Chapter Notes: Caleb's POV

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- 'If we're going to die, bury us alive. . .' -

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My heightened senses never failed to alert me when someone or something was near and they clearly had no intention of doing so either. So when a slight chill ran down my spine, I knew it had nothing to do with the almost non-existent night breeze weaving in and out of the surrounding statuesque trees. And when a warm tingle danced along my skin from head to toe, I knew that it had everything to do with the light footsteps headed my way. She was coming to find me and I had no other choice but to finally face my mate.

     I couldn't tell you how long I had been in the hauntingly silent forest; time had been the last thing on my mind, so losing it did not conjure so much as an inkling of my concern. But for however long I had been stuck out there, drowning in past memories and suffocating from the smothering clutches of regret, I was masochistically thankful for the distraction. I had gladly welcomed the pain from the past because it meant that I wouldn't have to deal with the painful present. That I wouldn't have to see it staring back at me with big brown eyes and pouring out in the form of tears. That I wouldn't have to witness it as it oozed out from the pores of her brown skin or as it blemished her delicate face. So I had gladly bid my time out in the woods and accepted my punishment because there was no amount of pain worse than having to face the kind inflicted on the ones you loved by your own hand.

     But my time was up.

     I didn't bother to move from my current position, seated on the grass with my legs outstretched and my back propped up against a tree trunk. Instead, I waited for the footsteps to carry her closer. Normally, I would have been angry at her for coming out here alone at this time of night, angry that she still refused to stay put like I instructed, but the time for anger had sailed away long ago. Despite the fact that she had taken the initiative to seek me out, I needed her now more than ever. And if the moon sitting in the sky directly above me was more than just a coincidence, then I was going to take it as a sign that my mate was exactly what I needed in order to silence my pain. Forever.

     Ava-Rain, tears of my moon.

     My redemption.

     I saw that more clearly now than ever before. From the moment we met, I had rejected Ava-Rain not just consciously but subconsciously as well. I said that it was done in order to protect my pack and to protect secrets that would destroy everything that so many people had fought to keep hidden, but that was the truth as much as it was bullshit. I walked away from her in that club because I had not been ready to accept her inside of my heart. And even when I realized that existing without her in my life and by my side was impossible, I still kept her at a distance. I allowed her touch to only reach so far. Allowed her light to only shine so bright. Allowed her warmth to only invade me to a certain point. And that point, I had determined while sulking in the forest, was where the concrete wall had been put in place to keep Ava-Rain out and keep Emmy Grace contained within. Almost as if it was my subconscious' way of ensuring that the two never crossed paths, if that made sense.

     But in order for me to move on, in order for Ava-Rain to have the mate she deserved,  what was about to happen had to happen. I was going to hurt her and saw no way around that. I was going to attack her with honesty, drag her down and through the dirt with cold hard truths. I was going to become the personification of every thing she feared the most. I was going to do everything I swore to protect her from. I was going to break her because, I realized, my redemption laid solely on her destruction. Because to destroy her would mean destroying myself and I could not begin to heal until the worst of the damage had been inflicted.

     If I ever believed our Goddess, Luna, to be twisted before, I was certainly convinced now. Only she could lay forth such a path for me to obtain my redemption.

     My eyes did not look up when Ava-Rain found me in the section of the woods that served as a temporary hiding spot, nor did they move when she walked over and kneeled down beside me. It wasn't until she spoke did my eyes finally meet hers.

     "I know I shouldn't be out here, but I just," her gaze flickered down for a couple of seconds before lifting once more, "I felt like you needed me."

     I couldn't bring myself to smile, an action I would have done any other time upon hearing her revelation.

     "Chase and Kane said I'd find you out here, but I can leave if you want me to." She tucked a few escaped curly strands of hair behind her ear only to have the breeze blow a few more in her face.

