Sierra
Deacon is a brute of the highest order who probably got his training in Juan’s school of charm for asshats, and half drags me, half lets me walk on my own feeble legs down the corridor to an elevator. Only stopping to bark orders at another guard sat at a desk nearby, before shoving me inside and taking me down to a level that has an air of aircraft hangar. The doors slide open to reveal a large empty almost garage like space in semi darkness, with concrete floors and strip lighting on the ceiling which stands a good twenty feet above us. The space is huge and there are three trucks parked at the far end on what looks like a platform which I am assuming raises up. It’s dull, definitely many degrees colder and seems like a part no one frequents all too often.
As we walk the lights begin to flick on automatically over our heads, and I note at the semi middle of the wall on the left a low glow is already illuminating from what seems to be an open alcove. From this angle I don’t really see what it is until we walk level with it and turn right, my head snapping to turn back at it even while being dragged along away from it, so we head in its exact opposite direction where I catch glimpse of what it actually is.
A room behind a full glass wall, stretching it’s width for ample viewing that looks like at one point it’s been a sectioned area for parking and was repurposed. There are tyre grids running up to the window but the inside room has concrete smooth floors as though they were resurfaced. It houses a bed right in the centre, surrounded by machines and carts and equipment all making flashes and low beeps and hums, keeping the solitary figure within the bed silent.
A motionless brunette woman, hard from this angle to tell if it’s Sierra, is laid out like some sort of sleeping beauty amid wires and tubes, under a single dull spotlight hanging directly over the bed. It’s almost like an art piece of a priceless mummy in a museum, she is so still, pale and lifeless and it tightens my stomach in knots, choking me with emotion. She’s on full view to this entire area in her glass box yet completely unmanned and without any kind of caregiver keeping an eye on her, which speaks volumes. I guess all the monitors and machines are doing the job of people and it breaks my heart to see her so alone, even if she isn’t aware of it. Colton would die if he saw the way she is being kept, with no human contact, no care or interaction… just machines and isolation in a god damn basement. My heart aches for him and I’m glad he doesn’t know this is what Juan has done to his mate.
Deacon gets annoyed with my straining backwards to stare and jerks my arm cruelly, snapping my face back around and I give him a hateful scowl, scared of him less and less the more I am in his company. He’s a typical Santo bully and not unlike a lot of the pack were my whole life. Pushing people like me around in a bid to exert his dominance in the hierarchy. He would last ten seconds out there if he made me mad enough to throw air at him, as stupid as that may sound. He’s a dumb jock type with a bad attitude and the need of a dart gun to take down a running femme….. loser.
I focus back where we are heading and I can see my room mirrors hers and I am about to join the glass casket crew. I am guessing it’s the back up room should they need to move her to do whatever, or maybe in case something happens in there and she needs moving over here. God knows, but it’s almost identical and I wonder if there was ever a second person like Sierra here. Or maybe Juan has plans to add one….like me.
Mine is not full of tubes and machines but it does house a solitary single hospital bed in the centre, which appears to be bolted down and a wall of units and cupboards behind it. One corner holds a very public portable toilet that the other room was lacking and I don’t struggle when Mr Security pulls me up level with the transparent wall. There’s no privacy or places to hide with its matching glass barrier and as we stand here, I see the almost invisible outline of a singular door within its vast transparency.
“Is this so you can watch all day and night without opening the door? Getting your freak on and watching defenceless women!” I snark at Deacon who has avoided saying anything more to me since we left the doctor in our wake. The only words were uttered at the guard outside the door when he informed him my three meals a day were to be added to rota and reported to the cook until further notice. Another Santo looking douchebag upstairs who glared at me like I was something gross he found stuck to his shoe.
He just looks at me with that sardonic asshole expression, scans a swipe card against a panel on the wall to our right and pushes me inside aggressively when the door slides open. It’s a little sci-fi tech and I refuse to react in any other way than hostile bitch.
