Two Halves Equal a Whole

Ch. 5 Arlet:

Ch. 5 Arlet:

We were eating actual breakfast at the diner. It was about 7:00 A.M. and I hadn't stopped telling embarrassing stories of Wren... the temptation to outweighed the consequences in my opinion. This particular one was about a party that we went to when we were seventeen.

"No!" Aspen said animatedly, his left arm snaked around Wren's waist.

I was starting to think it was glued there.

"Yes," I responded, laughing, "Then our mom finds that out because her shoes, which she had left in the living room, had cotton balls with the word 'party time' on top, like how do you not notice that?!"

"In my defense, I was wasted. If anything, it's your fault, you were the one that had to drag me up the stairs," Wren defended not even trying to hide her smile.

"So what I'm getting out of this is that my dear princess has trouble holding her alcohol," he said looking down into her eyes.

Not for the first time, I started to feel thirdwheelieish and felt my heart tugging me, making me want to jump out of the dining room window and run towards the one man who could make it stop. The pull had gotten really strong, over the past few hours, and I think I knew why, my mate was anxious. And that made me anxious.

Aspen's phone buzzed and he picked it up. He sat up straighter when he read it.

"Hey," he said, "We need to get going."

Aspen:

Get your ass back over here Alpha Kayce thinks she might be his mate and hes starting to get on my nerves. Dont tell the girls tho I dont want to get them all riled up

Alpha Kayce? Could she be? I had met him a few times when our packs had gotten together and he seemed like a nice guy, it was hard to imagine anything getting on his nerves. I shuddered internally.

"Hey," I said, "We need to get going."

I was freaking out a little bit so I texted Alpha John.

Is he angry?

Its more of a whiny dog situation

I sighed in relief I wasn't sure what 'whiny dog' meant but it sounded better than angry.

Arlet looked surprisingly relieved at leaving, while my sweet Wren looked up at me and asked if everything was alright.

"Yes," I assured her, "My alpha is just anxious to have me back, and to meet you," she looked a little intimidated now, so I said, "Everything will be fine, he's a good guy."

I paid the check, insisting on paying Arlet's as well before we headed back to the inn we had stayed at. When we shifted, I was shocked I knew that Wren and Arlet were identical twins, but even their wolves were identical. They both had beautiful auburn fur and hazel brown eyes (the same colors they had in human form) and medium builds. I could definitely tell who my Wren was though. She, to me, seemed to shine brighter and I could feel the bond between us. I looked back at her... God she was beautiful. My wolf and I were in agreement:

How did we get so lucky?

I turned into my large grey wolf, and he bounded over to Wren, yipping, sniffing, and jumping around her. Her wolf seemed to be on page as mine and started wrestling with me, and when I caught a glimpse of Arlet, she had a lopsided smile on her face. I really liked Arlet, and somehow felt a connection to her. Not like a mate bond, but something else, and I feel like it had something to do with her being Wren's twin. I had not felt even a twinge of jealousy from Wren towards Arlet, even when we were laughing and telling stories together, and I could tell Wren was extremely protective of me. Heck, I had felt jealousy from her when our waitress had just spoken at me to take our drink orders.

Arlet:

I have never felt so happy for Wren than I am now, just watching her excitedly jump around. I felt my heart warm in love for both of them even though I had just met Aspen; he made Wren happy and that was all that mattered. After a while though, my itch to keep moving made me intervene so we could leave. Aspen picked up Wren's bag (he seemed to want to do everything for her which I thought was cute) and I picked up mine before we started running towards the north, stopping at the pack's border to let a guard know that we were leaving. I was a little worried because even though most packs were directly connected to each other, these two had a little gap in the woods which meant that there could be rouges. I was tense the entire two hours that we were between packs, but thankfully we didn't run into anybody. When we got to the next pack's border, it took a little longer to be allowed access because, since marking took away the pull's wrist tattoo, the guard had to verify Aspen's pack and that he had indeed crossed the border the day before to find Wren.

This pack, while small in numbers, was big in territory, so it took an extra hour and a half to actually make it to the village. I could tell that my mate wasn't in this pack as soon as we reached the village, but Wren was hungry, so we decided to stop for lunch (it was only about 11:30, but Wren had been too busy ogling over Aspen to eat this morning). We ate quickly because I was eager to get moving again, still feeling the anxiety of my mate. On our way out of the village we ended up stopping again because the road was blocked due to construction – apparently, they were building another building for their school because their pack had recently experienced a baby boom. Construction always made me nervous, all of those big dangerous machines (I mean you had to be licensed to operate them), large heavy materials swinging around, and unstable structures. I edged around the site, on the complete opposite side of the street, with Wren's right hand (her left was holding Aspen's) holding tightly onto mine because she knew how much construction scared me.

She was looking into my eyes when I heard the screeching. Both of our heads turned towards the sound, and what I saw caused me a terror I had never felt before. It was like something out of Final Destination, all of my worst fears coming to life. A part of the school had started to collapse because a load-bearing beam had been knocked off balance due to a beam of wood being carried by three men slamming into it when one of them tripped. A nearby crane holding a lot of wood had to swerve out of the way, but crashed into another machine, making the wood swing wildly right towards us. I felt Wren wrench her hand out of mine and shove me harshly to the right before SLAM, the crane hit Aspen and Wren head on, and the last thing I saw in her eyes was sheer terror.

My ears were ringing as I ran towards them, everything seeming to go in slow motion, and just before I reached her, I felt something inside me snap, it felt like my heart. I crashed to my knees right in front of Wren and Aspen, seeing their lifeless terror-filled eyes, shaking Wren, even though I knew as soon as I had felt the snap that she was gone. Tears streamed down my face as somebody tried pulling me off of her, not noticing that my vocal cords were snapping, and that the blood vessels in my eyes were bursting. She was my entire WORLD, and she was gone, we had never, in all of our twenty years, been apart for more than twenty-four hours and she was gone.

I didn't even notice when one of the bands on my wrist faded away.