     And I wanted to kiss her in that moment. All of my earlier anger over what she had done was forgotten and all I wanted to do was grab her, pull her in close and kiss her. Show her that I was sorry. To prove that stronger than my anger was my happiness that she was okay. But I couldn't trust myself to carry through with it because I couldn't trust myself. I couldn't trust that it wouldn't be more than just an apology. I couldn't trust that my subconscious wouldn't turn the meaning of the kiss into some sort of goodbye.

     "I don't want you to leave, but I can't promise that you won't want to do just that if you stay."

     "Do you want me to stay?"

     "I need you to stay."

     "Then I'm staying." She finally took a seat on the grass in front of me. Her eyes continued to hold contact with mine as she waited patiently for me to make the first move.

     That anticipated first move, however, was not made right away. For a long time, we just sat there and stared at each other. Well, at least, it would have appeared to look that way on the surface, but if you were to look underneath that facade, you would have found that it was much more than a staring contest. We weren't just simply looking at each other, we were conveying our emotions to one another without having to utter a word. Allowing the floodgates to open, our fight to survive battling with our fear of drowning. She had said that she felt like I needed her, so I felt no other choice but to show her why that was. For once and for all, I had to allow Ava-Rain inside. I had to open up to her fully and completely.

     Luna, save my soul.

     "I feel it," she whispered quietly.

     If it weren't for my heightened sense of hearing, I probably wouldn't have heard her. But if there were ever a time that I wished I didn't have such a strong intuition, it would have been in that exact moment because I hated knowing exactly what she was referring to.

     "Your love," she continued, "I feel it." Ava-Rain offered me a soft smile but it didn't reach her eyes as they slowly began to glisten with sadness. "Your love for her. Whoever she was."

     I sighed hard. Knowing that I had to do this to her did not make me feel any less horrible. "Ava-Rain. . ."

     "It's okay," she quickly assured me.

     Was it? This was just as hard as I knew it was going to be. One of the hardest things that I had ever done. To torture my mate by inflicting my love for another upon her was a cruel and unjust punishment. And I tried to convince myself into believing that it could be done in some other way but it couldn't. The promise I had made to never hurt her was going to be broken. A promise I had no business making in the first place because, quite frankly, what was love without pain? What was strength without weakness? Courage without fear?

     I had set my relationship up with Ava-Rain to become something unbreakable.  Something indestructible. It had been my hope to be for her what I was never meant to be for Emmy Grace. To right my past wrongs, flaws and mistakes by eliminating every bit of space in our relationship where error could squeeze its way into. But, in reality, I was setting our relationship up to fail because deep down I knew that failing was the only thing I could say—with absolute certainty and full conviction—I was good at.

     "Caleb," she reached out and took my hand in hers. "Tell me."

     "What happened tonight. . .it forced me into remembering past memories that I buried a long time ago. Past pain. Past mistakes. Past guilt." My eyes flickered down to our joined hands, trailing over where the darkness of her skin met the lightness of mine in a beautiful contrast, where our fingers connected us in much more than just a physical sense. But I only allowed that short bit of attention to dwell on our connected hands. Putting off what I needed to tell my mate was not an option any more than it was a possibility. It was an inevitability that I could no longer prolong. "A past love."

     I expected her to pull away, to sever our connected hands, but Ava-Rain only held on tighter. Was it a sign of discomfort? A reaction of her anger? I wouldn't have faulted her if it had been. That would have been easier to deal with than if it was merely an offering of comfort on her part because I didn't deserve the slightest bit of consolation. So, instead, I pulled my hand out of hers, a quick and clean sever that I felt was better to have done sooner rather than have to endure later.

     "Her name was Emmy Grace." My gaze had dropped from hers then. I couldn't bring myself to look at her or witness her reaction as I spoke the very name of the girl that had once been a recipient of my love. "And she. . ."

I was forced to pause as the pain that still heavily impacted me whenever I thought of her death began to rise. But for both mine and Ava-Rain's sake, I had to push through it. I had to.

