Dying For You

Chapter 7

Theo's POV

"Oh, I'm so glad you're back," Mom says excitedly in my ear as she hugs me.

"I know I missed you too, Mom." I sigh.

Mom lets go of me and takes a step back with a broad smile. "I'm sure you're tired after your long drive. I won't bore you with all the chit-chat, but how was it? Did you have fun?" she asks.

"Honey, it's Alpha training. It's not supposed to be fun." Dad sighs, walking into the room and putting an arm over Mom's shoulders.

"But you can have fun when you are all trained up." she smiles.

"Yes, Mom, I had fun." I laugh.

"Oh good, I'm glad." she smiles. "I'd love to hear all about it tonight at dinner."

"Oh, Mom, no. You didn't," I groan.

"It's just a little something. Just a little dinner with the pack. We're just so excited to have you back. It's super… what are the cool kids calling it? Cas. It's super caaaasss." she nods with a smile.

"No, Mom. No one is calling it that." I deny.

"The cool kids are," she assures me as she walks away.

"We have your favorites. Get settled and take a shower. You smell like you haven't showered for six months. You were gone." Dad teases before following after Mom.

I head to my room and drop off all my bags. I dump everything in the laundry. Dad was right. The shoes in that bag smell like death, making everything else smell. Good thing I don't have a mate here to smell this stench. Ha….. yeah… great.

I look around my empty room. It's always had everything I've ever needed. But the older I get, the more open it feels. It's got everything but the one person I want, my mate. I'm 25, when am I going to meet her?

Ugh, the last six months spent training to take over the pack were a nice distraction from this loneliness.

I can't focus on this, though. I need to focus on taking over the pack so Dad can retire, and I will make this the best pack for my mate. I've traveled the world looking for her, I don't know where she has been hiding, but I'm so ready for her to be here.

I hop in the shower with thoughts of my mate filling my head. I can only imagine what she looks like. Maybe she will be tall. Maybe she will have dark hair and be in training so we can spend more time together. We could wrestle and spar. I'd never hurt her, but I'm not letting anyone else practice fighting with her. She doesn't need to fight, though. She would never be in a dangerous situation because I would never let anything harm her.

I bet she's funny. I think she will be outgoing- the life of every party. Oh, I can't wait. I need to get through this dinner; then I will have all day tomorrow to go out looking for my mate. My mate. Oh, I can't wait. I will claim her and make her mine in every way imaginable.

Is it possible to already be in love with a person I've never met? Because I am. I'm wrapped around the finger of a girl I've never even shaken hands with.

I shake those thoughts out of my head and get in the shower. I clean up and then hop out of the shower. I wear a T-shirt and jeans to prepare for this stupid dinner. Leave it to Mom to plan a dinner only a few hours after I get home from being gone for six months.

Soon we are headed down to the main part of the packhouse only to see dozens of people already there. Everyone gathered around, talking, laughing, and mindlessly waiting for the food to be served. Mom and Dad make their way over to the head of the table. A few people stop me to congratulate me and say they're glad I'm back. I guess it's kind of a big deal. I completed Alpha School. I'm not officially ready to take over the pack. I'm glad I got this done before meeting my mate; I wouldn't survive six months of not seeing my mate after meeting her.

I walk over to Mom and Dad only to see an extra seat at the head of the table tonight. Mine.

"We thought it was appropriate now that you are eligible to take over," Mom says happily.

"Thanks. I appreciate it." I smile at her.

I take a seat as the room starts to fill more and more. Ever felt alone in a crowded room? That's exactly how I feel right now. I don't understand why solitude is getting to me so much today. Maybe it's home. I see couples everywhere, probably.

Mom starts talking to me, asking for details of the camp. A new scent hits my nose. It's faint, only barely strong enough to catch my attention. It's mild, floral, and nothing specific. It must be a new air freshener. I like it. I start glancing around at the walls near me. Call me crazy, but when I see a color I like or a pleasant smell, I try to find out what it is; if I ever want to buy my mate a perfume or something, I want to know what scents I like to see if she likes them too. Or if it's a nice color, I like to commit it to memory so I can one day look for clothes or shoes or something for her in that color.

