Finally Her Turn

Chapter 25: Living the Dream

Marissa

My room turns out to be bigger than John’s, and it only has the one bed in it. If I had to guess, our adjoining rooms are intended for parents and their young kids, and it looks like I get the grown-up room. I can’t fight back the small smile that creeps across my face as I’m thinking about that, though thankfully only John’s “Uncle Ben” seems to notice.

That’s something I’ve been wondering about since I met John. Regardless of your relationship to them, I thought that Elders are always supposed to be addressed with respect to their position, same as Alphas and other ranked wolves. But I guess I have heard Aly just call Alpha Kane “Dad” and I’ve heard other people do stuff like that too every now and then, so it’s probably not all that strange. Still not something I’m comfortable with, though.

“Will this be to your liking then?” the Elder guy asks me.

Elder Benjamin I think, based on how John keeps calling him Uncle Ben, but I’m not confident enough to actually say it out loud to him. Most people don’t even know how terrible my memory is, and keeping my mouth shut when I don’t know something is how I manage that.

“Yes, thank you,” I tell him, doing my best to sound as grateful as I feel.

Would it have been the worst thing in the world to have to share a room with John? No, of course not. But it also would have been uncomfortable enough to keep me up all night. I’m not sure if this arrangement is much better considering the door that our rooms share, but at least he won’t be able to see me thrashing around if I do manage to get any sleep tonight.

“Alright then, Miss Carter,” Elder Ben or Benjamin answers. “Be sure and let John know if there’s anything else you need so he can contact me, and I’ll do my best to accommodate you. I know that being plucked from your pack happened rather abruptly, and I’m sure there will be things that you’ll realize you’ve left behind, so don’t hesitate to let us know so we can fix it.”

“And John,” the big guy turns to my mate next so he can fix that intimidating gaze on him instead of me for a moment, “I’m going to leave the keys to my rental with you, so that if it turns out that there is anything she needs that you can just go and get for her, then do it. Just be sure and let me know that you’ll be leaving and where you’ll be.”

“You got it,” John tells him and gives him a playful salute.

“What is it with you kids today?” his uncle muses, shaking his head at him. “I don’t know if you realize how well you would have fit in at New Horizon, John. It may even turn out to be quite a shame that you didn’t really consider that option.”

“It’s fine. I’d rather it this way,” I cut in almost automatically, before I even realize that I’m doing it.

But if his uncle is about to talk him into reconsidering which one of us should be transferring, then I wish he wouldn’t. The idea of joining John’s pack still makes me nervous, but those nerves have nothing on the panic I just felt while picturing him joining mine.

He’d want to meet Owen and see where I grew up, and it wouldn’t take him long to hear the “mate-stealer” rumors and probably reconsider his connection to me entirely. I’m a horrible liar, but I’m even worse at arguing my innocence, even if it’s the truth. I eventually gave up on fighting it and just let people spin their rumors. It’s not like anyone was going to want to be my friend anyway, or they would have tried by then. But if John heard about it and asked me, no matter how much I’d want him to believe me, I don’t think I would do very well at convincing him that my own father started that baseless rumor. It’s so ridiculous that no one ever believes it.

Not to mention the fact that John has an actual family back at his pack. There’s not just Uncle Ben, but he has two loving parents and even a sister, plus lots of extended family like cousins. I don’t have any of those things, and it would be selfish of me to demand that he give it all up to come and live where I have nothing to offer him. Except me, but I’m not really a prize.

I realize that both John and his uncle are gaping at me with surprise, and I start shifting my weight around uncomfortably, crossing my arms to try and steady myself a bit.

“It’s just that I know he has a lot of family back at your pack, and I wouldn’t want him to have to leave them,” I offer the only explanation that I feel comfortable sharing with them.

“That’s kind and thoughtful of you,” Elder Ben compliments me, smiling my way.

With his face softened like that, he doesn’t look quite as intimidating, but it doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable with his attention. Less, actually. I’d rather if he was glaring at me instead of telling me how kind I am. I’m not, and I feel bad about letting him think that I am. My reasons were selfish, and I’m practically taking advantage of John and his connections by letting him take me away like this.

I shouldn’t be going with him for the wrong reasons. I should only have agreed if I was ready to accept that he’s my mate and live with him the way that mates do. He obviously expected that since I agreed to come with him. I also can’t help worrying that I’m giving him the wrong impression by letting him get away with doing all that behind my back. And yet, I figure that an opportunity like that doesn’t come knocking twice, and I couldn’t let it slip away from me.

