Chapter 2: Forced Goodbye

16 Years Previous: March 9th 2037

I didn't fight against his strong warm hands; I didn't have anything left in me to struggle. I was a shell, a pitiful shell of a man, now being carted away by force, the only way I would willingly leave the warm glow of the only happy home I'd ever known. I was an abandoned man, lying half dead on the stained carpet floor of a motel, which was scattered with food litter and alcohol bottles.

"Solace, you're going to have to use your legs," Anna coaxed soothingly. I hadn't moved for anything but the bathroom and infrequent binges of junk food and alcohol in two months, since my divorce from Amber was finalized.

"It hurts," I said, the croak that came from my throat didn't sound like my own. The stiffness in my right leg felt alien too, as if I were dragging a wooden prosthetic as Michael tried to stand me upright.

"That's because you haven't been walking on it, Solace! Carlisle said you need to be working it constantly before the muscle just petrifies," Anna spat hitting my leg as it burned for the pressure of standing upright.

My leg was crushed in battle half a year ago but the damages were irreparable and it made the process of dragging me forcefully from my spot on the floor more difficult. It had been destroyed in the cold palm of a vampire, my bone splintering, large shards expelling from my body. Werewolf magical healing had limitations, I healed quickly but I didn't regenerate bones and the pieces that left my body weren't coming back.

"I don't care anymore," I said honestly, Anna hissed.

Amber stayed with me through six months of recovery, supporting me like no one in my entire life ever had. My mother was not the most attentive of women, this was common knowledge in La Push among the pack who had shared my mind, so it wasn't easy needing her like I did. I depended on her in ways I had never allowed myself to rely on any woman, they never stayed around long enough, but Amber had. She was never supposed to leave me, this hadn't been the plan.

She bathed me for the first month, when my leg was stiff and unmoving and while I had countless useless surgeries. She cooked for me, though she didn't really know how; food tastes better when someone you loved made it for you. At nights she held me, she never broke down, I had no idea the extent of her pain; I'd failed her as a husband.

Amber held strong, stronger than me as I healed and fought feelings of inadequacies. I had been injured in battle, the one thing I was sure I was prepared for. She took care of me while making sure I still felt like a man.

She was the strong one though; she was the rock as I mourned the loss of my fellow pack mate Devlin and our baby. One month after the end of the battle, three months along and just getting round in the belly, she lost him. It was a him, our sweet little baby boy.

There was no medical reasoning or proof behind it but I felt it as surely as I felt the hollowing emptiness of our loss. I felt the energy of our baby boy and when he was gone, the dreams I had for him disappeared, leaving a crack in our relationship I had been too stupid ad self-centered to see.

"I don't want to leave," I said robotically.

"Amber's going to leave if you don't, this is hard for her too, Solace. She… she loves you so much… it's—Anna help me out here," Michael said quickly turning to look for support as he lifted me up higher.

"It was the right thing for her to do, for both of you," Anna said repeated Amber's words exactly, making my blood boil.

The day I was given the okay from Carlisle to leave Alaska and go back to our home in Seattle, she passed me the large manila envelope that changed everything, our divorce papers. She saw her miscarriage and my injury as a sign from the gods that we were not meant to be, she was being punished for taking me from my imprint and living happily with someone who didn't belong to her.

There was no long drawn out agreements or division of property, I begged her with every ounce of my being to stay with me, that's all that mattered, all I really wanted. I didn't care about how weak I appeared, I threw myself at her feet and asked her to give our marriage a second chance but she held strong, she was giving up and I had no say in it.

I signed over the three bedroom condo I bought when I found out she was pregnant and gathered all my strength to pack my small bag. It was the second time I had shared a home with a woman and the last, my heart couldn't handle the strain of taking my life and packing it away. I took clothes, about enough for a month and one of the many pictures she had taken in the five years since we had gotten married.

It was snapped in Greece, the sun shining down on us, on the last day of our honeymoon in Santorini. Her hair was grown out, lying beautifully on her bare back, her tanned arm draped around my chest possessively. The picture hadn't left my hand for days, the clothes were almost untouched, but the picture was already fading, the oils and heat from my hand warping the image.

I winced as I attempted to put weight on my right leg to walk; Anna came in on the other side of me, offering her support as we made our way down the stairs. I was going back to La Push, as Amber requested, to start the life I was supposed to be living with my imprint, the life that had been pre-assigned to me.

I would like to say I had nobly signed our divorce papers because I wanted to respect Amber's wishes, but part of me, the magic part I couldn't suppress, begged for me to go back home.

I wouldn't be able to see her, my imprint Maddox. I hadn't been allowed the last time I was there, during the three weeks I stayed guard in La Push while the active wolves tracked and battle a vicious coven, but I longed to, a biological yearning I couldn't eliminate made me want it.

I laid across the back seat, my head resting in Levi Varn's lap. Devlin, my fallen wolf brother was Anna and Michael's also son, the middle of a set of three triplets. Levi was the oldest, entirely deaf and for the devastating howl that ripped from his throat when he stood over his brother' limp body, I would thought he was a mute. He looked down at me in shock as I threw myself across his lap but didn't move. He examined my face thoughtfully fingering the small patch of grey hair that had erupted around my temple at the time of Amber's miscarriage.

He snapped his fingers three times, catching his mother's attention. Anna sat in the passenger seat and instead of turning around she looked at him through the rearview mirror as he signed to her.

"He says you smell and you're going to have to shower before you are allowed to move in his room," Anna translated with a smirk that I could see in the reflection of the window.

"I guess that could be arranged," I sighed and he nodded twice after she informed him, taking my hand for a quick shake. That was it, I was on my way home, roommate to a teen werewolf.

