Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The flickering light of the candle in the corner of the room was irritating Lexa, and she was tempted to blow the thing out. She wasn’t yet used to the comforts of home after such a long time away.
She was itchy in her clothing, the voices of the others in the front room were grating, and the smell of cooking food almost made her ill.
It had been sixteen long months trying to get back to her mate. Almost eight of those went by during her fight to get back home, and the other eight were spent looking for her mate after she got home and found out that Clarke had succumbed to her feelings of abandonment.
She’d almost lost herself upon returning only to find out that her omega was no longer there and hadn’t been for months. She had briefly shifted into human form, spoken with the others then torn out of her home to search for her mate.
She should have known that the others would bar her and tell her that all was lost, that even if she found Clarke, there would be no bringing her back, but she refused to listen.
She hadn’t almost died a hundred times over trying to get back to her mate to give up now. She knew there were no documented cases of bringing a mindless, feral wolf back, but she would be damned if she didn’t try, especially not when it was her fault that Clarke had lost herself.
She hadn’t meant for it to happen the way it had, but she had been foolish, first for leaving Clarke to begin with, for letting her feelings of duty to her people overcome her duty to her mate, and second for letting her feelings cloud her judgment as a warrior.
When she had been training as a Nightblood, and then after she had become Heda, she’d been a master at tamping down her feelings, of pretending they didn’t exist, but Clarke had shown her a new way. She had taught her that there was nothing more powerful on this Earth than love, and it was her love for her fellow warriors that had led her into a trap.
It was during the last battle of the war, though she didn’t find out that it was the last until she got home. She’d been fighting alongside her fellow warriors, and they had been winning until a lone enemy, hidden in the trees, started taking out the gona one-by-one with well-aimed arrows.
It was a cowardly but effective way to fight, and Lexa would have none of it. After a fifth warrior fell, she had shifted and sprinted into the woods intent on killing the enemy who was taking out her friends.
Using her keen sense of smell, it hadn’t taken her long to find the warrior, but the enemy had still taken her by surprise. The Azgeda gona hadn’t stayed hidden in the trees. She had jumped down, tackling Lexa’s wolf, but she hadn’t done more than that. After knocking Lexa to the ground, she had taken off running through the trees. Even in human form, the woman was fast, and she led Lexa through the forest, over a few hills and onto the notorious ice fields of Azgeda.
Had she been thinking, she would have stopped in her tracks and not followed the archer onto the dangerous ice, but she hadn’t been thinking. That was the problem. She’d let her anger over the deaths of her fellow warriors cloud her mind.
It wasn’t until she was in the middle of the ice field, the archer having just reached the other side, that she realized her mistake. She shifted into human form not caring that she was now standing naked before the enemy. She didn’t need clothing to be deadly.
“Well done, Lexa kom Trikru,” the woman mocked. “As the former Commander, how did you not realize that you were being led into a trap?” The archer held up a small black device. “You should know that our clan has learned much from the Skai rats you love so much.”
The blood in her veins had frozen at the sight of the object in her hands. She knew exactly what it was.
“You don’t want to do this, gona (warrior).” The woman standing safely on land looked familiar to her. She recognized the pattern of scarring on her face, and she was certain she had seen her before but couldn’t place where.
“Oh, I definitely do.”
“Why? Why just me? You deliberately led me out here but killing me will be killing you and the rest of your clan. You must know this.”
The woman smiled. “I don’t care about that. You took my heart from me, my reason for living, and the only reason I have not succumbed, have not let my wolf take over, is because I want my revenge. I am going to take you from your mate just as you took mine from me. Clarke kom Skaikru is going to become acutely aware of what it feels like to lose her mate.”
A snide smile spread across the woman’s face. “I can see you trying to figure out who I am. Let me tell you. I am the mate of the Ambassador that you pushed from the top of your tower.”
Lexa’s anger had surged. She knew exactly who this woman was speaking about now. “I was his Commander,” she yelled. “He questioned my decisions.” She moved to take a step forward, but the woman held up her device and she stopped. “Nia was moving her army toward Polis and calling it military exercises. He lied to my face. He threatened the peace of the entire Coalition.”
“Did he deserve death for it? Before you killed him, had you considered that he might have a mate and pups?” The woman shook her head. “Of course, you didn’t.”
Lexa had felt herself wanting to shift back into wolf form. Four giant leaps would bring her to where the woman was standing, and she would be able to rip out her throat. At the same time, was this woman wrong in her anger?
