Fight Or Flight
877 Words
“Lorraine…”
“Just…” She shrugged him off, brows lifting when he did not let go.
“Please, talk to me. I need you to…”
“I need you to let me go, Logan.” Some of her messy feelings bled into her voice.
He stilled, and she looked straight into his eyes, hating that they still reached her.
“We can talk later,” she said, the words forced out.
Whatever he saw on her face loosened his grip on her.
Lorraine immediately slipped her hand out of his.
She shifted to leave, and his reluctance was clear.
“I…”
"Alpha", his beta appeared in the doorway.
He immediately noticed the tension and said, “Sorry, I will just…”
“No, stay,” Lorraine said briskly as she passed him.
Logan did not follow. Lorraine had dreaded he would.
She kept walking until she was deep in the woods.
Her breath had grown choppy by the time she finally stopped.
She leaned against a fig tree, thumping her chest as she dragged in air, her throat tightening like it was closing in on her.
“Oh, great. Now, I will add panic attacks to my shameful ailments,” she thought with a caustic laugh that sounded like a croak.
She had never had a panic attack before.
But she would not be surprised if it chose now to break her.
“It is him. He and this… inconvenient bond the goddess forced on me,” she thought grudgingly.
She had never felt this much. Not until him.
Since she was young, she had learnt to bury her feelings, to stay practical, and to keep her distance.
When you are surrounded with gossip and whispers branding you as the w***e’s daughter, surviving was the only way to spit in their faces.
“I need to leave. I really need to,” she murmured, bent over as she inhaled harshly.
But even she knew he had to accept her rejection first before she could truly be free of him.
If not, they would only keep circling back to each other because of their bond.
She did not want to think of it, but the image of the feisty kid reared up in her mind.
“Who are you?” the girl asked her earlier, like Lorraine was the one trespassing.
Which, in a way, she was.
Despite the resemblance to Logan, Lorraine tried to convince herself the girl might belong to a pack member.
“Or maybe our mate has a mistress,” Kiara had interjected, her feelings of betrayal bleeding into Lorraine.
Lorraine ignored her wolf and said to the girl, “I am a friend of the pack. Who are you?”
“I am Solana. I am the alpha's daughter.”
The conviction in her voice punched a hole through Lorraine's chest.
Her voice came out thin as she asked, “The… alpha's daughter?”
The girl nodded, curls bouncing. “That is what Mum said. Have you seen him? The lady said I should wait, but I need to find him. I hear them talking. Do you think he will send me away, too?”
Seeing the fear and uncertainty beneath the girl's bravado made Lorraine suppress her own messy feelings for a moment.
She crouched and spoke in what she thought passed for a soothing tone. “I don’t think so.”
The words felt like a bitter lie on her tongue.
She did not even know him enough to know what he would not do.
She had just started thinking he was honourable, but he turned out to be a child-abandoning prick anyway.
The thought dragged up her own buried pain.
“What is it with bastards who do not think twice before discarding their pups?” she thought in a surge of anger.
She rose swiftly, wincing inwardly when the girl automatically stepped back.
She wondered if someone had raised their hand to the kid before, and that angered her even more.
“You want to see the alpha? I think I have an idea where he will be,” she offered, her mind on the packhouse. “Come with me.”
The girl followed with hesitant steps.
The sight of her bare feet made Lorraine’s hands curl into fists.
She almost asked who her mother was, but she realised she might not like the answer.
So she took the girl right to the pack house, only to be met by Damien and the maids.
Logan’s confused look when he saw the girl only fuelled her anger.
“Who gives birth without even knowing it?” she murmured out loud.
For a moment, she wondered if her father would say the same thing, too.
She shrugged off the sudden thought and turned towards where she came from.
“I cannot stay here. He will accept my rejection whether he wants it or…”
Her head snapped around as a new scent hit her.
She turned swiftly as a twig snapped behind her.
Lorraine’s hand went to her holster as she called out,
“Who is there?”
Silence, yet the scent lingered.
Her voice rang out sharply, “Come out before I drag you out.”
- Writer