I almost trip over my own feet and end up slapping my hand on the wall to steady myself before spinning around to snarl at him, wishing I could turn because that boys throat would be in much need of repair given half the chance. I have so much aggression peeking inside of me that I almost can’t contain the sudden hatred of him. I swear I can almost taste his blood and feel his pulse beating out of his jugular as I focus on what I could do given half the chance. I spin back to him fully, my robe flapping around so he probably gets an eyeful of naked ass as I did so and throw the angriest hostile sneer I can right at his smug face.
“I’m so glad I got to shoot you at least one time. Got it made hard to see you go down like a sack of shit.” He smirks as the door slides shut and the urge to punch him in the throat overwhelms me to the point I angry jump at the door as it slides shut between us and end up palm slapping it at his face level, panting heavily as fire consumes me.
“You clearly were too slow to catch me then if you needed a gun, you moron. Probably the only time you have ever been tougher than a girl!” I stick my middle finger up at him and return the smirk he was dishing me as he turns on his heel to go, face grim with a darkening mood. I can tell I pissed him off on every level but he’s trying to act like I didn’t.
“Enjoy your cell…Carmen!” He snorts, using the name I gave him and I just throw sass right back.
“You know you should remember that name….you and her would be perfect for each other if you were ever allowed to leave. A mountain wolf with no standards and loose panties…right up your street. She’s a prize bitch to match your prize assholeness!!” I yell it after him, temper unleashed a little and furious for the sake of being furious. Annoyed I find myself banged up in this hellhole and under the care of a sanctimonious Santo like him. Colton would rip his head off if he was here. God if I could link him right now, I so would. Just to see him roll on up and tear Deacon a new asshole. He would beat seven shades of shit out of him without even needing to turn wolf. That’s the difference between an asshole looking to be Alpha and one who is naturally born that way – Colton never needed to push me around to exert his dominance, you could feel it whenever you were around him. He was gentler than most wolves once you got close to him.
Deacon blanks me completely, just waves a dismissive hand at me like he has the last word and leaves. Stalking back the way we came like an arrogant shit head who needs to go choke.
I honestly cannot stand that guy and if I could turn, god he would be first on my hitlist for being air punched across the room. I have enough rage bubbling through my veins to ignite it but unfortunately no actual ability in this weird futuristic building. All I need is an ounce of use to link Colton , tell him where his mother is and bust everyone’s ass in here. I have enough rage that I think I could, maybe. I just wish I had been bright enough to find and use that gift when they chased me through the god damn forest. I only have myself to blame for not being able to harness my own fate given gift.
As soon as I watch him storm off into the elevator and completely disappear, I turn my attention back to the room across the floor from me and focus on that lifeless sleeping body. She’s twenty feet away at the least, maybe more but these glass walls although thick, don’t keep the sound out. The low beep beep and swoosh of her life support is humming and repeating subtly in the air around us now that asshole has gone and the place is silent once more. I lean forward until my palms touch the glass again, only this time softly and press my forehead to it so I can steady my still pretty weak self and stare at the side profile of the figure laid out over there. Instantly enveloped in a feeling of hopelessness as I watch her lifeless form.
She’s been down here like this for god knows how many years and I can’t believe Juan would do this to his own mate. It’s like he just put her aside and forgot about her and the only reason she is even alive, is because their link would kill him if he let her die. So this is what he does. Breaking the bonds and rules of being mated. He’s not protecting her or caring for her in sickness and health. He isn’t allowing the pack to nurture their Luna the way they are meant to. He’s ashamed and hiding her in a place no one knows about. There’s no dignity in what they have done to her and the doctor slipped out and made it clear there is nothing wrong with her mind. Juan obviously has other reasons for keeping her down here if madness sis not it, and I will her to give me some sort of sign that she knows I’m here.
“Hey…… Luna Sierra, can you hear me?!” I yell as loud as I can, hurting my throat in the process with scratchy rawness but it doesn’t elicit any response, not even a change in heart rate on one of her many machines. I watch carefully, listen to the sounds but there’s nothing.
