2. Painful Memories from the Past

Diana's POV

I was crying from my bruised heart in the woods when I felt his hand on my shoulder. I raised my head, and he wrapped his muscular arms around my shoulders from behind.

I didn’t need to turn or look at him to know who he was. I just knew from his fragrance that he was mine. I leaned back on him and closed my eyes to let the remaining tears flow down my cheeks.

“Why are you crying when I’m here?” He whispered close to my ear, making my heart skip its beat.

I smiled and inclined my head toward his firm chest. There was solace for me, my home.

“Let me stay like this,” I spoke, inhaling the scent of his fresh cologne and musky, woody fragrance with a tinge of spice. His fragrance had always calmed my inner realm.

“Don’t leave me,” I mumbled, placing my hand on his hands around my torso.

He said nothing but wrapped his arms around me possessively. However, what happened next? He left me. How could he? I turned around. He wasn’t there.

"Ren, ren,” I shouted his name.

“You can’t leave me.” I ran around.

“No Darren, you can’t do this to me. Please, Darren. Please,” I screamed at the top of my lungs as my eyes opened, but the next moment, my head hurt a lot. I touched my head and found some herbs there.

"You wake up,” I heard a voice, and when I looked at the source, a man was grinding some herbs. I got scared. Where was I? It wasn’t my room. Was I dreaming? Where was Darren? I tried to stand, but my limbs hurt inadequately, and I fell to the ground. However, the man moved with the speed of light and saved me just before touching the ground.

“Don’t move. You’ve not healed yet.” He wrapped his arms around my shoulder and helped me to rest on the bed again. The man looked around 40, but his build was muscular. My whole body was aching, and I couldn’t move an inch. Helplessly, I looked at the man who just returned to grind his herbs and I was sure he was a wolf because he was fast. I became even more scared. I looked at my surroundings and tried to recall what had happened, and reality dawned on me. Charlotte pushed me from the cliff. She wanted to kill me just for Darren. How could she be so evil?

"How are you feeling?" 

I was in my thoughts when he spoke again, ushering me into reality. I looked at him.

"Who are you? And What am I doing here?” I composed myself.

"I’m Marcus. The owner of this cottage. I saved you last week from the bank of the lake; from then on, you’re here.”

"What? Last week. I was here for one week.” I was shocked because I thought it was a matter of time but one week had passed.

"You were in a worse state when I brought you here and treated you. Your external wounds have recovered, but your internal injuries remain.” He pursed his lips.

"My whole body is aching.” I tried to tell him.

"Yeah, I think your wolf is nothing for good. She couldn’t even heal you.” I thought Marcus was straightforward, but his straightforwardness pricked my heart.

“I don’t have a wolf.” My eyes welled up, and I remembered how Darren rejected me just because I was weak and couldn’t stand with him.

Marcus frowned. “How can it be? Your aura is strong.” He paused. “But,” he added with a bit of thought.

"How can I have an aura when I don’t even have a wolf?” I replied, interjecting his sentence with a heavy heart. He glanced at me. His stare was strange, but before I could ask him anything, he returned to his prior self and said with a little smile.

“It’s okay. No need to worry. Apply this ointment on your legs daily, and you’ll be alright in a week or two.”

I nodded, but my mind wasn’t clear. I wanted to ask a few things, but as I opened my mouth. A loud sound came, like some bell or something. Marcus looked at the clock in the room. I followed his gaze and saw the clock. It was five o’clock. Marcus turned to me and said.

“I have some work. I’m going, if you need anything, you can ring this bell. Someone will come for your assistance.” he gestured toward the bell on the side table and walked out of the room.

I pursed my lips. Now; I was alone. I looked around the room. It was a spacious room with crucial furnishings. The interior was old-fashioned. It wasn’t like my previous room in the pack-house, but who cared? I tried to move my legs, but it hurt, so I gave up the idea, laid back on the bed, and closed my eyes.

‘I was here for a week, but no one came searching for me. I knew Darren wouldn’t search for me because he didn’t care, but Grandpa did. He would be worried.’ I thought about Grandpa, and the urge to return to the pack house aroused.

