Looking at her now, feeling her pain from her own depths, I wonder what it is that made her this way. Why she closed off from anyone except Colton…. I know even the sub pack never really bonded to her like they have me and dutifully endured her presence for him. I can’t imagine what losing him must have felt like if he truly was the only person she thought of as her friend and security, and then lost the subs around her which were probably the closest to a real pack she had.
She isn’t as tough or as cold as she makes out and I can feel her fear, her insecurity, her worry over her mom, and her complete lack of bold now I’m touching her hand to hand. I squeeze it tightly and try to numb down the intense feelings I am absorbing from her, and she suddenly yanks her hand away, realizing what she’s doing by holding on to me. There’s a moment of heightened blush on her face as she reels back and pulls herself stiff and cold. A gust of icy cold as her heart clamps shut and her emotions are bit down hard to conceal all from me. Like an internal fire door being slammed shut to keep the fire at bay. The armor sweeping back up and the haughty exterior comes back into play. It’s almost so effortless and speedy that a blink would have made me miss it.
“I can arrange for Sierra to come sit with her, send up some food and give them time alone. She maybe isn’t Luna anymore, but as Rema she still cares for the people and plays a hand in making this home a haven of calm.” I ignore the change in her and don’t draw attention to the fact she’s wiping her hand to remove the feel of my warm touch on her. My brain is firing ahead to a solution for her mom.
I’m sure a little gentle coaxing will have Sierra leave her rooms for a while, especially if like Carmen said, this was one of her friends from the past. We don’t have many of those here. Most remember her only as Luna, her friends were all kept behind by mates or lost in the war.
‘I’m sorry I ever doubted you as Luna…. as worthy. For everything I said or did. He broke me. I was in pain. It was juvenile and I’m over it.” She states coldly, icily harsh in her tone as though overcompensating for the weakness she showed me moments before. In that flash the old bitchy looking, aloof, and haughty Carmen. stands in place of the lost and vulnerable soul of seconds before, trivializing her love of my mate once upon a time ago, but this time I see through it.
A broken hearted, lonely girl, who lost someone she loved, was left to fend alone in a home she no longer recognized and still harbors a world of agony deep inside. As much as I look back and feel like she once deserved my anger, I don’t think she does anymore.
Carmen’s adrift, with no anchor. Her home is gone, her mate went to another, her father’s a betrayer of all she knew and her mother…. slowly slipping away from her as the days pass by. There’s only devastation and fear hiding behind cold bitch, and I wonder what she has gone through in the last few months under Juan’s rule to lose the last ounces of soft she used to allow herself to show at times. I wonder what else our people out there are going through right now too, while here we live in a bubble of general safety and happy.
“The past has passed. Let’s focus on the now and the future and making your mom well.” I utter quietly, but with determination. A need in me to offer her some sort of hope now that I can feel her mood has returned to distant and closed off. It’s like there’s no light in this girl at all and she has become so accustomed to dwelling in the dark that her very warmth has ebbed into nothingness the second she reels it back to her damp cave with her.
“It’s been so long since I felt like we had any kind of real leader, or Luna…. I forgot what it feels like to have someone share the load and make you feel that everything might be okay.” She stares at her feet, a tiny flinch of her jawline and eyebrow, and seems to unfocus for a second as a tiny hint of color warms the apples of her cheeks at her own words. And then it’s gone just as quickly. A hint of something, maybe gratitude, maybe real genuine hope, then bam, she closed it back down and swallowed her carelessness once more.
For the first time I think I see what maybe Colton did all these years and why he tried to stay with her before there was us. Knowing him and how he likes to see the best in people, and his hero complex. I see it now.
The scared little girl in the midst of the hard-outer shell and the signals she gives off so subtly you almost miss them if you are not looking for them. It’s in glimpses when she forgets to pull her mask up, the tiny wrinkles in her armor, the careless words, or the unintended moments of genuine touch. It makes you want to help her, bring her into the warmth and remove the shackles she has put around herself to keep people out.
The bitch isn’t who she is. The tantrums, the behaviors, the arrogant outer persona, they’re all a mask to shield this right here. More like her mom than I think she knows and maybe it’s not so unbelievable that her mother is a weaker wolf with no ability to fend for herself. Maybe that’s exactly why Carmen learned to be this kind of way after watching her mother get pushed around for her own flaws.
Carmen is fragile in her own way, yet at the same time so much stronger than I gave her credit for, in a completely different way. She’s more capable than Tawna, less likely to break into a thousand pieces the way her mom seems to, but it’s there alright. The vulnerability. The sadness. She needs a strong mate to give her what she lacks. She needs security, and devotion, loyalty, to find her self-worth and someone who will love her and bring her peace the way Colton has for me. She needs a family that she leans on, instead of them leaning on her, and making her the one to shield and protect.
Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s that now I see her in a new light, I truly feel sorry for my part in her unhappiness. The fates disregarded her, cast her aside, and Colton could no longer stomach to look her way when she betrayed his bond. Which I guess, now I even understand why she did what she did to him when he bonded to someone else. I can’t even imagine what that did to her mentally and emotionally when all she had to rely on was him.
I took her place, in his heart, his bed, and the pack, and she was left on the cold mountain, alone. To weather the storm and figure out how to save her mom. She watched everyone slip away and her life was turned upside down while she held together the pieces of the wreckage she was left with. Maybe she has more reason to hate me than I ever hard for her. Yet standing here, I don’t even find a trace of it anymore. It’s like her emotions have died and all that’s left is a need to keep her single lifeline safe or else she has nothing at all to go on for.
“You’re home now. We’ll figure this out… as a pack.” I try a brighter smile that conveys ‘it’s okay, we got this’ and push down every other thought and feeling inside.
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