Awakening (2 book series)
Awakening – Rejected Mate Chapter 85

"My dear, I fear I have said too much and inadvertently made your hope of release a less plausible outcome. You must forget what I said, especially about Luna Santo. It's in your best interest that we never had this conversation, and you do not repeat to anyone that we did." There's serious concern etched into his face that deepens the lines around his eyes and he locks a direct gaze right on my eyes, a hint of warning in his tone. He's closing down our line of communication because he thinks what he's telling me puts me in danger. A hint that I was right about his character and him being the soft link in this facility. He's a decent man who cares, and I need to show him that I'm already screwed, so he doesn't lock me out.

"I imprinted on Colton and Juan forbade it.... We're fated, but he forced him to mark another for the sake of the pack. I'm not getting set free.... I'm probably going to end up like her, or worse. I'm a reject of the pack, a diluted bloodline who brings shame to his people, and the only reason he's coming here is to be done with me once and for all...... nothing you say makes a difference to what he's going to do to me. I'm not getting out." It's a harsh hurried whisper, and I fall silent as I catch a glimpse over his shoulder of his assistant coming out of Sierra's room. Nodding her way to alert him, but he seems completely dazed. Stiff and still and staring at me intensely.

"I'm done, I'll go up to the lab and run the new bloods we were sent from the south, Doctor." She calls to him from the hallway across the bay and without looking back at her he waves a hand dismissively, eyes locked on me in the most alarming way. She takes that as an answer, nods, and walks off towards the elevator briskly to head back upstairs. The air in this room suddenly heavy with tension.

"Imprinted? By the fates? As in that rare form of bonding two souls so they become insanely l**t and love driven to be forever together? I didn't think any alpha had the authority to undermine that. It means you're linked to .... Sierra's bloodline?" His skin tone seems to pale noticeably, and his eyes darken weirdly. His mind clearly racing over a million thoughts and his forehead wrinkles deepen as his frown does. An air of mild nervousness kicking up around him.

"Yeah, well, Juan doesn't give a rat's a*s about anything except his own authority, and Colton, he's so stuck in his shadow that he chose to let me go instead of honoring the bond. So I left, didn't look back and something brought me here instead. This wasn't a chance replace.... This facility. Dreaming of her almost every night, and something pulled me here. I'd headed south, but something made me change and come east from my path... Sierra's voice calling or some stupid memory of a dream that wouldn't leave me alone." I offload on him, now I know his companion is in the elevator and it feels good to finally say it to someone, rather than be all caught up in my own head. A gush of chatter that I've been turning over for days.

"Stop. Don't." The doctor waves his hand at me, snapping me back to attention, and the wild-eyed terrified look on his face as though I just told him I have a bomb under my ass. He turns abruptly, panic slamming the card against the wall panel to slide open the door, lacking graceful coordination, and steps out of the doorway fully, shaking his hands and head and I follow, unsure why he's recoiling. His whole-body trembling as he oozes a crazy amount of fear. I can taste it. "What? Why? Do you think I'm lying?" The sudden rise of emotion in him has me on edge too, and the panic that I'm scaring my only ray of light to escape away. He appears to be running away, but as he turns to me, to close the door, the tear I catch in his eye silences me and he pauses, taking a deep breath and lowering his hands. The open door between us keeping us a couple of feet apart, but his sadness overwhelms me.

"Eight years of silence... eight years watching her sleep. Eight years hoping that one day the things she said, I'd accept that my friend had lost her mind completely. Eight years.... and I convinced myself that her visions and stories were that of a mad woman, broken by battle which convinced her that her mate was an evil player in some bigger plan, and her confinement here was a betrayal to silence her. Eight years justifying that she was better asleep, than to be tortured by her own illness of the mind." I don't know if he's saying it to me, or to himself, his eyes not on me, just glazed and distant as a single tear rolls down his cheek and I'm so very confused.

"I don't understand. You said she was fine... upstairs.... She's been here longer than eight years..... Colton said nine." Or was that including the war... when he didn't see her in that timeframe because he never saw her when she came home at all. I don't know. Oh god, please don't tell me she really is broken, and this is all for nothing.

The thought crosses my mind, things not adding up to what he said, and going around in circles, unable to piece it together logically. Maybe Sierra really was sick, but then what the hell is he saying? The doctor smiles at me sadly, his pale grey eyes finally landing on mine, and gives me a watery half smile.

"If she was crazy.... then how could she tell me that one day a solitary she wolf from the west would come to save us all from something that was coming. A future leader of her people, joined to her blood by the fates. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it's not. Maybe it's wishful thinking and guilt because I've let her lay there for eight long years. Don't you see?" he's almost babbling, but I pick out the points I think he's trying to connect.

"I came East from where I was, and I'm linked to her son." I repeat robotically, still looking at him with a quizzical expression on my face and trying to figure out what his vague statements mean. He's lost in his own head.

"Tell me.... What does the name Marina mean to you?" He narrows his eyes on me, leaning in as though telling me a secret of the utmost importance, and her name falls off his tongue like a lead rod that stabs me in the heart.

I gasp at the utterance of it on this man's lips, my blood running cold as he says it, and I openly stifle a sob such is the unexpected pain of hearing it. A name that died when she did, and no one has uttered it in a decade. "She was my mother...." I whisper it painfully, that same rise of heartache anytime I begin to think of her and have to stop my own tears from breaking free.

The doctor clasps a hand to his mouth as though I've uttered something sinful, his eyes widening in alarm and he begins to breathe heavily. Backing away from me as something seems to click into place.

"I can't hear this, because if this is what she said...I've let my friend suffer in sleep for all these years, alone..... and I failed her. I let him convince me she was mad, don't you see. I broke my oath, I broke my promise as her friend, and I'm a terrible person. I need to go.... I don't want to know about any of this!" He pulls away, shaking visibly, beginning to crumble, and avoids looking at me as panic grips him mercilessly. He's clearly distressed, his word falter as he babbles them out and he's once again running from me mentally. "Wait.... don't go.....what about my mother? What do you know? How do you know her name? What did she say about her?!" I'm yelling after him, grasping for something I don't even know I'm chasing, as my own panic rises with being left with nothing but her name. My door slides quickly shut as he departs and traps me inside this chamber before I get after him, because I was too slow to lurch forward. He isn't looking back but scarpering across the concrete floor until he gets mid-way between mine and hers on the way to the elevator.