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His words confirmed just how much he loved her. How much of an impact she'd carried upon him, a survivor of his very hands. Any other woman would have pushed him away from the mere trauma of what he'd done to her, and yet, she somehow managed to stay. To see past her own physical, emotional, and mental pain and understand the true expression on the controlled mask that may have plagued him.
"I fought hard to hear her heartbeat from all the way into those icy waters, and I somehow caught it, but I listened to the rushing beat slow down...until it finally came to a stop."
He closed his eyes as he continued. "That's when I heard the call. The howling scream of defiance that rang through my very core and out through my mouth before I backed up as far as I could then jolted forward. Everything was different then. Nothing fucking mattered but reaching the woman I'd somehow fallen in love with. The woman I couldn't dare let leave my grasp. Bones cracked out of place and the pain was a fucking bitch, but I crashed through that magical barrier that prevented me from reaching Willow to begin with, and suddenly I was in that chilled water, racing to the bottom."
When his eyes opened, they were emotionless, like the waters of that frozen creek I envisioned in my mind. "The world darkened as I went lower and lower, and somewhere during that transition, I shifted back so I'd be able to swim faster. The whole place was fucking black when I caught onto the slight pink tint of white hair. White hair that reminded me of ice, the strands almost frozen as they began to multiply. Soon enough, there she was, her hands and legs floating up while her white strands curtained her face. I couldn't even see the blood that tainted the water around her, but I knew for sure her heart wasn't beating."
I clenched my fist as I could see the entire thing play out in my mind. Onyx continued, “When I grabbed her in my arms, I knew right then that I’d lost her. That she was gone, and I'd never get her back...and it fucking killed me," he struggled to state as tears overflowed from his sockets. "My willingness to live...the fact I'd finally cut through that cord of resistance that blocked me from being a wolf, it all felt worthless now, and that hurt more than dying. I held her with all my might, knowing well that I would run out of oxygen and slip through the cracks of life and into the shallows of deaths. I understood that...and accepted it with open arms. At least I'd be with the woman who shared every bit of pain with me and still loved me."
He wiped away his tears as he blinked back the wave of sadness that threatened to assault him, his gaze looking away to stare at the sky out the window.
"My resolve to end my life was made right there, and as my own lungs began to fill with water as I allowed myself to die, I realized how fucking lonely it was to perish in the water. I had the woman I loved in my arms, her dead body bringing me a bitter comfort even as my life slipped away, but Willow had to die alone. She contemplated her death, knowing she had more purpose to fulfill, and that very opportunity was stolen from her by a man who knew nothing about her. He was the perfect villain in our love story, stealing her away from me simply because she was a woman past the age of being a wolf and suddenly deserved to be crucified. It made me so angry that she'd died with all those piled-up regrets. For that pulsing desire to live, only to die by someone else's hands and not her own. It angered me to the point of wanting to live again. To act on my revenge and deliver it for the woman who deserved to be avenged before I joined her in the ether of life and death. When that thought came to my mind, suddenly my body was tugged upward, and before I knew it, I was gasping for air and coughing up water and blood."
He returned his gaze to us as he carried on, "Roberto was there with Viktor and Aurelia. How they all got there didn't really matter to me because I was struggling to breathe because of all the water in my lungs, but that was nothing in comparison to seeing Willow's lifeless body. She was so fucking pale, like a zombie or ghost. Her lips were purple, and blood still poured out of her like she had far too much left. Things happened so fast. Aurelia tried to use magic to remove the water from her lungs, while Roberto pumped her chest like a madman and Viktor fought to get oxygen into her. It was the first time I'd seen fear in Roberto's eyes. The first time I realized this man could actually care about Willow and didn't have a fucking clue how to show it unless it was in a manner that shot her down again and again. They worked so fucking hard. I'm certain it took thirty minutes before Willow finally gasped for air before vomiting blood and passing right out again. Aurelia managed to teleport us to her home where there was a medical team on-site, and they somehow saved Willow through a bunch of magical methods. My lungs were jacked up for a bit, but other than that, I'd live with no long-lasting issues."
"Is that why she takes those injections?" the question came from Neo, the words so quiet, I almost missed them. Onyx nodded as he leaned into his chair.
