The Sweetest Honey

Clearing The Air

(Clara point of view)

“Goliath what happened to your hand?”

“Clara I just lost it when you left. Vivian p***ed me off so bad. All I could see was red.”

“Did.. did anyone else get hurt?”

“No, I just took out half of my wall.”

I take his hand gently and give it a soft kiss on the top. *SNAP

“Ahhh! What was that!” I let go of his hand. He is laughing at me now, so I am even more confused.

“Did I just hurt you, Goliath? Why are you laughing?”

“You didn’t hurt me, beautiful! You healed me. Our mate bond speeds up healing, and that was my bones snapping back together quickly.” He squeezes his hand a few times, looking content.

“Our mate bond can do that.”

“It can when it is strong, and ours must be incredibly strong considering we haven’t even marked each other yet.”

“There is so much to learn about being a werewolf still, and we still have so much to learn about each other, Goliath.”

He takes a deep breath and looks up at me. “ Clara, I have more to tell you about than just Vivian.” He looks at me with an even deeper vulnerability I haven’t seen from him yet.

“One second.” I hold up a finger and get up. I shake off all of the crumbs from my food and walk to the bathroom. I hurry and brush my teeth and put on a robe. When I walk back to the couch, he looks at me confused. I plop a seat next to him.

“Ok go ahead. I am ready.”

“Clara, when I was 16, things changed a lot for me. I was about done with puberty already, and lots of she-wolves took notice. I shot up a couple of feet, and my muscle definition was developing fast. Even though it wasn’t settled, lots of pack members believed I was going to get the Alpha position, and that also got me lots of attention. Around this time, my parents gave me a talk about waiting until I was 25 or until I found my mate to have s*x. Not that there is anything wrong with having it before then. You will see a lot of wolves here are highly s****l before they find their mates, and that’s perfectly natural. It’s in our nature, after all. They just wanted me to wait so I could have the best experience like they did. They also were hoping I wouldn’t complicate my future relationship with my mate by having pups with other women.”

“Pups?”

“Yeah that’s what we call children. Anyways, like I said, they had that talk with me, and I promised I would wait because I had already wanted to. I honestly couldn’t wait to find my mate. They say s*x with your mate is the highest bliss you can ever feel.”

I felt shiver down my spine when he said that.

“ I still dated, though. I guess I was hoping by some miracle I would feel some kind of connection and just know that they were my mate. It is silly now, but I believed it then. That’s when Lacey came into the picture.”

I could feel anger and sadness in his voice, so I picked up his arm and sat down on his lap. I held his hand in my lap as I leaned the back of my head against his shoulder. Giving him a head nod to go and talk again, he clears his throat.

“She was 20 years old, and she came onto me. I understand how it sounds now, but back then, I thought I was hot s*** for landing an older woman. Before I knew it, we were spending every minute together. She told me if I bought her the car she wanted she would teach me how to drive and I did. I took her out every weekend and bought her everything she wanted. We would make out and do a few other things, but I always refused to go all the way with her. That always made her mad, but I would buy her jewelry to make it up to her. Of course, my parents were against us being together through the entire thing. By the time I hit 17, they threatened to take away all of the household funds from me if I didn’t break it off with her. I couldn’t though. Once I told her that, she said her wolf could already tell that we were going to be mates. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t possible to tell that so far away from my 18 birthday. She convinced me it was true, though. I decided to go to my parents and tell them I was going to be with her. The only thing was they were waiting there for me with my sister already. They told me that I wasn’t going to be with Lacey anymore and that they were going to ban her for a few years. I blew up and screamed and destroyed. That’s when Mindy came up to me and handed me a little pink book. I stopped because I had seen it before. It was Lacey’s diary. I had seen it before but always respected her privacy too much to read it. All Mindy said was read it. I knew she must have taken it when she went over to hang out at her house with us. I sat down and looked at it, and I figured I had nothing to lose at that point, so I read it. What I read was nothing but pages of notes on how she was grooming me. She wanted to be the next Luna. She even took notes on what to do to get me to buy her stuff. Nothing beats the last page, though. She was getting ready to trap me in her room when she went into heat, so I couldn’t resist but to mate with her. I would have gotten her pregnant, and she figured I would choose her over my own mate.”

“Goliath, I am so sorry you were put through that.” I hug him tightly and give him a kiss on the cheek before letting him go.