In her need to show her strength against accusations of weakness, she had killed the man. Had he deserved death? Hadn’t he only been doing his job?
“I can see you questioning yourself. You know what you did was wrong,” the warrior spewed, “and now you and your mate will pay the ultimate price.”
Lexa anticipated her move and had shifted as quickly as she could, but she had been too late. The woman pressed the detonator button on her tek, and a mere second later, at least a dozen bombs had gone off around her, exploding the ice field from under her feet.
Lexa had never understood the concept of slow motion, not really. Over the years, with the advancement of the tek around them, her people had taught her many concepts, but it wasn’t until the ice blew up that she’d experienced the feeling of slo-mo, as Raven called it.
She remembered the feeling of time slowing down as she completed her shift from human to wolf. She could see every shard and sheet of ice as it blew up around her, and she distinctly remembered feeling the ice falling out from under her feet to leave her scrambling for purchase on anything solid around her.
She could also remember the maniacal laughter coming from the woman as Lexa struggled to stay alive.
What took place in seconds had felt like minutes, and she now fully understood the concept of slow motion.
After that, things sped up again. She’d fallen into bone-chillingly cold water, struggled to make her way back to the surface, swam until near exhaustion until finally being able to pull herself onto a piece of ice large enough to hold her, and there she had floated for an untold number of days.
When she resurfaced from the cold depths, there had been nothing but ice and water around her. There had been no land in sight, and thoroughly disoriented, she hadn’t even been able to figure out which direction she was floating.
That had only been the beginning of her nightmare.
Floating for days on a piece of ice that was slowly crumbling from underneath her had presented its own problem, but so too did the fact that there was no drinkable water and no food.
Her human form was much smaller than her wolf and would do better on the shrinking ice, but her wolf was stronger and could last longer without sustenance.
Either way, she was in trouble. As the ice melted from under her, it would have benefitted her to shift so that there would be more room for her, but if she shifted back to her human form, and didn’t find land soon, she would drown, knowing that she wouldn’t have the energy to shift back into her wolf and swim.
It had been the most trying and terrifying time of Lexa’s life.
Nearly losing her mind as she floated hopelessly for days on end, in a landscape that afforded her no way of escape, she had nearly given up. Feeling desperate, she’d almost given in, had almost given up on the possibility of finding land, but after untold days had gone by of being blinded by the winter sun and frozen by the pitch-black nights, she had finally spotted land.
In her desperation to reach it, she’d jumped off her now tiny piece of ice and had started to swim, except the land was so much further away than she could have ever imagined.
It wasn’t surprising. Being on the ice in the middle of a vast ocean played tricks on the mind. She knew this, but her mind had already been slipping by the time she decided to jump, so it was no surprise that she had barely reached the far-off land.
She must have swam for hours, nearly drowning half a dozen times when her energy flagged and she couldn’t go on, somehow though, she had kept going and pulled herself onto an icy beach with a herculean effort.
There she had lain, thinking of her mate, feeling somewhere deep inside the desperation that Clarke was feeling in her need to get her mate back.
It was what got her to her feet to start walking.
Once on land, she found her situation not much better than when trapped in the water. Where she had come ashore was a barren wasteland, seemingly devoid of life, and more than once she had collapsed in exhaustion trying to find anything or anyone to help her. It was only by some miracle that a curious seal had come upon her.
Staring at it, she’d thought it was a mirage, had thought it was her mind playing tricks on her, but then she had gotten a whiff of its briny scent.
She could remember her mouth starting to salivate as the innocent creature approached, its youthful curiosity overcoming its survival instincts.
Lexa had stayed perfectly still, not even twitching a whisker as it got closer, and the wait was almost too much for her to bear, she was so hungry, but she bid her time and was rewarded with her first ever lunch of seal.
By the time she had finished devouring the poor thing, there was almost nothing remaining. A creature of its size should have been far too much for her to eat, but her long period of forced starvation had left her ravenous and desperate. She had no idea how long it would be before her next meal, so she ate everything she could.
Then her fatigue set in, and she fell into a fitful but deep slumber.
Sleep had come easily, but it was not peaceful or restful. She’d had dreams of losing Clarke, of losing herself, and of losing everything she had ever held close to her. Then she had nightmares about swimming in an endless sea, with no hope of reaching land. She would drown only to wake up again swimming.
It was a hellscape that she endured until wakefulness returned to her again, and then it had taken at least an hour before she was able to get her bearings.
