PAIGE

The weeks began to pass faster and with that, life was slowly becoming easier. I continued my days with Rhia and an awkward sort of dance with the Wolf. I no longer needed a chaperone to walk back and forth between our house and his parents'. I supposed you could say I was gaining trust. It felt nice, and everyone seemed to notice.

I felt lighter, like I was slowly letting go of things that had weighed heavily on my shoulders for years. Some days were easier than others, as if the depression settled into some darker corner of me. It was easy to pretend and forget that I was Paige Baylor, daughter of Samuel Baylor, raised to hunt wolves. Instead, I tried out the mundane life of a wolf that still caused me unease.

It had been three months since the bear attack. Three months since I crossed over the border and became a wolf. Three months since I had touched a gun. I didn't know how to feel. I kind of missed my father.

"You look different," the Alpha Female, Faith, said to me one day when I was walking in the frigid cold. The snow was piled high enough to reach my waist, but the foot trails were well cleared. She was wearing a fur coat with the hood pulled up, a stocking cap on her head, and these tall snow boots.

"I do?" I asked, still wary of her. There wasn't any clarity on where we stood. Evaluating her with my eyes, I noticed she was brutally beautiful with her sharp eyes and cheekbones even from ten feet away.

"Yeah, you look... More comfortable." She folded her arms over her chest, not indifferently, just suggesting polite interest. "Are you getting along okay?"

"Okay enough," I responded, slightly unnerved by her approach. She gave off an aura that made the inner parts of me want to curl. She had power. I had to respect her for it, she reminded me of my mother.

"That's good. I knew I sensed something in you." She came closer until we were only a foot apart, she held a few good inches on me. "Paige, look, I was harsh on you in the beginning. However, I don't judge anyone until I know them. Maybe I still don't know you, but I can see you well enough and I appreciate you for trying. I know it can be hard to integrate into a new world. The fact you are is impressive."

"How would you know?" I couldn't help the slight bite in my words. It made me a little mad that she thought I had been integrated. I had been plucked and shoved, not integrated. At the same time, it was pleasing to know that no matter what I was actually doing, people were believing it.

She cocked her head at me, a characteristic that was distinctly canine. "I have fought my own battles too, you know. It is not the easiest thing in the world to be a Female Alpha."

I imagined it wasn't, there wasn't a single easy thing about being a female and climbing to the top of a pyramid of males.

"We should talk more," she touched her cheek to mine. "I really would like to be your friend. After all, we'll be working together for the next few decades."

Nodding, we pulled away from one another. She gave me a brief toothless smile and made her way off into the cold. I stood still for a few minutes, just breathing and looking up at the white trees. What made me sort of sad was that I had missed out on the family dynamic that made a Pack. There was a subtle warmth in my chest, knowing there was a path I could choose that lead me to a position of leadership, a family of my own, of undeniable trust and loyalty and peace. I closed my eyes and fought the urge to cry. I couldn't remember a time when I felt such a way.

On the other side of things, my bond with Rhia had only grown stronger since my Heat that she helped me through. She was easy to be with and had endless things to keep me preoccupied with. We baked, went on runs, met with other women who warily accepted me, and did lessons. She managed to coax me into my wolf form weekly, a feat I found very difficult. It was hard to become something that you hated. Like turning into your own nightmare every day. Like being your own nightmare every day.

"Come on, Paige." Rhia gave her beautiful laugh, flinging the backdoor of her home open to expose us to the cold. "Haven't you ever played in the snow?" I remembered Berenger staring at her from the kitchen, a little smile on his mouth that dripped with adoration. It was snowing outside, adding to the drifts.

Stepping outside after her, it was so cold that I thought my fingers would freeze off right there. Rhia didn't even seem fazed by it. She beckoned me out into the frozen yard and stripped off her sweater.

"Shift!" She commanded with a brilliant smile. Then, as if she knew I would protest, continued on, "Don't make me say another word of encouragement. Let go, just shift and free your wolf!"