“Yeah, I appreciate it so much that you agreed to this, Marissa,” John adds, stepping closer and giving me a look that makes my belly feel weird and kind of gross. “I know that I went about it completely the wrong way, but I’m just so glad and grateful to be bringing you home with me.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I tell them, trying to brush it off and dismiss the topic entirely.

But when they both stand there giving me that surprised look again, I decide it’s better if I just keep my mouth shut about it. We obviously have a massive difference of perspective on this, and the more I talk, the more curious and concerned they’re going to get.

“But uh, I mean, I would like to go and get a new phone, if that might be possible. That’s what I was in the middle of when Alpha Kane called me back,” I explain, hoping that introducing a new topic that will appeal to their eagerness to help me might just be the thing that I need to make them forget my unfortunate comments.

“Of course,” John quickly agrees, stepping closer to me again and looking like he wants to reach for me. Thankfully, he’s still enough of a distance away that he can’t touch me yet.

His uncle nods his agreement, reaching into his pocket and pulling out those keys that he promised John.

“Feel free to take her wherever she needs to go, but stay in range and keep me updated,” he reminds him. “And don’t forget your sunglasses. Humans are about as common as werewolves around here, so don’t let yourselves get too comfortable and forget your eyes. Nine times out of ten, that’s what gives us away, and it’s just not worth the risk.”

“Got it,” John answers him, smirking as he salutes him again.

His uncle smiles with amusement as he shakes his head, but all he says is, “Then I suppose I’ll leave you to it.”

Then he musses John's hair a little, returning his smug look, and turns and leaves the room so that it's just the two of us now. As soon as he’s gone, John turns his attention back to me, giving me an uncertain and questioning look as he takes another couple steps toward me.

“We can go now, if you’re ready,” he offers, and though he still seems like he’s fighting back the urge to reach out and touch me, he shoves the keys in his pocket instead.

I check to make sure that I have my wallet and room key in the appropriate pockets and then nod my agreement in response to his plan, brushing past him on my way to the door.

“Alright then,” I hear him mutter behind me.

I figure it’s probably not a good sign that he already seems to be frustrated by me, but hey. He’s the one who wanted me with him so badly. Well, ready or not, here I am.

-

-

John

Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that I had to convince Marissa to just add another phone line to my plan and choose a decent phone. She wanted to go and get a really cheap pre-paid one, but I eventually managed to get through to her. Cheap price tag means cheap components, and it probably wouldn’t be long until we were right back here, needing to get another for her when she inevitably broke it again.

I’m sure that she thinks I’m still trying to control her and make decisions on her behalf, but I’m not. I’m just looking out for her and trying to show her that she’s not alone anymore. Even if she couldn’t afford a more expensive phone on her own, she has me now to help her pay for things.

What I can’t figure out is why money seems to have been such a struggle for her in the first place. She’s been earning a warrior's salary since she was 16, same as me, and she lived with her dad, which should have limited her expenses. I thought at first that she might just be terrible with money the way that Serena is, but I don’t think that’s the case. She seems to hate spending money.

Even at dinner, she was thinking price tags the whole time we were deciding what to order instead of just choosing what she wanted to eat. But I decided that I need to start picking my battles. The phone was important, but if she was content with a simple sandwich and a water, then I wasn’t going to push. Not that time, anyway.

Besides, it was nice just being there with her. For the first time since I met her, she seemed determined to stick close to me instead of constantly trying to put distance between us. I think it was because the restaurant was a bit crowded and the idea of coming into contact with any of the other people seemed to bother her far more than the idea of touching me, so she held onto my arm as we were walking around the place.

And then once we were seated at our table and the troublesome task of figuring out how she could spend as little money as possible was out of the way, she actually relaxed a little. We had a nice chat over dinner. Once I got her talking about her special assignment at Aly’s school, she settled into telling me silly stories about Tasha. It wasn’t lost on me that she was avoiding talking about the actual assignment as much as possible, but I wasn’t about to complain.

And then to top it all off, once we got back to the hotel, I somehow managed to convince her to leave the door that joins our rooms unlocked on her side. She may have also made me promise only to use it in the way that I specified, as a convenient way to get from her room to mine and vice versa so that we can talk and visit without messing around with room keys, but the fact that she decided to trust me with it feels like a huge step in the right direction.