"She died last April. My pack and I had just settled in Toronto months prior after breaking away from my father's pack in the west. He had stepped down as alpha a long time ago—I was only fourteen when he had done so—but for a while we still lived as one pack without a leader. Neither him nor my mother wished for me to start a pack too soon, but I always felt it in my blood that I was born to lead. At nineteen, I was provided that chance. And when others joined my side and our pack was established, years later I led them here."

     My gaze finally lifted but only to look in the direction of the den, despite the mass of trees obstructing my view. Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed that Ava-Rain's gaze was focused intently on me but I still refused to spare her a glance.

     "This den—hell, this land—has been in my family's possession for generations. For the most part, it has been unoccupied, mainly used as a safe haven for wolves or packs that needed to lay low. Growing up, this place was like a second home as much as it was my prison. I loved it here. The miles and miles of earth I believed to be endless; the thousands of trees that acted as my playground and promised to protect and shield me. I can't ever deny that whenever I was brought here, I felt safe. I felt comfort. But I can't deny that the countless times we ventured here didn't make me feel shackled and constrained either. It was as if my freedom was only limited to these lands. These woods. This house. As if the blood in my veins and the four elements that coursed through my being were only allowed to thrive when I was here. Out there existed the reality that I was not free, whereas here existed the illusion of freedom.

     "Bringing my pack here to settle had been a decision that came naturally to me, but it wasn't until we arrived that I realized that my first major act as an alpha had been to sentence them to a place that was and has always been a hideout. If you ask any one of my pack members about it, I'm sure that they'd assure you that they didn't care where we settled. That they'd follow me in death and reiterate all of those other endless vows that wolves make to their alpha. There are so many of them that would probably make your eyes roll, but the one thing that you cannot call them—without running the risk of Luna striking you down where you stand—are liars. Kane, Chase, Harrison, Stryder, Tommy, Rickon, Declan and Angelie would have done anything for me."

     My head finally turned in her direction and my eyes were reunited with Ava-Rain's once more. It took only a fraction of a second for what I just said to register before a look of disbelief marred her face. Her mouth parted slightly and I was sure it was more out of shock than an anticipation for her to speak. I had never revealed to her that Angelie used to be a part of my pack, though it had not been lost on Ava-Rain that, despite my very obvious hatred towards her, Angelie had once meant something to me and to this pack. Now she knew exactly what my connection to Angelie had been.

     "The more time we spent here, the more constrained and restricted I felt. As hard as I tried to put those feelings aside to focus on my pack, the more my self-esteem dwindled. Every day soon became a battle between who I wanted to become and who they needed me to be. Alpha is a title that should have built up and strengthened my courage, but the idea of perfection that title carried and required had the reverse effect for me. I never once regretted becoming an alpha, but sometimes I felt like I wasn't the alpha that they deserved because of who I was. Because of what I was. So I sort of withdrew from them. From this house. And that emotional, mental and sometimes physical absence led me to Emmy Grace. It drew me to her."

     I was about to ask her if that sounded familiar but refrained myself from doing so. That last thing I needed to do was equate my relationship with Emmy Grace, a girl who had not been my mate, to my relationship with Ava-Rain, the girl who was.

     "Or, at least, I thought it was like that at first. That my self-pity and misery led me to her. But the more time I spent with her and the more I got to know and understand her, I believed whole heartedly that Luna had pushed me in her direction. That there was a bigger picture. That all of my feelings of inadequacy, my belief that I wasn't a good enough wolf let alone alpha for my pack, my low self-esteem, my limited freedom and restraints placed upon me by the world that would never accept me if they learned what I was.

"I felt that all of that had been put in place and forced upon me to endure because it was a part of Luna's plan that would eventually lead me to Emmy Grace. And it did. I found her. And the moment I laid eyes on her. . ." My eyes really locked onto Ava-Rain's at that point; I couldn't allow myself to continue being a coward by taking the easy way out and avoiding her gaze. She deserved for me to look her in the eyes as I laid my bare soul before her feet for her to do with as she pleased. "I knew that our paths were meant to cross."

