Chapter 9
1031 Words
NORA
I walked back to my room and shut the door behind me and stood there for a second with my mind replaying back everything that has happened so far.
The dining table had been uncomfortable from the moment I sat down. Iris had not bothered to hide it. Every question she threw out was aimed at making me feel like I had walked into a space I had no right to be in and the tension that built up around the table with every passing minute was not the kind that goes away on its own.
Raphael shut her down each time she pushed too far but he did it carefully, like someone who was managing something rather than ending it, and that told me more than anything he actually said. There was history there.
Between him and Iris. I don't really know what this is about, but as much as I tried not to doubt it. I can't ignore the fact that something is definitely going on between them.
Maybe, not something deep or maybe it is deeper than I had thought.
I kept my eyes on my plate and my mouth on my food and I said nothing because I have learned a long time ago that watching and staying quiet gets you more information than anything else you could do in a room full of people with agendas.
When I stood up to leave I said my thanks and kept it simple.
That was when Iris made her comment. About the name. About how nobody in this pack, not even the people closest to him, called him Raph. And here I was, a complete outsider, using it like it belonged to me.
Raphael told her to leave it alone. His voice was calm and it was final and it did not invite a response. He did not raise it or sharpen it. He just said it, more like a command. Even though his glares were cold and icy.
I bowed slightly and walked out and did not look back.
By the time I reached my room and lay down on the bed the ceiling was the only thing I was looking at and my wolf had already started.
"You should not be this closed off. This place is not Kael's pack."My wolf whiner, bitterly with eyes Peircing through the ceiling.
"You do not know that," I told her and sighs as we both glare at the ceiling like our life depends on it.
"The mate bond does not lie, Nora."My wolf drawl, I only scoffed.
Of course it does, I was mated to Kael, yet he hurt me like no one else.
"Kael was our mate too, he was good before he turned into a monster that is practically worse than the devil himself " I pulled the blanket over myself and stared up at the ceiling again. "He started out gentle. He started with saying the right things and doing the right things and I believed every single part of it because I wanted to. And look at what that cost me."
My wolf was quiet for a moment, every of my words started to sink in.Like it was realization.
"Raphael is not Kael."She muttered convincely and I only smirked.
"Maybe not. But I am not the same person I was when I married Kael either." I turned onto my side. "I am not ready to hand anything over to anyone. Not the mate bond. Not my trust. Not any part of me that I just spent everything I had to get back."I declared boldly.
"So you will just keep your walls up forever.”Rolly, my wolf asked.
"I will keep them up until I have a reason not to." I closed my eyes. "That is not the same thing."
My wolf did not respond to that and I let the silence settle.
The room was dark and unfamiliar and the bed was nothing like anything I had slept in before and somewhere outside the window the pack was going about its evening and none of them knew who I was or what I had come from or what had been done to me to get me here.
I thought about Iris sitting beside Raphael at that table. The ease of her.
The familiarity.
The way she looked at me like I was something temporary that had not yet been told it was temporary.
I thought about the way Raphael shut her down without fully explaining anything.
I thought about my pup and the thought settled on top of everything else the way it always did, heavy and constant and without any softness in it at all.
I was not going to trust this place because it had a comfortable bed and a man who pulled me out of a forest and spoke to me without cruelty.
That was not enough.
That had never been enough for me and it was not going to become enough now just because I was tired and hurt and had nowhere else to be.
I needed to watch.
I needed to learn.
I needed to understand exactly what I had walked into before I let any of it in.
"You felt the mate bond though," my wolf said quietly, trying once more.
"I felt Kael too," I said back. "In the beginning. I felt everything I was supposed to feel and I built a life on top of it and he tore that life apart piece by piece while I was still living in it."
My wolf went quiet again.
"Mate Bonds and feelings and promises are only as good as the person carrying them," I told her. "And I do not know this man yet. I do not know this pack yet. And until I do, everything stays exactly where it is."I said, finally.
I pulled the blanket tighter and closed my eyes and lay there in the unfamiliar dark room in a pack that was not mine and told myself that surviving one more night was enough for now.
My wolf did not argue again.
But she did not fully agree either and we both knew it.
- Writer