I look around, not seeing any air fresheners plugged into any outlets. Maybe I just can't see it. I look straight ahead right as a girl sits down at the far end of the table. She's looking around, looking very confused. I don't recognize her. She must be new. A man is talking to her while holding a cup in his hand. She nods, and he puts his hand on her left shoulder. She looks at his hand, then glances up at me, making eye contact for so split second.

At that moment, something clicked inside my soul. She's mine!

Another man is touching what's mine! I can't help but growl when I register the scared look on her face as she looks at the man. I hop on the table and sprint towards her. As soon as I reach her, I wrap my arms around her and growl at the man. "Don't touch her!" I growl at him. He reacts by ripping her out of my arms and putting her behind him. Three other men are now on either side of him, standing between my mate and me. I lash out at the first one.

Random people in the crowd pull us apart. "I want him dead!" I growl.

Some warriors are immediately at his side, forcing his arms behind his back and cuffing him. "No, please, Alpha, we can explain." the older men beg.

"Reid!" a pregnant she-wolf bursts through the crowd in tears as she looks at the traitor.

"Take him to the dungeons," I growl.

"No, Alpha, please let us explain." A new woman begs.

"Where is she?" the oldest of the men growls.

"I don't know." the woman answers.

"Theo, what's the meaning of this?" Mom asks, walking over to us.

"Please, Luna, please let us explain this outburst. Please spare my son." the woman begs.

"He scared my mate. There is no excuse." I growl, glaring at the one whose name is Reid, according to the crying pregnant lady.

"I was just going to get her water," he says.

Dad is now by my side, looking pissed. "All of you to my office. Now." Dad commands. The warriors pick up the guy and drag him toward Dad's office as the crowd disperses.

"I'm going to look for her." the woman says to the older man.

"I said 'ALL of you to my office,'" Dad growls.

"Yes, Alpha. My apologies." The woman bows her head.

They leave with their heads hung. "I just wanted to f*****g eat. Is that too much to ask?" Dad huffs sarcastically in my ear and then walks off.

I want that man dead. I look around the crowd trying to find my mate, who should be waiting on me. I just saw her. I want to hold her in my arms and find out her name.

My mate.

Oh, goddess, I'm over the moon! I found my mate!

The excitement fades as I see that she is nowhere to be found. She has to be in Dad's office. He did order them. She has to be there.

I run towards Dad's office. I am such an imperfect mate. I left her alone to go to Dad's office with a man she is afraid of. She's probably scared shitless. I open the door to the office to see many people inside waiting for me… but not the one I want to see.

"Where is she?" I growl.

"Come sit down, son." Dad huffs as he takes a seat at his desk.

"Where. Is. She." I growl, about to lose it.

"I said take a seat!" Dad yells. "I just want to eat some f*****g spaghetti, and it's getting cold, so sit the f**k down!" Dad growls at me.

I enter the office and walk over to a spare seat near Dad. I turn to look at the small crowd of people. Mom and Dad are sitting behind Dad's desk, and I'm slightly off to the side. The older man and older woman sit beside each other, holding hands. Warriors are keeping the cuffed man on his knees by the door as the pregnant woman cries, and he is trying to calm her down. The two other men sit beside two women I've never seen before.

"Alpha, I'm sorry for the outburst, but please let my son go." The oldest woman begs.

"He scared my mate; I want him jailed if not dead," I argue.

"Your mate? Are you sure??" Mom asks me.

"She's mine." I nod.

"Congrats." Mom smiles.

"I can explain everything. Please hear us out." the man speaks up.

"You're positive she is your mate?" the woman asks, looking at me nervously.

"Yes," I nod. Why do people keep asking?

