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Chapter 3: Love Is _____.

The realization that the feelings I had for Kate stemmed beyond mere admiration and rapport, was bestowed upon me on the day that I suddenly realized that I would never be able to have her. By this point, Kate and I had known each other for the better part of eight months and in that time, we had only continued to grow closer. She had grown to trust me with some of her most intimate secrets, and I, knowing that the time when she would ask me to introduce her to the ghosts of my past was imminent, had crafted a clever conglomerate of convincing mistruths that would satisfy her desire to know my story without actually exposing her to the terrible tragedies that haunt me so.

I know that this deliberate misdirection may seem dubious and distrustful, but I implore that you try to understand... if she had even the slightest inkling of all the horrible things I had seen and done, she would then be scourged by the same wretched curse that has haunted me since my birth. And I could not do that to her. Even now, after my love has fermented and turned to spite, I could never do anything to cause her an ounce of pain. So keeping her in the dark about my past was the only way to keep her safe from the afflictions that will chase me until the day that I slip into my shallow, dirt cradle.

The bond we shared was unlike any I felt with any other. It was passionate and raw. It was blissful and beautiful. It was painful and it was real. I've known many joys in my life, and I've known many sorrows, but none were ever greater than those that I experienced each time we pulled each other close and pushed each other away. I realize now that I should have recognized this self-destructive pattern since the very beginning, but the walls of rationalization that I had fabricated around the signs that I either ignored or denied prevented my head from escaping the mighty grip of my bleeding heart, and by my heart I was held hostage inside a toxic abyss of willful decay.

To this day, I still can't quite determine if this pernicious pattern of misery and bliss emerged as a result of the realization that what I felt for Kate was in fact love, or if we were always destined to be trapped inside of this inexorable paradigm from which there was no hope of release. But, no matter the reason, be it cognizance or the ordinance of some higher power, the day that I discovered that we two were destined to walk separate paths, I found myself suddenly blindsided by a crippling sense of anguish and desperation so great that it consumed the entirety of my being. For you see, this was the day that I learned about the existence of the Purity Law.

Up until this point, I never once gave the idea that the feelings that I possessed for Kate could run deeper than the level of friendship a second thought. The exact explanation for this eludes me, but if I had to guess, I'd say that the most likely reason why I never worried about losing her was because deep down I just assumed that I could always have her. But then, all of a sudden I realized that I couldn't. For she was destined to be an alpha, and I, through my own extrinsically acquired fear of violence, was doomed to be an omega. Per the Purity Law, this meant that, no matter what sort of feelings we two shared for each other, we could never allow our two souls to become one, and that fact tore my heart to pieces.

I was made aware of this fact about two months before our ranks were finalized by the pack's leadership. So, of course, I made profuse attempts to overcome the flaws that would hinder me from achieving the status I needed in order to secure the heart of the woman I loved, but alas the physical and mental deficiencies that my previous experiences and resulting complacency created ultimately proved too great to quash and I had to watch her fade from sight over the horizon.

For four long months, I awaited her return, and in that time there was not a moment that passed when she was not on my mind. Of course I had grown and changed in the spaces between winter and spring, but there was one thing that always remained the same, and that was my feelings for her. In the beginning, when the wound of her departure was still fresh in my heart, I was deeply embittered by my role as an omega in the pack and I despised myself for not being good enough for her, but as time went on, I slowly came to accept my role- and had even begun to enjoy it!

A common misconception that I've seen, is that omegas are lazy and irresponsible, and in a small sense, it's true. The typical omega of the pack is fun-loving, spirited, and care-free. We don't hunt. We don't wake up at all hours of the night to man the Entry Control shifts or protect the territory from intruders like the alphas do, but that doesn't mean we don't pull our weight. Our job, fun as it is, actually requires a lot of work. While we may not do the dirty work around here, we are responsible for keeping the peace and ensuring that the pack stays lighthearted regardless of the situation- and with a war with the East imminent, that task was a lot easier said than done. Tensions were always high amongst the pack, what with the espionage, the poaching of our game, and the constant threat of attack, so we omegas always had our work cut out for us.

Now, the other omegas in the pack were doing a decent job with fulfilling these duties, but I noticed that the most common shortcoming among my kind was their timidity, and this meant that most of their attempts at controlling a situation were often nullified by their own inability to brave the tasks at hand. However, the confidence that I had acquired through Kate helped me to excel above my peers, and before long, I was able to quell the nastiest of fights and break the bearing of even the most hardened alphas. I never had any desire to be an omega, but I figured that if this was the hand that I was dealt, I would be the best omega I could be.