From the moment, he welcomed me into the pack house sixteen years ago, he cared for and loved me unconditionally. His unwavering love has been the cornerstone of our bond, creating an unbreakable connection that has stood the test of time. Everything was so good before the last two years. Darren was so good to me. I didn’t care about others’ behavior towards me until Grandpa, Darren, and nanny Sophie were good to me. I remembered the night of Darren’s eighteenth birthday two years ago.

~~~~~~~~~~FLASHBACK

“You’re his friend, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be his mate, too. I know you have high hopes to become his slut, but a weakling like you who doesn’t even know about her background or status doesn’t suit him. He is an alpha, and only a girl like me, the daughter of a beta, suits him. You know I can give him everything. I can help him against other packs, but you can only be of one use.”

“You can only be his bed warmer.”

“But I wonder if you are good at bed or not?”

Charlotte’s statement about our pure relationship pierced my heart badly that night. I loved him and wanted to be his mate, but being a slut was a shameful thing that I had never imagined. I didn’t reply to Charlotte anything and ran from the party to the woods without even meeting Darren, without knowing whether we were mates or not. My legs trembled, and my knees got weak from the dirty proclamations of Charlotte. She despised me just because Darren loved me. He cared for me more than anything. Everyone hated me just because Darren was my best friend. I had the privilege of his friendship and living in the pack house.

I couldn’t take the burden more and fell onto the grass with a thud. That was the problem with me. I couldn’t even cry my heart out. Every time I cried, I became even weaker. My body refused to support me like I was under some curse. My emotions made me vulnerable. I didn’t know how much I cried there. I wanted to go to Darren’s eighteenth birthday party. But I didn’t dare to face him. I couldn’t meet him in this condition. Ren would be mad again. He hated tears in my eyes. He was my shining armor, always saving me from bullying and protecting me. I couldn’t hurt him on his special day with my tears and myself, so I just wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my head there. That time he came, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I told him to stay with me. He was there till I fell asleep in his arms. However, that was the last day he came for me. After that, he never came.

~~~~~~~End of FLASHBACK

Tears were in my eyes, remembering him and his love that wasn’t mine anymore. I remembered his words.

"Stop your wishful thinking and tell me why you need my comfort every time. Can’t you stop depending on me? I won’t be able to help you anymore. I’m Alpha now, and I have a lot on my plate and don’t have time for your sobbing and comfort.” He had yelled at me the next day when I opened my eyes in the room and asked him whether he brought me into the room from the woods.

“It’s time for you to be strong. I can’t be here for you every time.” Darren broke my heart that day. I told him he had promised he’d always be there for me. But what he said next broke me.

“Oh, common, Anna. Wake up from your imaginations and land in the real world where no one can stay with you all your life.” Darren’s voice was harsh.

“But you know I only have you and you promised me. Darren, you said you would never leave me. The moon goddess had made me for you. You said you’re my guardian, and maybe one day. You’ll be my mate.” I tried to recall his words to him that day, but he denied them.

"That was some teenage bluffs. I was immature, so please forget everything I have said to you. Besides, we’re not for each other,” he spoke, shattering my broken heart into a million pieces. He told me that day I wasn’t his mate. From that moment on, he never looked at me. I heard about his dating rumors with Charlotte after that.

However, everything was meaningless to me. I had lost the taste of life until last week on the night of my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t get my wolf and I heard his quarrel with Charlotte. He said to Charlotte that I was his mate. I clearly remembered each word.

“Who told you I don’t have a mate? Diana is mine. She is my mate.”

If I was his mate, then why did he abandon me? I was heartbroken by this fact until he broke me all over again with the reality that he never wanted a weak Luna for his pack. He saved me that day from two werewolves who attacked me and tried to rape me. He saved me from them but killed me with his own words, with the words of rejection.

Everything, every memory, was hurtful from the last two years. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.

I was sure Grandpa would be worried and maybe searching for me, but soon this thought left me when I thought,

‘If he’d be searching for me, he should have searched for me till now. It’d not be difficult for them to find me. Did it mean Darren convinced him?’ I knew I thought about the worst, but after what Darren did to me. I was ready for everything. My heart clenched in my rib cage. How badly I wanted to be with him, but he refused me so lightly and even tried to reject me.

I subsided every thought of returning because that place was not my home anymore. It was Darren’s pack, and if he didn’t want me. I wouldn’t go there.

‘But how would I live without him? I lived the past two years believing he might have some reason for ignoring and torturing me, but now I know why he did that to me. I couldn’t force my heart to not yearn for him and couldn’t force him to live with me.’ I cried over my fate, over my helplessness for him. He was my everything, but I was nothing to him.