Fortunately, when she had opened her eyes, it was to a moonless but star-filled night which allowed her to navigate toward home, a home that was much further away than she ever could have imagined.
She was no longer on Coalition land. As far as she could tell, she was in an uncharted region much further north than anyone had thought possible.
From what she had been told, there was no land that extended above Azgeda’s territory, but the map makers had been wrong. It could be that they assumed that because there were no navigable passages that the land must not exist that far north, but it was more likely that the people didn’t bother to worry about what might lie so far north because there was no way to reach it.
Unfortunately, Lexa’d had the distinct displeasure of “discovering” and then traversing the rugged, frozen terrain on her own.
It hadn’t been easy. If she travelled by day, it was easy to get lost, but when she journeyed by night, even when following the stars, she found herself presented with many dangers from giant white bears, to ice slides, to thin rime that she fell through more than once.
Then there were the mountains that had to be climbed.
At this point, she could no longer shift into her human form. She hadn’t for months. She had no clothing to protect and keep her warm. She was forced to remain on four legs, which made trekking through the peaks more dangerous than it might have been had she had her two legs and, more importantly, her hands.
There was no doubt that being able to shift was extremely useful most of the time, but there were certain times that having hands, having dexterity, was better than having claws and brute strength.
She shook herself away from those thoughts. She did not want to relive the months she had spent finding her way home only to have to leave it again immediately.
Carding her fingers through Clarke’s hair, she started to cry, something she hadn’t done yet, not in over sixteen long months. She hadn’t given herself the chance. When she had gotten home and found Clarke missing, she hadn’t even hesitated for a moment before racing out of the house to find her.
It wouldn’t have mattered if she had known beforehand that it would take her eight full months to find Clarke. She still would have searched. There would be no returning home without her mate.
Anya had tried to stop her, had told her that Clarke was no longer the person she remembered. She had told her that she wasn’t even a person at all, but it hadn’t mattered. She would sooner die than give up on her mate.
Their love was one for the ages, and that meant that Lexa was never going to give up. Never.
It hadn’t mattered that she had searched hundreds of miles for her mate, and she hadn’t cared that she had gotten into scrapes with natural born and other mindless wolves, leaving her injured and limping, and she didn’t think it unreasonable to think that every wolf she found was Clarke until she knew without a doubt that it wasn’t.
There was no taking into account their size, shape, or scent. Lexa approached every wolf she found, and she “interrogated” them until she could rule them out as her mate. She had no way of knowing if Clarke’s size or shape, or even her scent, would change once she had let go, so Lexa hadn’t taken the chance with any other beast she encountered.
“Lexa.”
She quickly wiped her eyes. “I am right here, ai hodnes (my love).”
“Kwaka.”
She squinted and pursed her lips. “Wh-what?”
“Kwaka. I used to hate it, but after…when I…I’ve killed a lot of ducks. They were my favorite food after…”
“After you changed.” Lexa couldn’t help it. She kissed Clarke’s forehead. “I remember when I taught you that word. Kwaka. It threw you into a fit of giggles for five minutes. Then I had it made for you for dinner and you declared quite loudly that you hated it.”
Clarke’s chin wobbled and she opened her eyes. They were filled with tears. “I don’t remember that.”
“Hey, shh. It’s okay.”
The omega shook her head. “It’s not. When you found me in the woods, so many things came back to me, but there are still huge gaps, and I know I lost a lot of the things I first remembered.”
“Give it time. It will come back.”
Clarke’s arms floundered as she tried to get them out from under the furs. “Lexa.” Her arms lifted once she got them free. “I need to feel you, to know that you are real.”
Without hesitating, Lexa lifted Clarke into her arms. “I’m right here.”
“But you weren’t.” Fat tears slid down her mate’s perfect face. “You left me. You were gone.”
“Klark, if I could change things, if I could do them over again, I would never have left you. I am so, so sorry.” Her head was heavy on Clarke’s shoulder. “I know it won’t help, but you should know that I have spent every day for almost a year and a half trying to get back to you.” She sobbed. “I never meant to leave you for so long.”
Clarke didn’t say anything, and Lexa didn’t know if it was because she couldn’t because she was crying or because she had nothing more to say.
“I…”
There was a soft knock on the door.
“Go away,” Lexa growled. Since getting Clarke back, she hadn’t allowed anyone near them.
“Lexa, I understand you are feeling protective, but I need to do a thorough check-up of my daughter.” Abby’s voice was raspy, and Lexa knew she had been crying. Her daughter, who she thought was lost to her, had been brought back to her and Lexa was being selfish.
