Chapter 14 – Back To Him

Selena

It was my third night here, the ominous stirrings became too insistent to ignore. As I watched my babies drifting off to dreamland. As I saw Enzo's call I was about to pick then an overwhelming wave of yearning crashed over me out of nowhere. Something primal and instinctual that shook me to my core.

Mate...mate...mate...

Those phantom words echoed through my mind, sent by some previously dormant impulse sputtering back to life within my psyche. No matter how tightly I squeezed my eyes shut, I couldn't shut out the keening emptiness rapidly metastasizing inside my heart.

Like a part of me had been silenced for too long, leaving a aching void no amount of domestic bliss could fill.

I barely made it out of the playroom before instinctively doubling over, fighting a losing battle against the unexpected vertigo. Dimly, I felt strong hands gripping my shoulders to keep me from outright collapsing.

When my vision finally cleared, I found myself crouched on the floor in the hallway outside, Mother kneeling in front of me with a mixture of worry and grim realization etched on her regal features.

"The wolf has awoken again, hasn't she?" she stated knowingly. It wasn't a question.

I could only mutely shake my head, hot tears of shame and frustration spilling down my cheeks. After so many years of being dormant - a chapter seemingly closed forever - my primal canine instincts had come howling back with explosive force.

And at their core was one singular, unmistakable cry resounding with deafening volume - MATE!

No matter how hard I fought it, how deeply I had buried that part of myself, that yearning for my destined mate was rearing up once more to consume me completely. An ache more profound than anything I'd ever endured.

.....

My phone buzzed insistently from the nightstand, pulling me from my tortured reverie. A glance showed it was Enzo calling again. With a pang of guilt, I realized I hadn't spoken to him in nearly three days since coming to my mother's estate.

"Hello?" I answered cautiously.

"Selena." His voice was taut with worry and hurt. "What's going on, bella? You haven't returned any of my calls or messages."

I squeezed my eyes shut against the ache in his words, my throat tight. "I know, I'm sorry. I just...I needed some time."

There was a strained pause before he responded, quieter this time. "Time from what? From me? Have I done something to push you away again?"

"No, no, Enzo, it's not you," I rushed to reassure him, my free hand toying anxiously with the edge of the bedsheet. "You've been nothing but perfect, as always. It's me, I'm...I'm struggling with some things right now."

"Then talk to me, let me help!" He was practically pleading now. "You know I'll move heaven and earth for you, Selena. We're partners, a team. Don't shut me out like this."

Tears burned my eyes at the naked desperation in his voice. Gods, how I loved this man's fierce loyalty and devotion to me. But could I truthfully give myself over to him completely while still battling these increasingly overpowering impulses?

"I wish I could explain it all to you," I said thickly. "But I'm not even sure I fully understand it yet myself. I just...need to find some clarity first."

Another pause, then a resigned sigh. "Is it him? That guy from the warehouse?" He asked?

"Did he really know you mi amor?" He asked again.

"No,it's not! I told you he had mistaking me for someone." I tried to explain.

"So, tell me what haunt you that you walk away from me?"

Blaze was my answer.

I flinched at Enzo's growled reference to Blaze - my first mate, the shadow alpha who had tormented me so brutally. As much as I wanted to deny it, to bury that dark chapter forever...I couldn't shake the feeling he was indeed the source of this renewed inner turmoil.

"I don't know," I finally answered honestly. "Maybe. I'm just...very conflicted right now, about a lot of things."

"Then come home to me," Enzo implored, a hint of that powerful, commanding edge slipping into his tone again. "Come home, and we'll face it together like we always have. Whatever weight you're carrying, let me shoulder it with you. That's what bonding our lives means."

I smiled sadly at the familiar words he had first used to convince me to take a chance on him all those years ago. He had been so determined to prove his worth as my protector then, beyond just being a means to secure my family's alliance.

"Okay by tomorrow I'll you don't have to worry." I smiled weakly and with that we ended the call.

Over time, through fire and blood, Enzo had more than made good on that vow to stand unwaveringly at my side through any storm. Perhaps foolishly, some part of me had allowed myself to believe that bond, that life we had forged, would be enough to finally silence the demons left behind from my escape from Blaze's tyranny.

But after these past few days of being consumed by inexplicable longings stirred by his resurfacing...I could no longer delude myself. Some primal part of me still belonged irrevocably to my first mate, for better or for worse.

...

"Bella, I need you. I promise to protect you." Enzo voice tremble with care.