"Willow suffered a shit-ton of broken bones that required a ton of magic to be pushed into her body in a short period of time," he began. "However, she'd sustained a brain injury that seemed to disjoint her personality."
"Disjoint?" Jayce questioned. "So she's bipolar?"
"You could kind of call it that," Onyx admitted. "It's hard to explain because it's something no one has ever survived from. She hit her head upon impact before plunging into the water. The action should have basically burst her head open. The witch coven believes the shock may have triggered her magic to rush through her body in a protective gesture and gather around her head the most. Bones anywhere else can be healed, but if your brain is gone, it's gone. The impact caused major internal bleeding that pushed against one side of her brain. You know we have a creative side and an intellectual side. It pressed on the creative side but did a number on her intellectual part as well. Long story short, Willow can do some creative things while she can’t do others. She can dance but can’t draw well if at all when she tries. She can speak certain languages, but others can’t properly process in her mind. She's good at numbers but tell her to count backward from one hundred and she'll struggle. She's experienced her share of blindness during her recovery stages but gained her vision back through therapy."
No wonder she was able to fight in the ring...
I could only imagine what the others were feeling, my astonishment thrumming through me at the idea Willow survived something like that.
"The major problem with this disjointed injury is Willow has major triggers. Not what you're thinking due to this type of traumatizing incident, but when her magic is off or drops so low that it feels as though her body can’t function, it triggers a flight-or-fight mode that essentially activates a very cynical portion of Willow that you could define as mentally insane."
"So when she fought us in the forest and you injected her," I brought up. He nodded and continued for me. "It was me forcing a spike of magic into her bloodstream to deactivate the flight-or-fight mode which puts that defensive insanity to slumber. This is why we don’t call it having a bipolar problem or even carrying a split personality because it's not a case of her having another entity, if that makes sense. It's a body response that sends her into an overdrive of protective actions which turn her into a manic killer who is more than willing to go off on a spree of revenge if need be," he elaborated.
"There's no cure for that?" Dimitris quietly inquired. The soft tone of his voice told me he'd been moved by this revelation but was taking it to heart as if he'd caused it.
Wolf Alpha problems.
"Can’t cure something when it's the first of its kind. This is why they don’t want to accept Willow into the witch coven even if she has strong magic capabilities. With her being saved by the spikes of magic from the coven themselves, she could be ranked a Triple S in the witch world, but because of her Disjoint Brain Disability, or D.B.D for short, they can’t accept her as a member."
"They fear that her magic levels could drop during a battle and trigger that," Neo concluded, to which Onyx nodded.
"Is that why when Willow returned she was...too friendly?" I inquired, remembering her behavior when she returned. "She offered to hug us, which was rather odd seeing as we've never hugged or been emotionally attached to reach such a level of intimacy, and yet she did it like she'd been a part of our pack for a good while."
"Yes and no," Onyx muttered. "Yes, because Willow knows when she's close to flicking that switch and needs to remind herself that she's alive, safe, and around people she probably knows won't kill her in her sleep, and no, because Willow likes to face tragedy with humor and give those around her a sense of relief when she's aware that she is the reason for their worry."
That made perfect sense.
"What happened after, then? How long did it take Willow to recover?"
"Twelve months," he declared. "She had to learn how to walk at some point because her brain was struggling to send signals to her legs. Many of her scars are from the incident and not from the torture we experienced. She hides many of them with magic when she can, and that's probably why you didn’t see as many when she was in the ring."
He paused as his eyes darkened once more. "As for what happened after all of that...well, I kind of went rogue for a bit."
"What?" all of us said at once as he shrugged. "I went rogue."
"Weren't you bonded with Roberto when your wolf was awakened?" Dimitris inquired.
"Yes, but if anyone thought I was going to let that rich bastard get away with what he did to Willow, he could think again. He expected Roberto to be the one to deliver vengeance, but Roberto was actually afraid to leave Willow alone. She never saw any of that shit because she was recovering and slept a good chunk at that stage, so her body would recover. Roberto was a protective fucker during that year and that douche knew he wouldn't leave her. She may not have met his standards, but he realized she was a powerhouse that had survived something that was basically un-survivable. It's the first time he realized she could potentially be someone close to him, even without a wolf."
"You went after him," Neo whispered.
