Dying For You

Chapter 19

Theo's POV

"Laila, you're my mate," I say again as she stares blankly. Maybe I should have broken the news that we're mates some other way. But she should feel it. She and her wolf should feel connected to me if she is alive. I should have just been labeling something she was already feeling. Maybe this is another sign her wolf isn't alive anymore.

"Laila." Her mom puts her hand on Laila's knee.

"I- I- Wha- How do I know you're telling the truth?" she stutters.

"I don't know how to prove it to you other than by my actions. I never want to scare you or make you uncomfortable. I will protect you until the day I die. I'm already in love with you, and I hope you can grow to love me, too." I admit openly.

"Bu- But you don't know me. I don't know you. How do you know you love me?" she asks.

"I just do. Everything I told you about the mate bond, I felt it the moment I laid eyes on you. I am yours, and you are mine." I say.

Laila looks at her parents and points between them. "Do you feel that way about each other? If you're mates, wouldn't you feel the same way about each other?" Laila says.

"Princess, are you asking if your mom and I love each other?" Ron asks.

"Yeah." Laila nods.

"Of course. He's the love of my life." Rebecca nods as Ron grabs her hand.

"Absolutely. I love her with all my heart. Just like we love you with all our hearts," Ron says.

"Ok." Laila nods once. Ok? What does ok mean? "Are we done here?" Laila asks, looking around.

"Yeah, I should be getting home to start on dinner." Rebecca nods.

"Laila, can I show you one more place I think you will like," I ask. We are already so close to my favorite place on earth, and I've been dying to show it to her. I think she would like it too.

Laila looks at her parents. "You can go if you want." Rebecca encourages.

Laila looks at me with a smile and nods. "Ok."

"Ok, just have her back in time for dinner." Ron scowls.

"Ron," Rebecca sighs, rolling her eyes. "She's a grown girl, and it's her mate."

"It's not because of that. It's because she has medicine she's supposed to take with dinner." Ron says, motioning to Laila.

"No, she doesn't. It's supposed to be taken with food, so just whenever she eats." Rebecca shakes her head.

"He doesn't know that, Beccs. You were supposed to agree." Ron and Rebecca stand up and start walking away as they continue their little spat.

"They're mates, and Laila likes being outside. Let her have fun. If she's awake, she will not miss a meal."

"I know. But that's our little princess. I'm doing the hard work of preventing teen pregnancy."

"She's 19, and he's in his 20s. They're mates. I don't think Alpha Theo would try anything or hurt Laila. If she said no, he would stop." Rebecca says quietly.

"I know he would. But I'm still not too happy with this current setup. We just got her back, only for her mate to find her. We just never got enough time with her." Ron says right as they get out of earshot. They're right; I could spend all day with Laila and still feel like I don't have enough time with her. Of course, her parents feel the same way.

"Are we just going to sit here and look at each other?" Laila asks.

"What? Oh, no. I was listening to your parents' conversation as they walked away." I explain.

"You can hear them that far away?" Laila asks, pointing to her parents' retreating figures.

"Yeah, are you ready to see something cool?" I ask excitedly, standing up and offering her my hand.

Laila hesitantly places her hand in mine as the sparks shoot through my body. I've noticed that the more Laila heals, the stronger the sparks get when I touch her, and the more her smell starts to stand out. I talked to the doctor about it, and he said he believed the wolfsbane and silver were blocking the full effects of the mate bond.

I lead Laila through the training field and into the woods. "It's a short walk, but I promise it's worth it," I tell her.

"I'm ok walking. Please don't leave me out here," she asks quietly.

"I will never leave you," I answer honestly.

We walk comfortably for a couple of minutes until Laila breaks the silence. "If you're supposed to be my mate, how come I know nothing about you?"

"I'll tell you anything. What do you want to know?" I shrug.

"I don't know. Everything, I guess." Laila shrugs.

"Well, I'm Theo. I'm a werewolf. But you already know that." I chuckle. "I'm my parents' only child. They want to retire soon to start enjoying life together since they didn't get to when they were young. I will take over for my Dad soon; I've already been learning. We just haven't made it official yet." I explain.

Laila looks at me blankly. "What's wrong?" I ask.

"That's not anything about you, though. I want to know about you. What do you like to do? What foods do you like? What do you want to do when you grow up?" she says.

"You're a dreamer, aren't you?" I chuckle. Laila tilts her head in confusion. "You're always the optimist, looking on the brighter side of things. Well, I'll tell you the answer to all those questions. Hmmm… I like to hang out with you and my friends and my family, I like to train, and I like to do puzzles in my free time." I say, trying to think of anything about me. I've probably not done a puzzle since I was a child, but she might like puzzles, and we could spend time together doing puzzles later. Why do you suddenly forget everything you've ever known about yourself when someone else asks you something about yourself? Weird.

"What's a puzzle?" Laila asks.

"I'll show you later, ok?" I nod.

"Ok," Laila smiles.

"Hmmm… what else can I tell you? My favorite food is spaghetti. And as far as what I want to do when I grow up, I'm still young, but all I've ever wanted to do was be Alpha, and that's what I'm about to do. Do you remember what an Alpha is when I explained it to you a little while ago?" I double-check.

"Yeah." Laila nods. "Do you think I'm ever going to grow up? I've been waiting to grow up and be big like the hunter men, and the doctors said that I wouldn't grow up yesterday. But I want to grow up." Laila says innocently.

"Have you been worried about that since yesterday when the doctor said you are done growing?" I chuckle.

"Yes. How come everyone else gets to grow up and become an adult, but I'm going to be a kid forever." she sighs, looking at the ground.

