PAIGE

It was sunny the day my mother went missing. Funny to think I was only nine, maybe ten years old. I hadn't a clue of what would follow that day. The time that made up the next day felt distant and irrelevant at that age, it could have been a million years away. My mother had always stretched out her days with me, always making sure they were crammed with learning and adventure and fun. She treated me less like her daughter and more like her best friend whom she cared for and loved with all of her heart. She had a big heart. Big enough for me and my father who made it hard to really love anything.

And I did believe that she loved him. In a twisted way she couldn't manage to untangle herself from. My father loved her too, but in a different way. He loved her the way you love something beautiful and pure and fleeting. So he showed his love by being controlling and aggressive. Like a rare bird, too risky to share, he kept her caged in his home, unable to see the world beyond the backyard. She wilted, it was obvious she didn't belong in his home. So he gave her a girl, who she held so closely to her heart and gave all her love to.

I knew only the version I believed in. That my parents were both perfect and normal. I believed that my mother's occasional paranoia and frantic moods were just how mothers were. I believed that men were supposed to hold you by the throat and tell you to stop fucking leaving the damn house when I am working. She cried a lot, I knew because I would cry with her. But it wasn't all bad.

So it was sunny the day she went missing. It had snowed the night before, but the clouds had cleared and left us with a beautiful blue sky. My mother took me out to make snow angels and throw snowballs. Bundled up in all of our Winter gear, she looked like an angel. Her hair was pale and long, hanging nearly to her waist. But her eyes were tired, I realized. Tired and sad.

Eventually, I was tired and cold. She made me hot cocoa inside and tucked me into my room with a movie playing softly on the tiny box television on my dresser. I fell asleep to the gentle hum.

When I awoke, my mother was gone and my father was standing at the end of my bed. It was dark out then, and I noticed he too looked unbearably tired and somewhat sad. I could feel it in my belly. Everything was going to change.

I started to cry, though I wasn't sure why yet. He broke the news, that my mother had gone missing and he didn't know where she went. Then he left me alone to cry in my room because he was a fraud and didn't know how to comfort a grieving girl. A week later, he told me that the wolves had killed her. That same day, he began amping up my training.

Looking back, the mental images Cody had passed me still fresh in my mind, I tried to put together a timeline. When did he shoot her? I knew it had to be my father, but it was also hard to believe. I felt like I was trying to put together a puzzle with only half of the pieces. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried hard to remember the last day I had seen her. But, in the end it didn't matter. She had died, whether from wolves or from men, she was gone and had been for years. I was the one who hadn't moved on. I was the one who was placing the blame on everything and further hurting myself.

Damon loosened his hold on me, trying to push me away slightly to get a look at my face. I didn't want to look at him though. The shame was hard to swallow. I had actually tried to kill him. The thought had new tears streaming down my face.

Again, I was struck with the terrible yet deserved sense of self loathing that I had always carried with me. Except in that moment, it was so unbearably potent that I thought I might actually choke on the sensation. It was unbearable, sitting there in his lap, thinking of trying to kill myself or being killed. I could have been a million miles away. I knew one thing for certain: I did not deserve that wolf.

It took me a few minutes to gather the courage and choke back the sobs, but when I finally looked up at his rugged and handsome face, I was just happy that he was alive. Images of him with the knife in his chest, no light in his eyes, his blood pooling around him, were all flashing through my mind. The tears wouldn't stop. My sadness was suffocating me.

"Are you ready to talk?" He asked softly. I could still hear his voice I love you. He shouldn't have said that so soon, there was no way he meant it anymore. I convinced myself.

I shrugged slightly, I wasn't ready to talk. But I knew I had to. I owed it to the Pack, at least. I owed that to him. 

"What were you thinking, Paige?" His voice was still a murmur, though he should have been screaming. He held my face tenderly, his grasp was gentle. He was always surprising me with his openness and ease with kindness. He was a man who was good to his core, something I had never witnessed in my lifetime. I wished my mother could have met him. My stomach fluttered at the way he handled me, the electricity thrumming between us, flourishing at the contact of our skin. When his voice softly gave way to the heartbreak inside of him, I couldn't hold back my own sorrow any longer. "Why did you do it?"

"I am so sorry, Damon," I whimpered, gripping his bicep so hard my nails broke the skin. He was grounding me, if I let go I might have floated away.

I realized he was crying too, at the time I didn't know why.

"I need help," I cried. "I don't know how. All I do is let everyone down and I am just so fucking tired." My breaths were staggered gasps.

"I am here for you, mate. What has been hurting you? You are safe here with us." His voice was also choked with tears.

