Desire Goddess

Chapter 2 - No Escape

During the ride, she said things. She couldn’t remember what. Things about the country and culture. Probably stupid things. She just remembered a distinct feeling of not caring if what she said was good or bad. Which was a major departure from her usual feeling when talking. It was nice not to care.

“I know what you are”, he said immediately after they were seated.

“I’m a werewolf too”, he quickly added, as if she didn’t know.

“I’m sure you noticed it right?”, he asked.

“Noticed what?”, she replied, fully knowing what he would say.

“We are true mates.”

“Yeah”, she answered.

He stared at her for an uncomfortably long time. Then took a very, very deep breath and said,

“I already have a chosen mate.” Somehow she had known. Of course. That’s always how it went for her.

Still, they talked into the night at the small bar. It was a strange balm for her closed soul, which oddly latched onto a compassionate ear. It felt so good to be seen. Too good. It felt good that ladies at work were jealous of her. It felt good not to be at the bottom. It felt weird not to be the unseen one.

Over the next few weeks, they were always together after work. She started feeling things in a way she had never felt before. They never had s*x because of his chosen mate (werewolf mates can always feel when their second half is engaging in s*x). But they played the edges of their body’s limits. The very edges. It was absolutely exhilarating. The only way to describe it, she suddenly realized, was that it felt like having lived before in black and white and now seeing in color. She was seeing color for the first time ever. But his chosen mate was always a present fact. And his kids. He wasn’t going to leave them. Not even for a true mate. His past had been rough and horrible. Filled with incomprehensible traumas. His chosen mate had been there. Loved him. Loved him through his unspeakable mistakes and unforgivable behaviors. He owed her. She deserved his best. Instead, he was f**king around with her, Quinn. And she did nothing to stop it. She felt evil. She felt dirty. She didn’t want it to stop. She didn’t care.

But she also wasn’t paying attention to the deadness of her body. He was her mate right? Her mind thrilled being with him. But her body was the same dead, disconnected, fleshy block as always. Was that normal? Wasn’t the body supposed to awaken with a true mate? She always thought the jolt of meeting him would finally wake up her inner wolf. But nothing happened. She may as well have been human.

Then he left. Back to his chosen mate. He wasn’t going to leave his chosen mate. And Quinn didn’t even want him to.

But his leaving had gouged a hole into her life. She had nothing more to expect. Even meeting her so-called true mate hadn’t fixed her issues of not belonging, of not having an inner wolf, or of not fitting into the pack. It had been her last hope. That maybe meeting him was the missing piece of the broken puzzle. But it wasn’t and she had to face the reality that something was wrong beyond anything she understood. She didn’t even know where to start now to search for a fix. The idea of taking any next steps felt like contemplating leaps of faith, moving blindly into the future.

She finally blew out the candle. Her memories had caught up to the present. And she wanted to be in the dark with the fresh memories of tonight. In the past weeks, she had renewed her plan to run away; go out on her own. It had been a big decision. Lone wolves were always in high danger, away from the protection of their pack, and seen as a threat by all other wherewolves. They usually didn’t live long. She wasn’t sure she cared. But it seemed the pack had noticed what a flight risk she was and had decided a course of action for her.

And tonight, they informed her of this plan. They just left her apartment. The last few hours had been spent with a surprise counsel including her parents, the pack Alpha, and several of his most trusted Betas. They decided she should marry one Beta in the wolfpack. One younger guy named Grant. During the entire visit, she had prayed the entire earth would open and she could simply fall away into some abyss. The embarrassment of having an entire group of older wolves decide her future life while she watched silently from a chair was more than she could take. She hadn’t cried. But the tears flowed now. Without sound. She was so tired from the stress of that meeting, even her vocal chords couldn’t be moved to participate in her sadness. But it still felt like her spirit was trying to split her body in half. The pain in her core caused her to double over.

The group counsel reasoned that getting married and having pups might wake her inner wolf. At the least, it would keep her tied to the pack and less of a flight risk. And what would happen if even marriage couldn’t solve her issues? Maybe she would fade into oblivion. Just a purposeless, failed creature. Or maybe they would devise more “solutions”. Maybe this would only get worse for her. But the previously open door to her psychological cage, which had been an escape to the wide world, had now closed hard. Guards were posted at her door to ensure she wouldn’t run, and she would meet her future “husband” at dawn.

She would be married by noon.