Female ✔️

28: connecting the past

I shake my head sharply, the trembling in my limbs won't stop. I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything. Goosebumps pull my skin taut as I recall near freezing black water in a tin basin. Breath escapes my lungs and floats to the surface in bubbles that lose integrity fast.

"Montana, calm down." Blu is in front of me, his hands grasp my cheeks. I want to pull away, but his hands are warm and grounding. They pull heat to my face and a deep electricity to my belly that has my toes curling and my breath slowing from the panicked hitches. It is such a good feeling but such a bad connection. This mate has no worth to me. "Please, I'm going to make it go away."

"No!" Shrieking, pulling away from his trance. "You're preparing me for them! For death!"

"No... I know what you were trying to do in the kitchen, I am trying to do the same. Something about... New Ways?" He grasps my face again and I see his eyelashes flutter within the feeling. Blanching at his revelation, I shake my head. "Don't bother, I know it all. I'm on your side. I have a plan."

Shoving at his chest, I snarl. "Plan, plan, plan. When will you let me know this plan? You say you wait until you can trust me, but am I really the one who needs to be trusted? I swear to the fucking Moon if you do not tell me now I'm going to..." I look around the room desperately. It's his, looking mundane and empty. Trying to calm the quaking in my shoulders and hands, my nature is spilling over the brim, heat flashes behind eyes squeezed shut. I wish the window is open, I need air. "I can't and won't even bother to think of trusting you if you don't-"

"Stop." With his command my words obey, leaving my hair in my fists and my eyes dead on him. I wait. Watch him pace and pace and pace. He's back and forth across the room, his face is the picture of turmoil and upset.

I don't speak a word during the process of thoughts, at least he is thinking of saying something.

"Okay. Listen," he pauses to even his breaths and I release one that is somewhat relieved. "I was waiting for the right time. I needed to make sure you were still motivated." Eyes stare into mine, we are locked together, searching for something. "Everything you know of me... Lies and show. The females I carted around, following my father like a perfect pup, sitting at the Council as if it held honor. All of it. You see, it has been a plan ever since I first saw you."

Swallowing nerves and squashing the blooming hope is easy. He will get my ear, but not my head. Not yet. "The females you carted around? Not one of them was significant?"

"Montana." Blu says, eyes unwavering from mine.

"What?"

"My virtue is still intact."

My stomach bottoms out, thinking of how badly I don't want to believe it. I think of how he portrayed himself before us. Walking around with the scent of sex on his skin. "No... You're telling me lies."

"I am not. Do you want to check?" He lifts a brow and the corner of his mouth so slightly. Even amidst all this stress he is trying to joke. "Irina was always a female I used, but we would only trade scents. Skin on skin, making up the scent of bodies together. Never any further. I would carry them around on my arms, only for image. To make you hate me. I needed you safe, and safe was ignorance." His eyes close, head tipped down. Shame suppressed. "But, I'm not sorry for this."

My lower lip wobbles, it is painful, how badly I want to believe his words.

"The first time I saw you," His eyes slowly lift back to my face, but I am looking off. "I had just come back from a trip with my father. I was just five winters and you were three. All those freckles and a whole head of dark hair. You had on this yellow sundress in mid Autumn, a big wool coat on top and no shoes. When you looked up at me, I saw your wolf eyes and knew you were mine." Blu lifts my wrist to his nose, smelling my pulse with a small smile and light laugh that makes my belly flutter unnecessarily. "Still smell the same; roses and fresh rain."