Alphas broken mate

Losing

Daniel

The moment that little sound left her mouth, my whole body went into a complete shutdown.

She sounded like a wounded animal crying out in pain and my body reacted to it... I felt the pain in that sound pierce my chest.

And before I could regain my wits she was gone again... running off on her cut feet...

When I saw her in that ring it took me a moment to comprehend that it was she who was standing in front of me and not the famous Beast fighter that has taken hundreds of lives of all types of unlucky souls.

She didn't look like the girl I grew up with... the girl I fell in love with.

Gone were the soft waves of waist-long brown hair, now it was cut shoulder length and covered in dried blood.

The soft rounded cheeks that always shined with bright pickiness now looked sharp and hollow...

She no longer had the generous curves that kept me at night on more than one occasion...

Now she was all skin and bones, under which there were steel macules that turned her body into a killing machine.

Her soft skin was now covered in scars, cuts and bite marks.

She still looked beautiful... but different. She no longer looked like I was used to seeing every day, now she looked dangerous and deadly... and I guess she was.

She has proven on multiple occasions that she can kill everyone and anyone, without remorse or caring who the person she killed was, or why they ended up in that dammed arena.

To her, they were just the next target... her next victim.

But the thing that changed the most was not her body... no, it was her eyes.

Before the s**t with her family went down she always smiled, her eyes shined with bright spackles like the freaking galaxy drawing me.

After the tragedy where she lost everyone, her eyes changed, they shined less, but there were still little glimmers of hope and happiness in them. Sure there were moments when her eyes would get clouded, the dark moments when all I could do was hold her, but they would pass and her eyes would be smiling again.

But now...

Now her eyes looked empty, completely empty.

There were no glimmers of hope in them.

Only sadness and pain.

I hoped that when she saw me they would light up even a little bit like they used to, but the only thing I saw on her face when she looked was pure panic and fear.

Just like a few moments ago when she released the freaking sound.

The moment my mind shook off that pain and shock, I ran after her, like always.

Not sure where she had run off to, so I tracked her scent... though it changed.

She no longer smelled of forest and sunshine, but blood, death and fear. I am not sure if it was her emotions that were affecting her scent or maybe it just absorbed the scent from the arena where she lived for the past few years.

She didn't make it far.

I saw her body lying a few hundred meters away from the house.

When I saw her body on the ground, lying there lifeless... hell...

Logically, I knew that she was alive, but my heart stopped for a moment.

I pushed those thoughts away and ran towards her.

It looks like she hasn't hurt herself while falling.

Relief filled my chest when I felt her chest rise and fall as I lifted her off the ground.

She weighed next to nothing, so I had no trouble carrying her back into the house. Letting go of her as I laid her down was the hard part.

Subconsciously, I had this fear that if I released her she would disappear again and I couldn't lose her again. Not after the torture I had to live with all this time, she was gone.

I forced myself to release her because I had to dress her cut feet before she woke up. Good thing the healer left ointment and bandages to help heal her other cuts.

I brought the little bracket she left for me to take care of Erin's wounds and laid it on the bed.

Seeing the bloody cuts on her bruised feet made my stomach turn.

Even now, I can't stand the idea of her being in any sort of pain, physical or emotional.

I can't stop her from hurting emotionally. I can't erase or change the past, but this... this type of pain I can prevent or at least I can fix, so she would be hurting less.

So I did that.

I cleaned the wounds with the most care and dressed them. Feeling happy that she is not awake right now and that I can take care of her without fighting.

After finishing it, I inspected my work one more time and, feeling happy with it, I cleaned up. I put away the medical basket and cleaned up the broken plate, remembering how happy she looked for a moment when she took the first bite, so I guess she hasn't lost her love for food... good to know that at least one thing about her stayed the same.

I know that there was a lot that I had to do, and there is a lot of pack responsibilities that I needed to tend to, but I just couldn't leave her.

The same feeling of fear that she would disappear when I turned my back on her returned and I stopped fighting it.

Slowly, I crawled into the bed next to her.

And just like when we were kids, I pulled her into my arms.

Pulling her in so close that there was not even space for air between us.

I didn't stop myself from burying my face in her hair, even if this was for a moment, this healed the part of me that was still raw... still hurting...

"I promise, I will fix this. I refuse to lose you again... not when I just got you back."

I whispered more to myself than her.

It was just a bit of reassurance to help me push through this with the hope that it would all be better when we woke up the next day.