"She's our daughter." the man sighs.

"I figured as much." Dad nods.

"We just got her back." the woman starts to shake her head as she mumbles.

"When Laila was almost three years old, she was kidnapped by hunters." my mate's father says.

"She was what?" I nearly yell as my heart pounds in my chest.

"We searched for her for years. Admittedly, after about ten years, we assumed she had died. We gave up on looking for her to focus on the three boys we did have. She was just a baby when she was taken by hunters who regularly kill adult werewolves. We had no hope left. But someone found her when the warriors raided a Hunter Facility almost two months ago. I was there, and the moment I saw her, I felt a connection to her. I didn't know if it was because she was my daughter or if it was because it was a young female werewolf that was trapped around the same age as my daughter was supposed to. But I immediately returned her to the pack hospital and couldn't leave her. I asked the hospital to test her, and all the results came back as our Laila." the man says, looking at his mate.

She sighs with a sad smile looking at him. "It took her weeks to wake up after taking her to the hospital. Those hunters pumped her full of silver and wolfsbane, arsenic, and just about everything under the sun. It was touch and go for a while, but she finally woke up." the woman explains.

"We still don't know exactly what the hunters did to her, but we can guess and probably won't be too far off." My mate's father huffs.

"My poor mate." I whimper.

"We just got her talking to us. She still doesn't understand what's going on. We're sure some of her is convinced that this is just some experiment they're doing on her. We've tried to explain that she's safe now, but we don't think she understands. She's deaf, so everything we can communicate is by writing things down, but we don't know how she learned to read because she understands some more complex words but not basic things like family or bedroom." My mate's mother says.

"We would go visit her in the hospital, but she was either asleep or too high on pain meds to remember because she was terrified of us when we met her yesterday. She inhaled her dinner to go hide in her closet again." one of the men, I guess her brother speaks up.

"She ended up getting sick and passing out from eating too fast. You say she is your mate, but she can't be. We are still working on getting her to wake up every day, even if it's only long enough to eat something and drink water consistently. Which is fine; the doctor said it's to be expected that she will be tired and lethargic for a while. But we've barely gotten her to feel safe enough with us to come out of hiding in her closet. We can only get her to come tonight because she wants food. We tried to explain that it would be a lot of people, with more than just the family, but based on how she reacted when she saw the pack, I don't think she understood that. All she heard was food, and she was hungry." My mate's Mom explains.

"I was only trying to get her some water to help her calm down so she could eat," the handcuffed man explains. "She's my little sister. I didn't know she was your mate, I just saw my already traumatized sister shaking in fear, and I pulled her way." the jailbird says, looking at me, seeming genuine.

"I tried to stop her before she ran away, but I have no clue where she ran off to. Alpha, Luna, may I please be excused to look for her? She doesn't know her way around and has been in fight-or-flight survival mode for the last 16 years. Please, can I go find my daughter." her Mom begs, sitting on the edge of her seat.

"Yes." My Mom sniffles with tears in her eyes.

My mate's Mom gets up and runs out of the room without another word. "Thank you," my mate's father speaks up, seeming less tense. "I promise my son never meant to disrespect your son and his future, Alpha. Please don't kill him or throw him in jail," he adds.

"No, I don't suppose I can punish him for trying to protect his sister." my Dad sighs, leaning back in his chair.

The guard stops holding him down. The man gets to his feet, stepping closer to the pregnant werewolf who clings to him as the guards take the handcuffs off. As soon as his hands are free, he hugs the pregnant woman while whispering in her ear, trying to calm her down.

"Here, come with me, Darling; let's get you some tea so you can calm down; getting this worked up isn't good for you or the baby," Mom says, standing up from her chair.

Mom and the pregnant one leave the room. "Ron, you and your family have been dedicated, loyal pack members and warriors for years. I hope something like this little incident doesn't change that." Dad says.

