Chapter 4 ~ Engulfed in Flames

"Where... Where am I?" Higgins awoke to the solitary sight of his eye glancing to his masculine mitts.

"Is this..." He added, as he caught a glimpse of where he might have been.

"This is where you belong Higgins." A female werewolf beside him called to his attention, in an erotic sense as she stroked the hair strands on his chest.

The same emotion he experienced when he first saw Astoria began to disclose its source; he was certain he had relived this event before, and it was now obvious enough.

"How is this possible, you're..." His eyes glistened with disbelief, as he wafted any foreign element that might've insighted a mirage.

"Shhhhh!!! You'll jinx it..." She replied his curiosity, although still leaving him dumbfounded.

She came atop him, with her sole clothed night gown allowing her warmth to caress the entirety of his abdominal region.

"No. No. This isn't real, I need to snap out of it." He pushed her off.

The werewolf he had been grieving for years over had laid atop him, seemingly begging to have him inside her, it was too much to reflect back on shrouded memories.

"Ouch!" She fell to the floor from the raised bed, landing with her lap to a slapping thud.

Higgins held unto the side of the bed, he couldn't believe it so he made to raise himself.

"I'm so sorry my love, it's just... I think I'm losing my mind." He confessed.

She made to stretch out her right hand, for him to help her up, which he did.

"It's alright Higgins, I shouldn't have forced myself unto you after just one night." She said something that came off as a shock to him.

"What do you mean only one night? Where is she, where is out daughter?" He began to throw a fit in panic.

"Daughter? That's very daring for someone who has only known me for a short time, don't you think? We only had a hazy idea about it, and that might not be enough." She stated...

"What are you saying, wait when are we?" He had caught on to the decor in the room.

A greater mystery now shrouded in his wake.

"I don't understand? What do you mean 'when are we'?" She had already began wearing her underwear and putting her bra back on.

"I mean it exactly the way it sounds. What did we do the night before?" Higgins had a distorted sense of familiarity with the image that had been painted into his psyche.

"Do you want me to go over everything?" Despite my best efforts to explain myself to you..." She raised her voice.

"Yes, I do, and please hurry up." Higgins approached the window and tried to peek out when only a white light emerged from it, but he was stopped.

"If you say so..." she answered.

When he turned to answer her, his hand was still holding onto the curtain, only moments away from revealing what had caused the white light to appear.

"Yeah, that's what..." He muttered this as his sentence was interrupted by the fist clenched "Shit!" He exclaimed, presumably drawing his nose against the bone that sustained its shape.

"...If you really want to impress me, you could try to take a better hit than that. He's not even a beta, just an omega. Is he even a werewolf?" As another scene unfolded in front of him, the same female werewolf crouched herself into a twirling chair, clothed in the attires he earlier saw scattered on the floor.

This was one he would never forget, no matter how much he grieved.

"This is the first bar where we met." Higgins was still on the floor, bleeding from his nostril as a result of the roughhousing that had occurred in the pub where he was standing. "And you're still wearing what you wore that day."

"All right, Mr. Stalker. Even after I told you why I came here, you insisted that you wanted to impress me." Higgins looked around the bar before returning to her last words.

"What did you tell me!" He flinched from his depicted stance, taking slow steps to avoid the bottles flung across his view, as well as the goblin who appeared to be tossed in that light. "Did I get a chance to hear it?"

His standing up had been to have her recount the memories he seemingly lost.

"Well..." She crouched to his sole hearing, with a feeling resonating that told of this same setting had happened before. "I told you I want to join the resistance. I can be the Delta feeding you Intel." She lauded, to his hearing.

Higgins' focus shifted as a result of her repetition. Why would he be taken back to the point where his ravenous desire to escape the island began to wane?

He didn't know what to do, and Higgins was left with few options other than to work his way through the circumstances he was in to learn more that the Nefario pack had to hide inside its control than just the little he cared about.

He now gave her his complete attention, seeming to gain insight when he really just wanted to relish her presence, at least until the cloak of deception in the scene chose to unravel.

"What makes you think you'd want to join the resistance?" He inquired.

She then reached out her palm and caressed his clenched fist, tightening her resolve.