I closed my eyes, this was my least favorite part by far. It was the most painful experience I had ever felt. Focusing in on the image in my head of a wolf, I conjured up the feeling to shift. It started in my toes, where they slowly popped and shortened. My skin grew dusky red, and then pulled apart. I didn't make noise as my body destroyed itself and then rebuilt, collapsing me to my knees as my knees popped out and my bones realigned. Ribcage popping out, spine elongating

I didn't see the Pack as I had before, though I would never admit it out loud. It was a family system, with all parts connected and working in unison. Rhia showed me all over the Pack; from the training center to the Alpha house, to the Packhouse that held odds and ends of wolves in-between places. She took me on runs around the Southern perimeter, opposite where I used to live and the river I had fallen into so long ago. She showed me how nice it feels to have someone else brush and braid your hair. She showed me what it's like to have a mother again.

When I was alone, I found myself reverting back to some of my old ways. The ways that I had thought I lost so long ago. There were moments where I could pause and breathe in the frigid air with an empty mind. Moments where I admired the conifers with their snow coats or the birds on their limbs. A sort of peace was slowly creeping back into my life. I recognized it from when I used to sketch plants, take pictures of the wilderness, and admire the wolves from afar. It seemed like a different life that was no longer mine. But at the same time, it seemed like a new one that I might be able to reach again. One day.

I still felt like an outsider in a lot of aspects. But sometimes it just felt like I was making myself one. Isolating to a few select wolves that helped or acknowleged me. I never really had been social growing up. That wasn't really by choice though, I supposed.

While Rhia worked through to me, I found it harder to get along with the Wolf. Though we were slowly growing closer, like vines that had somehow grown together and tangled their stems until one was indistinguishable from the other. We ate dinner together most nights as he worked the majority of the days. We talked about nonsense and found out useless things about one another. Sometimes we would just read in the presence of one another, lounging on seperate pieces of furniture in front of the fire. Sometimes he would teach me things like the best way to cook a deer or how the paperwork process of the pack goes.

I found out he was a very good listener, and even better at asking questions.

"What was your mother like?" He asked one night as we sipped warm mint tea and read seperately in the den.

I hadn't been expecting such a question, and I found it midly bizzare that I did. At the same time, I didn't really have an answer for him. There wasn't too much I remembered about her, she had dissappeared so long ago. "She was very gentle and loving. But, she had an iron backbone and never let anyone walk over her."

"Do you look like her?" He set down his stack of papers he had been looking over.

"Yeah, except for my eyes. Her's were so blue they were almost gray." She had been the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Beautiful and sad, she cried a lot.

"I would have liked to meet her," he frowned softly, looking at me with his equally sad eyes.

Nodding, I looked down at my book. There was nothing to be said about that. I didn't know what she would think of the Wolf with his lopsided smile and mysteriously boisterous nature. A deeper part of me whispered that they would have gotten along very well. I couldn't think about that.

"If you don't mind me asking... You said she was killed by wolves. Do you remember what Pack?" 

My eyes found his again and I felt myself harden, the anger simmering under my skin, flushing to the surface. "This one," I responded coldly.

His response was not one I expected, it was shocked. "Paige, my Pack has never had an altercation with a human until you. Let alone killing a human. Its never happened."

I was speechless, staring at him. It was like learning a fact you had always thought of differently, it was world quaking. "You're lying."

"I am not, I have never lied to you and I never will. My Pack has never killed a human in all of our history." 

My mouth was dry and my palms sweaty. I couldn't breathe so I just stared into the fire and tried to control the shaking of my hands.

I wasn't sure what to believe anymore.

DAMON

As if the Heat wasn't a big enough turning point, the revelation that her mother's death was not at our hands seemed to be equally as polarizing for Paige. She looked lighter, happier, and more involved than she ever had since being taken into the Pack. It was a beautiful sight to watch, her coming out of her shell. She was unfurling like a blossom in early Spring. Showing her true colors whether she realized it or not.

Where at first, Paige had been dangerous, angry, bitter, and fridgid... The female who stood before us now smiled, talked to others, and found some joy in her newly granted freedoms. Though I seemed to watch from afar, I couldn't help but take pride in the way she had changed. It was like she was coming into herself after a lifetime of oppression and malguidance.

