I run so long, pushing my wolf to go further and further until she gives out completely and I fall naked to the ground as she retreats within me.

The rain soaks me enough that I can't be sure if I'm crying or not. I tell myself I'm not. But I likely am.

Everything hurts.

My stomach has been twisted in knots since the second I saw Stacey get out of the car and fall back to Daimon.

I feel like I could be sick as I curl into myself on the wet muddy ground, bringing my knees up to my chest.

It's all so fucked up.

I'd been so afraid to let him in because I thought I'd lose him or have to leave him eventually and keeping a wall up between us felt like it was protecting me. He'd taken the wall down though with hammers, glares, and sweet words whispered in the dark. Ellison dying should have meant that I could have Daimon. Really have him.

I wasn't prepared for this.

How am I supposed to compete with Stacey?

He was in love with her.

Madly in love until she was stolen away and he thought he'd never see her again. There would be no me if it hadn't been for Pablo, Luca, and even Jon. If Stacey had never been taken, I'd have never even got a taste of Daimon's love.

It's impossible to go against.

She loves him too.

She didn't ask to be taken away from him and it was thoughts of coming back to him that kept her alive all this time when I know for sure I'd have died if I were in her shoes.

I can't even be mad.

As my whole body feels like it's falling apart, I can't even pick a reason to be mad.

Of course she came back to him. He was hers and she was his from the time they were so young. They'd planned a life and a future together and so suddenly it had all been taken from them. They didn't break up. They didn't decide they weren't meant to be and to go their separate ways. They were torn apart.

They never ended.

My eyes burn and my body beats with exhaustion.

Just hours ago my life was finally going right, and now I'm all alone again. How could I ask him to choose? I can't. I won't. I don't even want to know the answer.

My heart breaks. But not just for me.

It breaks for my twisted life.

It breaks for Daimon. He never saw this coming any more than I did. Stacey was gone and now she's here and that can only be confusing the shit out of him.

My heart breaks for Stacey. She didn't ask for this either. She's been tortured, tormented, and stolen from her family and life to be kept for years by a psycho Werewolf.

The part that really strikes me the most, to the point that I would laugh if it weren't for the pain, is that it was because of me that she was able to come back.

If I hadn't killed Luca, he'd still be holding her hostage.

Me killing him set her free.

I'd been the one to make her coming back for Daimon a possibility.

Damn life and it's fucking sense of humor.

When will I stop being surprised by the cosmic comedy show that has been my life since the moment I was born?

As the rain slows to a lazy drizzle around me, I hear the ground squishing beneath the weight of someone's feet. Thunder rumbles in the distance and the sky is split by silent lightning.

"Alyssa?"

I struggle to cover myself as I sit up and pull up my legs as he comes into view, his eyes averted and a hand out in front of him as he steps around trees carefully.

"Go away, Easton," I snap weakly.

"I can't do that." He shakes his head as he stops a few yards away, still keeping his head turned to the side.

"How did you even find me?" I ask, knowing I've not got a clue where I am and since he's fully dressed, he can't have followed me in his wolf form. Plus he was with his patient when I'd left.

I hate myself for thinking that way.

Stacey needed a doctor and I'm being salty about it like a burned bitch. I do feel a little burned, but it isn't her fault.

Easton tilts his head and I strain my ears before I listen harder. I hear the slow pants of an exhausted wolf and I feel a little guilty. "Ash followed me?"

"The poor kid nearly ran himself to death."

I bristle. "No one asked him to run off after me." I glare at the side of Easton's face. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

"Yeah well he didn't have much of a choice," Easton replies with equal annoyance.

Of course he wouldn't have.

So Daimon sent him then.

Not just him, but Easton too.

"So why are you here?" I sigh.

Maybe I'm supposed to be touched or moved that he sent them after me, but really, it just pisses me off. He wasn't going to come for me himself. So he sent his goons.

"Here," Easton says, shrugging out of his jacket and throwing it over to me. "I can't keep talking to this tree." I snatch it from the ground, the warmth of it all wrong. The smell all wrong. The man here for me is all wrong. "You've got to come back."

"I don't have to do anything, Easton."

"Come on, Alyssa, don't do this." He shakes his head at me as he stares up at the sky at the splinters of lightning. "You need to come back. It's not safe."

"Not safe." I laugh as my eyes well with tears. "I'm never safe!" I shout. "Not a single part of me! I'm better off out here."

"No," he says. "You aren't. Please just come back home and we can work through all of this as a pack."

"I'm not part of the pack!" I point out. "I've got every right to leave, and no reason to stay now."

"Don't say shit like that." Easton folds his arms. "You may not be official yet but you're every bit a part of our pack, and you're in danger out here. I can't leave here without you."

"That sucks for you," I say hatefully.

It hurts on the inside to talk to him like I am but I can't do this. I need space. I need to think. Or to not think. I know well by now that to get what you need, sometimes you have to harden your heart.

"He wants you to come back."

It's like being punched in the gut.

"What's the point?" I ask, a traitorous tear coming out of my eye that I'm hoping he will mistake for a raindrop. "What place do I have anymore?"

Easton looks away and I swipe the tear away like a sullen ninja. He's quiet for a second and then he looks back at me. "He says the two of you can figure it out but you have to come back to do that."