~X~

Levi was quiet, not just because he didn't speak but in general. Even with my werewolf hearing, he found a way to creep in and out without being heard, and it was a welcome talent. I was left to my own devices, which meant instead of wallowing in self-pity in the motel around the corner from my old home, I now did it in a room much too small for two wolves, sleeping on the bottom bunk because the top had belonged to Devlin and Levi didn't want me ruining his scent.

Levi was like a bloodhound, this might have been because he was the son of Anna, the best tracker in pack history or because he was deaf and his other senses were amplified, but he was determined for me not to mar the remaining essence of his brother.

Melody, the third triplet lived across the hall and she was equally subdued, she came out of her room only for her imprint Taylor Cameron, Amber's older brother, and not always then even. When her parents weren't home, the fifteen-year old girl would pull him into her room and not emerge for several hours. From what I could tell, it was mostly kissing. I tried not to listen but with ultrasensitive hearing, I couldn't help it, so I knew other than a few gasps that might have signified fondling, Melody was not mourning through sex, a method I had employed many times before.

"It's dinner time, Solace," Anna announced gliding into the room where Levi and I sat across from each other in complete silence.

"I just ate," I groaned stretching out my leg. Levi watched the transaction carefully from his desk. Since he had joined the pack he had been trying to learn read lips, something you couldn't do unless you could identify the different sounds made with each curl and curve of the lip. HSo I made sure to speak slowly and clearly whenever I was near him, I liked his determination. I liked him a lot, actually. He was deep, I could tell that by the pools of his eyes but he didn't say a word, not about his pain.

He turned to me, slowly using his hands to try and communicate with me, I didn't understand.

"I'm sorry," I apologized, looking to Anna for answers. Anna watched him as he did it again, faster this time.

"He said," she giggled, signing something back before she continued. "He said generally people eat three meals a day." Anna interpreted fluidly, complete with his sarcastic tone.

It had been eight weeks since I was dragged here, a jumble of days that meshed together seamlessly, a simple schedule of eating and sleeping. Freddie Call, our Alpha-in-training, tried to talk me into starting a light patrol schedule or to help with the new training regiment, but we all knew that was a senseless request. I walked and felt like an old man, old men had no place in the pack.

The dinner table which normally sat five, was set for eight and colorful plastic children's cutlery sat one of them. Eli.

Jordan and Mark, holding their adopted child between them stood nervously in the living room. Eli was clingy, he grew up in child protective services where love and affection were not exactly showered on him. By the time he was taken into the care of a private orphanage with more specialized care and attention, he saw it as a gift and he reveled in it, soaking as much of it from a room as possible.

He was my opposite in ways, growing up without a mother's affection I became shut off, holding my emotions in and hiding them tight until the burst out of me at frightening intervals during sex or battle. Eli was just a constant burst of love, he needed to share it and feel it ten times over.

Eli ran to me and Levi as soon as we walked into the dining room. They were the only two deaf members of our community but that was enough to make everyone but me, who had not lived in La Push for the last half a decade, at least semi-fluent. They used their hands so quickly my eyes couldn't keep up.

Dinner was a solemn affair until Amber was brought up. "Amber."

The sound of her name brought me out of my head as Mark knew it would. He paused before he continued, "she's asked me to tell you… to call her when you're ready." Mark sighed when my fork hit the plate loudly and I whipped out of my chair.

I had my cell phone in my hand, her number speed dialed before I could even take another breath.

"Solace," she whimpered into the phone, her voice making my stomach drop.

"Princess."

"Solace, you need to start phasing again," she said stiffly.

"No." One words answers were all I would trust myself with now.

"Stop being a baby, Solace, don't—don't waste the sacrifice I made for you," she said with a flair of Amber fire, her signature passion, and it melted the parameter of my heart.

"I can't… I don't have a reason to live anymore," I said simply.

"Stop saying those kinds of things, Solace. You have reason, you have a purpose and that little girl needs you alive."

Maddox Ateara, my child imprint. We didn't say her name, we hadn't since the wedding when we made a pact, which was intended to keep our marriage alive and together forever.

"Maddox," I let her name escape my lips for the first since we had been married, it was over anyways I had nothing to lose.

"Yes Solace… Maddox," Amber said, sadly.

"She won't… she's better off without me, Amber." I would be alone like I deserved for the rest of my life, which hopefully wouldn't be long. I was already aging, I had been for the entire five years of our marriage, and after the war, I hadn't phased again. I had tried in Alaska at Carlisle's request, to no avail. I hadn't tried again.

"She needs you! Goddamnit!"

"She's fine, she's doing just fine," I assured her. She was crying, I couldn't stand it, my fist were balled so tight it hurt.

"How do you know, you stubborn bastard?!" Amber cried.

"I have my sources." I had kept track of her since the day I imprinted. She didn't lose a tooth without my knowing. No days at home sick without my suffering with her from afar.

"Solace, this depression… as much as I'd like to think it's all for me, babe, it's not. It's your prolonged separation from her," her voice cracked a bit, but her breathing stayed even. "You need her as much as she needs you and… I need you to be happy, Solace. I can't—I can't move on till I know you're okay, please—"

"I can't love anyone else," I pleaded. "You have my soul."

"That's not possible l because I'm not your soulmate… Solace, I'll never ever love anyone else, it's not even a question… but I did this all for you… and her," she ended in a whisper.

"I don't have anything left to give her, Princess, I'm just… a shell." She breathed deeply. I counted each breath, 12 rattling exhalations before she spoke again.

"Just give her your shell, she'll fill it." And with that she was gone.