“Can you hear me?” I try again, not as loud but my throat aches with the effort and I cough drily, giving up on that method quickly. I sigh, sliding down the glass and watch her desperately, trying to figure out how someone in a building that blocks gifts, in an induced coma could somehow reach out to me and guide me to her with the weird dreams and urges to come east. It doesn’t make sense now that I see her and know she can’t call to me. In fact, she doesn’t seem like she can do very much of anything at all, except maybe breath on her own as she doesn’t have any kind of ventilator over there. She didn’t urge me here, there’s simply no way in hell it could have been her. She’s all but a vegetable down here.
The only answer I can think of, is maybe the fates did this instead and it wasn’t her at all, but I guess I’m not about to find out. If I thought she had answers then it’s pretty clear she won’t be giving me them and this is a dead end. The fates delivered me back to Juan for absolutely nothing. And when he gets here , knowing I found this place and saw her like this, he isn’t going to let me get back anywhere near Colton ever again.
I hate being stuck in human form and completely powerless to even get out of this dumb glass. Everything in here is bolted down, probably because they don’t want prisoners throwing things at the window and I am not about to kill myself by hurtling my own body through it to see if it breaks. Without being able to turn I would probably bleed to death, being that unlucky girl who brought down a shard over my neck or something and still be stuck down here. A shrivelled empty corpse to stink the place up.
That jerk didn’t even let me eat like he said and my stomach growls angrily at the lack of having food since god knows when. I don’t even know what time it is, morning or night or how long I was sedated in that room considering there are no windows underground. I last ate in the day before sleeping in that damn tree where all my possessions are and I’m starving. It’s no wonder I feel weak and shaky. I’m running on empty.
It’s weird but maybe it’s my years of being bossed around, held captive in a less than caring home and treated like a reject at the hands of my so-called pack, but I’m not even afraid anymore. Being here held captive, I know that the worst will come with Juan but even then, what’s he going to do to me? He can’t kill me, or inflict too much pain because his son will bear the brunt and lord knows his legacy is always at the centre of everything. He could do what he’s done to Sierra I guess, but it’s not like she seems aware of anything and maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing. No longer tied to Colton, carrying this burden of heartache while he lives his life with that ‘skanky Puta’ maybe a long sleep will be better than stuck in a glass box for a lifetime.
I abandon the glass and get up to walk across the cold concrete floor on shaking legs. I need to lay down and finally get rid of the rest of this drug in my blood so I can at least walk around normally and not feel like I am on new-born legs. Maybe I’ll feel better if I just take some time to let it work out and sleep off the rets of it. My body is shaking internally and I keep having minor bouts of dizziness which remind me I am in no state to take on the likes of Deacon if I ever get a chance. My first goal before I leave this place is to knee him in the balls, for shooting me in the back like a coward.
I don’t get to the bed before the noise of the elevator whooshing open sways this way and I instantly stiffen, expecting Deacon to come back and grace me with his toxic personality and mentally try to figure out the likelihood of being able to kick him between the legs for the sake of it. I climb on the bed, turn around and sit with my legs dangling off the edge in readiness to give him more attitude and lure him inside to my perfect level of height as I hear footsteps and a lot of squeaking noises of wheels rolling across the hard floor coming my way.
It’s not Deacon, it’s the doctor and a female in a white lab coat too and I frown as he appears in front of the glass door pulling the food cart and carrying a bag in his other hand, while she pushes another behind him. He waves at me before accessing the door and slides it open with a smile.
“My dear, we never fed you and I couldn’t let you go hungry down here in this inhospitable nightmare of a place. I brought you some clothes. They’re nothing fancy just the smallest size from the supply closet that I could find and a fetching shade of military grey.” He pushes the trolley inside, the sudden smell of food filling the air and my mouth starts to water with the reminder I am near famished. He drops the bag just inside the door but hesitates about coming in and I sit here waiting patiently. His female companion stays back, arranging some medial implements on a tray on top of her own trolley and avoids looking my way completely. She’s young , maybe early twenties and looks very white girl, medical student human. Blonde, blue eyed so definitely not a Santo.
