Willow’s baby. The Paladin land. I’d ruined everything.
A sob formed in my throat but I swallowed it down. Now was not the time to be emotional. I’d spent a year having a pity party for myself. Now was the time to suck it up and get out of here.
Closing my eyes, I took in a deep cleansing breath through my nose and then exhaled through my mouth. The bubbling sounds of the creek water coupled with the rustling of the leaves put me into a calm state.
Plain as day once you trust.
The words of my ancestors looped in my head.
I found it. Trust. Plain as day. Trust, trust, trust.
I’d had a thought late last night. What if the trust was different for each alpha? What if Run never trusted the land, or his own heart, or something like that? What if each alpha had an issue trusting something in life and coming out here forced you to confront that?
Chills ran the length of my arms at the rightness of that thought.
Run loved my mom, that much was clear, but did he struggle with that love of a city girl? Didthatstick him here for three years? Did he feel something was wrong with him for loving the enemy?
A great wind ripped through the canyon then; the leaves rustled as if trying to speak to me.
I breathed in slowly, feeling closer than ever to figuring this out.
“What don’tItrust?” I whispered out loud.
I trusted my heart, my love for Sawyer, this land that had kept me alive for years. I trusted all of that.
‘Yourself,’my wolf whispered softly, startling me.‘Your body.’
My throat tightened as images of my rape flashed through my mind. Silk sheets, muffled screams, blackness.
Shame. Defeat. Betrayal. Weakness.
The sob that bubbled to the surface now was too big to gulp down, so I opened my mouth and let it rip out of me as it transformed into a howl.
My wolf was right…
I’d stopped trusting my body the night I was raped. I was ashamed I couldn’t protect myself, ashamed I didn’t scream louder or fight harder. Ashamed that I didn’t do more to get Vicon arrested, although Iknewthat wasn’t true, that I wasn’t in the wrong, and had nothing to be ashamed of.
When I couldn’t protect myself, my soul split in two and my wolf had to protect us, had to be the badass, the strong one, the one I could always rely on when things got tough.
But hadn’t I just survived out here in the middle of the freaking woods with bears and the threat of starvation and pregnancy … all on my own? My wolf was with me yes, but she’d barely done anything to help out here.Ifetched the water,Ihiked the mountain,Ihunted the meals,Ibuilt the addition to the cabin with my strong hands.Ipushed a baby out of my damn vagina with no pain meds, not my wolf.
I was a badass and I needed to trust myself. This human part of Demi wasanythingbut weak.Anythingbut full of shame.
Tears flowed down my cheeks as my throat tightened with emotion. “I trust myself,” I whispered.
“I trust my body.” I broke into a sob, my throat tightening to the point of pain as I tried to hold back my tears.
Something inside of me mended itself then. I couldn’t say exactly what it was, but it fused together in that moment … a rightness, an effervescent filling up the darkest part of my soul. I could trust myself to get us out of here. Just because my wolf and I were split didn’t mean we weren’t the same.
I was her, she was me. We were one. I saved myself that day with Vicon, and I was going to get us home now. Today.
My eyelids snapped open and I jumped up from where I sat.
“Sage!” I yelled, running full speed to where she was cutting the tubers with baby Creek on her back.
She looked up at me in alarm.
“I’m going to find the cave. Right now. I know where it is,” I told her. I didn’t actually know, but I knew it would reveal itself to me. Ifeltit.
