"In spite of everything, you rise." Alpha Drake Cold

"Five hands a fist full of sorrow,

A sprig of thyme and a bundle of sage.

I'll see you on the morrow.

Don't weep for what

you could not save"

I was singing the comforting song of healing when I heard a strangled cry of pain. I looked over my shoulder and saw a handsome man crumple to the floor as he clawed at his chest, gasping as if he couldn't breathe. I rushed to him and felt the urge to wrap myself around him. I pulled him to a sitting position and pulled his head to my chest.

"Just breathe. It's okay." I said as he shattered in front of me. I rubbed his back as he finally took a deep breath and sobbed and shook like he were being attacked by some invisible force. He wrapped his arms around me and clung to the back of my shirt as if he was terrified that I would disappear in an instant. "It's okay. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here." I soothed. After sometime his sobs died down and we stayed like that, with my arms wrapped around his head and his face in my breasts while I kneeled between his powerful legs. It wasn't until he spoke that I moved.

"No offense. You have lovely breasts but I can't breathe." I released him and scrambled backwards.

"Sorry." I squeaked. He laughed half heatedly.

"As far as deaths go, it's not bad." He sniffed. "I'm sorry. I just smelled the ferns and heard you singing and it reminded me of her."

"Who?"

"My mate. Maranda. She loved sorrow ferns and her mom heard that song from a friend who heard it from her grandmother who heard it from her friend who happened to be a witch." He took a deep breath and continued. "She used to sing it all the time."

"I get it." I said as I folded my arms around my knees and rested my chin on top. "Trebin was obsessed with pine cones. I couldn't tell you why. He would talk to inanimate objects like they were alive and had feelings. It always made me giggle."

"Maranda used to do that too. I saw her apologize to a chair after she tripped over it." I looked up and saw a sad look on his face. It felt almost as if I was looking in a mirror. I knew that was the look I must wear when reminiscing about Trebin.

"How long has it been since you lost her?" I asked softly.

"Ten years."

"Does the pain ever go away?"

"No."

"How do you make it stop hurting?"

"If you ever find out, let me know."

"Fair enough." I waited but the question I was expecting never came. "She told you." I growled as I stood up and started for the bathroom.

"She did." He watched as I stopped just short of the bathroom. "Why is that a bad thing?"

"I don't need pity from you."

"Good. Then we understand each other."

"We are a messed up pair aren't we?"

"Yeah but get each other better than anyone else ever would." He stood and pulled a bottle from his pocket. He emptied the contents and began placing the small white pills back in the orange container one at a time. "Feeling overwhelmed?" I asked softly.

"How did-"

"I count steps." I wasn't lying. "Fifteen is too few and seventeen is too much." I closed my eyes and started towards the opposite side of the room. "One... two... three..." I counted until I reached sixteen and stopped. "It is the exact number of steps I took before my world ended."

"She was only supposed to take two. She was so drunk that she took four."

"Funny how we find comfort in such tragic things, isn't it."

DRAKE P.O.V.

It really was. I didn't expect her to say anything else. Yet she continued after a shuddery breath. "I was never more than sixteen steps away from him after he was discharged from the Marines."

"You never thought he'd die at home." She shook her head. Tears started to follow down her face.

"We were supposed to be safe." She half sobbed.

"Why did he die?" I asked without thinking.

"Some hikers saw us and decided it would be justice to kill him. In retrospect maybe I shouldn't have kissed him the way I did."

"How so?" I didn't miss the resignation in her soft voice, or the self accusation.

"It was a lovers kiss. Nothing you wouldn't see in a pg movie but it wasn't chast either. They came up to us and started yelling at him. He told me to go to the car and let him handle it."

"You didn't make it to the car though."

"No. I got sixteen steps down the path when one of them grabbed me and dragged me back. That was when I saw one of them had a knife and was stabbing him while two others I hadn't noticed until that moment were holding him down. Then the one holding him down said they should make him watch what they were going to do to me. He managed to fight three off but the fourth drew a gun and shot him in the head."

"didn't you scream?"

"For the longest time I swore I started screaming after the second one grabbed me. But Trebin's father swore the only sound he heard was three men screaming for help. He said it looked like a scene from a horror movie. There was blood and guts everywhere and I was sitting in the middle of it with Trebin cradled in my arms. It took them four hours to convince me to let go." She was far away. I could see it in her eyes. Her body was here with me but her mind had gone back to the day she lost everything.

She was shaking and it looked as if she were about to shatter. Suddenly she drew in a deep breath and screamed. It was loud and piercing. The pain in it was almost as tangent as she was. A physical force attacking me from all sides. The mirror over the mantle shattered along with several other glass objects in the room. Finally the light bulbs fell victim and the entire room was throw into darkness. It was at that point I stepped over to her and pulled her into I tight embrace, willing her to feel safe and protected in my arms.

The scream ended on a wail of pain. That was how Jack found us. Rosemary clinging to the back of my shirt as she wailed from a pain I could only guess at. Maranda's death was my fault but I didn't witness it, much less exact revenge only an instant later. Rosemary's mind was protecting her from the reality of what had happened that day by blocking it out. She wasn't ready to know what she had done. What ever had happened after Trebin had taken a bullet to the brain, I didn't want to know.