"I can't go on like this," my words were choppy, sputtering between cries for breath. There was suddenly an inexplicable feeling that he might want to leave me. Why would he stay? What honest, loving, kind person wanted a compulsive liar? I squeezed my eyes shut. I felt like I was laying at the bottom of the ocean, the amount of pressure was suffocating me, crushing my insides. "I almost killed you." 

"But you didn't, and you could never." Damon gathered me in his arms and moved to the couch. He settled me down on one side and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. He sat himself on the other side, a few inches of space remained between us. In that moment it could have been miles. I felt like I was losing him. Selfishly, I hoped he would 't leave.

"You have to start from the beginning, Paige." He sighed, his arm was propped on the couch, he leaned his temple on his closed fist. He looked unbearably tired yet handsome. "Tell me everything so we can proceed. So we can heal."

It was a promise, hidden in the deep tenor of his voice. He was promising me the future, with him. I was swarmed with the feeling of my own selfishness and obliviousness, he had always been that way. I was just in denial, lying, and downright mean. The image in my head, standing over him with the knife, was haunting me. Murderer. It would for years. We didn't touch as we sat on the loveseat before the fire. I took the much needed breaths as I prepared to lay out my life's story.

We sat together for a few minutes in deep silence, I held my mouth to quell the trembling in my lower lip. I didn't know how to begin the story of my last twenty years to the best of my memory. It felt like a lot to wade through. There were a lot of lies I had created in my head, and for the first time I was attempting to see them in their true light. Moments that I had sequestered when thing had gotten so bad that not even my mother could right them. The trauma I had endured as a child had accumulated in the deepest parts of me, settling in my bones and adding up in my tissues... I didn't know what was going to be harder about recounting the years to my mate: the terrible disgusting feeling I got when I thought of my father and his home, or the look on Damon's beautiful face. 

"When I was a little girl, my mother tried really hard to shelter me from my father's lifestyle and teach me about the world beyond our home. He was constantly in and out of the house, so it wasn't hard for her to enrapture me with her stories and lessons. But when my father was around, he made sure I was equally enamored by him, always bearing some sort of gift or interesting fairytale of his journeys. I idolized him, because I didn't really know him.

"As I grew older, the dynamic of my home began to show its true colors and the death of my grandfather lead to my father becoming increasingly invigored by his work as he took over the business. I didn't know what his work was, though, not yet. He was gone more often, and when he was home, he and my mother would scream at each other until my mother disappeared to her room or left the house. I didn't understand them and I didn't want to. So I shut it out and pretended like it wasn't a problem and instead just something that happened, that it would all return to normal. And it did. But subtly, over time it began to change. My mother grew away from my father and I, she left more often, for random excuses that she came up with. I never knew where she was going, just that she was leaving me alone in that house, sometimes with my father, but mostly by myself. It hurt, more than I want to admit, but I never really knew what was going on in their world. So I made up my own." 

I took a break for a moment, closing my mouth and looking up to the ceiling as I faced the memories of the rapid downward spiral of my life. Damon remained quiet and thoughtful to my left. He didn't speak, instead simply waited for me to finish. I could smell his sadness and sympathy in the air between us, intertangling with my own.

"When my mother disappeared for good, everything got exponentially worse. If I didn't know who I was before her, I really didn't know who I was after. Like I said, she was the model I looked up to. I strived to be like the image she had made of herself for me.  It happened so suddenly, my father and her when screaming at each other downstairs while I hid out in my room. They were yelling about the wolves, her disappearances, and more that I can't remember. It wasn't good. I remember the backdoor slammed and the house became eerily quiet. A few days passed, I didn't think anything of it. She had just left like she usually did. But then my father came to my room and explained that she hadn't left, she had been killed by the wolves..." I choked on a little cry that bubbled out without my permission. "I suppose that's when she was shot. He must have been the one to do it." 

Damon turned his body to face me better, his hand catching mine to offer me the support. I squeezed his hand gratefully, though my knuckles were white. 

"So everything got worse. My father grew colder and more cruel, he began to treat me like he treated her. Don't get me wrong, he loved us, but he never knew how to express it right. And he loved his work more, because it was all he knew. So the house filled up more often with his men, some new and some returning members. They circulated our house like it was there own, always drinking and smoking, leaving for hunts and coming back more rowdy than before with each success and new wad of cash... I never knew what they were doing until then, when my father explained his true work. I was eleven. It shocked me to my core, I had never killed anything. But he taught me how. I killed a wolf shortly after, I know it was a shifter now." The realization took my breath away, the guilt was consuming. Tears streamed down my face. "He didn't care and he knew, Damon. He knew what the wolves were and yet he proceeded to kill them. I didn't know anything, I think he wanted to keep it that way. He wanted me to take out your pack as my initiating hunt, and I was going to do it by myself. I probably would have... If it weren't for you.