"Don't you mean the three of us?" I turn, stomping through the woods, the soles of my feet stinging as they're stabbed by rocks and twigs. I don't mind it though. Physical pain hasn't ever been able to keep me down. It's the emotional pain that will break me if I'm not careful.

"Alyssa!" he calls after me. "Wait!" I hear his feet and the padding of the wolf in the distance following me. "He loves you!"

"Stop!" I scream, covering my ears.

"He doesn't want you to leave!"

I whirl around fast, not bothering to hide my tears now. I feel like every word he speaks is a stake to my heart and I don't even care that that analogy is for vampires and not werewolves. I can say silver bullets or some shit, but that doesn't sound painful enough to be right.

The pain I feel is like a thick blunt stake crushing right through my chest and piercing my lungs and crippling me.

"What does he want then?" I demand. "Come on, Daimon, you're listening. Tell me then, what do you want? What am I supposed to come back for? So I can sit to the side and watch you and your beautiful fiancé rekindle your lost romance? No thanks."

"He said he will tell you the same thing he's told her, and that is that it's not that simple," Easton says and I freeze.

"No, it's not." I sniffle. "Which is why I can't be there right now."

"You have to come back, Alyssa," Easton tells me. "I need to get back. I'm the only one who can go to the hospital to get all of the things she needs without raising suspicions."

"So go," I snap, not wanting to hear about her or her needs right now. Her needs are the same as mine. And right now she's got him.

"Alyssa," he sighs. "I understand, I do, but think about it. People just tried to kill you, you're not in a good state of mind, we don't know where the hell Jon is, and Stacey is very dehydrated and has wounds that are infected. She needs me. You know what that's like."

"Yes, Easton." I jerk my hands through my hair. "I know exactly what that's like. I'm fully aware of the horrors she's been through and the miracle that it is that she's alive and here. I know just how much we have in common, Easton! One of them being that we both are in love with and want to be with the same guy, but tell me, which one of us holds more of his heart?" He stalls and I nod. "Exactly."

"Alyssa, he loves you!" he repeats himself.

"And I love him, but you know what? Where is he?" I ask. "Which one of us has he already chosen? He's not here. You and Ash are. Which is why I need to be alone."

"You can't be alone right now."

"I'm already alone." I grimace, looking away from him. "I'm already alone in every way that counts to me, and I need you to leave. I need space to think. I need to figure out where I go from here."

"You come back." His voice is different, another tone altogether than his usual. "You come back. We talk. We work together. You don't just run away." Easton looks me in the eyes but I feel like I'm looking into Daimon's. "You don't run anymore."

"I...." my mouth opens and closes as my bottom lip quivers. "I can't yet. I need this." I turn and walk away. "Sorry, Easton, but I'm keeping the jacket for now."

"Alyssa!" he calls after me but I don't turn back. "I can't stay!"

"Good," I say under my breath as I leave him behind.

I listen closely, testing it, and my stomach turns as I hear him turn and begin walking in the opposite direction.

He's letting me go.

I walk about a mile in my bare feet and emerge from the trees to a highway covered in mud and wrapped in nothing but Easton's all-wrong jacket.

The wind blows and I tuck my hands into the pockets to fight out the chill when my left hand hits a leather wallet. I pull it out and fish out the cash, plenty of it.

Well, this is helpful.

I tuck it back into the pocket and stick out my hand as a huge semi-truck drives up the highway, its bright lights blinding me and the screech of the breaks shooting my nerves.

I stare up at the window as it rolls down and the little round man leans over the bench. "You ok, ma'am?"

"Not really, sir." I shake my head. "I need a ride."

He looks around, probably thinking he's about to be jumped and robbed and I'm just someone tricking him into lowering his guard, so I try my best to smile.

"Where are you headed?" he asks, still wary.

"Airport." I shrug and I hear the hissing of the wolf back in the woods. Ash is still in his wolf and standing just within coverage of the trees.

The man leans back over and I hear the door's locks click before the passenger side door swings open and I step up to sit in the warm cab. Country music plays lightly over the radio and it reminds me of home.

Maybe home isn't the right word, because I've never had a place that felt like home. But country music, tobacco, humidity, and friendly truckers do remind me of the place I started out.

"You flying out of Kansas tonight?" he asks as I settle in, fastening my seatbelt.

"Yeah." I nod.

"Without shoes?"

"It was a hastily planned trip," I say, looking at the wet highway ahead of us.

"Where you going?"

I try to not look as sad on the outside as I am on the inside. "Georgia," I say.

He pulls the giant rig back out onto the road and the rain glistens in the headlights. "Got family waiting there?"

"Not family," I say. "But people I need to see again."

I don't mention to him that they're dead, because that would just make me look even more crazy than I'm sure I do already, and really he doesn't need to know anyway.

We sit comfortably together as he hums along with the radio.

They may not be family, but really they were as close as it gets. Inside I feel so lost; the uncertainty over everything and the new found freedom I've never had before now that Ellison is dead converge on me.

I could never go back before.

But now I can.

I feel like I've forgotten just who I am and what I've come from, and so what better way to distract my mind and to find myself again? I'll go "home".

I'll return to the places that started it all, facing them now that they can't hold me back anymore.

I will go back to the start and hope that somehow that will lead me to find the strength in me to get to the finish.

Whatever the ending might be.

Whether it's me and Daimon, or me all alone.

I've got to let go of the ghosts that still haunt me before I can face what's real and true right in front of me now.