'Tyler left last night.'

Those words stuck in my heart like teeth in the prey. Where would he go? He appeared out of no where, we didn't have a conversation about it but he never gave the impression of a family to return to. I just assumed that he was a rouge. Why would he leave his mate?

I turned to Holly and Luna for confirmation, they both stayed silent and returned to what they were doing.

"No, t-that's impossible. Why would he leave anyway?"

"Nova-"

"Just shut up, alright. Just shut up."

Luke looked like he was about to say something but I ran out the kitchen door that led to the garden. I ran through the freshly fallen snow from last nights storm. I ran into the woods and through the cover of the tall trees.

Maybe if we run fast enough we can catch up to him, my wolf suggested.

Maybe..

I stopped running and sniffed the air deeply, trying to catch a breath of his scent. It'd been only a bit under one day, but I had his scent memorized. It was faint, but it was there. I ran in the direction of the smell.

I ran fast and hard through the snow. My heels making it harder and harder to do so in the already dense floors of the forest, the thin cardigan that I had put on this morning doing absolutely nothing to keep me warm in the cold.

I made it to the spot that I'd found my brother hovering over Tyler just yesterday morning. Looking around frantically I let out a mangled scream. I believe that it was meant to be his name but it turned into a sob halfway through. Falling to my knees, I hunched over with my hands in the snow while I cried so hard that I couldn't breath. I fell back onto my back and let the cold take me over as I fell asleep in the cold snow with only one thought on my mind-

Why?

Tyler POV

I'd left in the dead of night, goodbye's have never been a forte of mine. As soon as I heard her breathing settle into a steady pattern in the room down the hall, I'd left my room and went to the door.

My hand was on the handle when I stopped myself. The air is filled with her scent, I couldn't help but at least leave a message. I had returned to my own room and wrote a note. Slipping it under her brother's door, I snuck out and into the dead of night.

Now I stand on a branch of a tall tree watching as my mate broke apart in front of my eyes. When I saw her looking around I almost dropped down from the tree and went to her on the spot, it took a lot more self-restraint than I knew I had to actually stay in my seclusion. She screamed loudly, enough to make birds fly out of the trees and a deer run off. My heart broke into a thousand pieces as she fell to the ground and cried her eyes out in the cold snow. It was only when she passed out in the snow that I allowed myself to come out.

I kneeled next to her all but lifeless body. She looked tired. I brushed a hair out of her eyes just as she had yesterday for me. She stirred and I almost ran, stopping when I realized that she was still sleeping soundly.

The temperature was dropping dramatically, I glanced at the sky before picking her up and taking her back to her room through the window, as to not be seen by the rest of her pack.

She was still cold when I placed her onto her bed so I pulled up her blankets, even pulling an extra from the closet to keep her from being too cold still. I was going crazy with the need to lay down next to her and warm her up myself, knowing that I shouldn't.

Can't.

Everything in there smells like her, I opened the window and got ready to leave when I thought about it for a second then opened her closet, grabbed something and jumped out the window, hitting the ground running.

____

Over the course of the next few days I hid in the trees, just above the head of the only thing I've ever wanted in my arms. I studied her every more as if she were a goddess and I merely her worshipper. She is.

And I am.

Of course, I've always been told that I was on for the dramatics. My grandmother told me, my sisters and brother told me, even my father when the time came for me to meet him.

Either way, I hid in the trees as close to Nova as I could get, only leaving her when she went into a building for long periods of time. Every night I went into her room just before the sun rose. I noticed a nearly unbreakable pattern to her routine. Every night she wakes up at precisely midnight and goes for a run, at 2 in the morning she returns to the house and goes to sleep again only to wake up at 7 and begin another day.

For the first few days she went into the woods looking for me but when almost a week had past she stopped looking, mainly to make her brother stop worrying.

About 2 weeks after I left I saw Luke, he was cutting wood in the back of the house. He looked up at me as I dropped up from a tall tree. Releasing a sigh, he wiped his hands on a cloth next to him before looking at me.

"What do you want, Tyler?"

"I-," I paused and thought for a moment. What do I want? Would he even tell me?

"I don't have all day."

"Is she alright?"

He closed his eyes before nodding. I smiled a little. I knew that she was okay, but I had no idea how she actually was.

"So she's okay?"

"I didn't say that," he replied. What? He added," Your little disappearing act really got to her. She's pretty beat up over it."

"You know why I can't be with her."

"I do," he paused this time. His forehead creasing and he squinted his eyes tight," But she doesn't."

"You want me to tell her?"

He didn't reply, only stared at the floor.

"I'll think about it."

"You better, she deserves an explanation," glancing back at the house he added," Even if it's as bad as what you are."