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Zorah had been like those mysterious sea creatures. Before Morris Hill, she'd known nothing of the world beyond River Bend's borders, all that ignorance and constraint within her natural environment. She'd known nothing of being seen for who she was, rather than what she was, or how she might be used. Known nothing about possibility. Or love.
Overcome, Zorah slumped into Nana's lap, her body shaking as the story flooded out. At some point, the tears started, slow and relentlessly dribbling down her face to soak through the quilt as Nana petted her head. Zorah had the odd sensation of being there and also not there; her mouth formed the words while, at the same time, she was back inside the memories, inside every excruciating, heart-rending detail.
The numbness had ceded its hold. The fragile shield faltered at the first opportunity, at the gentlest inquiry from someone who cared enough to notice.
"So that's it, then?" Nana asked into the snuffling quiet. "You're going to mate with Nelson and forget all this ever happened?"
Zorah lifted her head and wiped her nose on a shirtsleeve. "I'll never be able to forget. I thought I was grown enough to choose an Alpha, but I made a mistake. The worst mistake an Omega could ever make."
Nana's head tipped to the side. "Well... you haven't picked an easy path for yourself, that's for sure. But knowing what you did at the time, and how you felt about him, do you really think it was a mistake?"
"Isn't it obvious? I'm here; he's there. We're not together and we never will be."
Nana expelled a long, long sigh, like she was gathering all her strength. "Being an adult isn't making perfect choices, it's living with the consequences of the choices you do make." Zorah winced at the repetition of what Ida had sneered at her in the Heat Hut. "But at the first hiccup, at the first sign of trouble, you zipped your lips and hid behind your parents. You ran away just as much as he did."
"But my parents —"
"Fuck your parents," Nana snarled. "If they know what's best for you, why are you walking around like a ghost, and they refuse to see it? They want what's best forthem."
"It doesn't matter," Zorah said, full again of resignation. "Even if I confess everything, declare I'm already mated, and throw everything into an uproar, Jake isn't here, he didn't come for me. He isn't coming for me."
Nana's thin lips pursed. "Maybe not. But look whatyoudid. You went out into the world and had an adventure, and you chose him as your mate. After all that, are you really going to slide back into your old life and accept someone else?"
Zorah toyed with a loose thread on the quilt. "I don't know."
It was the truth. She didn't know if she could go through with it, if she could hold her tongue and mate with Nelson. Not just through the mating ceremony, but for the rest of her life?
"You've been focused too much on what he did or didn't do," Nana said, patting her hand. "You have some choices left, Zorah girl. Maybe think about whatyoucan do."
CHAPTER 37
Jake
The air was cold. Not brisk, not nippy, not chilled. Fall made its spiraling descent into winter with no hesitation. It was fucking cold, and he didn't feel a thing.
Shirt off, bare-chested and sweating, Jake wiped this damp hair from his eyes. He needed a haircut. A shave. A bath.
He needed a lot of things, the most important of which was gone forever.
It had been a month. One month since Zorah had ridden out of camp and back into her real life. Like the coward he was, he hadn't even watched her leave. He'd slunk out of the mess hall through the kitchen and gone back to his hermit life on the ridge.
Those first few weeks, the bond blared with Zorah's pain, inescapably urging his Alpha instinct to do something,anything,to comfort his Omega. He'd fought it. Harder than he'd fought his imprisonment, harder than he'd fought the night they'd taken Ava, harder than his fight for survival after he escaped, harder than he'd fought addiction and its alluring oblivion. He fought himself, repeating Zorah's words like a mantra, "The decision has already been made. The decision has already been made."
The days of her Heat, in the midst of a storm, had been a fever dream, a halcyon delusion, driven by her biology, his loneliness, and two primal natures colliding. In the still hours of the night, he convinced himself it was all a beautiful, terrible dream of moonlit kisses and pine-scented passion. Resistance had been futile, but he could never argue it was sound decision-making with an eye toward what was best for the Omega.
If it weren't for the bond, he wouldn't believe it even happened. But then, like a hand stroking over a bruise to gauge its tenderness, he would seek her presence through their connection to see if he could detect the slow breaths of her slumber. She was there, tethered to him, diminished and withdrawn, and so very far away — both there and not there. Strangely, a memory coalesced in his mind, the experience of hearing someone wordlessly answer a phone call, knowing they were listening, yet saying nothing. A limbo, a perpetually open line of communication without any actual communication.
At times, the bond felt like a lifeline, the last thing tying him to her in any capacity. At other times, it felt like a cancer, gnawing on his soul and slowly digesting whatever good parts of him remained.
"Hey." Leading a horse piled high with supplies, Colt crested the rise and reared back at the truly ridiculous amount of newly-split firewood at Jake's feet. "You've been busy."
Jake buried the axe head in the stump and reached for his water. "Figured you could haul it down to the village and add it to the pile. Temps are dropping."
"Yeah, sure. Came up to see if you needed help —" Colt's eyes pinned to the mating bite blazing on Jake's left pectoral, shock splattering across his face. "What the fuck is that?"
Jake's blood ran cold.
Since Zorah left, he'd been careful to keep his torso covered around Colt. Colt had seen him without his shirt enough times during the summer, so Jake figured he'd notice the most recent scar in his vast collection if given the opportunity. Emotional exhaustion and sleep deprivation had him forgetting to cover up when the Second's footsteps trudged up the rise. He silently cursed himself for a fool.