“I am sorry, Abby. Please come in.”
“No.” Hands that had recently been paws, clutched at her back.
“Klark, we need to let your mother…”
“No. I’m not ready.”
Abby whined. It had to be killing her that she couldn’t get close to her child.
“Niron, maybe we should let her in.”
“No,” Clarke said more forcefully. “I don’t know any more what is real and what isn’t, so right now, all I want is for my mate to hold me. That’s all I am asking.”
Lexa turned and mouthed to Abby that she was sorry.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Abby was lying. It wasn’t okay. She looked crushed. “Why don’t we all leave? We can come back in the morning.” Addressing Lexa, she told her that Octavia brought food. “It will be on the table when you are ready.”
“Mochof (Thank you), Abby.”
When everyone was gone, Lexa got fully on the bed and carefully maneuvered their bodies so that she was spooning Clarke from behind. “I never meant to hurt you, niron.”
Her mate didn’t respond, and she didn’t know what to say, so she just started speaking . “I know your memories are fuzzy right now, but do you remember telling me right after we met about the animals that used to roam the Earth?”
Still no response.
“Well, I can tell you on good authority that polar bears still roam the far north.”
Nothing.
“I saw many, and a few almost killed me. They are beautiful and ferocious creatures, even if they did hunt me.” A few of her injuries from that time would affect her for the rest of her life.
Clarke sniffled. “Why were you so far away?”
Her poor mate’s voice was so cracked and broken.
“Because I was a fool and was led into a trap.” There was no sense in buffering Clarke from the truth.
“Tell me,” Clarke demanded, so she did.
Lexa told her of her regret after agreeing to Heda’s call to arms, and about the battles she fought, she told her about the woman who blew up the ice field, and about how she floated on a piece of ice for days before finding solid ground again. After that, she told her everything about her trek back home.
Clarke cried hardest when Lexa told her about the part about getting home and her not being there.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped between sobs. “I wasn’t there for you, and you spent all that time making sure you got back to me.”
“Please don’t cry, niron. It’s over, and we are both home.” When Lexa had brought Clarke back from mindlessness, she hadn’t been sure what to expect, but this wasn’t it. Clarke was struggling, she was hurting, and the alpha didn’t know what to do because she was struggling and hurting too.
It was a long while before either of them spoke again. “Lex, I’m not comfortable here. The room…the house is too big.”
Lexa didn’t understand. Their home was Clarke’s pride and joy. She’d been a part of the building process every step of the way. There wasn’t a single inch of space that hadn’t been touched or influenced by her mate in some way.
“What can I do for you, Klark. What do you need?”
“I want…I want to go back to my den,” Clarke whined mournfully.
Lexa’s heart shattered. She had just gotten Clarke back, and she knew the transition for her mate couldn’t be easy, but she hadn’t thought that she would give up again.
She swallowed. “Your den is two-day trip from here, hodnes, there’s no possible way to get there tonight, but if it’s what you really want, we can leave in the morning, and I will help you return there.”
Lexa was dying inside. She had found her mate, brought her back, but Clarke was telling her that it wasn’t what she wanted. She was telling her she would rather be mindless, she would rather be alone, than with her.
She got up from the bed without another word. Clarke whined, but she ignored it. She was going to have to start getting used to not having her mate next to her, so she may as well start right then.
Leaving the room was the hardest thing Lexa had ever done. It was harder than her fight to get back home, and just the few steps it took her to land on the couch in the other room had exhausted her. She grabbed the quilt off the back cushions, covered herself and curled up in a ball cursing herself for everything that had happened over the past sixteen months.
There was no way of knowing how much time had passed. Lexa tried to be still, but she found herself tossing and turning on the couch. It wasn’t nearly as comfortable as she remembered. It might have had something to do with the fact that she had constantly been on the move for so long. She’d been so focused on getting home to Clarke that she’d never had a chance to be still or relax for long, and now she was finding it hard.
She still hadn’t been able to decompress from everything that had happened because nothing was resolved yet. She had thought that after getting Clarke back that things would get better when in fact, they were getting worse.
In the morning, she would take the journey with Clarke back to her den because that was what her mate wanted. She would do anything for her omega. She just didn’t know how she was going to leave her there.
She swatted at the unwanted tears that started to stream down her face again.
From the other room, she could hear her mate moving restlessly on the bed, and she wanted to go back to her, to offer comfort, but she didn’t think it was what Clarke wanted, not really.