"But before then, before you... I did some bad things, Damon. I am not proud of it and it hurts me so much to think back on." I took a shaking breath, tears welling once again. "I don't know why I did, maybe because it was something to feel, something that took the pain away... But sometimes I would let the men into my room, I would fuck them, and then they would leave. Looking back it was so disgusting, and I knew it was then, but it didn't stop because the word got around and soon enough it became a sort of thing... I can't keep track of it, I didn't... know how to stop it." I swallowed, looking up to the ceiling to find some sort of strength. Damon's hand had slackened in mine, I didn't want to look at him. "Then came along the new member, Tye. He is a member of your pack, but I didn't know that, my father did. We got along well and he was close enough to my age, more than the rest. I don't know why he was there. He too..." I shook my head, clearing the thought. "He was the one who attacked me the other day. He pinned me in the snow and threatened me. Tye was the one who gave the message to go back to my father or face the consequences."

Damon's responding growl was low in his chest. 

"So I did what I thought I had to do because the wrath of my father terrifies me. When I left last night to go meet him, I felt like I should have turned back. But I was determined, even though I knew it was wrong. When I saw him, I knew nothing good would come of the night. He gave me two options: kill all of you or he would kill me himself right there. And I said I would do it, so they gave me the dagger and... Now we are here."

I withdrew my hand, it was trembling. I stared down at Damon's hand that slowly closed into a tight fist. Without a sound, he got up and began to pace the den. His arms linked behind his head and his breathing grew harsh. 

"Damon?" I called, but he didn't respond. He was somewhere else in his head, recounting everything I had just laid out for him. The disgusting, ugly truth of my past. My heart wrenched inside of me. I felt loss like he was already gone. I didn't know how he could love me after the whole story came out. 

I knew he was mindlinking someone after a few minutes of angry pacing and I grew more panicked. 

"Say something, Damon!" I cried. "Please!"

"What am I to say, Paige?" He turned on me, his eyes red and wet with tears that were yet to be shed. I could see it there, the way my story had torn him apart. He was good and kind and brought up with love. I was the opposite. I never had what he had and he never had what I did. "You just told me... I don't know how to process everything. I want to kill all of them, I want to fucking tear them to shreds for what they did to you-" he broke off as the wolf surfaced beneath his skin like a flush of heat, forcing his shoulder out of place and bringing him to his knees. 

I quickly got up and went to him, taking his face into my hands and willing him to calm down. After a few labored breaths, his skin returned to its normal pallor and his shoulder returned to its proper place. "Please," I whispered. "I need you."

Damon closed his eyes and turned his nose into my palm, taking deep and slow breaths. 

"I understand if you don't want me after all of that. It's a burden to carry, but I don't want you to think you have to. You are way too good for me, wolf. You are the kindest, purest soul I have ever met and I knew today that I have been so fucking stupid. I have taken you for granted and for that I am so so sorry. You don't have to forgive me. I tried to kill you when you have only ever been good to me. I wish I was better for you, I will be better." I was crying again, heavy breathless sobs that hitched my chest with spasmed breaths. 

Slowly, Damon rose to his feet and wrapped me up in his arms. I cried into his chest and he held me tighter. "What's done is done, Paige. I forgive you and I will never leave you." 

"You won't?" I whimpered, feeling like a child in his embrace. 

"Never," he responded with positivity. His voice cracked with emotion. It would take years for us to come back from this, to heal from the events of the week and the ones yet to come. "I told you, I chose you. And I will choose you again and again." 

I pulled back slightly to look into his golden eyes and I saw his truth there. In response, I said my own. "I love you, Damon. I have loved you since I first met you. I am sorry I wasted so much time and didn't tell you sooner."

He shook his head and reached his hands up to hold my face. "I love you too, my mate." 

For the first time on his initiation, he leaned down to place his mouth on mine. For a moment, with the electrical heat of our reunion, things felt like they might be able to be okay. I felt like I had finally made a choice for myself. This was a new path, one that I was carving out, slowly but surely. One that wasn't so dark and ominous. One that was my own. 

It was a slice of paradise before the hell to follow. 

holy shittt I have not updated in a while. school is insane. i miss this book though, even though I was stumped on this chapter for awhile. it was a difficult one to write. paige unpacks a lot and finally faces everything that she has suppressed over the years. 

we are yet to be finished though. things do get worse before they get better. 

let me know what your thoughts are thus far, i love to read all of your comments. and dont forget to vote if you so desire. (: 

love to all, hope you are healthy and happy. 

LS