The Change (Fated Series: book1)

The rhythmic tick-tock resonated through the quiet room. The Alpha-mandated psychiatrist sessions were predictable waste of time and effort for both parties. Yet they kept seeing each other as if they could resolve anything.

Vanessa kept staring at the decor, ignoring the doctor, but vigilantly cataloging her surroundings. If nothing else worked out, at least Nessa would have inspiration for future renovations. The room was inviting and warm, allowing Nessa to forgot she was here involuntary. Nessa sat on the dark sofa, which gently supported her weight and enveloped her in a reassuring embrace, thus focusing her mind on the task at hand. Gather your thoughts and pour your heart out. While the purpose of every single element in the room was to facilitate the healing process, Nessa only saw furniture she would love to have one day, if she lived long enough to be able to afford it. Whoever decorated the room had an easy going style and certain innocence which made Nessa jealous.

All she ever wanted was to rest her tired eyelids, and just to be done with just eighteen years of life. But the darn therapist kept yapping about the feelings they were bound to unearth.

It would have been a really cozy hour of silence and solitude, had it not been for the yapping psychiatrist of the feelings they were supposed to unearth. Nessa’s cooperation was expected, as if opening your bleeding heart for judgemental inspection wasn’t hard enough.

“So how have you been?” Evelyn Franklin, resident psychiatrist and fellow Rover Grove pack member, asked as many times before.

Nessa often wondered just how much things had changed since her rejection a couple of months ago. Surely, the pain wasn’t as physically impairing as in the first couple of days. The sharp, pulsating and suffocating agony had slowly decreased to this tolerable ache. It had become her new norm, and Nessa hardly ever thought about it. Unless she was in Evelyn’s company.

The desperation of being stuck, unloved and unwanted was duller, but still present. It consumed the air around her, and left her breathless at times.

And then there were the nights. They were still the worst. When everything was quiet and sleeping, Nessa could not occupy her troubled soul with distractions. Her mind constantly replayed memories in a loop – growing up with him by her side, the teenage crush blossoming first into a relationship then into a mating. It was just as the Fates intended. But if this was the Goddess’ plan all along, where did Nessa go wary to deserve the soul crushing rejection? Or was it just meant to happen? Was Fate simply cruel enough to have planned all this sorrow?

’How have you been’, was just the beginning of the monologue the young health professional had in Nessa’s presence every Wednesday morning.

Nessa chose to look at these mandated sessions as audiences she had to attend, listening to the pestering woman in white.

“Another silent session,” Doctor Franklin sighed. “You know, I am here to help you if you allow me, that is.”

Nessa couldn’t even be bothered to raise an eyebrow at such an outrageous statement. How could a happily mated she-wolf comprehend the loss of a mate, and relate to the ultimate betrayal of the rejection? The feelings associated with the rejection could not be understood or retold fully unless you had personally experienced them. As long as there were no common grounds, it was foolish to assume one could prepare any soul for the miserable and lonely existence, the renouncement brought.

The torture of seeing Brandon happy, day in and day out, unaffected by a single consequence of his decision was not fair. Nessa soon began avoiding people she loved as to not burden them, allowing them to live in their blissful ignorance of the struggles she faced. She preferred the questioning glares, and whispering as she passed that the pity in their eyes if they ever found out.

‘What’s wrong with her,’ the question everyone, including Nessa, wanted answered.

Logic dictated there had to be a reason for the rejection. Nessa was punished, because no God was cruel. Therefore, she must have done something wrong.

There had to be a reason for her suffering. She was a dutiful daughter, and the respectful pack member of Rover Groove. She did all the right things, and said all the right words. Then why couldn’t she have her happily ever after. How she ended up rejected by the one person who was supposed to be hers remained a mystery. Perhaps if she were more outgoing… or less outspoken? Would that have changed her Fate?

Knowing it wasn’t her fault, did not make the nagging voice in Nessa’s head shut up. Wasn’t she pretty enough? Loving enough? What did she do wrong? Where was the happily ever promised by all those silly romantic novels she read?

Nessa repeatedly asked the Goddess for answers and guidance. When she received none, she stopped believing in the good of the people, and in the divine intervention.

“You’ve well passed the time of respectful mourning of the loss of your destined,” Evelyn continued.

Nessa didn’t miss the narrowing and the slight judgement in the doctor’s eyes, as Nessa remained silent. The verbiage of Evelyn’s narrative implied Nessa’s Fated was dead. Often Nessa wondered if it was going to be easier to talk about a loving relationship cut short, than the betrayal she had gone through. Either way, when Nessa was able to voice her pain, she sure as hell wasn’t going to be vulnerable in front of someone on his payroll.

Nessa wanted to scream at the doctor, but realized it was worthless. At the end of the day, Nessa was another case, paperwork Evelyn had to file. Besides, what good would ‘talking about it’ do?

