Blood.

There was so much blood, tainting everything with its deep crimson colour. It painted the pristine snow in vivid colour. It smeared across his pale cheek with alarming contrast. A bold handprint in the disgustingly red liquid forever tarnished his favourite sweatshirt. But Junior payed no mind to that. The daunting stains were no matter in the moment.

All that mattered was her.

She was dying. She was slipping away from him, threatening to leave him alone and broken in this world without her. He needed to find help and save her at any cost.

Tears welled in his dark eyes, blurring his vision before they fell and swirled with the blood seeping from her wounds as he carried her in his arms. He stumbled clumsily in his agony, knowing all too well that his efforts were futile. Her breathes were laboured as she slipped in and out of consciousness. They were miles from civilization, miles from any hope, but he had to try anyway. It was all he could do. His sanity was lost as soon as she was attacked. Until she took her last breath he could not give up, he would not give up on her.

With each hasty step he whispered to her, begging her to hold on, begging her to stay with him, pleading with her to fight the darkness he knew was closing in on her. The snow crunched under his boots and low branches cracked against his calves, the only sounds in apart from his desperate sobs.

Consciousness found her once more. Her chocolate eyes, surrounded by the lushest lashes he had ever seen stared up at him in sympathy as she weakly uttered his name. Her small, bloodied hand reached up to gently, lovingly, caress his chiseled jaw. A small, sad smile played on the corner of her lips when he finally glanced down at her. Tears of her own glossed over her eyes but never fell as they stared into each other’s soul.

Even in her state, her voice remained soft and melodic as she pleaded with him to forgive himself. “It’s not your fault, please don’t let this consume you.” These words only provoked more sobs from the distraught man.

“I love you.”

They were the last words she spoke. The lingering words that continued to haunt him. The words that jerked his knees out from under him as she passed away in his embrace.

He fell to his knees, ignoring the cold bite of the snow beneath him as his body wracked with each sob. He held her limp body close, rocking back and forth, begging his love to return to him. The desperation, the agony, the loneliness was overwhelming in the silence of the forest. With a mournful howl, he released every remaining emotion until there was nothing left, until he remained nothing more than a hollow shell of himself.

That fateful day he lost his mate as well as himself. That fateful day Junior changed in ways no one could ever had expected. He would never be the same warm, inviting, nurturing man he had been. That day, that part of him was swallowed and frozen deep inside himself. In the midst of his ultimate pain, he was consumed with raw hatred and vowed vengeance for this injustice. The love of his life laid lifelessly in his arms, a dead weight on his conscience. She was his light, his breath, his everything. 

And she was stolen from him.