"Not at all. You had helped and supported us for years when we were looking for Laila. Mishaps like this happen all the time when wolves first find their mates." my mate's father shrugs. I guess his name is Ron.

"So, how can we help you look for your daughter now? Where do you think she would go if she were scared?" Dad asks.

"She shouldn't be scared. All I did was hug her. I'm her mate. She would have sensed that and calmed down." I say.

Ron nervously takes a deep breath sitting up in his chair before looking at me. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but we have reason to believe that her wolf isn't alive, so she cannot sense who you are to her. We only just taught her what hugging was."

My mate didn't know what a hug was. The gravity of everything they just told me about my mate suddenly sinks in. Hunters have used her as a human lab rat since she was a toddler. That's the only thing she's ever known. She doesn't know who her parents are or who I am. She might not even know she is a werewolf.

My mate.

I stand up. "I'm going to look for her," I announce. I walk out of the room and look at the empty hall. I feel my heart start to race in fear. I need to find my mate. She could be in danger, and she's scared and easily frightened. If the hunters had given her the silver and wolfsbane and everything her parents said, she could have had a medical emergency because of how I reacted.

Shit.

I start opening every door I pass and checking inside. Coat closets, storage rooms, offices, cabinets, everything is getting limited. I check every room on this floor and head downstairs and check that floor.

Nothing.

I return to the first floor to see if anyone from the pack has seen her. People are sitting around the table eating as they chatter to themselves.

Motion catches the corner of my eye. I turn to see someone walking out of the kitchen. The cabinets are just a bunch of boxes for her to hide in. I run to the kitchen and open up every cabinet, checking inside. Nothing again.

Come on, mate, where are you?

I run down a side hallway and open a nearby storage room door. Not in there. I open up a door next to that. Nothing. The only other entry on this hall goes outside, and it's still locked; I don't think someone would close the door behind her, so I assume she didn't go out there. I am assuming she didn't go out there.

I turn around and head down another hall, checking all doors. I keep checking, one door after another, only to come up empty.

Until, on the fourth door in that hallway, I fling open the door to see my mate flinch at the movement. She's sitting on the floor, shaking because she cries hard as she hides behind a mop handle leaning against the wall.

"Oh, my mate." I breathe a sigh of relief as I step closer to her. She flinches, leaning more into the corner. "It's ok. I won't hurt you. I didn't mean to scare you earlier." I apologize, trying to get her to calm down.

"Dad, I found her. She's in a supply closet on the first floor. Please let her parents know." I mindlink my Dad.

"Is she hurt?" He mindlinks me back.

"It doesn't appear so."

I show her my hands and try to show her I'm not here to hurt her. I want to help. "Please calm down. I'm not going to hurt you," I ask in the most calming voice possible. She retreats further and further into the corner as I get closer to her. She is visibly shaking from fear as I reach out to touch her. She flinches away from me. I scoop her up in my arms, bridal style, as she starts trying to fight me. I shift her, wrapping her legs around my waist and getting a better grip on her. Her brother rounds the corner just as I do.

"What are you doing?" He yells at me.

"Show me where she seems to feel safest," I command. He nods and turns around.

"Follow me." He leads me up the stairs and down a few hallways before stopping at the door. He opens it up to the apartment her family lives in. "Her room is this way." he leads me through a living room, past a kitchen and dining room, and then down a hallway and into a pink bedroom that looks like it's for a little girl. "Her closet." he points to the open closet door.

I walk her into the closet as she continues to fight me. I set her down in a corner it looks like she's been sitting in and set her down gently on the ground. She leans against the wall and starts crying with her forehead against the wall.

"Laila!" her Mom frantically runs into the room, stopping before my mate. Laila. My mate, Laila. "It's ok; you're ok. Brad, get me the whiteboard and pen." she points into the bedroom. Laila's brother, I guess this is Brad. He turns around and goes into the bedroom. Why does she need a pen?