     Even with the admission, Ava-Rain still remained faithfully silent. I was positive a million questions and thoughts must have been running through her mind, but she didn't interrupt nor did she allow her true emotions to betray her in any sense. She was blocking me out, that much I was sure of. But whether it was intentional or not—whether she was using what I had taught her in her very brief conditioning lessons or not—I couldn't be certain. She had always been good at keeping her feelings hidden and masked that it was a natural ability for her to do so. There had been many occasions in which that wall had cracked and I was able to tear it down. But, in that moment, as intentional or unintentional that wall she was putting up was, I wasn't going to bulldoze through it in order to gain, for my own selfish reasons, a sense of her feelings. So, with no other choice, I continued.

     "When we met, it was like. . .like everything made sense. I did not care that she was a human or the dangers of introducing her into my world. It was like she was meant to be in my life and I was meant to be in hers. My pack and their belief in me as a leader gave me strength, but it was her that made me realize and find it." My hand lifted to my chest and settled right above my heart. "In here. She encouraged me to fight my fears and insecurities. It was crazy, I guess. A human girl wielding the power to lift a wolf from his knees to stand on his feet. But if there's one thing I see clearly now more than I did then, was that my love for Emmy Grace was anything but insane.

     "I loved her. I. . .I loved her, Ava-Rain. And I wish I could explain every single reason why I did but I can't. I can't because I still don't fully understand it myself. Love doesn't always make sense and that's one thing you can bet you'll learn the hard way in my world. But love, even in all of its ambiguity and underneath all of the camouflage, harbours a truth that cannot be disputed or denied. I can't explain to you why I latched onto her. I can't explain to you why her light was able to slice its way through the darkness inside of me. I can't explain why I felt in every bone in my body and with every fibre of my being that. . .that we were meant for each other. I can't explain that even though I knew she was not my mate, why I wished that she was."

     A deep sigh escaped her mouth as though she had been holding her breath in anticipation of the bomb she knew I was going to drop. To my surprise, she nodded her head in understanding, but just before her gaze flickered to the earth beneath us, I witnessed the flood of unshed tears in her eyes. But through it all, she still had not once allowed her emotions to betray her by allowing me to feel them, and that was only making everything that much harder. And it was her silence that was turning my fear of losing her from a possibility into a probability.

     I wished she would have yelled or screamed at me. I wished she would have begged me to stop. I expected her to question my love for her, to question our entire relationship and stomp her way back to the den. But Ava-Rain remained silent and, for the most part, composed. And when she pulled her gaze from the ground to latch onto mine once more, it was clear still that she wanted me to keep going.

     "I guess. . .to try and make it make sense for you, I guess in a way Emmy Grace represented choice. Control. I wouldn't trade the world I was born into for any other, but choice and control will always be the two things that every child of Luna will never fully be able to obtain without conditions. As wolves, we cannot control which elements reside inside of us; we simply have to accept it and accept that wolf that we are given. And from the moment your able to walk and talk, your conditioned to control the beast that you did not ask for but are stuck with because it is not a separate entity but a part of you."

     Some past memories of when I was a pup and undergoing the very painful but necessary training and conditioning in order to reach my ultimate balance quickly flooded my mind. As an heir of the four, I had always been pushed harder than the other pups. Always had to work harder. Had to be stronger and more composed. Had to prove that I was worthy of being a vessel to carry all four elements because Luna had chosen me for a reason. There were things that I had been forced to do and forced to endure that still haunted me to this very day, but it was those experiences that had shaped me into the wolf that I had become. And it had taken me a long time to stop rejecting that wolf and accept it.

     "We cannot choose our elements. They can't be traded off for another or eliminated simply because it's proving to be a challenge to control. I did not ask to be an heir of the four, but here I am. A secret of the night. A darkness that cannot be brought to light but kept in the shadows. A complication to The Council that would rather silence me forever than risk the chance of allowing themselves to consider for only a second that I am not an abomination. I couldn't choose or control any of that, but I could control and choose the biggest event of my life.