I couldn't get the terror on her face out of my head. "Paige?" I urged, watching her stare into the fire. She looked like she was in pain, relaying the newfound fact over and over in her mind. It was true, we had never had any altercations with humans. Never even a curious human stumbling onto our land, lost in the woods. Not until Paige's family moved in at least.

We had found a woman though, years prior. She washed up on the riverbank, dead. It must've been when I was an early teenager, long before Cody or I took over our titles. The memory unnerved me, as if rubbing the wrong way. I would have to look into the archives to see what we recorded about it. I had made a note to do so when I went back to the training cabin.

"Paige?" I urged again, leaning forward to get a better look at her from across the coffee table.

Her eyes moved slowly to me, as if coming back to her body. She looked vacant for a brief moment before her pupils dialated and she muttered, "What?"

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know what to believe," her brutal honesty caught me off guard. I could hear the precise nuance of truth in her tone. It took my breath away.

"What do you mean?"

"I have only ever heard one side to every story, and since coming here it's like everything I have ever known is wrong. I feel like I have been living a lie my entire life and I don't know how to make my own choice of right or wrong, true or false." She took a shaky breath, "I don't know how to be honest to anyone, not even myself. There is no telling my truth when I don't have one."

I was speechless, unsure of how to interact with the brutality of her pain that struck me so deeply. Her hurting was so severe that it was leaking in little tears that slid down her cheeks to collect on her chin. She wiped them away with her sleeve, her book falling to the floor at her feet as she did so. In the place of the once angry and steel spined woman was a fragile little bird who had been left out in the cold so long she had nearly frozen solid.

Standing, I made my way to her only to kneel at her feet. I moved my hands to her's where they rested clenched in her lap. Her knuckles were white from holding herself so tightly. Taking them into my own, I held onto her tightly. The motions came with a strange sort of deja vu from the last time we sat like this and talked about her trauma a few weeks prior.

"I am here to help you find your truth, Paige. Always and forever. I was born on this Earth to find my other half, that's you. Which means I will do everything in my power to help you. But I have to tell you, you're wrong. You have had a choice in everything since you have came here, and you will always have a choice. I have seen you in these last few months; growing, changing, deciding. You are strong beyond words, taking hard paths, carving new ones. Wolves train to be as strong as you are. You have to know that I will always provide you with the truth, just as I always have. No one owns you but yourself. And it's not all about honesty, black and white, right and wrong. It's about living the life that you were born to live, and that in itself is inevitable."

Paige stared into my eyes, our gazes unwavering. Her hands slowly moved to clutch mine back, a lifeline to the future.

"You deserve the truth, Paige. Not the easy way out, you're too good for that. Look at the way you have grown since coming here. It's not easy, and it will never be easy, but the future is better because of it. I promise you, Paige. Your future is good and bright."

Her eyes moved back and forth, studying my face, before closing softly. She released a breath and spoke, "I don't know how to get to that point. I'm struggling with who I am inside."

"I know, and you're in pain."

She nodded, another tear leaking out.

"I'm here to help you. I will always be here to help, if you just let me."

Paige opened her eyes and when her gaze met mine again, she was staring straight into my soul. "Do you promise?" She whispered.

"I promise." The air released from the situation with the simple words that held all the meaning in the world. I had revealed to her that she had a side that fit the inner workings of her mind that she had shoved away for fear that they would be taken from her, by her father, just like everything else that she loved so dearly. The realization that those inner dreams had been unlocked and released into the realm of possibility was world changing.

For the first time, I couldn't feel an ounce of anger from her.

I had thought this was her rock bottom. But in hindsight, I realized it was just a rocky outcropping with a bigger trench below. A bandaid on a surface issue. I had no idea just how deep the darkness of hurt and anger inside and beyond her really was.

But for that night, it was just the promise of a better future, one that could heal her wounds eventually.

my classes are kicking my ass!
how are you all? thank you for reading, sending my love to everyone.
LS