Chapter 88

White-hot rage lances through me. Everything around me blurs as my eyes solely focus on the fucker *my mate* married. I force my body to not move. Years of practicing this numb state have carried me through most of my life. I have this act down pat. But today, no longer cursed, I struggle. 
I watch them kiss as I take one deep, slow breath. 
Then another, sharp, the moment I feel someone approaching. I already knew I didn’t like her ex husband, but seeing them together, it feels beyond that. It is pure, hard, personal contempt.  
He lets her go and says something. Then my mate grins at him. 
Fuck me. Without reason, her smile makes me feel lighter. 
I can’t believe that I finally found the true love I thought I would never have. 
My fists tighten as he approaches her again. I’m going to kill that motherfucker!
But just as I take a step forward, ready to kill him with my bare hands, I feel my sister’s arms tighten around me, trying to hold me back.
I could easily break free, but by doing so, I would end up hurting her. And that’s the only reason I don’t. “Let me fucking go, Vi!” I say in a deep voice through clenched teeth. “She’s my mate! Alicent is my fucking fated mate!”
“I know, I know, Ian,” she says in a sad voice. “Please calm down—”
“She needs to know I’m her fated mate! She’s mine!”
“No, Ian!” Vi yell-whispers. “Use your brain!”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, turning to her; only then does she let go of me.
“Look at her,” Vi says and I shift my head to look at the most beautiful face I have ever seen in my life.
“She’s *happy*.”
“You don’t know that! She could be suffering. She could be in trouble. There are rogues after her. I need to protect her. I need to claim her. I need her! She’s mine!” As I finish speaking, without realizing it, I’ve walked to her house and I’m standing now ready to climb the steps that lead to the door.
“Ian, she ran away from our pack. She’s happy now. It was her choice,” Vi pleads, grabbing my arm to stop me from advancing any further.
“I don’t care. She’s mine!”
I climb two steps of the stairs at the same time. My sister’s voice sounds a little harsh and louder, but this time, it is in my mind via mindlink, but I keep on ignoring her. Because right now, all I want to do is claim my mate. 
My sweet fated mate. 
This feeling of having a mate is so fucking raw and weird and right. 
I knew she was familiar like my heart has known her for longer than I have.
Why have I been so blind?
Mine. Mine. Mine.
I could have met any female that night in my nightclub and then met the female again in my pack. Any human. And yet, it was her. A roll of the dice. The luck of the fated draw. 
Why have I been so fucking blind? I chide myself.
From the moment I laid eyes on her, I felt a connection, and for the first time in years, my frowns had turned into smiles. She brought me joy from the very first day she moved into my home. Every. Single. Day. 
It’s only now that I realize—the mate bond found a way to unite us, no matter how powerful my curse was.
Kral growls inside of me. My body feels like it is a hundred degrees. We’re hungry and desperate, needing our fated mate with every cell in our body.  
‘Ian, stop!’ Vi yells in my mind, making me turn to her with a hatred I’ve never felt for her before. She takes two steps down the stairs in fear before continuing. ‘You saw it yourself. She’s happy, Ian. It was her damn choice, and you need to let her go!’ 
‘Never!’ I bared my teeth. ‘Why are you against my mate bond?’
‘Because you had every opportunity to have her, and you still rejected her. I saw how hurt she was all those days before she left our pack. Allie always made it clear that she loved you, and you refused her feelings.’
‘I know all of that! And now she’s with her fucking ex-husband!’
‘If you go in there like this, you won’t be able to claim her. On the contrary, you’ll only scare the shit out of her. Think about how she’ll feel seeing you kill her son’s father in front of her? Can you handle the pain?’
‘I’ll be thrilled! I will marvel at the pain of him dying!’ 
I already can feel it.  
‘Did you smoke rotten wolfsbane? Because you’re unhinged!’ Vi says. ‘No, dumbass! I’m talking about *her* pain!’
‘She’s fucking right!’ Kral tells me.
