Chapter 155

Asher

I wasn’t doing well. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought of Cynthia and the look on her face before she’d left my life forever. I had no appetite. I had to force myself to eat for sustenance.

I felt like a zombie, going through the motions of the day to day. Classes, practice, food, sleep. Again and again, on a loop. The days passed without meaning. The whole world felt darker without her.

And the pain was unbearable. I felt a constant burning in my chest, and multiple times a day it would spike so high that I would stumble. Once, I was brought to my knees.

I went to the doctor then, thinking I was having a heart attack. The doctor told me that while my ailment wasn’t fatal, I would suffer. Eventually, he said, it would get easier in time.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked him.

“I’ve seen this before,” the doctor replied, “when someone loses a mate.”

I shook my head. “We weren’t together yet. The bond hadn’t finished forming.”

The doctor looked skeptical. “If it wasn’t fully formed, it was a near thing. You have a long, painful recovery ahead of you.”

I didn’t care about that. If it wasn’t fatal, I could make it through. My bigger concern was Cynthia. “Is the same thing happening to her?”

The doctor searched my face for something. I didn’t know what.

“Perhaps not, if the bond truly hadn’t finished forming,” he said. “As an Alpha, you would feel the effects much stronger.”

“Good.” I huffed out a relieved breath. I was confident then, that I could survive anything.

Several days and many attacks later, I kind of hoped the pain would just kill me already.

I wasn’t suicidal, just miserable. And lonely. And angry.

During a hockey game, I put so many opponents into the wall, accumulating so many penalties, that the referee had ejected me from the rest of game.

I went into the locker room and hung my head. I still hadn’t found a suitable outlet for my self-fury. I’d broken two more punching bags. I worked out to exhaustion every night.

Nothing stopped me from hating myself.

When the game ended and the team came back into the room, none of them could look me in the eye—except for our coach, who laid into me with a harsh lecture.

When he had shouted himself hoarse, he slammed the door to his office, and I winced, remembering the way Cynthia had slammed my door when she’d left.

The locker room was quiet for a while as most of the players began to remove their equipment. I still hadn’t touched mine, sitting on the bench in my full gear, with my helmet and stick beside me.

Then our goalie, maybe my closest friend on the team, spoke up, “What is going on with you, Asher? I’ve known you a long time, and I’ve never seen you act like this.”

There wasn’t really any good excuse for my behavior, and I certainly didn’t want to accuse Cynthia. But if I told them the truth, maybe it would end this conversation quicker.

“Cynthia and I broke up.”

The goalie dropped his helmet. The rest of the players all froze.

“You can’t be serious,” someone said. “After everything?”

“But she was so good for you,” another said.

“You won that challenge for her!”

“Don’t forget the way she acted afterwards. I thought for sure she was your perfect match.”

I shook my head. What could I say? What was done was done.

“Hey, give him room.” The goaltender shoved away some of the players that had come too close to me. He looked at me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head again.

“See that, boys? So stop. Got it?” the goalie said.

“Sorry, Captain,” someone said, and they all chimed in afterwards with soft apologies.

I was glad they knew. At least they had an explanation for my behavior. But I didn’t feel any better.

After I finally found the strength to change, I headed straight for the weight room, where I pushed myself to my physical limit. When my muscles pleasantly ached, I knew I might just be tired enough to actually sleep tonight.

That confidence lasted the entire walk to my dorm room, until I found Cynthia’s friend Aimee standing outside my door.

“It’s late,” I said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I want to talk.” She stepped aside as I withdrew my key and unlocked the door.

“I have nothing to say.” I opened the door.

“Then you can listen.” She shoved past me, entering my room. I could have stopped her, I guessed. But I hadn’t. Maybe, truthfully, I wanted to hear what she had to say.

When I flicked on the light, she’d already made it to the center of the room. Arms crossed, she scowled at me.

“I have eyes,” she said. “I’ve seen the way you act around Cynthia. So when she tells me you never cared about her, I know it’s bullshit. What I don’t know is why you let her believe it.”

I crossed my arms too. Aimee was Cynthia’s friend but what happened wasn’t any of her business. If she wanted answers, that was up to Cynthia to share.

Aimee wasn’t going to get anything out of me.

She didn’t care about my silence, and pressed on without any encouragement from me.

“More than that, I want to know how you could be so heartless as to let her suffer through a broken mating bond.”

I stilled. Somehow, since talking to the doctor, I had convinced myself that Cynthia wouldn’t feel the brunt of our bond breaking. I believed I was carrying that burden alone, as it should be.

“She’s having pain?” I couldn’t keep from asking.

“Of course she is! You were forming a bond.”

No, she couldn’t…

At once, my own pain spiked. I gasped and fell into my desk. Fire ignited around my heart and spread outwards, flaming hot through my veins.

It was excruciating, this pain. I tried to count through it. Before, the attacks hadn’t lasted more than ten seconds.

This time, I counted to fifteen before I could breathe again. I blinked back the unshed tears from my eyes. I unclenched my fists, ignoring the bit of blood my nails had carved out from my palms.

“Asher.” Aimee was beside me. She didn’t touch me, but didn’t hide the concern from her face.

“Tell me…” I struggled to normalize my breathing. “Tell me hers… aren’t this bad.”

“They aren’t,” Aimee said. “She gets some chest pain, but nothing like this.”

Relief helped wash away some of the pain and I slid down onto the floor, too exhausted to stand.

Aimee’s face was an open book. I could see her inner conflict plainly.

“You can’t tell her about this,” I said.

“She thinks you don’t love her.”

“Love isn’t our problem.”

“Asher, if you would just apologize, you two could fix this.”

“I believe what I said. She has next to no shot at passing the transfer exam.”

Aimee frowned. “If you could see how hard she’s trying, you might disagree.”

“It’s too late, Aimee. I said what I said, and I won’t take it back.”

“God, you are stubborn.” She backed away from me. “Look, even if you don’t believe she can pass the exam, which I wholeheartedly disagree with by the way, you were a total asshole about it. Talk it out with her. Fix it.”

I attempted to give Aimee my best glare, but I knew it mustn’t be very convincing with me leaning heavily against the side of my desk.

I said, “I can’t.”

Aimee’s anger grew. “If you truly believe that, then you don’t deserve her. And here I was, routing for you.” She huffed out a breath. “Get over yourself, Asher. Before you really lose her.”

“I’ve already lost her.”

Aimee gave me a pitying look, then she disappeared out the door. She didn’t slam it, merely closed it gently behind her, leaving me alone.

In the silence, in the wake of Aimee’s accusations, the doubt in my heart whispered, You might have messed this up.

My wolf was less gentle. “Apologize to our mate.”

I wasn’t wrong. But… maybe I could have been kinder in how I said it. If I talked to Cynthia, maybe I could explain what I meant.

Maybe I could fix this, if I helped her see what I had been trying to say.