"Laila, that's not what the doctor meant. You will still be an adult; you're just not going to get any taller." I explain. Come to think of it, she is short, especially for werewolves. She's probably 4 foot 9 inches. She doesn't even come up to my shoulder. She seems self-conscious over her height, though, so I should change the subject before she gets upset. "What about you? What's your favorite food, and what do you want to be growing up?" I ask.

"Me?" she smiles some. "I like when Mom makes sandwiches because all your foods are just right together. It's great!" she doesn't seem upset over her height. I stop just short of our destination before she can see it. Laila notices and stops walking, turning to me. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I ask.

"Free," Laila says in a breathless whisper, smiling.

"You are free." I remind her.

Laila looks at me like she is surprised I heard her. "Yeah." she half-heartedly agrees.

"Ok, we're here. Once we walk past these trees, we will be there, and you will see my favorite place on earth… aside from being next to you." I wink at her.

Laila slowly and carefully walks past the tree line, where she sees the open field of wildflowers. Her mouth falls open, and her hands go to her face as she looks around in surprise. "It's beautiful. Are these all real?" she asks.

"Yes. Feel free to run around and smell and feel them all. You're safe here with me," I say.

Laila starts running around and feeling flowers and smelling them. Goddess, I love this girl.

I walk a few steps into the field and sit on the ground, watching in awe at her movements. That's my girl running around experiencing life for the first time, and I get a front-row seat to watch. I'm the luckiest guy on the planet.

The way the sunlight bounces off her long, wavy, dark brown hair is so pretty as she twirls around. But nothing could be as lovely as her big smile from ear to ear. She's breathtakingly gorgeous.

Laila laughs as she sees that I'm sitting down, and she prances to me while giggling. "This place is magical. How'd you find it?" she asks, falling on the ground beside me. She leans back and spreads her arms out, lying down on the floor with a sigh. I follow suit, lying down next to her.

"It's part of our pack lands." I lean up some, pointing towards the west. "If we walk a few more minutes that way, that's the fields where we grow a lot of our food. To help the soil, we rotate which fields we use and let the soil grow what it wants instead of what we plant, so this just happens to be a field we haven't used in a couple of years, and it's grown into something gorgeous." I explain. "We have fields like it all over the place. This happens to be my favorite one."

"It's so pretty," she sighs.

"I agree." I lay back down.

"You want to know something?" she says so quietly I almost miss it.

"I want to know everything." I turn my head to look at her. She's looking at the sky with a stoic expression.

She stays silent for a moment. I don't want to push her if she isn't ready to discuss it. "When I was there…" she says with a voice crack, trailing off to take a deep breath. "I was in my space, and it was so small and dark and cold all the time. I would dream that there was something out there like this, something warm and light and open- a place where it was easy to breathe and not like I was used to. I would dream of bigger things than I thought possible." she says as a tear falls down her cheek, and she squeezes her eyes closed.

"Laila-"

She opens her eyes and looks at me, "You gave me my dreams. I didn't think a place like this actually existed, and you have it and shared it with me."

"All I have is yours, my love," I say.

"Please call me Laila. I like it when people use my name. I like my name- I don't want to be called other things my name anymore." more tears fall as she looks at me.

"Ok, Laila. I'll only use your name from now on." I nod, sitting up some to look at her more.

"Thank you." the damn breaks, and she starts sobbing.

I wrap my arms around her, pulling her towards me as she cries into my chest. "What's wrong? Tell me how I can help you."

Laila sobs into my chest, clinging to my shirt for a few minutes. I wish I knew how to help her. I want to take all her pain away. "Please tell me how I can help you," I whisper into her hair.

"Why me?" she sniffles.

"Why you what?" I ask.

"Why me? Why couldn't I just have Mom and Dad and brothers and grow up? Everyone else got to except me. Why would those mean hunter people take me? Why would everyone let the mean hunter people take me? If Mom and Dad love me like they say they do, why would they let mean people take me?" Laila looks at me with pleading eyes. "If they are wolves like you, they could have done something. They could have stopped it! Why would they not stop it?" she sobs, burying her head in my chest again.

"Laila," I sigh.

"I didn't like them. They were so mean. They hurt me so… so much." she whispers.

"I know; I'm so sorry." I kiss her hair. "I never want to hurt you."

Laila continues to cry for a while. But eventually, her sobs turn into deep, shaky breaths. I put both hands on her face making her look at me. "Cry all you want. Let it out. But you need to remember that you are amazing. You're the bravest person I've ever met with the things you experienced and the fact that you still are unapologetically you and manage to get out of bed and light up the room with your pretty smile. I don't want you to ever forget that. But your parents love you. I love you. I don't want you to ever question that. You. You're the most important thing to me." I explain.

"Why?" she whispers.

"Because I love you," I answer.

"Why me?" she asks again.

"Because I think you're amazing," I answer. She opens her mouth to say something, but I cut her off. "I know that you have a lot to heal from. I'm not trying to pressure you or make you into something you are not. Your healing process is going to go through a lot of ups and downs, and I want to be there to help you and experience things with you if you let me. We can take things at your pace. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I want to earn your trust. Nothing you say or do will ever make me turn my back on you. You are my everything, and if you'll have me, I want to be your everything too." I say.

Laila nods wordlessly, burying her head in my chest again as she hugs me. Just this small moment of acceptance from her, just accepting my comfort at this moment, makes my heart swell with love and pride in my mate. How could anyone hurt this girl?

"I don't want to be like this. I don't want to be weak." Laila cries.

"You're not weak; you're healing. There's a difference. But I can help you with that."