I grip the stair railing so tightly that I break the wood. With a leap above my sister’s head, I unleash Kral. Kral’s furry black paws run toward a nearby park. My sister is right. I am unhinged. Even though the path is deserted, I don’t give a shit if anyone sees my wolf right now.
Blind rage takes hold of me. I can’t stay there any longer. It’s a Herculean effort to walk away from my fated mate.
My Little Dove.
She offered me everything. And I turned down her offers. Her love.
That’s the only reason that stops me from breaking that house she’s in right now because I was fucking wrong. I broke her heart. The sweetest, purest heart I’ve ever seen.
I was still too fucked up over the curse to let myself have her. 
Kral runs ferociously between the trees. Even though he is angry right now, he still avoids stepping in places that could leave paw prints on the ground. I force him to run and run.
What if my Little Dove starts to think she can be happy without me? That’s so fucking terrifying. Kral whimpers before it turns to growl. The thought of losing her forever is heart-stopping. I can’t allow it! I don’t think we could ever recover. I don’t think there’s anything that could take away the deep-seated fear within me other than her. I need her! I need my mate!
I feel pain in my body just from recalling her kissing someone else.
‘Ian!’
She lit a fire in my heart the moment I saw her, and now I will not snuff it out. 
‘Ian, wait!’ 
Kral turns sharply to my sister’s wolf and growls.
Her wolf bends down low, whimpering and submitting. Her wolf’s fur is all gray except for a white patch on her forehead, different from my completely black.
‘Ian, everything is going to be okay,’ Vi mindlinks me, her wolf’s head lowered.
‘Do you have any idea of the pain I’m feeling, Vi? This fucking pain? I wouldn’t wish it on anyone!’
‘The Moon Goddess writes our destinies before we are ever born into this world, Ian,’ Vi says softly. ‘You should not be so afraid. You’ll get her back! The Goddess Selena knows what is best for you!’
I don’t believe that. Because if that is so, the Moon Goddess is a cruel Goddess. 
How could I think anything differently when she had already written my fate, putting a witch in my path to curse me and make me live without my fated mate for two decades?
I’ve been rejecting my sweet fated mate, and she had been only given her love to me. I feel like a piece of shit.
Those emotions loosen my tongue, and I question, ‘So you think if I’m meant to find my fated mate today, then nothing bad I did to her matters anymore? It was all a great plan?’ 
‘Ian...’ her wolf whimpers again. 
‘Then how do you think the Moon Goddess wrote your fate? Jordan? You deserve so much better!’
Her wolf grunts, but Vi doesn’t reply. 
‘And yet you have him as your fated mate,’ I say with disgust. 
I don’t need to see her aura to know that my words struck her.  
Kral turns back and starts running again. In the opposite direction of the house he wanted most to run to. I hear my sister’s wolf following behind us. 
Upon reaching a lake, Kral climbs onto a high, big rock and lets out a long, low howl at the almost full moon.
Vi’s gray wolf rubs her furry head against Kral’s side. Then she lowers herself onto her haunches beside him. Minutes slip by. Sometimes, her gray wolf tilts her head back and howls—a mournful sound that cuts through the still air, carrying her sorrow for me into the night. Other times, she just sits there in silence by his side.
After a few minutes, when Kral’s stopped howling, I hear Vi’s voice in my mind. Her wolf sits with arms folded across her chest. ‘It’s a weird thing to see you finally gone for a mate.’ 
Deep inside, I roll my eyes. ‘She’s perfect. She’s everything,’ I say, much calmer now thinking just about her and not my unfair fate. 
My heart stutters, more bare in front of my sister than I’ve ever been. No one has ever meant that feeling to me before. 
I was so... lonely. That longing, that search for the one person I know is missing from my life, the person I knew would fill those aching, lonely gaps inside me. I always wonder when I’d find my fated mate. If she would still even exist at all… 
I don’t know how long we stayed there like that, but when Vi speaks to me again, I realize the sun has already risen.