     "That's what Emmy Grace symbolized. My free will. My power to choose. My power to control. But even as I say that now, it seems so black and white, so watered down and trivial because it somehow makes it seem as though I only wanted her because I could choose her or because a part of me wanted to rebel against the rules and regulations that I had to abide by in this world. It was more than that. It was because—"

     "You loved her," Ava-Rain whispered. I would have reveled in the delight of hearing her voice after such a long vow of silence if it weren't for the words she had uttered. Again, she looked away from me, but that time her reaction was taken a step further as she pushed herself to her feet and turned her back on me. She had only taken a few steps away from where I was still seated on the ground, but the distance between us emotionally and mentally was much wider than it was physically.

     Rising to my own feet, I approached her, but stilled immediately when she turned around to face me.

     "Keep going," she urged.

     I only shook my head in response. Had she not had enough yet? Why did she want more of this pain? "Ava-Rain—"

     "Please," she cut me off. "Keep going, Caleb."

     "I need you to talk to me, Ava-Rain. Tell me what you're feeling."

I needed something. Anything. A feeling. A thought. Hell, I'd even take an eye roll at that point but my mate was giving me nothing. Ava-Rain was withdrawing from me and if I didn't intervene—if I didn't reach out and pull her back to me—then I was going to lose her entirely. I had known that might have happened coming into this discussion, but having a front row view to the obliteration of our relationship was not a sit-back-and-watch-the-show type of scene being unveiled before my eyes.

     "I'm fine," she replied, but the slight crack in her voice betrayed her.

     I moved to her then, closing the space between us and taking her face in my hands. Her skin was terrifyingly cold, so much so that my immediate reaction was to call upon the red and use its heat to sooth her. But Ava-Rain had all too quickly pulled away from my touch.

     "I really need you to not touch me right now, Caleb."

     She began to rub her hands up and down her arms, but whether it was done to warm or comfort herself, I could not say. However, what I did know with absolute certainty was that Ava-Rain wanted this pain. And I wanted to give it to her. I wanted to rain it down heavily and drown both her and myself in my misery so that I could finally be laid to sleep. Because if we were to die then we would both die together. We had vowed that to each other, hadn't we? But I just couldn't do it to her anymore. Standing before me was not the Ava-Rain I knew, but the girl that I had created. The girl I had broken. The girl I had tainted just as I knew I would when I entered her life.

     "I loved her and she died. End of story."

     Her eyes narrowed. "What?"

     "That's it," I shrugged.

     "No, that's. . .that's not it, Caleb. How did she. . .what happened? Why won't you tell me the rest?"

     I could see it in her eyes. The want. The need. She was yearning for it, begging me to unleash it all upon her. Was this what I had done to her? What I had turned her into? Had I destroyed Ava-Rain to the point that she was now a glutton for punishment? A wanton woman whose pleasure could only be derived from pain?

     I've broken you.

     "She was not mine to have and Luna made sure that I learned that the hard way. Again, end of story." My gaze dropped from hers and seconds later I made a break towards the trees. But just as I brushed past her, she grabbed my arm to stop me.

     "What happened to the girl you loved?" She was still trying to keep her tone under control by attempting to sound emotionless, but her hold on my arm provided a connection between us that neither of us had anticipated.

     Instantly, I felt her bubbling anger and her waves of sadness, her torturous pain and her sorrow. I felt the overwhelming pressures of her guilt and the debilitating feelings of inadequacy.

      Was that why she wanted to be further tortured by my reminiscent memories of a past love? Because she felt guilty? Because of what had gone down earlier that night? Did she truly feel she deserved what I was doing to her? That I was punishing her as payback? Hurting her because she had hurt me? Trying to shove Emmy Grace in her face to show her that she would never be her?

     We both pulled away from each other and her hand immediately dropped from my arm.