Clarke had told her mom that all she wanted was to be held by Lexa, but it hadn’t been true. What her mate wanted was the life back that Lexa had stolen from her when she had brought her back from mindlessness.
“I guess life isn’t more than just about survival.”
Lexa wondered why she had been given a second chance at life if this was what life was going to throw at her. Hadn’t she suffered enough already?
“Jok (Fuck).”
Sitting up, she almost jumped when she found Clarke standing unsteadily in front of her.
“Why are you on the couch?” Even in the pale candlelight of the room, Lexa could see how bloodshot Clarke’s eyes were. “You’ve never slept on the couch before, not even after we fought.”
With eyes that felt like they had been rubbed with sandpaper, Lexa looked up. Again, she decided to be truthful. “In the morning, I’ll be taking you back to your den and leaving you there. I guess I am trying to get used to being by myself.”
The never-ending flow of tears continued down Clarke’s cheeks. “You would leave me there alone?” Her face crumpled.
“It’s what you want.”
“It’s not what I want.”
Lexa stood. She wanted to take Clarke in her arms again, but she wasn’t sure if her touch would be accepted. “What is it you want then, Klark? I know all of this must be hard for you, so if it’s your old life that you want back, without the parts that make you human, I will return you to it.”
Her mate’s knees began to give out, and instinctively she caught Clarke before she could sink to the ground. She wondered if it was the emotional toll or the fact that the blonde hadn’t stood on only two legs for so long that was making her legs weak. “I’ve got you, ai tombom (my heart).”
She carried her mate to the couch and placed her on it. She covered her with a fur. “Beja (Please), Klark. Tell me what you want.”
“I want you,” Clarke wailed. “All I ever wanted was you.”
“Then why do you want to go back to your den? Why don’t you want to be in the home that we built together, that I fought so hard to bring us back to?”
Clarke’s fingers scrabbled for purchase in Lexa’s shirt as she tried to get her mate closer to her. “Please lie down with me. I don’t have the energy to sit up.”
“Should I take us back to the bed?”
The blonde shook her head, so once again, Lexa found herself maneuvering their bodies so that she could spoon Clarke from behind, only this time it was on the couch. It was a tight fit, but it appeared to make her mate more comfortable. She could feel her mate relax into her hold, even if it was only fractionally.
It was silent in the room, but outside, Lexa could hear the chirping of crickets, and the ribbits of frogs coming from their pond out back.
“Lex?”
“What can I do for you, ai hodnes (my love)?”
“My den was small, only large enough for me to sleep in. I said I wanted to go there because this is all overwhelming to me. It was the only place I was truly safe while I was…when I turned…but I don’t want to turn it all off again. I don’t want to lose this part of myself, and I don’t want to lose you again. I can’t.”
“You won’t lose me. Not ever again.”
“You left once…”
“It will never happen again,” Lexa promised. “My duty is only to you, and I am sorry that it took almost losing you for me to realize that.”
“What if Heda needs you again?”
“My answer will be no. I will not ever fight for anyone else unless that person is you.”
Clarke turned onto her back, forcing Lexa further into the back cushions of the couch. “I never meant to be so weak. I didn’t used to be weak.”
“Klark.”
“I don’t know how to be strong anymore, Lex. I failed you. I should have waited for you longer.”
“You didn’t fail me. You went into abandonment. You lasted longer than most, and if anything, I failed you by leaving that day.”
Clarke turned to face her. “We failed each other.”
“I suppose we did, but we’ve been given another chance.”
It was a long while before either of them said anything again. Tendrils of light began to filter through the windows. Dawn was approaching, but neither of them had slept.
“I’m not ready to see the others yet,” Clarke finally whispered. “I can’t.”
“They miss you, niron. They want to see their friend, their family.”
“I can’t.”
“Hodnes, beja.”
“Lexa,” Clarke sat up. “I left them. They all knew what was happening to me, and they supported me, they helped me, but I still left them.”
“Klark, they understand.”
“Please Lexa. I can’t.”
“Shh,” she tried to soothe her mate. “I won’t force you to see them, but please consider letting your mom and Anya visit. They both care for you so much, and Anya is a wreck. She may not have lost her mate the day you left, but she did lose her best friend. She just wants to see that you are okay, and then she will leave.”
“I’ll think about it,” Clarke conceded, “but you should know that I am not okay, Lex. I don’t know if I will ever be.”
“I’m not okay either, Klark. I’m not either.”