“Thank you.” It’s a genuine response because this gown is not exactly great at hiding things or offering comfort and maybe eating will help straighten me out a little. In human form I am suffering from the effects of not eating and probably have a low blood sugar to boot. The female seems interested in me but keeps her distance and it’s not hard to tell that my kind makes her nervous. She pushes the trolley to near him and then turns and walks away without a word.
“It’s nothing too adventurous, just a chicken salad and bread. The cook is normally quite wonderful with our hot foods but you were an in between meal visitor. It won’t be long before lunch is served and it will be something hot, like it always is. I believe today is carrot and coriander soup, followed by a delightful steak tartar. Fabulous talented chef and we are most grateful to have one here.“ Despite his overly friendly chatter and enthusiasm over food, he seems awkward now that we are down here and I catch him throw a glance over his shoulder at our sleeping beauty, watching our departed medical student walk into her room and check on the equipment and levels. The door closing behind her quickly and dampening the noise back to a low hum that had intensified when she opened it. I catch the doctor pause for a second longer, before a slight sag gives away a little tell.
“You knew her?” I ask brazenly , seeing a sadness as he turns back to me and a fake smile pops up to hide his obvious reaction. His expression clouding over a little and despite my sense not being on form, I can almost taste the change in his mood. He looks at me oddly, eyes narrowing and it’s as though he goes to say something then stops and falters, his mouth opening with no sound before he draws back, looks around once more and leans in a little, lowering his tone. Only too aware of the female across the way.
“She was my friend. This was her project…long before the war. The hybrid research….the learning about the rare wolves no one talks about. I never imagined she would end up being one of its inhabitants.” His face reddens and he shakes his head as though he can’t quite believe he told me this. Mentally shaking himself but I’m not going to let an opportunity pass me by and I have to show he can trust me.
“He just left her here to rot. Juan, I mean… because she got sick?” I ask innocently, fully aware that upstairs he said there was nothing wrong with her mind at all but I need to gently draw him into this. I need to win him over slowly.
“Sick! Hah…… Her mate has no interest in my research but we serve a purpose that he needs fulfilled. Keeping her alive and……. Quiet. If that is the sickness to which you refer. So, he pays the facility bills, funds my grants ad leaves us to do whatever as long as she exists here and we don’t ask questions anymore.” His low hushed voice signals that maybe he doesn’t quite trust either the female across the way, or maybe there are camera’s down here. I sit up a little, pushing my hands under the edges of my legs and change tactic. A common ground to show him I am definitely not about to run to Juan.
“I knew her too…her son…. I know him. Colton.” I don’t know why I hesitated to call him my fated mate but the piercing sharp stab to my heart before the word would come out stopped me. Maybe because all I can think of when he comes to the forefront is that he has betrayed me and marked that bitch and is now her mate. I can’t bear to say the word out loud. I swallow it down, the bitter taste almost making me gag.
“Ahhh yes, little Colton, such a blessed boy. So many years since I laid eyes on that child. She was so very proud to bear a son you know. Always wanted a child of her own and the fates blessed her finally with that little bundle of cheekiness while providing Juan the heir he was pressing for. His future legacy. He was such a little rebel as a pup, always climbing and running around when I visited the manor. I can’t imagine what her being taken did to him.” The faraway look, the distance as he locks onto a memory and I slide down from the bed, motioning to the food tray so as not to make him think I’m coming at him but I want to be closer so he feels more able to talk freely in a hushed tone. I want to lull him into a sense of security and kill him with kindness.
“She struggled to conceive him?” I ask innocently, trying to direct the conversation and keep him engaged in what he assumes is neutral conversation, get him talking. If I am going to win him over to my side, I have to make him feel he can talk to me and not like I am prying to much for answers to Sierra’s current predicament. You move around the prey to suss out the best angles and lull it into a sense of calm before you pounce on it…is something my grandfather always used to say. I am curious though, that a wolf would have issues with fertility as it’s not really something we suffer with. We’re physically perfect…fertility is a given.
