"N-No, but I'm.. I-I'm braver," she informed the older girl, unconsciously echoing her argument with Frankie from her dream last night. She was still convinced it had to be a dream, no matter how real it felt, because it gave her too many chills to consider otherwise. She had been convinced, ready to go, to follow the brunette to the other side. But something pulled her back from that edge, kept her alive, was still keeping her alive. It had felt easier to give up and die, and she felt incredibly guilty for wanting to give up, even if it had just been a weird dream. Frankie's presence wasn't in the room anymore, she was wide awake now, but she was unwittingly on the redhead's brain. She hadn't believed Tatum was brave at all, but after all of this, Tatum was forcing herself to believe it. She had too much ahead of her to weaken now.

While Mack kissed her hand, the redhaired girl managed a lazy smile, scooching around in the bed and wincing at the pain it caused her when she moved too much. Still, she had gotten her legs over so that her girlfriend could sit on the end of her bed, rather than kneel and hold her hand, looking all sad like that. It tugged desperately on the younger girl's heartstrings. "I w-wasn't.. it w-was an accident, I just n-needed to go to the store, and you were busy so I didn't.. I didn't w-wanna bug you. So I just went."

Trailing off, Tatum gave Mack's hand a squeeze, carefully twining their fingers together until they were interlocked closely. "I just w-wanted to have a smoke, so I like.. I d-didn't go l-looking for t-trouble. If that's what e-everybody thinks, I just.. I only t-tried to walk to my c-car and I guess I wasn't t-thinking, I wasn't p-paying attention and then the-- t-the wolf was just there, and I k-kept screaming, but I c-couldn't.. it was s-stupid, I s-should have fought harder."

With her size versus Sam when he was transformed, Tatum knew she hadn't been able to stand a chance. Fight as hard as she would have liked, she wouldn't have come out unscathed. Once the wolf had gotten her scent a month before, this was all decided in it's own way. It was inevitable. He would have sniffed her out eventually, some night. "I g-got through though," she offered softly, chewing her lip and squeezing Mack's hand again. "I got through, and t-that.. I s-saved myself. N-No, Michi saved me, I still would have.."

But she had gotten through to Sam, and that had made a big difference, a life or death difference. Michi had stopped her bleeding out, but Tatum herself had gotten through the wolf, to Sam on the inside. "Not that it m-matters, I'm a.." she trailed off. She didn't want to say freak, Sam wasn't a freak, but she knew how most witches and wizards thought of werewolves. Vicious scum, and nothing more. "I-I'm marked now, f-for good."

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Mackenzie couldn't help but let the tears flow freely down her face as she listened to Tatum talk. Hearing what her girlfriend had gone through, seeing the girl's visible pain as she shifted her legs over so the blonde could sit down, it was all making her feel like her life was out of her control. She had only cared about a few people in her life, and besides Hunter, all of them had left her one way or another. Perhaps it was the fact that she had never really gotten over losing Craig a few years ago, especially because she hadn't appreciate him in her life until he was gone. Tatum being so brutally attacked and almost dying had only proved to Mack how close she was to losing yet another person she had come to care about.

Wiping her tears away roughly again, she squeezed Tatum's hand back. "You should have come and gotten me Tatum," she said harshly. "I told you to be careful! And you went out by yourself anyway!"

It was like she was having an out of body experience, she could see herself exploding as it happened. She was scared, scared that she would lose the girl she loved, that she wouldn't be able to handle the way their life was changing. It terrified her almost as much as the realization that she couldn't lose Tatum. And of course, her only coping mechanism was anger.

"Did you ever stop to think about what could have happened to you?" Mack said loudly, still gripping Tatum's hand. She refused to make eye contact with the girl. "You could have asked Michi, or Apple, hell, you could have asked anyone to go with you, but you didn't! That was really stupid Tatum! You could have died!"

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