
This was home.
This was the place to hide from the hurt. To hide from the hate, and the pain, and shattering.
I looked around, dazed, as I was carried down the hall towards my room. My room. Not Sebastian's room, not the room where Jasper had been defiling every moment of love and intimacy we'd ever shared in a single instant, but my room. A room full of precious memories.
A room full of love, life, and good energy.
I lay limply on the bed when Richard gently set me down on top of it, staring off at nothing, arms at my sides, legs useless. I had no more energy. Everything was red. The walls, the ceiling, even Richard... he said something and I saw everyone else hurrying into the room.
Someone knelt beside me, touching my cheek, and I felt patting.
"Let me sleep," I found myself saying, numb. "I just want to sleep. Please."
"What happened?" Leo asked, and I found his eyes, saw the way they were narrowed. My heart, fragmented, contracted before exploding yet again.
Tears trickled out of me, staining my skin, staining me, and he froze as my lips moved.
Everyone froze, actually, and eyes either went wide or blank.
I walked in on Jasper and Sebastian fucking.
Woody started breathing hard, eyes turning a sick shade of toxic yellow, hands shaking. Tiffany put a hand on his arm but he shrugged her off, nails exploding into claws; his body jerked, cracked, popped, and I saw that Richard wasn't doing much better as far as reactions went.
"I'm gonna kill him," the bald man said quietly, staring at me. "Are you fine with that?"
I stared at him, every part of me screaming to say yes, but that fading part of me not stained with red fought back, repelling the chance to let him do it.
His memories, that part seemed to cry out. He'll lose all of his memories and hate you! He'll hate you! He might never get those experiences back, not all of them, and every one is important!
My mouth opened and I said, "not now. I just want to sleep. I need to sleep, to go to sleep, dream and forget this. I need... I need time to figure out what to do. I need to sleep. Please."
I was like a broken record, but everyone shared a long look.
"Your eyes aren't normal, Aerin," Tiffany said, and I looked at her. "Your eyes are red."
"Been crying," I mumbled, but she shook her head.
"No, I mean your irises," she told me, leaning down close and touching my cheek. "They aren't blue... they're blood red, and you're... you smell like you're in really bad shape."
"My heart was just ripped out and crushed," I said softly, and everyone twitched. "Go away."
"No," she said, heated. Her amber eyes glimmered, sad and fearful and determined all at once. "I'm not leaving you alone."
"But I don't want you," I croaked, and she froze. I shook my head. "I don't want this life. I don't want you, I don't want Bash... I can't fucking take it. I'm giving up. It's over. It's all over."
"No!" Jak barked, and to my shock he stormed forward and loomed over me. "Not before he's had a chance to come back from this. He is not himself, and has imprinted on you! If you leave him, under a spell or not, hypnotized or not, it will kill him in the end! Do you really want that?!"
"No," I said, closing my eyes as my consciousness flickered, "but I'm just... so tired."
"You can't hold what's happening to him against him," Tiffany said seriously, eyes wide. "Aerin, he isn't in his right mind right now. What you saw was rape in every form of the word. Your mate, your fiance, was and is being raped by Jasper! He didn't give his actual consent! He never even would, he's just not like that! You can't give up on him! Not when he needs your help!"
She touched me, and beneath her hands, my shuddering arms went still.
Tiffany—fair, kind, devoted Tiffany—wanted me to keep fighting. Woody—the man who'd kill for me, or die for me—wanted to butcher the man who had caused me so much pain.
How was I supposed to reconcile her words with the hopelessness trying to come alive inside me?
"You're his, Aerin!" Tiffany was saying; she gripped my wrists a little tighter when my eyes opened to stare at her. "This is... this is just... not right! It's not right, and you have to be strong! You have to be as strong as you can! He loves you, and you love him, so don't give up! Ever!"
The breath caught in my throat, because when she said that I loved him, and he me, an image flitted across the eye of my mind. Bash... my Bash... when Tiffany spoke of love, Sebastian D'Agostino's soft, playful, cocky smile filled my head to bursting.
"We don't give up on the people we love," Richard added, taking advantage of my ongoing silence. "We won't give up on you no matter how many times our memories are erased. In the end we'll always come around because we genuinely love you."