But now that I’m lying here in my bed on my side of that same door listening to her enduring what I assume is the nightmare she warned me about, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to keep my promise. She quite specifically told me not to use that door to come in her room after we went to bed, and I knew even then that it would be a challenge, but I didn’t realize that it would be like this.

I’m not just hearing her distress. I’m feeling it. We haven’t really even bonded all that much, so it’s shocking to me that my body is reacting this way, but it is. What’s worrisome is that I vaguely remember learning about mate bonds back in high school, and I think that one of the things I learned was that a physical connection like this between mates only happens after the bond has been completed and sealed by marking and mating, except in extreme cases. If one mate or the other is in danger, in extreme pain, or dying, then their mate will be able to feel that.

Which means that those nightmares of hers are intense. She is experiencing herself being in danger, in extreme pain, or dying. Her brain is so convinced of it that it’s being transmitted to me as though it’s real. It’s bad enough that she’s going through that now, but knowing that she experiences this every night kills me. I also can’t help worrying about what it means that she has such intense nightmares every night of her life.

“This is ridiculous,” I finally mutter aloud, sighing with the weight of how much trouble I’m about to get myself in with my mate.

Then I toss the covers aside and start getting out of bed, though I think better of it once I’m about halfway to the door and try to distract myself by heading to the bathroom instead. But after my face is washed, my bladder is empty, and my teeth are brushed, I can’t shake the urge to open that door and go to my mate, and Raj won't allow it anyway. He's already threatening to take over and barge in there himself if I won't. I’ll just have to tell her the part about how I can feel her terror and her pain and hope that she’ll give me a pass.

Though my instinct is to open the door carefully and quietly, I fight it, thinking that maybe just the sound of the door opening will be enough to stir her out of her dream. But no such luck.

I creep across the darkness of her room, every bit of me wanting to just crawl in the bed with her and hold her to see whether our mate bond will soothe her. But figuring that she’ll be more upset about that than if I just stand at her bedside and try to rouse her that way, I go to her bedside instead.

The instant that I lean down to touch her, bringing my face close enough that she’ll be able to see that it’s me if she opens her eyes, a defensive hand shoots up and automatically grabs me by the throat as if it’s an action that she’s so practiced at that she can literally do it in her sleep. But her eyes remain closed and she sleeps through it, though she does start mumbling.

“No, not this time,” she says, and her fingers start to tighten around my throat.

With the air being choked out of me, I jut out an arm to push back on her and try to disrupt her hold on me. She seems surprised by it, but the sound she makes is more of a frustrated grunt accompanied by a sharp exhale of breath through her nose. Then I twist a bit to try to escape her hold, which admittedly hurts a bit as it allows her fingernails to dig into the flesh of my neck more, but that lasts only a split-second until I’m free.

And she’s still asleep, thrashing around more violently on the bed now. Maybe this is why she hates people trying to wake her up. I can feel how much more intense her dream has gotten since I started this, so I hurry around to crawl into the bed and go with my original gut instinct this time.

But as I try to slide in next to her, she whips her body around and starts fighting me. Still sleeping. I’ve never seen or heard of anything even remotely like this, but I don’t waste any time on marveling about it.

It’s a struggle, but I finally manage to push through her flailing and clawing at me, though she does land a solid punch to my jaw. Impressive, considering that she’s lying down, not to mention still sound asleep. Her efforts to fight me off are all blind instinct, but the effect of having someone real to fight seems to only make things worse in dreamland.

Once I manage to get close enough to secure a good hold on her arms and wiggle myself into a position where she can feel the effects of the contact with me, she finally starts to calm down a little. The hands that were swinging at me a minute ago are desperately clutching and grabbing at me now. Her body can’t even seem to make sense of who or what I am, but it also seems to know that it wants to be closer to me.

She ends up crawling on top of me, securing herself one handful of my shirt and another handful of my hair, but I’m completely fine with that. I have to wonder what she’s picturing in her head that has her wanting to be on me like this, but whatever it is, I’m beyond happy to be the safe place that she brought herself to so she could finally settle down and relax into a more restful sleep.

I don’t know that this argument is actually going to work on her, but in my defense, technically she never woke from her sleep, so I only half-broke my promise not to open the door and come wake her up.