     "Is that why you think I'm doing this? Why I'm telling you?" Without facing much resistance, the blue broke free from its cage and summoned my anger to rise to the surface. "I'm taking you back to the house. Come on." I turned my back on her as I headed towards the darkness of the forest.

     "We're not leaving until you tell me what happened!"

     I continued walking, trying really hard to ignore the fact that her footsteps could not be heard behind me.

     "Caleb!" She shouted but I continued walking away from her. "Caleb, I swear to God, Luna, whoever, if you take another step, I'll—"

     "You'll what?" I stopped and turned around. She was still standing in the spot I had left her, the distance between us couldn't have been more than twenty feet. Now that her guard had been let down, I didn't need a physical connection to her to be able to feel her emotions. "What will you do, Ava-Rain? Leave me? Hate me?" As the anger continued to flood my body within, instead of putting as much space as possible between us I stormed my way back towards her. "Because I can tell you that I'm already abandoned and that nobody on this earth can ever hate me as much as I hate myself!"

     "Tell me," she demanded in the form of a whisper. The fierceness in her eyes told me that she had no intention of backing down.

     "You want to know what happened? I left Emmy Grace in Angelie's care and she was killed!" My heart was racing, my breathing coming out in a heavy rapid pace as I stared down at Ava-Rain. "I made a promise to protect her and she died. Angelie never liked her. She told me time and time again that her presence in our lives would risk everything that our families had done to protect me, but I didn't listen because I loved her. Because she was my choice. But I guess one day Angelie decided she had enough of being ignored, so she shifted and attacked Emmy Grace until she was an inch away from death. It was in these very woods that I found her almost lifeless body, clothes torn and more blood soaking the earth beneath her than there was inside of her body.

     "And do you want to know the worst part of it all, Ava-Rain? I did not feel a thing as Angelie mauled her to death! Not an ounce of her pain! Not a shred of her fear! While she was being killed—the girl I chose, the girl I claimed to have loved—I felt nothing! And that, Ava-Rain, that is what haunts me most of all. So if you ever think that I would use her death to punish you, you're wrong. I use it to punish myself!"

     I had put my trust in Angelie to protect Emmy Grace and she died. I had put my trust in Declan to keep Ava-Rain safe and almost lost them both. I was the common denominator, the reason why both of the women I loved—the only women I had ever loved—were harmed.

I had no business bringing Emmy Grace into this world that I believed I could protect her in, and the cost of that misguided belief was her life. I should have known better than to think that Ava-Rain being my true mate meant that I could have her. That I could keep her. That just because she was meant for me, that just because she was my intended, that it would be different. I knew better but convinced myself that I could do better.

     But I had failed. Again. And tonight, when I felt every bit of Ava-Rain's fear, felt every bit of her pain and her sorrow, her guilt, anguish and regret, and knowing that I was too far away to help her, too far away to protect her from the pure bloods, that failure destroyed me. It destroyed my title as alpha and my role as Ava-Rain's mate.

     I had not shed a tear once since that fateful day when I stumbled upon Emmy Grace's body and tried to revive and heal her with my blood. Alpha's did not cry. They did not weep for the dead but turned their sorrow into strength. They did not tremble over past memories no matter how haunting they were, but steadied themselves and remained in full control. But I had cried back then and I had cried in that moment as I stood face to face with my mate and allowed the last miserable bit of pain, regret, sadness and guilt to bleed out from my soul.

     It took only a matter of seconds for Ava-Rain to cross the space between us and slide her arms around my waist in an embrace. All anger between us pushed aside. All of the hurt, pain and guilt between us temporarily forgotten as she held onto me so tightly that if she had been a wolf, I probably would have had the life squeezed out of me.

     For a while, I did not move or embrace her back. I had never been as vulnerable with Ava-Rain as I was in that moment. My natural instincts were to regain control of my emotions, to not allow them to betray me, but I let it all out instead. I allowed myself to feel, to let Ava-Rain, tears of my moon, cleanse my tarnished soul.

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