Ch. 117: Sharing Stories

CHAPTER 117

Rachel~

This place is crazy. My life is crazy. The aftermath of this battle is crazy.

“Rach, are you okay?” Ally asks me, the question lifting me from my spinning mind.

“Ah, yeah, I just - ” I look up between her and Kyle. “Does this stuff get any easier?”

They look over at what I had been looking at. A makeshift hospital inside the cafeteria space. Groaning men and women scattered around on tables, two doctors and several helpers running around assisting them.

“I hope not,” Kyle says.

It makes me turn to look at him.

“I’ve never seen anything like that out there, and I hope I never have to again,” he says, still looking out there. “If this,” he took a shaky breath, “got easier, I think it would mean losing part of my soul.”

We stayed quiet for a long moment. The sounds of doctors’ orders and clinking medical equipment took over the space.

“Rach?” I know it’s him before he even speaks.

Somehow I do.

I turn to look at Jake. He’s exhausted, with an unreadable expression on his face. Even after all these years of learning to read the tiniest of cues from him, sometimes I just can’t place him.

Me, on the other hand, I have a highly readable face. I must have been showing concern and worry, and he just pulls us into a steady hug. My head only reaches the center of his chest and it makes me feel a little bit like a kid. I guess I still am one, in some ways, despite everything I’ve gone through and everything still yet to come. I breathe him in for a moment, aching for any normalcy in all of this. 

“What is it? It’s that redheaded girl from the field isn’t it?” Ally’s voice comes from behind me.

“Have anything to share about her?” Jake’s voice rumbles.

“I think Evan will have some things to share,” she answers with a tone of wonder.

Jake squeezes us for a moment. I know he’s biting back some reply to that without looking. 

“Walk with me?” he asks, looking down to my eyes.

I nod.

We start out heading the opposite direction of the battlefield. I’m thankful for it, but know in the back of my mind it’s not necessarily the best thing - to ignore it.

“I think we have some things to talk about,” he starts.

I don’t even know where to start. He looks back down at me with an expectant look but I can’t give him anything right now.

“I have some people working on a few things, so we have a couple minutes…” he goes on. We come up to a picnic bench and we sit across from each other on it. “Do you want to ask me anything?”

I move my hand from the bench table to my temple. Half rubbing the mind scramble that’s been going on since this morning, and half blocking the last bits of the setting sun.

“I honestly don’t know where to start,” I say breathlessly. I take another moment and note that he’s waiting for me to continue. “I guess - I obviously know what you are. I think anyway. Between what happened today, and with the past - like my memories are all mixed up. I’m still sorting it all out.”

He nods, an empathetic look on his face.

His head turns a bit and he asks, “Do you know what we are to each other?”

I can’t help but smile. He looks like everything is riding on my response, like he’s been dying to ask this question.

“Yes, you’re my mate,” I say with confidence.

He lets out a huge breath, relief washing over him. He reaches across the table, palm up, inviting me to put my hand in his, and I do.

The glorious little bits of electricity move across my skin, and into my heart. Warming me.

“Yes, yes I am,” he looks… proud, sure.

Something flickers across his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly. I must look confused because he closes his hand around mine and the pain in his gaze is clear. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come for you earlier. It would’ve been dangerous for me, but I should have done it anyway. I let you down. And as happy as I am to be your mate - I’m so sorry for failing you.”

“What are you talking about? You would’ve died!” I replied. “If you’d left me that way, I’d never forgive you!”

I was surprised at the rushed, panicked voice that came out of me.

His eyes squint in an unspoken question.

“I know! I mean, I know I’m all mixed up. There’s contradicting memories in here,” I say, making a vague gesture to my head with my free hand. “But the warnings about you not being ready to shift yet - the talks I had with Archangel Aurora, they’re clear as day. It’s how I knew I could fight off Sean long enough for you to get through.”

Jake looks totally, utterly confused. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I,” I start and stop, taking a big breath. “Maybe I should just tell you everything I know? From the beginning?”

“Please do,” he says, eyes darting, trying to absorb everything.

“I guess I can start with my first day at Pacific…” I begin.