Plus, making others happy was an excellent means of occupying my time, and the energy that I put into my job started rubbing off on the other omegas in the pack. Through me, they, too, began to blossom and break free from their shells, and before long, we had the greatest unit of omegas the West had ever seen.

And I know that personalizing the task of creating the pack's greatest Omega Force was ultimately just an elaborate means of distracting me from the fact that Kate was gone, and the fear that when she returned, she would no longer be the friend I knew when she left. But this thought always lingered in the back of my mind like an itch that I just could not scratch, and eventually I had to convince myself that I would accept that we were (probably) still friends and would never be anything more than that.

This was easier said than done, though, because the second I had finally started to come to terms with this reality, and had actually begun to feel healthy again, she, in all of her resplendent glory, lured me in and ensnared my heart once more. I had spent the entirety of her absence trying to conjure the strength to let her go, but I realized the moment I saw her stalking that small group of caribou that I would always be desperately in love with her.

She had changed so much in our time apart, and yet so much was still the same. Her body had matured to one that was the subject of every young wolf's private fantasies, and the playful pup that left me behind four months ago was now a proud, militant alpha, but beneath all of this, she was still, in many ways, the same girl I watched disappear over the hill that day. Her heavenly aura still breathed life into everything it touched, her smile still shone like the brightest stars on a cloudless, summer night, and her radiant, amber eyes remained my eternal muse as I once more found myself adrift in their gaze.

However, one notable change I found upon her return was her sudden lack of interest in giving me any time of day. I mean, I knew that she had her own life and her own image to uphold, but the fact that she would treat me in such a fashion when we had once been such great friends really hurt. I tried to tell myself that all of the childish antics and the incredibly pathetic attempts that I made to assert myself back into her life were my way of reminding her of the pieces of herself that she had forgotten, but no matter what I told myself, the axiomatic truth of the matter was, I knew that she had outgrown me, and that if I didn't find a way to secure her affection soon, I was going to lose her.

I swore to myself that I would die before I allowed that to happen, and I refused to believe that what we had was gone. We were meant to be together. I knew this from the beginning, and I vowed that if she didn't see it, somehow, some way, by any means, I would find a way to make her. It didn't matter what obstacles stood in my way. There was no law or custom, no reasoning, and no arranged marriages to insufferable meatheads that would stand between me and the woman I loved. I didn't know exactly how I was going to defy all the odds and steal her away from years of tradition and her staunch sense of duty, but when fate smiled upon us on the night of the Moonlight Howl and we found ourselves marooned in Idaho, I was judiciously mindful not to squander the gift that the universe had so graciously bestowed upon me.

This task was easier said than done, though, because, from the very beginning of our journey home, she made it quite clear to me that she was going to deny her feelings and fight me every step of the way. However, if something isn't worth fighting for, it isn't worth having, and nothing good ever comes without a price, so I was more than ready and even more willing to roll with the punches, conquer every obstacle, and read her signs like a roadmap to her affection and grace. So, that's exactly what I did, and when the moment came for me to save her life as she saved mine so many times before, I knew by the way she looked at me, that my heart had finally found purchase upon hers.

Kate's P.O.V.

Alpha School was so long ago by now that it's almost like a blur to me. I remember bits and pieces about it, but if I reflect for too long upon my time there, in that place, in that den, my mind begins to take me back to a traumatic series of events that I've tried very hard to erase from my memory. I never told anybody about what happened, but about three years ago, as a result of a series of events that I still don't fully understand, Humphrey discovered the terrible secret that has haunted me for most of my life during the near-death experience he faced during his own alpha training. He was supportive and tried to help me cope with everything that I had been forced to do, but I just don't think that he ever understood, and I noticed that after he discovered this truth about me, we two began to slowly grow distant. But before you learn about all of that, you need to first learn about how we were drawn together.

Fate had thrown me into an arranged marriage that I was not thrilled about, and in that same night, it saw me and Humphrey boxed up and shipped to Idaho where we were supposed to "repopulate the area." As I'm sure you can imagine, Humphrey was THRILLED, but I wasn't gonna have anything to do with it. Not only would that have been illegal at the time, I also had a duty to the pack to marry Garth, that I was determined to fulfill even if I was repulsed by his horrendous howling skills. But even more than this, I realized in our time apart that Humphrey drove me nuts. Sure, he was handsome and he had a certain boyish charm about him, but I just didn't have the patience to deal with his inability to take anything seriously, and I grew especially weary of his incessant flirting.