If Nessa so much blabbed about how empty her life felt, and how soul-crushed she was, Evelyn would be ordering a suicide watch, and admitting her on 48 hour hold. If Evelyn ever heard even the slightest whisper of her attraction to the stupid male that prevented her from erasing him from her heart, a report to the Authorities would be in order.

The liability of a berserk shifter was not something taken lightly by licensed psychiatrists, especially when the rate of such occurrence was five to six times higher with rejected shifters. Once you were feral, there was no going back. The sentence was death as desperate werewolves were the most dangerous kind. They didn’t care about exposure to non-supernaturals or about pack laws.

Everything pointed evidence that the truth was often better left untold.

No, it was better for Evelyn, and everyone else to believe whatever story they had told themselves. Nessa was not going to take away their innocence. Besides, there was little anyone could do for her at this point.

Nessa was doing everyone a favor by bottling up the resentment she had for herself, for the world and mostly for her ex mate, Brandon. Because how were you even supposed to move on, and to allow yourself to trust once again, while your coward of a fate mate hid behind the skirt of another. And what good was having a brother if he was not there to beat the living shit of his little sister’s Fated.

The morning after her mating was said to be the happiest day in her lifetime. In reality, there was nothing joyful about waking up to a bone-crushing pain, heavily wrapping around her body and heart. Nessa could still remember the burning of her skin, while the rough material of her clothing was soaked by her sweat, as the chills kept running down her spine. Her breath was stolen right out of her lungs and her heart fluttered, hardly pumping any blood out. She was frozen in place, when she heard his words of rejection through their mindlink.

“I need to do what’s right. I am sorry I couldn’t control myself around you, Nessa. I hope you know it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But we can’t be together. Vanessa, I’m taking Juliet as my mate. I can only be Alpha Brandon Horton to you.”

He hadn’t had the decency to even reject her in person or do it without projecting every caress he was sharing with Juliet.

Denial provided the much needed comfort for her soul. Rejection almost hardly ever happened. Not to anyone she knew. Certainly not to anyone in Rover Grove. Not until now.

The wee hours of the morning were when Nessa’s tortured existence begun. There was no waking up, no escape from the terror as the newly mated couple enjoyed their bodies.

The average shifter did not deal with this kind of betrayal. They lived their lives blissfully clueless, wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

Plain, simple and easy. Weres were blessed with soul mates, who were their everything. When you took that from a wolf, you condemned the wolf to isolation, unfulfilled and empty, meaningless existence. Drowning your sorrow in the pleasures of the skin, or in servitude were ways to keep moving on, but both paths lead to untimely death. Werewolves needed a mate, a partner to balance their moods, a shoulder to lean on things got out of hand.

Vanessa had neither.

Then the denial gave way to anger. Fury at all the little gestures, comments and clues, Nessa ignore in the name of her love. Love that was promised from birth. The love she had grown up with.

Her Brandon wasn’t hers anymore.

As the pink shades of unconditional love rattled, Nessa made connections between seemingly unrelated events. She saw things for what they were. He never loved her the way she had selflessly given him her heart. Nessa felt guilty for allowing her senses to be so overwhelmed by his scent, his laugh, and his whereabouts to recognize her story would not be a happy one.

She was submerged into this excruciating nothing-ness. She had no direction, and no path to follow. Nothing to live for, and nothing to look forward to. She was the nothing she felt.

Although Nessa was now free to choose her own fate, she had absolutely no desire to live, much less to love once again.

The rejection was the perfect contradiction which made sense only to wolves in similar situations. Time just affected weres differently after a life-changing event like this. It was more or less an out of body experience, where the minutes passed slowly at first…The brain screamed for its need of oxygen, yet your muscles did not respond.

Breathless. Timeless.

Empty.

When she finally opened her eyes, it was morning and the events from the night before played through her head with mortifying details. She was numb and unable to process anything. As sleepiness wore off, she discovered the emptiness in her heart grew faster than she could have ever imagined. Then overwhelming fear and pain settled.

Eventually there came a day when she accepted the pain she lived with like cancerous cells, slowly suffocating your existence. His claim on her neck faded, leaving flawless skin. It was then she realized, there was a reason why he postponed her claim on his neck.

He knew he was going to complete the bond with someone else.

And yet, he had claimed her.

“The Alpha is very concerned about you.”

Nessa rolled her eyes. The audacity of such statement!

‘If he was so concerned about my well-being, then perhaps he should have rejected me or not mated another,’ Nessa sarcasm echoed through her mind, while no sound escaped her plump lips.

Even though the bond was shattered, she could fairly well pick up on his location and read his feelings. Oh, how she wished she could pretend ‘they’ had never happened. But it was clearer with every passing day - he meant what he said. There was no place for her in his life.

