(VAL POV):
I watched her head break the surface of the water, coughing and choking for a moment. Her maple hair turned into more of a cinnamon stick color when it was wet. Her clothes were soaked, sticking to her skin like glue. I admired her from a short distance down the creekbed.
When four hours had passed without her coming back, I started to panic. I feared she might have started to make a break for it and head back north. Liana didn't strike me as someone who wanted to live as a rogue, but if she was angry enough she just might have tried it.
I shifted in place, itching to move forward and be closer to her. My shifting broke a rotting tree branch under my feet and for a moment she didn't turn- but I could sense from the flutter of her reddish brown lashes she would.
She turned slowly, almost indignantly, and met my creepy stare with completely no expression. For a second, neither of us moved. Her hands were dropped down at her sides and she stood still with the water up to her mid-thigh- running around her body.
I swallowed. Suddenly feeling the consequences of my decision to watch her rather than speak to her but I didn't move towards her. My chest was aching the way it used to whenever dad and Rosaura had gotten into their nastier fights. I felt frozen, like I was still twelve years old somehow and lacked all influence over our situation. I knew that wasn't true and that I was partially to blame for her having been wrapped up in any of this but my body wouldn't move anyways.
Her voice was cold and jarring. It lacked any warmth or sensitivity.
"You've never even apologised."
Her elbows had started to get goosebumps as the wind picked up. The moon was striking the water droplets on her pale skin and I felt the Moon Goddess' judgement boring over me. I remembered her mother and father on their knees at my feet, crying. I remembered the sick and heavy feeling in my chest and making the order to have them killed. The smell of her home burning, the way she glared at me with so much venom I was halfway sure my own mate would murder me.
Her face wasn't glaring now. It wasn't angry. She looked vacantly in my direction.
"Vallory you've never even said that you're sorry. Are you even sorry?"
There was something cutting and emptying about her words. My throat was dry, I couldn't feel my lips. I swallowed and forced myself not to look away from her. I repeated her words again in my mind as I stared at her, refusing to move.
Was I sorry for burning her home to the ground? Or was I sorry for killing her family?
I stared at the look in her eyes, acknowledging in my mind for the first time since it happened that I had taken everything from her. That I had dragged her here against her will after murdering her loved ones.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Did it even really matter if I was sorry?
"Fucking say something."
She sounded bitter, like she couldn't even stand to spit in my direction. I knew deep in my mind that if I didn't say something she really was leaving.
"I don't know what you want from me, Liana."
My voice broke in a pathetic crack.
"I can't undo it. I can't bring them back"
"I asked if you were fucking sorry, Val. I didn't ask you to bring them back!"
She screamed now, throwing her hands up from the water. Her voice was vibrating in the night from her anger and her pain. It physically hurt in my chest to hear the pain in her voice. I clutched at my aching chest, feeling the throb there.
She started to stride out of the water and in my direction. I felt deja vu hitting me as she approached with a venomous anger. The vein in her neck was visible from her rage. We had been here before, we had started in this same place.
When she reached me, she physically shoved me backwards. I stumbled, taking the full force of the blow without trying to stop her. My lack of reaction to her violence made her angrier and she turned away from me like if she didn't she would hit me more.
"I don't know how to be the person you need me to be."
My words made her hiss in irritation as she turned back to face me. There was a finality about the look on her face when she answered me.
"You don't have to worry about that anymore."
Liana shoved past me, not sparing so much as a glance in my direction as she stormed back towards the manor. I had turned to watch her leave, every step of the way. My heart ached and Rashir, my wolf, begged me to try and make her stay.
I stayed where I was, unable to move in her direction.
After everything that I had taken from Liana, how could I possibly ask her to stay?