-

-

Marissa

I fully expected to wake up with my hand around John’s throat. He agreed not to come in here, but I could tell as he was swearing up and down that he’d stay on his side of that stupid door that not even he believed himself. Even Tasha couldn’t bring herself to leave me alone to fight my nightmares in peace, and she’s pretty much my best friend.

But to my surprise, I wake up like a normal person with no memory of any dreams, nightmares or otherwise. Even Audra feels quietly content for once. I mean, my body feels a bit tired like maybe I was fighting through a bad dream at some point, and maybe I vaguely remember Owen cackling at me again, but it’s hard to say.

Once I open my eyes and push myself up a little, I realize that I gave John too much credit. He not only came through that door, but he stayed. It’s not a pillow that I’m all cuddled up to, it’s a man. And just judging by the guilty, worried look he’s giving me, he already knows how badly he screwed up.

“You’re unbelievable,” I grumble at him, pushing myself the rest of the way up and away from him, intending to roll myself off the bed.

But he reaches out and grabs both of my arms before I can get very far. Problem is, he forgets that he’s not the only warrior in this bed. If he wants to fight it out first thing in the morning, then so be it. I set some pretty clear boundaries before we went to bed last night, and I’m absolutely ready to back them up with my fists since that’s what he seems to be begging for.

Since he has my arms restrained, I quickly lean my head back and bring it forward on his face, headbutting him in the nose.

“Goddess, Marissa,” he calls out, releasing his grasp on me so he can hold his nose instead. “Just give me a damn minute to explain.”

“Explain how I made it very clear what I expected of you and you quite deliberately decided to do whatever the hell you wanted?” I yell back at him, continuing in my plan to roll away from him and out of the bed.

“You don’t understand!” he shouts, sitting himself up. “I could feel your distress, and your pain. The sound of it was bad enough, but I couldn’t take feeling it too, not knowing that that's what you were going through in here, and there was no way I was going to sleep through it.”

That actually pauses me in my tracks as his words sink in. I didn’t account for that. He shouldn’t be able to feel what I’m feeling yet because we’re not mated. Although, I suppose it kind of makes sense. Maybe intense nightmares fall under the category of “extreme duress” that would make it so that he can feel what I feel through our bond.

“Besides, I have something that Tasha doesn’t in that I’m your mate,” he goes on. “Our bond is meant to soothe us both. I knew that if I could just manage to fight my way close enough, you’d settle down. And guess what, you did. After I made it through all the punching, thrashing, and clawing, you settled right down, and we both got sleep that I don’t think we would have otherwise.”

I glance up and notice that the sunlight streaming through the window is another thing that’s strange about how I woke up today. It’s usually still dark out when I wake up. Maybe he’s right about all the sleep we got. Well, and the rest of it. I suppose that it’s understandable that he barged in here, considering what he was going through.

And now I just plain feel bad, about all of it. I hate my nightmares in general, but especially now that they’re affecting him too. And I hate that I reacted the way that I did, especially considering the blood streaming down his face from where I hit him in the nose.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him softly, averting my eyes because now I just feel ashamed about it all. I wish I wasn’t such a problem mate. He doesn’t deserve this.

“No, don’t be. I knew you’d be mad, and I’ve also got a better sense for why you hate people disturbing you while you’re having those nightmares now. But I’m not just anyone. I’m your mate,” he reminds me, standing up and starting to cautiously make his way over to me.

“Can we hug it out?” he asks, holding out his arms and showing only the smallest trace of the natural smirk that seems to run in his family.

I’m really not comfortable with hugs, even after all the practice I’ve had recently, but I suppose I owe it to him since I probably broke his nose.

“Okay,” I answer uncertainly.

And that seems to be all he needs to shift his slow, cautious approach into a full-on sprint as he hurries over to engulf me with his strong arms. I still don’t really know what I’m supposed to do during moments like these, but he grabs my head and tucks it against his shoulder, and I do my best to bring my arms up and around his back some.

“Thank you,” he breathes into my hair. “I know it’s more for me than you since hugs aren’t an easy or comfortable thing for you, but I appreciate you giving me this.”

I never told him that, which means that I either look far more ridiculous trying to give someone a hug than I realized, or he’s been paying close attention to me. I’m not sure which I hate more, but I am kind of glad that he seems to understand that asking for a hug from me is no small thing. I’m also surprisingly glad that we ended up hugging it out instead of fighting it out this morning.

But give me ten minutes, and I'm sure I'll have ruined it by then. It's what I do best.