“Curse of some hybrids I am afraid. It is that when they mate with a pureblood sometimes the pure genetics destroys the hybrid cells and the child becomes non-viable. In vitro death. It’s been so hard to reproduce with your kind because like I said, imperfections are destroyed by your own DNA. An invasion of another species in the makeup and it has itself a little war of its own and diminishes the fertile egg. Fascinating yet heart-breaking, especially for her. Colton was her seventh and I think had he died it would have finally broken her. Special boy.”
I know he has said it twice now but he can’t be right, about the hybrid thing at all. I mean my mother had two planned pups and she never mentioned issues in pregnancy or carrying us, so neither of my parents could have been hybrids. Which means I am definitely not.
And then there is the matter of Sierra… especially not where Juan is concerned. That’s a whole other thing.
“She can’t be a hybrid. That makes no sense at all… Juan Santo is a pureblood who wouldn’t’ tolerate that kind of union. His son is a pureblood, it’s all he ever goes on about.” I roll my eyes without meaning too, a little anger spiking through as memory replays on the whole superior lording over the mountain bullshit. Juan’s constant lord and king kick and preaching to the packs for decades about his families traced pure line of genetics. The Santo’s pride themselves on being from the strongest lineage of wolves. He would never willingly take on a mate who was anything less, I mean look at his reaction to my being fated to Colton. That says it all!!
The doctor looks behind him, checking his assistant is engrossed in dealing with the machines before stepping inside my room so the door slides closed behind him, and lowering his tone once more.
“My dear, I fear I have said too much and inadvertently made your hope of release a less plausible outcome. You must forget what I said , especially about Luna Sierra Santo. It’s in your best interest that we never had this conversation and you do not repeat to anyone that we did.” There’s a serious concern etched into his face that deepens the lines around his eyes and he locks a direct look right on my eyes, a hint of warning in his tone. He’s closing down our line of communication because he thinks what he’s telling me puts me in danger. A hint that I was right about his character and him being the soft link in this facility. He is a decent man who cares and I need to show him that I’m already screwed, so he doesn’t lock me out.
“I imprinted on Colton and Juan forbade it…. We’re fated, but he forced him to mark another for the sake of the pack. I’m not getting set free….I’m probably going to end up like her, or worse. I’m a reject of the pack, a diluted bloodline who brings shame to his people and the only reason he is coming here is to be done with me once and for all…….nothing you say makes a difference to what he’s going to do to me.” It’s a harsh hurried whisper and I fall silent as I catch a glimpse over his shoulder of his assistant coming out of Sierra’s room. Nodding her way to alert him but he seems completely dazed. Stiff and still and just looking at me intensely.
“I’m done, I’ll go up to the lab and run the new bloods we were sent from the south, Doctor.” She calls to him from hallway across the bay and without looking back at her he waves a hand dismissively, eyes locked on me in the most alarming way. She takes that as an answer, nods and walks off towards the elevator briskly to head back upstairs. The air in this room suddenly heavy with tension.
“Imprinted? By the fates? As in that rare form of bonding two souls so they become insanely lust and love driven to be forever together? I didn’t think any alpha had the authority to undermine that. It means you are linked to ….Sierra’s bloodline?” His skin tone seems to pale noticeably and his eyes darken weirdly. His mind clearly racing over a million thoughts and his forehead wrinkles deepen as his frown does. An air of mild nervousness kicking up around him.
“Yeah, well Juan doesn’t give a rats ass about anything except his own authority and Colton, he’s so stuck in his shadow that he chose to let me go instead of honouring the bond. So I left, didn’t look back and something brought me here instead. This wasn’t a chance find…. This facility. I was dreaming of her almost every night, and something pulled me here. I had headed south but something made me change and come east from my path… Sierras voice calling or some stupid memory of a dream that wouldn’t leave me alone.” I offload on him, now I know his companion is in the elevator and it feels good to finally say it to someone rather than be all caught up in my own head. A gush of chatter that I have been turning over for days.