"I know, amore mio," I managed to choke out, fresh tears sliding down my cheeks. "And you've been more than I could have ever hoped for, truly. But I think...I think I have to see where these impulses lead for now. If I don't at least try, they may tear me apart from the inside."

Enzo was silent for a sickening moment, and I could vividly picture the anguish and conflict warring across his striking features as he struggled to process my words.

"So that's it then?" he finally growled, the bravado slipping as his voice went dangerously low. "You've made your choice to chase that long shadow again? Even after everything we survived to build what we have?"

"No! Enzo, no, you have to know how much you mean to me!" I was openly sobbing now, clutching the phone like a lifeline. "This life we made together - our family, our alliance - it's everything to me. But some piece of my soul still feels...unresolved, because of Blaze. I need to find a way to finally put that specter behind me once and for all."

"By going back to him?" The bitter accusation lanced through me like a physical blow. "Cristo, Selena...you were the one who attacked me when I tried rescuing you from that hell! And now, what? You just cast me aside to go running right back into his sadistic clutches?"

My heart shattered at the rawness of his pain and fury - emotions I knew my alpha only allowed to show with me, the depth of his trust utterly broken in that moment. Still, I pushed on desperately.

"I would never, Enzo! Blaze is a monster, you're right about that. And yes, you were the one who finally pulled me from his vile grasp all those years ago. That's how I know, deep down, that a part of me will always be bound to you as my savior, my partner, my family."

I drew a shuddering breath, fighting to arrange my tangled emotions into some semblance of coherent thoughts.

"But another part of me, the she-wolf inside, was irrevocably bound to Blaze first. And clearly, those primal instincts have never fully gone dormant like I convinced myself they had. Now that he's lurking again after all this time, that side of me is feeling reawakened in...intense ways. I can't even properly describe it, just that it feels like I'm being violently pulled in two different directions."

There was a pregnant pause, and I could easily envision Enzo's jaw ticking as he wrestled with containing the outrage simmering in his veins. When he finally spoke, his tone was deceptively calm and controlled - that of a composed Don addressing business matters.

"So let me ensure I understand you, Selena. You intend to pursue this phantom connection to your former tormenter, despite the lifetime commitment we made to one another before our family. And you expect me to what? Aside and allow you to be consumed by his degenerate sickness again?"

My face crumpled with a fresh wave of anguish. "No, Enzo, I don't expect anything! I'm simply...I'm being torn apart and I don't know how to stop it. Avoiding it clearly isn't working any longer. Maybe if I can just confront this, finally get closure over it somehow, the hold it has will be broken for good. Then I can return to you fully, with no part of me trapped in the past any longer."

"You don't know that," he shot back remorselessly, each word dripping with derision. "For all your insistence about moving forward, you're behaving just as naively as when I found you in that pit years ago - starry-eyed over an alpha who viewed you as fresh prey to devour."

I recoiled at the heated rebuke, Enzo's disappointment and fury like a slap across my face. How could I make him understand the forces ripping me apart from the inside when I could barely grasp them myself?

Perhaps he was right - perhaps I was foolishly deluding myself again, rationalizing a chance to get swept back into Blaze's poisonous web of depravity. Maybe the only way to kill this tumorous yearning was to lean into it just once, experience its foul sting again directly, before excising it permanently.

Or maybe I was simply cursed to always remain a fractured, torn creature - one half forever bound to the light of rebirth Enzo represented, while the other writhed eternally towards her most primal, savage roots.

In that moment of desolate realization, only one truth rang clearly in my mind with any certainty:

There would be no true peace for me while Blaze still drew breath in this world.

"I need to go." The words felt like shards of glass being torn from my very soul. "Not just from here, but...from you. At least for now, until I can find a way to purge whatever hold he still has over part of me."

"Selena..." Enzo's voice went taut again, a hairline fracture of heartbreak underpinning the fury. "Don't do this. Please, I'm begging you..." He yelled.

I waked up from the sleep rubbing my eyes!

What's this? I never intended to leave Enzo, and if not this is just a mare nightmare, I don't know what Enzo would so if he found out about Blaze is my Mate.

The thought of it make me shivers, it would be a constant battle between them until one had full responsibility under me.

I make my mind to return to him tomorrow morning, I k still can hear his anguished plea resonated straight into the depths of my very being, where an indelible piece of myself would forever belong only to this man. The one who had shown me the path to self-worth.

I won't abandoned him.