"And when Bash remembers what's being done to him as well as you," Leo said flatly, "he'll likely kill Jasper himself. Give the poor guy a second chance."
Second chance.
"Aerin... please."
I flinched.
Tiffany had moved within touching distance, kneeling in front of me on the floor. She wrapped her hand around my wrist, gently this time. Her thumb traced a circle, cool and steady, across my pulse.
It was her eyes, begging and pained, that sliced gently through the aching fog of my anger and hate and revulsion and pain, cutting deep into it until she caressed the core of my emotions with her words.
I was suddenly just tired. So tired. The red faded a little.
Then faded some more.
Faded until everything was bleached of color.
I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again. That felt like the better option at this point. Her talk of forgiveness, her quiet murmur, the earnest and loving and understanding tone...
"I love him," I said. My voice cracked like glass breaking. "I want... I want..."
"I know," Tiffany soothed. "Baby, I know... but you have to have a clear head, first. Get some sleep, okay? All of us are gonna stay here, even Diana and Cassidy."
"But they don't remember," I croaked. "They don't know--"
"Doesn't matter," Richard grunted, and I looked to see that he was already texting. "I don't care if they remember you or not, all of us are finally aware that something is seriously wrong and they'll come running regardless because pack sticks together."
"Just relax, Hyung," Jun said, speaking up for the first time; Kyle seemed wide-eyed, looking at everyone as if he had no idea what the hell was going on. "This isn't your fault and you're safe here so just try and get some sleep."
I saw everyone looking down at me, trying to be as reassuring as possible. They loved me. Even though some didn't remember me, these people loved me.
Tiffany held my eyes for the longest moment, her pretty irises boring into mine. My thoughts drifted as I looked at her warm smile, but that warmth didn't reach inside of me the way it used to do back when I felt like I was still alive. I concentrated on my soul, on the fabric of it inside my living shell, searching for the light and warmth that had been stamped out.
The hope and optimism and sense of forgiving, the compassion I'd once had.
I found nothing, of course.
Nothing but the black chasm of my own absence, dark and cold. I stared into it with the eyes of my spirit, searching in its depths for a flicker of my old fire, for a flicker of something, anything... but all I felt was that feeling from earlier.
That sense of agony, and hate, and heartbreak, coalescing into the desire to strike Jasper down like a rabid beast. Sebastian wasn't here to calm me. He wasn't here to tell me everything would be all right. The hate spiraled within, gaining momentum and tension, winding tighter and tighter until my hands clenched and shook and my sharp teeth grit.
Red bled across my vision, staining the grey.
Die, die, Jasper needed to die, I needed him to die—
A hand touched my cheek. I jerked my head up and met Tiffany's eyes again.
"Killing him won't fix you," she murmured. "Saving your man is the only thing that will."
Suddenly, the roaring hatred fell quiet, and I tore myself away from the dark brewing in my soul. My eyes prickled, throat thickened, hands trembled. I covered my face with shaking fingers. As quickly as lightning in the summer sky, my rage and hate turned to deep, aching pain.
"Why?" I hissed into my palms. "Why is this happening?! Why is this happening to us?!"
Soon, I was crying, and Tiffany flopped down on the bed and pulled me to her in a hug. She knew I needed to feel the touch of someone who loved me.
Wrapped in my pain, I tangled my hands in the back of her shirt and sobbed. There was no sugar coating. There was no easy way to get over what I'd seen.
Jasper had been fucking my boyfriend, raping him, and I'd done nothing to stop it. If I had stepped in, Bash may have killed me for it. If I had stepped in, Jasper might have looked better than he already did. So, I'd just walked away, frozen and broken and shattering to pieces.
That night, surrounded by wolves who watched me in sorrowful silence, I cried myself to sleep for the very first time in my life. I was just too far gone.
However, before I fell asleep I felt something in my chest. A tug that made my lungs cold.
"Be strong, beautiful child," someone whispered. "Be strong and feel all pain, la. Let pain hurt to the core, let it change the heart. When time comes, use it like a weapon and strike."
Feng-Feng? I wondered.
A strange sensation pulsed through me like the caress of a cat's tongue, as if to say 'hello, I am here,' which was soothing but not nearly enough to ease my broken heart.
It didn't matter though.
I was out cold seconds later.