For the Taking ✅

22 • Liar

Seraphina POV

The world felt like it was spinning around me. The once harsh bitter cold air felt like nothing against my skin. I was numb. My stomach twisted with a nauseating sensation all the while bile threatened to make an appearance on the dusty white snow

My father grabbed a hold of my forearm as my balance briefly slipped my mind.

"I- I don't understand." I stuttered my eyes unfocused as they stared out into the wilderness.

"Sera, your mate would have marked you already. I'm talking from experience."  He meant well but his word stung.

He didn't know how much I was broken-hearted. His words were like venom to my every nerve. It rendered me still, grounded in place, pained by the meaning.

"You don't know that." I rejected taking a step back.

"Listen to me Sera, I have nothing to gain by telling you this." He tried to assure me but it fell on deaf ears as I ripped my arm from his hold.

I felt like I had been slapped in the face with a hot frying pan. My blood felt like it had frozen itself in my veins but my skin was scalding hot.

"Of course you do. You have the perfect reason to tell me this just like you said I have no wolf. That means that I wouldn't know that you are lying." Tears begged to fall out of my eyes but I took a deep breath to ease the urge away. "You think that a man like Desmond, a beta, someone who has the potential to be an alpha would openly choose me, a mutated wolf as their mate? I'd be a weakness to him, he'd never choose me in any setting except if I were his mate."

I jerked my arm out of his reach as he tried to grab it again. I was furious at his words, this was not at all how I thought my parents' visit would go.

"Then why hasn't he marked you?" He took a cautious step closer to me like I was a fawn he didn't want to spook away.

I blinked my tears back as I listened to his question. "If he's your mate Sera he wouldn't he offer to take you out of the cabin and show you off? Why hasn't he "

"Maybe because he's ashamed of me?" I shouted. "Maybe because I'm not anything that he ever imagined his mate to be. Because I'm wolf-less dad because I have no heightened senses because I'm a fucking failure." I shouted. "There, you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?" I questioned with a huff.

He blinked unsure how to approach me now. His calculating eyes scanned me over trying no doubt to comfort me or prove his point. I wasn't sure which it was, regardless I didn't want either one.

I felt worthless. Admitting what I've always thought of myself out loud like I had left me feeling the whole weight of my inferiority. I had always known that I was never at the same level as werewolves, but I had always held on to the belief that something would change through the years. That someday I'd wake up and be a wolf.

As the years passed by however that drive to be optimistic dwindled until it became virtually nonexistent. Why continue to be hopeful when you repeatedly get the same results.

"Sera, that's not what I meant." My father reached out again to pull me into a hug. It was a hug I rejected.

I didn't want his touch. I didn't want his fatherly attempts at comfort to hinder my thinking anymore than it already was. It felt like manipulation, it felt like a scheme, a ploy to convince me of something I knew deep down not to be true.

It couldn't be.

"No, dad. I'm not listening to this. I can't believe that you'd come here just to spew these lies. Don't you want me to be happy?" I accused through narrowed eyes.