Getting that phone call at the beginning of the week, where my da admitted they’d been keeping her cancer a secret from me, had been devastating.
Getting the call that I need to come because she’s dying?
Unimaginable.
What will a world without my ma look like?
I’m not sure I want to know.
I look up as a man goes rushing past me toward the regular seats, and the plane door is closed behind him by an attendant.
Damn. It looks like I just made the flight.
I wasn’t even paying attention to the time when the limo dropped me off at my house. I didn’t even bother unpacking the clothes I brought with me to filmHeated. I just grabbed my carry-on and filled it up with clothes and the essentials before grabbing my laptop bag and rushing back to the limo.
My ticket was already on my phone, so I blew through security and rushed to the gate. It never even occurred to me I might miss my flight—even though I knew it was going to be tight.
But I made it, and thirty minutes later, we’re taking off.
I have a long flight ahead of me. Flying from Los Angeles to Glasgow is an eleven-hour flight, then I have a little over an hour drive to the coastal town I grew up in.
Before the Event, Glasgow wasn’t a coastal city, nor was Glenmore, the town I grew up in. Much of Scotland, Ireland, and the UK’s east coasts were wiped out by tsunamis that blew through on that fateful day. Scotland lost something like five thousand miles of coastlands to the sea.
We’ve seen the maps from before the Event, and it’s crazy to think just how much everything changed that day.
Besides the obvious changes in humans.
It’s hard to believe that alphas, betas, and omegas haven’t always existed, since it’s the only life we’ve known, but I can only imagine the hell our ancestors went through when they realized they’d changed. And then on top of that, the world they lived in changed.
Two hundred plus years removed from that, it’s not something I think about often, but my mind is a mess right now.
Which is okay.
Grief does weird things to people. I’m aware of that.
It doesn’t mean it’s any easier to deal with.
I might understand the intricacies of grief and how it affects the human body and mind, but it’s something completely different dealing with it myself.
Logically, I know what’s going on, but it’s like that part of myself is detached.
I lay my head against the window, my eyes falling shut as they fill with tears.
I’m not ready to say goodbye. We should’ve had years longer than this.
My ma is only sixty-three.
Why does she have to die so young? She should’ve had at least another twenty years of life.
She’ll never get to see me find an omega or a pack. She’ll never get to meet her grandchildren—assuming any of that happens.
Hell, she’s never even met Luna, her grandpup.
If there had been more time, I would’ve tried to bring her with me, but bringing an animal overseas requires more than just buying a ticket.
I miss her so much, and the idea of being away from her any longer kills me.
But I have to see my ma. I have to say goodbye. I have to tell her how much I love her and how sorry I am for not visiting more. That I’ll miss her, and how my world will never be the same without her in it.
