Chapter 10

Luca

Ilistened to my brother's retreating footsteps and took note he moved slow but steady.

He wanted me to call him back, to open my emotions as he just had.

To give him hope that I wasn't truly gone and mad.

I wasn't going to reassure him though. I couldn't.

He found his mate, and I was happy he would no longer suffer the same lonely fate we had all these centuries. But jealousy reared its ugly head at hearing he was now completely whole, even if he hadn't claimed her yet.

He found his mate, and that's all that mattered.

I felt fucking sick and angry at myself for feeling anything but joy and happiness for him.

I knew Ren had told me in hopes of giving me a renewed sense of purpose. I knew that without a doubt. I felt it in the way he spoke, the inclination of his words. I refused to open the door for him, but even still, his muffled words had been as if he was standing right before me, baring his soul.

I sat on the edge of the bare mattress that sat flush with the cold, stone floor, my knees bent, my feet planted firmly on the unforgiving rock.

Dragging a hand through my hair, my mind whirled with the pain, discord, and loneliness that some of the supernatural succumbed to when they didn't have their other halves. Their mates.

A mind slowly declining, wasting away as thoughts and images of that unnamed soul that was meant for you and you alone.

Lycans with their Linked Mates.

Vampires with their Coveted Ones.

Demons with their Blood Females.

And an array of other supernatural creatures I heard lost their fucking minds because they hadn't been mated.

We were strong beings... the strongest to walk the earth. Yet in this regard—to that one female—we were utterly weak.

Reality twisted as I sat in this… hole at the pit of the castle. My home forevermore. A place to stay away from others so I didn't inflict my sickness on them. This may not be a virus one could catch, but it sure as hell felt like one, spreading outward, a parasite to claim a host.

Leaving was an option, allowing my brother to be with his female in our ancestral home, away from the darkened likes of me.

Ending my suffering was also an option, although my belly clenched and churned at that thought.

For even through my hopelessness, a sliver of possibility that she was still out there—my beautiful, perfect mate—waiting for me, had me hanging on.

For what if I left this world, taking matters into my own hands, but she still walked the earth? I couldn't leave her if the possibility was still there.

Screams erupted in my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut, roaring out, the pain unimaginable. My mind slowly slipped away day by day until I was more beast than man.

I roared again, swiped at the mattress, stuffing and feathers exploding upward from my violence. I destroyed the room, the anger in me—my beast rising up—so monumental it consumed me.

And this was all because I didn't have the one meant to be mine.

It was easier to lose your mind than think there really was no hope.