I knew that he liked me, even back in the days before I left for Alpha School, but I always kinda figured that by the time I got back, he would have found a nice omega girl that he could romp and play with to his heart's content. I had no idea that the crush he had on me was so strong, but I guess it shouldn't have come as a surprise since I was literally the first, and for a long time, the only one outside of his new "family" to treat him like anything other than a creature. I guess when you're the only female friend a guy like him has, he's bound to misinterpret your intentions and develop feelings for you eventually. The only problem is, nobody ever seems to ask themselves if what they're feeling truly is love or if they're just obsessed with the idea of the other person. I'm not sure if what Humphrey felt for me was genuine love, if it was obsession with some overly-romanticized idea that he had created about me, or if it was some weird mixture of both, but I know that there was at least a part of him somewhere that truly loved me for more than what I represented to him.

Now, I can't say for sure which part of him managed to latch onto me and pull me in despite my best efforts to fight him off, and I can't really explain why- but I can at least tell you when I first began to notice myself falling for him. I can't explain exactly how my feelings for him changed, because ever since I ran into him by the lake the night of the Moonlight Howl, he did absolutely nothing but get under my skin and act as a constant source of annoyance. He flustered me so I was off my guard, which led to us being captured in the first place, he treated our dire situation like some romantic getaway wherein he would only have fun at my expense, and given all of this, by the time Humphrey caused us to lose contact with our ride back to Jasper, I was infuriated with him, and I wanted nothing more than to leave him to his own designs in the American wilderness.

In fact, that's actually what I was trying to do whenever I attempted to cross that river during the storm. It was a stupid move on my part. In my aggravation, my own arrogance, and my desperation to get away from him, I attempted to cross something that I should have never attempted because I knew that he couldn't make it across and I just assumed that I could. Had he not followed me, and acted expeditiously to rescue me, the chances are pretty high that I wouldn't be alive to tell this story today. The remainder of the night after he saved my life was kinda strange to me. I had so many emotions running through my mind, and all of the stress that I had been under since learning of my obligation to my pack, combined with the sobering realization of my own mortality, somehow led to me breaking down in front of Humphrey in the den that we dug to shelter ourselves from the storm.

I'm not gonna go into detail about what was said, but I will relay this: Literally all of my wires were crossed. My thoughts and my emotions were so scattered by everything that I had been through, and so frayed by my absolute lack of control in my own life that I didn't know what to do. I needed somebody to be there for me, and, even though most of this was his fault and he drove me crazy, Humphrey was there. He was so strong for me, so kind, so caring, and his embrace was so warm and firm... I just couldn't control myself. I felt myself slowly becoming more and more lost in his warmth, in his words, and in his embrace, and eventually I lost sight of absolutely everything else beyond where I was and who I was with. And then, without ever once thinking about the consequences of what this act might conjure, I slowly pulled away, and I kissed him.

It wasn't much, just a quick three second peck on the lips, and Humphrey was so shocked by it that he barely had time to return the kiss before I pulled away, but I found myself looking at him differently after that moment. Humphrey could only sit and stare back at me as I smiled at him.

"Thank you," I said as I then went and lied down for the night.

"Uh... don't mention it..." he stammered, and that was the end of it.

We slept on different sides of the den that night, but ended up waking up next to each other the next morning. However, that next morning, when I awoke to see him smiling back at me, the realization of what I had done the previous night came crashing down upon me and I didn't know what to do or how I was going to get away from him without having to talk about what had happened. Thank goodness Marcel and Paddy had found us, because not only were they able to act as a much-needed distraction, they were able to set us up with another, perceptively less personal method of getting home...

Well guys, here we are at the end of another chapter. I truly hope you enjoyed it, and were able to pick up on the little references that I made to other stories of mine. I love being able to allow all of the stories in my universe to interact and collide with each other. Plus, these little details from other stories are also applicable in the overall psychology of their relationship and how this psychology ended up being toxic in the end. Who was toxic to whom, I'll leave up for you to decide, but for now, this is where I get off. I hope to have another update soon, but in the meantime, if it strikes your fancy, please scroll on down to the Reviews button and tell me what you thought of this chapter! Constructive criticism and comments are always welcomed and appreciated! Thanks!

-MTOW out.