“Stop. Don’t.” The doctor waves his hand at me, sapping me bac to attention and the wild-eyed terrified look on his face as though I just told him I had a bomb under my ass. He turns abruptly, panic slamming the card against the wall panel to slide open the door, lacking graceful coordination and steps out of the doorway fully, shaking his hands and head and I follow unsure why he is recoiling. His whole-body trembling as he oozes a crazy amount of fear. I can taste it.
“What? Why? Do you think I am lying?” The sudden rise of emotion in him has me on edge too and the panic that I am scaring my only ray of light to escape away. He appears to be running away but as he turns to me, to close the door the tear I catch in his eye silences me and he pauses, taking a deep breath and lowering his hands. The open door between us keeping us a couple of feet apart but his sadness overwhelms me.
“Eight years of silence…eight years watching her sleep. Eight years hoping that one day the things she said, I would accept that my friend had lost her mind completely. Eight years….and I convinced myself sadly that her visions and stories were that of a mad woman, broken by battle in which convinced her that her mate was an evil player in some bigger plan and her confinement here was a betrayal to silence her. Eight years justifying that she was better asleep than to be tortured by her own illness of the mind.” I don’t know if he’s saying it to me or to himself, his eyes not looking to me, just glazed and distant as a single tear rolls down his cheek and I am so very confused.
“I don’t understand. You said she was fine…upstairs…. She’s been here longer than eight years….Colton said more than nine.”
Oh god, please don’t tell me she really is broken and this is all for nothing.
The thought crosses my mind, things not adding up to what he said and going around in circles unable to piece it together logically. Maybe Sierra really was sick but then what the hell is he saying?
The doctor smiles at me sadly, his pale grey eyes finally landing on mine and gives me a watery half smile.
“If she was crazy….then how could she tell me that one day a solitary wolf from the west would come to save us all from something that was coming. A future leader of her people, joined to her blood by the fates. Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s wishful thinking and guilt because I have let her lay there for eight long years. Don’t you see?” he’s almost babbling but I pick out the points I think he’s trying to connect.
“I came East from where I was, and I’m linked to her son.” I repeat robotically still looking at him with a quizzical expression on my face and trying to figure out what his vague statements mean. He’s lost in his own head.
“Tell me….what does the name Marina mean to you?” He narrows his eyes on me, leaning in as though telling me a secret of the utmost importance and her name falls off his tongue like a lead rod that stabs me in the heart.
I gasp at the utterance of it on this mans lips, my blood running cold as he says it and I openly stifle a sob such is the unexpected pain of hearing it. A name that died when she did and no one has uttered it in a decade.
“She was my mother….” I whisper it painfully, that same rise of heartache anytime I begin to think of her and have to stop my own tears from breaking free.
The Doctor clasps a hand to his mouth as though I have uttered something sinful, his eyes widening in alarm and he begins to breathe heavily. Backing away from me as something seems to click into place.
“I can’t hear this, because if this is what she said…I have let my friend suffer in sleep for all these years alone…. and I failed her. I let him convince me she was mad, don’t you see. I broke my oath; I broke my promise as her friend and I’m a terrible person. I need to go….. I don’t want to know about any of this!” He pulls away, shaking visibly, beginning to crumble and avoids looking at me as panic grips him mercilessly. He’s clearly distressed, his word faltered as he babbled them out and he’s once again running from me mentally.
“Wait….don’t go….what about my mother? What do you know? How do you know her name? What did she say about her?!” I’m yelling after him, grasping for something I don’t even know I’m chasing as my own panic rises with being left with nothing but her name. My door slides quickly shut as he departs and traps me inside this chamber before I get after him, because I was too slow to lurch forward. He isn’t looking back, but scarpering across the concrete floor until he gets mid-way between mine and hers on the way to the elevator.
