He waits.
And he waits.
And keeps waiting.
For her.
In fields of fresh green blades breaking free of snow-bound patches promising new life, in long lush meadow grasses warmed by the summer sun that heats the body from the outside, in the brittle dry harvest of fallen leaves with the earth closing her eyes lulling him to sleep, in the frozen hoar-frost of the deepest darkest season. The world asleep, his heart asleep. He waits for her. Come home, he whispers into the wind and wishes for his voice to carry his cry to her. And at night beneath the low-hanging moon he tips his head back and howls and howls. For her. The pack joins in but their cries don't rend the black sky the way his mourning voice does, all jagged cutting edge.
Within the embrace of his family he is alone. She is his mate. He misses her and swallows the words that would call her back to his side.
But then she returns. And when she appears she is death-shrouded in the scent of another man, a human lover. The smell of him on her skin sends hairline cracks through the long bones in his legs and in his arms and he feels that he might fracture into pieces if he tries to move. He wants to pull her against him, bite down into the place where her neck curves into her shoulder, he wants to suck a bruise into her flesh, framed by the marks of his teeth, and send her back to from wherever she came and then he'll change and run until he can't breathe. Which is very, very far. He wants to be lost. To the pack, to her, to himself. He wants to change and never change back.
She leaves again and his world becomes shades of black and grey with a bright white of despair. And for the second time in his life he knows fear. He keeps this knowledge to himself but after a run with Jeremy, the alpha too-casually mentions how the thought of being alone is the ravenous monster that preys on the pack mind. I won't leave you, he says wordlessly with the language of a firm grip on the nape of his neck. His father shakes him gently. He knows that Jeremy knows then.
Bu still, he is bereft and seeks out shadowed corners to lick at the wound that is his heart.
Returned. Again. Something has changed; he can sense it in the permission she gives him to move into her heat. But he is wary of her now, her words that are sharper than her teeth. He hangs back, too far, and the unthinkable happens. He watches her die. Shot through the back by a psychopath. He roars in disbelief, he cannot believe this because his heart is still pumping his hot blood and how can that be true, if she has been slain then surely he would bleed out because his heart would not survive the injury.
But it is not her.
And that night she comes to him. He would weep if he had not already cried himself dry months ago. He can only stand trembling, waiting, waiting, waiting for her to offer herself to him. Again. The world shifts beneath him and he falls towards her, into her, holds onto her with everything he has to keep from drowning in her particular sea. He leans down and she presses forward until the only thing he can do is offer his arms so she can climb into them.
For the first night in a year's time, he sleeps without nightmares, sleeps without waking in a cold miserable sweat, sleeps without wrapping himself in blankets woven from regret and recrimination. Then, the still betraying lover, the morning sunlight casts another shadow and he lies as though paralyzed as she rises and departs. But now her scent is on his skin and it fills his nostrils and somehow he is healed. Time becomes immaterial. He can wait. He will wait and she has no say-so in this regards. He is hers forever.
He thinks that now Jeremy will exert, insist, demand that she stay. Chain her with shackles forged from love and need. They are stronger when she is with them. Instead, it is he who is chained. He is leashed and sent back to the city with her. The obedient, the loyal, the guard. Before they leave he pulls a leather-bound copy of the Arthurian Legends down from a high shelf in the library and he stuffs it into his pack. He will be her Knight Errant.
He has to adjust his judgment on Phillip after he sees the broken glass, the drops of blood, and smells the fear and adrenaline inside the gallery. He can hear her lover's heart racing and he nods to himself. If he was wolf they would run together, chase down Olson and rip him to shreds. She sees his reluctant approval and she scowls at him. Her canines deep in the muscle of his heart. He turns away.