Jake~

It wasn’t easy listening to everything Rachel had gone through. The Vance guy was creepier than I had thought, and I had never been so pleased to have beheaded him. The Sean stuff was probably the worst. She wouldn’t go into too much detail but I knew from her expression that she was working out all kinds of feelings about him. It nearly broke my heart when she described the nightmares and the day I had shown up, the one where she had just cried into me. Her perspective on the night of the tree lighting made me smile. I knew I had been right. All that time, she had feelings for me before the matebond really took hold.

She told me about her only reprieve for a long time were the dreams of wolves and the Goddess, and I believe that we were really sharing dreams. Because for a long time those were my only reprieve too. The whole time as she went on, we kept our hands together. Not both of course, Rachel’s always been expressive, and she uses her other hand to punctuate her story. It makes me happy to see that bit of normalcy in her. Despite all of this insane stuff, she still moves her hands all over the place when she’s absorbed in sharing something. 

The Archangel stuff blows my mind. I shouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore. But here I am. Listening to her talk about her interactions with her. She nears the end of her story, to the point right after she was kidnapped by Sean earlier today.

Today. Wow. This has got to be the longest day in history.

She finishes and looks very tired. She looks at me expectantly, and I don’t know quite what to say.

“I guess it’s your turn?” she asks, sending a small squeeze to my hand.

“Sure. I’ll just fill in my side?” I suggest and she nods eagerly.

It’s so strange to just be pouring out my childhood like this. For my entire life, the werewolf side of me was always something hidden from everyone else. From her. But I tell her briefly about my parents, their ranking, how I was raised with expectations. I told her I had a massive crush on her in middle school but was forced to step back because of who I was. Her face gets flushed and I love the look of it. 

“I think you know,” she says, eyes looking anywhere but at me.

“Tell me,” I tease.

She looks at me then looks away. “You already know!”

“Tell me anyways, Killer,” I push.

“You know I kinda liked you too,” she says quietly, avoiding my gaze.

But I can’t look at anything but her. I must have the biggest smile of my life on.

‘She’s our mate. A crush doesn’t compare,’ Aamon notes grumpily at me.

But it does compare. It fills in something I had always wanted to hear from her. Without the need to reject it over me.

“You know I wanted to tell you all this, after what you said at the dance,” I say seriously.

She finally looks at me, the pink faded from her cheeks, and she says smally, “I know.”

I continued on, skipping to high school and to when she changed schools. I talk about when she crashed into the pole at the park and again she got all embarrassed. I could spend every moment of my life saying things that make her all blush.

I moved into more serious things. The demon part of me and the few things we knew. The story of the past demon wolf.

“Hellhound,” she corrects me.

“Yeah, I guess - How do you-?” I stop my question, because I can read the answer on her face. Archangel Aurora told her.

I told her about my parents’ kidnapping and she squeezed my hand so tight when I told her about finding them dead. I fill her in on our connection over winter break, and how I held onto those memories when I thought I had lost everything. 

We talk about Ally and Kyle. She hadn’t known about their backgrounds, just Kyle’s disappearance. She laughs and giggles when I give her the details on Ally and Nick’s gooeyness. How they discovered they were mates and how extra gooey Nick is for her. She’s delighted by it. I tell her that I killed Vance, and she doesn’t react much to it. Her face reads “resolve.”

I told her about Sophie then. And Tiffany. And how poor Evan rejected her because of the role she had played in harming his future Luna. She had questions about that and seemed to think about that a lot. Maybe she was filling in some blanks.

“Luna?” she asked me.

And I fill her in on what that means. She looks very unsure. Then I jump over to Maxine. That one seems to hurt her. She didn’t know. I tell her more about The Collective and how that connects to what happened today. And then I’m finished.

We’re both quiet for a moment.

I’m about to ask her if she wants to go back in when I’m linked.

‘I’ve got it. Ally worked it out with Kyle’s help. It was one of the guards down here. They let Sophie out. How do you want us to proceed?’ Nick sends.

Rachel noticed my distant gaze.

“That was Nick. We have a lead on Sophie’s escape,” I share with her. “Do you want to head back in and hang with them while I deal with this?”

“Well, I’m not going to stay out here in the dark by myself,” she laughs.

That’s when I realized that the moon was fully up in the sky. We’d talked for literal hours and I hadn’t noticed.