“I’m sorry…I really am.” I cried it at me, as I slam my hands on the glass in a bid to get the door to open, pressing hard against it so I can se him as he runs off to my left.
“I need to know what she said about my mother!!!” I scream it like a feral banshee, my own emotions overwhelming me as so many racing thoughts rush through my head and I’m consumed with suspicion and pain and heartbreak all weighing down like a house falling on top of me. My breathing erratic and I pound the glass aggressively in sheer need to follow him. It shudders and quakes but doesn’t budge an inch.
I can’t calm down, the craziness of that interaction has me all wired and panting as emotion wracks me and my thoughts spiral crazily with so many possibilities on such little information. The mention of my mother, his reaction….it’s made me react in ways I never have before and I start pacing, pulling at my hair as I try to self-calm ad focus. I upset him, so he’s run off but maybe he will come back and he needs time to process and calm like maybe I do too. Maybe it was a shock, that something she told him now appears to be coming true. He said visions but wolves they don’t have those and maybe that’s what triggered him. A fear that she could and did and now I’m here and I came east and I’m linked.
Oh god , it’s all so messy in my head so I can’t even imagine what’s going on in his if this is something she told him over eight years ago. I mean to us the fates and coincidence, it’s a common thing and we trust in the paths they lay for us with so little questioning of it, but humans…they have a harder time accepting or believing. So many nowadays don’t even believe in god, let alone some supernatural higher power that always has a plan.
He will calm down, rationalise and come back to explain why he knew my mother’s name.
I mean that’s what he will do, right?
Something struck a chord in everything I said and now I need to know more. I have to know more. I need to find out what it was Sierra told him all those years ago that got her sent here and pushed into a coma . Juan is keeping her quiet by convincing people she is crazy so I want to know what that is. Especially if my mothers name is in there somewhere and she knew I would come and be linked to her son….how could she know that?
Wolves cannot see the future. Only witches and seers and…… oh god.
This hybrid crap and Colton being a long-awaited child. None of that could be true because Juan would never value a mixed breed child the way he does his son. Especially not a witch, those are like the sorcerers and demons of the supernatural world with a kind of voodoo you don’t fuck with. Unless he doesn’t know? But that can’t be if he knew about this place and the research and left her here. She obviously wanted to know how she could be both witch and wolf and find others like her for whatever reason…maybe she wanted to know how to conceive child without it dying. Juan had to know she wasn’t pure and that makes even less sense given how he is.
Witches and seers, they’re more like the humans but with gifts that are insanely powerful. Sierra surely couldn’t be a half witch, that’s crazy. She couldn’t hide something like that from the pack all those years and why doesn’t Colton have any of those gifts? You would know if he could conjure magic and catch visions, for sure. And then she’s here…a witch has power; then why didn’t she save herself?
Maybe he didn’t know when he mated to her and maybe when he found out that’s why he banished her here, so the pack would never know and possibly revolt against an alpha mated to an impure. I’ve never heard of anything like this and it does explain his obsession with making sure Colton has the right Luna. Maybe he’s afraid Colton isn’t pure enough ad it will show in his offspring if he mates badly. Colton definitely has no knowledge of it, I would have seen it in our joined memories.
None of this makes sense. Luna Sierra was in the pack for decades before she had Colton so surely that cannot be the reason Juan brought her here. He would have known; you can’t hide anything from your mate. Her memories in transference when he marked her would have made sure he knew. Which means HE hid what she was. And after decades living hat lie why would he then suddenly banish her to the back of beyond and what the hell has my other got to do with any of this?
My head spins with all of this, a pulse hitting on the centre of my brain with overload and aching so badly I feel like my skull might explode. I end up pacing back to the bed and falling face down on top of it with an arghhh noise that reverberates through my entire body it’s so loud. All the doctor has done is give me more questions than answers and I roll on my side so I can see her across the gap. The lights have shut down out there so she’s illuminated in the light from her own cell.
