Page 108 of Mated By Twilight

“Theydowant me!” She screamed, chasing her down.

Leah vaulted onto the bed and jumped off on the other side, turning just as Biella slammed the knife into the mattress. It ripped loudly, making Leah think that knife wasn’t all that sharp.

“No! They wantme!” Leah yelled back, putting a hand to her chest as they glared at each other over the bed. “They matedme!We’ve had bonding ceremonies!”

That sent Biella over the edge. She bellowed like a banshee, cutting and scrambling her way over the mattress. Leah turned and ran from her, making her hit the wall. Then the other wall. Then the desk again, before once more vaulting the bed.

She turned back, both of them breathing heavily from the short chase. Though, Biella looked even more mussed. Her hair was a gnarled mess, her dress was slipping off one shoulder, and she had managed to cut herself on the chest one of the times she hit the wall and was bleeding from it sluggishly.

Leah, still in her Thumbelina costume, had her skirt bunched up in her hands as she glared over the mattress, waiting for her to charge again.

“You’re crazy,” Leah told her, a surprising tone of determination in her voice. But she clung to it. Letting it power her. “Sollit and Tillos are not your mates. They never were! You’re obsessed with them, and I get it. I’m obsessed with them too!”

“NO!” Biella slammed her hands on the mattress, stabbing it with the one still holding the knife. She did it again and again, allthe while screaming her defiance repeatedly. The dense foam in the mattress went flying as she cut into it.

Leah just waited for her to exhaust herself. Until she ceased thrashing about in her tantrum and she stopped, half slumped over the mattress, still holding onto the knife she’d plunged into the same spot she’d been digging into.

“But they’re not yours,” Leah continued like the meltdown hadn’t happened. “They don’t love you, Biella. Not like they love me. You need help.”

“I need yourhead!” Biella snarled, drool seeping out from around the corners of her snarling mouth. “If you’re dead, they’ll come back to me.”

“No. They won’t. And you know it.”

“No!”

“You’re sick in the head, Biella! You need to stop this now and just…listen!”

Her own shriek made Biella draw back as if in disgust that she’d dare take that tone with her.

But Leah continued, determined. “You’ve got these beliefs in your head that are just delusional!You’redelusional. And you’ve got this idea of reality that you want to believe in so badly, you’re willing to hurt and warp and manipulate the people around you to make things how you think they’re supposed to be. And when they don’t live up to that expectation, it breaks you inside because you feel like reality is falling apart, so you want to hurt them more to fix it.”

Biella blinked at her, still staring in affront, but at least not lashing out again.

“You are trying to force your beliefs and desires onto them, despite whatever they want,” Leah continued, her voice strengthening. “But what you’re doing is just hurting them further. Is it really worth hurting the people you claim to love because they don’t agree with what you think?”

“They don’t know any better!” Biella snapped. “They don’t know what’s best for them. I do! I have to show them what’s right. I have to make them see!”

“But they won’t! They won’t agree with you. You’re going to make them hate you, you’re going to make them hate everything you stand for, just because they won’t think like you.”

“So what?!”

Leah’s heart hurt at her dismissal. She shook her head. “Then, you can’t say you really love them. If they told me tomorrow that they loved you and wanted to go to you, I would let them go. I would love them enough to release them. Support and love are unconditional when they’re true. And if you make them happy, I’d want that for them.”

“Because you’re weak! Because you don’t love them like I do!”

Someone began pounding on the door.

“Leah!” That was Skara’s voice. “Leah, are you in there?!”

“I’m here!” Leah called back to her, surprised by the calm in her own voice.

“Are you okay?!”

Leah didn't answer that, because she wasn’t sure what the answer was. Her heart was pounding fast and though she knew she should be in pain, she couldn’t actually feel anything right now. Everything was weirdly disconnected.

Biella was shaking. She dragged the knife out of the bed and stood facing her.

“I don’t care what they want,” the avanava female said, responding to her earlier words. “I want them. And they’ll learn to love me!”

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