“ Well, it is coming full circle now. She was banned and my parents took back everything I had bought her. I spent the rest of the year getting drunk and getting into fights. Once I got my wolf, I pulled myself together some but still spent my weekends drinking heavily and finding fights to get into the middle of. I haven’t been a great person, Clara. I have been a d*** to be around. That is where Vivian comes into the story. Lot’s of women have tried to have s*x with me or make me fall for them. When I was drunk, some got a little lucky, but all in all, I still kept my promise and cut things off immediately after. A little over a week ago, now I got so drunk I must have blacked out. This has never happened to me before. When I woke up, Vivian was in my bed, and she said I took her virginity.”

“Pffffftt… Hahaha ha yeah, right!”

He looks at me stunned.

“Why are you laughing it’s not funny.”

“Goliath you may have slept with her, but her virginity has been gone for years. She lost it to a football player freshman year.”

“Are you sure? It could have been a rumor.”

“Even if that was a fake rumor, she had slept with plenty more. Even if those were lies, I know for sure she had slept with Drake last summer.” All of a sudden, my smile drops, and I feel weird. I almost feel embarrassed, so I grab Goliath’s hand and pretend I am reading his palm or something.

Everything feels quite now. I know he is mad, but he is holding it back.

“Is that your story with them?” He asks softly.

“Sort of but there is more.”

I lean my face under his chin so he can’t look at me. I can hear his heart with my ear against his chest.

“I guess I would say my story starts a few months before junior year of school ended. Drake asked me out, and I felt special. He was a football player and popular, and I was a basic nerd. We went out and he asked me to be his girlfriend and I accepted. I did everything he wanted me to. I went to his games and did his homework. At the time, I was very uncomfortable with my body. My boobs grew in, and being underweight was showing more than ever. So every time he touched me, it felt wrong, and I wasn’t ready.” I hear a small growl coming from Goliath.

“Sorry please continue.”

“I guess that brings me to the end of the school year. We only had about a week left of school, and it was getting warm out . Drake asked me to go for a walk with him because it was such a nice day but when he showed up he said he needed a glass of water. I never let him in before because I was embarrassed of the way it looked. I couldn’t have him be I let him in. He sat on the couch and waited for me. After I gave him the glass, he asked for me to sit with him while he drank it. When I sat down though, he put the glass on the end table and pushed me so he was lying on top of me….”

“You don’t have to keep going, Clara.”

“I wasn’t fully aware of what was happening at first, but he.. he did stuff. I begged him to stop once my brain caught up..” I can feel tears falling.

“Did he?”

“No! Wendy walked in, and he acted normal. Then he simply got up, kissed me, and left. I tried to act normal, but Wendy could tell I was shaken up. The next day at school He walks up to me with Vivian under his arm. They both poked fun at me for being prude, and Vivian said that he was amazing in bed and I missed out. But Goliath!”

“Yeah?”

“After I met you, I now know I had no real feelings for him. Now that I have the real thing, I understand how awful of a person he is. I never want anything to do with him again.”

“I am sorry about what happened at the mall, Clara, but I promise to protect you always.” He looks down at me, and I look up at him. He wipes away my tears and kisses my lips softly. I pull away and look back at him.

“What happened to Lacey? Is she still banned?” He groans, and his body gets tense.

“Well the real reason I had to tell you that story is because she is back. I saw her downstairs while I went to get you food earlier. I told her that I wanted nothing to do with her, but I am thinking she isn’t going to drop this so fast. Don’t worry, though, because I am going to have Jack talk to her while we have a talk with Vivian.”

“Wait we have to have a talk with Vivian?”

“I sent her to spend the night in the dungeon as a punishment, but we need to let her know that you and I are together and she needs to stop. Now that I know she lied about the virginity thing, I may have to give her another consequence for her actions.”

“Goliath I don’t think that is necessary. If she is as crazy about you as I think she is, hearing that she has no chance would be punishment enough.”

“Well she hurt you and has been making me miserable for days. I feel like she deserves something.”

“How about you sleep on it? It is nearly midnight.” He looks at the clock on the wall and sighs.

“Are you going to be okay, though? You know what she said was bulls***, right?” I look down and start messing with my belt on my robe.

“Well she isn’t all wrong. I am not going to be able to be a good Luna and run a business at the same time. I have a hundred things on my plate, and I am going to fail at them all.”

“Hey you are going to be the best, Luna Clara. You are honest and kind. You are so smart and believe it or not powerful. We will get through all the hard things together. You have an entire family here to help you. We will take it day by day.” He stops and kisses my lips “By day.” He kisses my neck. “By day.” He moves my robe, kissing my shoulder, causing me to moan. He lifts me up in his arms, walking me over and laying me down on the bed.