The truth was that his grief would never cease, which was why he attempted suicide; the pain was excruciating.

He couldn't believe she was there directly in front of him.

He wanted to cry into her arms and embrace her without any bars, to sob into her breast and clech, to embody her being so tightly that she would feel the length of the ten years he had been apart from her, the sorrow he never seemed to overcome.

"Are you okay, Higgins?" Her concern reverberating in the form of her plenty heart felt words was something he didn't recollect from the situation.

He bowed his head as she drew herself closer to him.

"Everything is fine." He finally declared as he raised his slumped gaze, with an even brighter red flaring in his soggy sockets.

"Oh Higgins, I already told you... I love you, you don't have to worry about..." She repeated that words that spoke to a promise made, and sank his heart.

"Here is your drink madam..." The bartender hadn't chosen a better time to walk in on their moment, although his smile didn't disappear, Higgins led with a chuckle to the weakness he had displayed.

"...Oh thank you." Her view wouldn't retract from Higgins's gaze, but when it managed a turn, she expressed her gratitude to the bartender. "What's so funny?"

Even though their pace had been halted, Higgins managed a chuckle as he clenched again her held grip the more.

"...its just, between your being the Delta, seemingly falling in love with a hunter and talking about having a daughter, I just thought that your wanting to join the resistance was more than enough shock for one person to take in for one day." He explained.

"Don't forget how I stirred up all this." She quoted the fight that had left the bar in the midst of being thrashed.

"Yes, you really shouldn't have tipped on that werewolf's nerves. He punched me in the nose and only grunted then left. Do you think your obscure reason for being in the resistance warranted this, I mean i could've killed him." Higgins said.

"My being in the resistance wasn't my idea, but I agreed to it. Falling for you was all my choice." She relied.

"I just can't believe you would say that you actually love me." Higgins said, as he doubted her proclamation. "We crossed weapons in a fight, the kiss wasn't..."

He bowed his head and twirled the chair as his doubt persevered in trying to convince him that he didn't deserve her.

He was thrown aback and met his gaze widened as the same action repeated itself.

The moment was ethereal, although with an unsavory background, they shared a kiss for the second time.

There was no mistake this time, only true sentiments that erupted as a million and one hormones urged her to push herself against him.

"Uhm, Uhm!" The bartender cleared his throat to call them out on what they caused to his bar.

The kiss and overall moment was again halted as Higgins opened his earlier clenched lids to a doctor's presence.

"What the..." He exclaimed as he erupted from a downed head, in the waiting section of familiar hospital, to a doctor's calling him out.

"You're Mr Paul, I presume." The doctor scruffled at his ability to remain as calm and drift unto sleep amidst the condition his mate had been through for several hours.

"Uhmmm, yes doctor. I am Paul Higgins" his mouth moved on its own, but his intentions were true. "How is she?" He asked.

"Your mate is doing fine..." The doctor began a teaser to a greater reveal with his tone alone.

Higgins came off as warming up for an even more insightful news. "So is your daughter." The doctor's words flipped a switch.

Higgins ran towards the room where she had laid, overjoyed with the prospect of his family's welcoming a new member.

His ecstatic leaps for joy halted as he came to the door that preceded where they waited for him.

He began to let out tears, he couldn't hold back any of the joy he felt and abruptly pushed the door open to an overbearing heat.

The next scene that met his revealed gaze was his house, set ablaze and having his his wife and child burning to crisp inside.

"Were the mother and child able to get out in time?" His neighbours stood beside him as every effort to put it out failed.

It was as if the flame was unquenchable, as its persistence to incinerate everything inside the house's interior knew no bound.

"They weren't able to. I hear it has been burning for hours." Another neighbour responded.

They hadn't even noticed that the owner if the house, whose family had been scalded knelt in their midst.

His earlier tears of joy turned into a stream that the scalding heat chose to make into a factor to cause more pain on his skin.

"Where was the husband when all this was happening." One of the neighbour whispered as her fault had been redirected to him.

As tears flowed down his eyes accompanied by a resurfaced, almost forgotten memory, "...With the resistance, on a fool's mission." He replied her in his thoughts as his emotional obscurity knew no bound.