“What are you not telling me Sierra? Why am I here? What are you and what the hell am I?” I call to her as thought somehow it will give me an answer but she remains still and silent in her cocoon like state and I exhale heavily. My body trembling with adrenalin as I begin to calm down but my tears fill up my eyes. It’s not sadness really, but confusion and frustration and a gnawing pit of unease that there are things I know nothing of which clearly have everything to do with why I was guided here.
I’ve lost my appetite, no longer interested in the food he left while my head is going crazy with all of this and I know one thing for sure. I just lost my ally, chased him away and I only have two days before Juan shows up to deal with me. I have zero chance of romancing Deacon in that time even if I wanted to try. Not that I could, he physically makes my skin crawl and I don’t think I have it in me to be nice to the asshole that darted me in the back like a white liver bellied coward.
I cross my arms over my head and face to smother out the light and noise and just ‘garrrrr’ loudly at this situation I find myself in. Willing my brain to just stop spinning around and turning inside out and give me a few seconds peace to get my bearings once more. It feels like it’s been the longest day in history and according to the Doc, it’s not even lunch yet.
For the love of the fates!!
What I wouldn’t give to be anywhere but here right now. Maybe reverse the clock go back to my awakening ceremony and run before I even turned, to save myself from all of this bullshit that has happened since. It really was the worst turning point of my life and I can just blame all of it on the bloodline of Santo. I curse that name forever more.
I should have left a long time ago, and never waited to turn.
No Colton, no imprinting, no running to mountains and attacks by vampires playing on my mind. Just sheer ignorance of a girl running free and turning alone and never knowing any of these people or caring at all. I should have just found my courage to go long before I did and save myself the heartache of all of this. Live din sheer blissful ignorance that the fates were going to screw me over one day.
“Alora?”
I near jump out of my skin at the sudden closeness of the doctors voice and almost topple completely off the bed as I realise he’s right beside me and my lack of wolf sense let him walk right up to me with zero warning. My heart misses a beat and almost kills me in the process.
“You scared the shit out of me!” I impulsively snap, taking in the bloodshot eyes, the pale pallor and the strong hint of alcohol on his breath that I’m sure he knocked back hastily to level himself out. He looks a little dishevelled and shell shocked to say the least and there’s no sign of his female companion.
“Quite.” He replies tartly and I can tell by his manner that he isn’t okay. Or his weird British response to what I shouted at him.
I manage to pull myself to sitting and eye him up warily as he stands stock still in the centre of my room, staring at me as though I have two heads. He twists his hands together, wringing his fingers through one another nervously and I give him a moment to pull himself together.
“There are no cameras down here. They like to pretend she isn’t here you see….the wolves upstairs. They don’t venture down very often so they don’t have to acknowledge their shameless purpose of guarding this place. Lord knows we didn’t need chaperones when Luna Sierra was in charge here. Just me and my staff to take care of her, mostly from upstairs. None of them were here before she was put to sleep, so they think she’s in a coma and life support of her own accord and her rich husband benefactor is paying to keep her comfortable.”
He walks around in a circle and I watch him quietly, feeling the anxious waves and deep emotions coming from him intensely. I’m wary about sending him running once more but he came back, and I have one question I need answered before we go any further.
“Why did you ask me about my mother… Marina?” I say it solemnly, heart hitching at the use of her name, breathing in slowly and deeply to stop the spiralling emotions that run through me and I note that my hands have started to tremble. I feel nervous, reacting in a subtle wave of anxious anticipation like I’m perched on the edge of a cliff and one tiny breeze will knock me off and change everything I ever knew about my life. I don’t know, I can just feel it weighting down on this moment , like I should stop, turn and run far away.
He stops mid step of his frantic pacing and turns to me completely. Eyes wide, face serious and he implores me with a wide handed spread of palms as though apologising as the words come out clearly.
“She’s the reason Sierra is here…. Juan executed every one of your bloodline so they would never return to your mountain and she tried to stop him.”
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