‘You’ll get her back, Ian!’ she repeats herself. ‘But don’t fuck it up. You want Allie? then woo her.’ 
Kral’s head turns to her sharply. ‘What?’
‘Woo her.’
‘Woo her? Like flowers, dinners, and shit?’ I ask as Kral tilts his head. ‘I don’t do that shit. She’s *mine*. I don’t have to do that to get her. It’s my right.’ 
‘You need to take it slow, gain her trust again, little by little. Spend some time with her, compliment her, chocolates go down well, take it from someone who really wish her mate would do it once again. Because it damn works the time he did.’  
Kral shakes his furry black head at her. ‘Ew.’ I answer. ‘I think I’m done getting advice from my little sister. I’m not discussing this with you. I’m going to be all right.’  
Vi’s wolf shakes her head. The white patch on her forehead would frown if she could do it. ‘I’m serious, Ian. You can’t just go there and impose yourself on her.’ 
I stay silent for a moment, reflecting on what my sister had just said. Yet, all I want is to rip her ex-husband’s heart apart. Perhaps I just need to do this, so then she can all be mine.
‘Let’s go home,’ Vi says in my mind, ‘Shawn drove your car away from Allie’s house and parked it nearby for us.’
‘What time did he do that?’ I ask suspiciously.
‘I mindlinked him a while ago, Ian. I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s almost nine.’
I grunt. ‘Okay, let’s go.’  
Minutes later, my sister and I are already in the car. All werewolves usually leave spare clothes in their car in case situations like this happen. And even though it’s my damn car, there are more of my sister’s clothes in here than mine.
“Ian, this isn’t the quickest way to Blackmoon,” Vi points out, looking in my direction from the passenger seat.
“I’m just going to go down the street to check if she’s okay.”
“For fuck’s sake!”
As we near the dead-end street, something inside me snaps. I can’t control my body. Before I even realize it, my hands jerk the wheel, my foot slams on the brake, and the car screeches to a stop. I’m out the door in an instant, moving like I have to, like keeping inside to go to Blackmoon would suffocate me.
“Ian! Come back!”
“I need her, Vi!”
“Oh, my fucking Goddess! Here we go!” she says behind me.
Before I even realize it, my feet are carrying me straight to the yellow house where I saw her yesterday. By the time it fully registers, I’m already at the door, knocking hard. So fucking hard that I have to take two steps back before I actually break it.  
My heart starts beating faster. But then the door swings open, and my heart skips a beat.
Little Dove.
*My* Little Dove.
The delicate and soft lines of her face shift into an expression of surprise as her eyes meet mine. Her beauty nearly knocks the air out of my lungs.
“Ethan,” she breathes out like a question. A plea. I have so missed the way my Little Dove says my name. 
She is mine. I am hers. And before the day is over, she will know it. 
“What-What are you doing here?” She asks, closing the door behind her in a hurry.
She looks a bit too pale for my liking, as though she’d been recently ill. My eyes spot the dark smudges under her big meadow green eyes. Her skin had a sallow tone to it. Yet none of that detracts from how perfect and gorgeous my mate is.
I look down into her eyes. Just a small space separates us. 
“I’m here because I want you, Little Dove. I want you for as long as I continue to breathe,” I start saying. “I don’t give a shit if you got back with your ex-husband. You are mine. Always have been. I love you, and I can’t wait any longer to have you by my side. Being without you isn’t an option anymore.” 
She gapes, keeping looking up at my eyes.
I raise my hand to cup her face, my lips itching to kiss her.
But then, Little Dove winces, snapping both arms up in an X like I’m some kind of threat she needs to shield herself from. A sharp pang hits my chest, but I can’t tear my eyes away. She presses herself even harder against the door as if she’s desperate to disappear into it. 
Like she needs an escape. 
Like I’m something to be afraid of. The realization stings inside me.
“Little Dove?” I say, stepping forward. 
“Please, stay back... don’t—don’t come any closer.” I hear her frightened voice begging.