The urge to escape his presence and everything that reminded her of him became an obsession. Nessa had to get far away or risk becoming berserk.

At first the lone walks helped clear her head. The fresh air and scents of the forest washed away the frustration and pain she was feeling. By the end of the first week, her so called walks turned into long runs. She was aimlessly roaming the territory, returning home too numb and too tired to breathe much less think of her predicament.

It was hard sorting through her feelings in the vicinity of her tormentor. Social events, which Nessa previously found exciting, were now forced encounters with Brandon. What she hated the most was that he robbed her of being happy for her best friend’s bonding. Nessa could not idly stand by Juliet’s side, and be part of the happiest day in Juliet’s life, but not with him. It hurt knowing he would be there for Juliet, but not for Nessa.

“Damn it, he is mine,” her wolf wasn’t giving up.

“Was mine,” Nessa corrected herself.

By the end of the first month, Nessa could hardly restrain her wolf onto the pack’s territory. Never before did it feel so small. Distance became Nessa’s only friend. The miles lessened the pull, stretching it until it eventually became easy to ignore. Nessa started venturing into the unclaimed territories between the pack and the neighboring ones. And if that wasn’t bad enough, her wolf got even bolder lingering at the other pack’s borders. It was only matter of time before she intentionally trespassed into a territory on a poetically beautiful suicide run.

Every time Nessa shifted, her beast would take over, while the human was pushed away from the driver’s seat. Nessa lost chunks of time. The beast in her wanted to destroy or be destroyed, so Nessa chained it, blocked it in the deepest recess on her mind never to be heard or seen again, because she was afraid of the darkness. It was truly terrifying to flirt so intimately with insanity.

Waking up in the middle of the woods, butt naked and dirty was the new norm. Although she knew she needed to put miles between her torturer and herself, her wolf longed for its pack. Was this the initial stage of going berserk?

Nessa wanted to live and get past it all but she still struggled with the words to dissolve the remnants of the bond. Saying them would just make things official. Lips dry, tongue unsteady, resolution shaky. She could not sever the connection, but she decided to put a leash on her wolf and finally allow distance to dissolve the pull she felt every time she caught his mouth watering scent. It seemed like a good enough solution.

For now.

“This is a safe room, whatever you say stays within the room,” Evelyn tried again.

Nessa almost laughed at her face. There was simply no expectation of privacy. Not when their sessions were recorded and certainly not when the Fated mate in question was the Alpha.

Nessa certainly didn’t feel comfortable with the recording of the sessions either. The were-health-care system was corrupt in its foundation. Although they pledged themselves in servitude to their patients; doctor-patient confidentiality was just a formality where Alphas were concerned. The unique hierarchy of packs allowed Alphas access to medical records under special circumstances. The definition of such circumstances was defined by the Alpha himself. Nessa doubted Brandon would even need to use the Alpha command.

Nessa could hardly remember herself before the rejection, before the gloom and sourness overtook her life. Was there even time when she believed in eternal love, in the moment, in life itself? Where did the mornings when she was still excited to greet the sunrise go?

She now knew, it was all lies. There was no grand plan, and no divine intervention. Just random events. If you were lucky, even a chance for some big love, before it all came biting you just where it hurt the most.

“You can’t continue like this. After a while this whole martyr act loses its appeal,” Evelyn tried a new approach.

Oh, how Nessa wished it was just an act. Then there would at least be hope.

Sadly, it wasn’t the case.

Not that Nessa thought of herself as a martyr. She wanted to move on but there was just nothing to look forward to. When you have these big plans for your life, and they revolve around one person, your hopes and life fracture by a rejection. It left you empty, bruised and a shell of the person you once were.

Rejection was painful, lonely, full of loathing, and fighting to hold onto the last shred of humanity.

“Listen, I get you don’t want to talk to me about your feelings. Why don’t you consider writing them down? Studies show such therapy is just as effective, especially when you are finding it difficult to connect to others….”

Nessa tuned the good doctor out. She didn’t want to talk about her past not because she could not connect to others. She was still human. Much more human that any werewolf for the matter, since her wolf had become withdrawn. Nessa just wanted to be left alone. Was it too much to ask?

Once the wolf was gone, it was only a matter of time before the human gave up unleashing the suppressed beast. It was the final stage of becoming berserk. You were beyond hope, with no chance of recovery. Berserk wolves were hunted and rightfully put down by Pack Law.

Nessa wasn’t there yet, but that was the last stop on the rejected train. Travelling alone in such a gloomy destination left her with little desire to open up or to discuss the inevitable. In her case, denial was as close as she could get to peace.

Evelyn reluctantly left Nessa to her thoughts as she again failed to engage her in conversation as so many other times before it.