Page 56

FORTY-SIX

Playing: Help Me Out by Alicks

The human walks around mindlessly. The area is unfamiliar to us, the loud noise of party-goers echoing throughout the city streets.

I ache for home, cozy sheets and those wax melts she knows that I like.

She ignores me, or maybe she doesn’t hear me.

Her mind is daydreaming, heedless to her surroundings entirely.

She knows that she is floating outside of our body, still contemplating the events from earlier, still believing that this life meant for us will not be a choice of our own.

I try to push her to not accept defeat. I’m growling with all my sentience for her to muster up the courage that we both know she has.

This body was meant for this. We were meant to come together, demand that our life be ours .

But instead she is thinking of her father through the lens of the little girl inside her that didn’t turn out to be a little beta like he wanted.

She hears his voice, full of venom and hatred, demanding her to do what she must all because biology said it must be so.

He now deems her worthy only as stock, so she must see herself as such and accept it.

No! Wake up! I try to scream at her, but she’s ignoring the feeling in her gut.

I’m starting to worry that she is no longer in this body with me.

At some point, our shell interacts with others on autopilot. Some of them look at us with hesitant smiles, while others have the same half-lidded eyes.

She accepts the pills when they are offered. I can’t do anything but watch her hand bring them to our mouth. She has taken these before, but never in a dissociative state, and never so many at once.

It’s not a surprise, though. Whenever the spineless alpha would spew evil words at us, she’d take them.

The first time was brutal. He apologized a few days later right before hurting us again.

He’d gotten flowers, told her that he loved her and that he was the only one who would ever love her that much.

She didn’t have the energy to realize the bullshit, still numb and confused.

She wanted to pretend it didn’t happen, that it was something she imagined from one of the books she was reading.

She didn’t listen to me then, and she’s not listening to me now. No matter how many instincts I send up her spine, she feels better disconnected. She feels safe this way.

I love her. I don’t blame her for wanting to feel that way.

The verbal beating before the pills was brutal. I felt every sensitivity poked and prodded at by that craven. Something inside my human had turned off that day, and it had stayed off. Until we ran into a pretty beta outside Alpha Xi.

There’s a fogginess now, setting in heavier by the second. She’s brought us to a green clearing now, her footsteps faltering. She freezes as something cold spreads over us. In the confusion, I can hear her thought clearly:

What is happening to me?

Our body falls backwards, but we never hit the ground. I am confused by the sensation. We are sprawled out, but nothing hurts. The body has become completely numb.

It’s a beautiful feeling of nothingness. I feel relaxed, no longer worried about anything or anyone.

Deep in the crevice of our mind, there’s a few faces and names I can’t quite remember.

I am finally experiencing what I’ve been searching for. Complete bliss. I am fully letting go.

I agree with her. We feel on equal ground again, feeling and wanting the same thing. I feel her close our eyes, and a dark abyss chases us.

Then I see their faces. Blonde hair, lightning earrings, the smell of chamomile tea with a good book, the sound of a bass strumming softly in a dimmed room…

My mates…

I panic, sending shock into the body.

Wake up! Stacia, please!

I am banging from the place deep within her. She can no longer hear me, let alone herself. She’s forgotten that I know what we need, and now we are here, dying in the sunken earth.

My mates. I plead…

I’m so sorry.

I remember each of their scents one more time before I succumb to feeling once again, and let it drag us under.