Brad brings the whiteboard and marker, handing them to his Mom. She starts writing quickly, which I read over her shoulder. 'It's ok. You're safe.' She lightly shows it to Laila while tapping the shin to get her attention. Why would she have to write that?

"Why write that?" I ask.

"She's deaf," Brad says in a duh tone.

"She's deaf?"

"Mom explained when we were in the Alpha's office. I know she mentioned it." Brad says sarcastically.

"Brad, be nice. I told him a lot. So it's not surprising that he forgot some details." Laila's Mom sighs.

"Mom?" Laila sniffles, picking her head up from the wall and turning to look at her Mom. Her Mom nods and moves a little closer to her. "It was so scary. Mom, I'm so scared. I wouldn't say I like it. I want to go back. I don't want to do this anymore; please take me back. I want to go to my space, please." she sobs, leaning toward her mother. Her Mom sits on the ground beside her, hugging Laila as she cries.

"What's her space?" I ask her brother.

"They think it's the hole in the ground they left her in. It's about a 3-foot by 3-foot, silver-lined box about 7 feet deep with grates over it. It's where she was found. We assume she felt safe there just because the whole wasn't big enough for another person to fit in to hurt her." Brad explains.

Did they keep her in a hole? Were they made of silver? Oh, my poor girl.

"How can I help? How did you get her to trust you?" I ask. I need to know. I need my mate.

"She's semi-comfortable with Mom and tolerates Dad. We introduced her to my brothers and me last night, and she did not handle that well. We've been in the room with her before, but I don't think she can see very well. I'm pretty sure she needs glasses because things must be right before her face." Brad says.

"Oh hush, Brad, she doesn't need glasses; she's a werewolf." his Mom scolds him.

"But she's deaf. Werewolves aren't deaf. We know she wasn't deaf as a child, so who knows what else they damaged and took from her other than her hearing? Her eyes need to be at least looked at because you have to write very big for her to see." Brad points out.

"I'm not saying we won't get her anything she might need; I'm saying that now is not the best time for her to have a bunch of tests and doctors appointments when we are trying to convince her we won't run tests on her." Laila's Mom sighs. Laila suddenly stops leaning on her Mom and starts pushing her away.

Laila slaps and kicks at her Mom until her Mom gets up and moves out of her reach. Laila goes back to crying and leaning against the wall. Her Mom stands up, looking at her daughter with a sigh. "We better give her some space to calm down."

"I'm not leaving her." I deny.

"Alpha, please." She turns to look at me with a sigh. "Let's get out of this small closet and talk."

Laila's Mom leads Brad and me out of the closet and into the bedroom. "I have to get back to Nora, Mom," Brad says.

"Ok. Have a nice night. Thank you for helping with your sister." Laila's Mom hugs her son.

"Of course. She's family. We love her and want her to get better." he hugs his Mom and then leaves us alone.

Laila's Mom sighs and looks at me, looking exhausted. I know what she's about to say. "I'm not leaving her." I deny.

"Please. I mean no disrespect to you, Alpha, but she is now scared. Today, yesterday, and the last 16 years have been a lot for her. She feels threatened by people in her zone, where she feels safe. So, sitting here trying to invade her space will not help her. She will not willingly leave the closet until she no longer feels scared, which probably won't be for a few days. You are more than welcome to come back tomorrow morning when she has calmed down some." she says.

"You will take care of her?" I ask.

"She is my daughter. I love her more than life itself. Of course, I will take great care of her." she nods.

"Ok." I gulp and look at my mate, who is still sobbing.

"Alpha, she probably still won't talk to you tomorrow. I spent days and weeks sitting on the floor, just letting her get used to my presence before she would talk to me. So it might take a while before she feels comfortable with you. She still doesn't trust me completely."

"I'll be here. As long as it takes." I assure her.

"Ok." she nods. "I'll see you in the morning." She smiles softly.

I nod, then force myself to walk out of the door. I return to the pack house hallway, leaving their apartment, and let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding.

I found my mate!