The Past
“What?” it’s like every cell in my body stops as a deathly silence fills the air and you can hear a pin drop as his words sink in slowly….so fucking slowly.
Juan executed my family. They didn’t die in battle.
That’s a lie, it can’t be true because, they weren’t the only pack to never return. The entire Whyte line, among others, they all died protecting our kind. It was a war for god’s sake and we had many casualties. Did Juan kill them all too.
The Doctor has to be playing me, lying to mess with my head for some kind of ulterior motive and I am falling for it. Maybe it’s a test to see if I am strong enough to turn despite being in this isolation tank. Maybe I was wrong to trust him and this is all a ploy to break me down and get intel he thinks I may have…but how would he know her name?
I take a much-needed breath as I begin to suffocate under the pressure of my own mounting emotions, realising I wasn’t inhaling or letting it go and a moment to let that sink in, my head spinning as my brain tries to dissect and makes sense of each word and how it comes together in what he just said. I don’t know how to react; cry, rage, scream, laugh? I just sit here like a numb dead weight staring at him as though he just told me the world was ending and we are just to wait here to die. Momentarily devoid of feeling as shock fills the void.
It has a different effect on my body though and for a second, I think I might throw up. I wretch, my body lurching and as it all spins out of control and I have to lift my heels to the edge of the bed so I can prop my head between my knees to ground myself. Swallowing down the rush of salvia that clogs my throat and breathing through the waves of nausea.
“I’m sorry….. my memory is not what it was, but the gist is that Juan was eliminating the possibility of a prophecy coming to fruition…a white wolf queen rising from the shadows to reign the people in a victorious and united future. Juan believed your mother was going to dethrone him after she proved herself a worthy warrior on the battlefield and led many a victorious attack on your enemy. Your kind were losing the war, and she turned it around…your mother, she was gifted and special and more powerful than he could ever dream of being. The kind of specimen I could only dream of being able to study.” He sounds concerned, regretful, apologetic, all at once but it’s all meaningless noise and I just keep coming back to it, over and over.
Juan….he killed them all.
My past ten years have been a lie and I suffered not because they failed, but because he took them from me.
That can’t be true, especially not if she was so powerful.
“Then how did he…. If she was” The words die on my tongue, hastily uttered in a breath as my brain tries to rationalise the details, as warm salty tears roll down my cheeks and I sit absorbing a history I never knew as the pieces are laid out before me. Confused with the conflicting statement to what I have always been told and a fire and rage building inside of me slowly to overcome the icy cold that has spread through my nerve endings. It’s like a drip, drip as it’s fed and allowed to grow slowly. It warms my belly and spreads across my pelvis and down my limbs, something growing inside of me so all consuming that I almost welcome its warm fluid expansion to my cold empty soul. My brain just cannot seem to filter and arrange it so that it makes sense.
“Your father was her weak point… just a peaceful land-dwelling wolf that he murdered to get to her. Your kinds devastating ability to kill both mates with one blow and sadly an uneven pairing as that was her only downfall. It’s a rather sad travesty that even your strongest is only as strong as the mate bonded to them in the end and highlights the importance of why they shun the impure. He then ordered his own sub pack to hunt down and destroy everyone from the pack she was residing with, in case they had linked in the last moments and knew of his treason. He had to tidy up loose ends. He had to cover his tracks and only his loyal knew of what he had done and aided him.”
The Whyte pack, none of them returned from war as they were apparently cursed as warriors and fell at the first battle. Not strong enough, fast enough, not able to hold their own because of being weak land workers and not warriors at all.
All lies.
All slaughtered by Juan and his trusted – his sub pack, his elders, his closest. Those he now wears like a shroud to lead from behind at the mountain. Which meant Sierra saw it all too, as his Luna she was by his side at all times and followed him into battle. None of them jumped to defend her because they were just as guilty as her mate.
My mother, my father, my brother, my grandparents…all gone at Juan’s hand and I cannot contain the fury growing within me as my mind puts the pieces together and it all begins to add up. The return of the wolves saw everything change and the children like me, ripped from guardians families who had vowed to care for us, and pushed into that home.
We went from being cared for, cherished by wolves who opened their homes to us all while our families fought, to being almost outlawed in a way , by Santo wolves who spread the word that the war was almost lost because of our blood lines. They told them none of us should be revered as fallen heroes remaining legacy…but left to fade out and kill an impure invasion on future generations. They started the second they returned, in pushing all of us into that dark side of the mountain and maintaining we were cursed. Why didn’t he just kill me too?
Words fail me and I just stare at him as I lift my head, catching the wariness in his eye as he see’s the expression on my face and he hesitates about moving away a little.
My heart is pounding, my breathing shallow and a twisting knife of pain devours me as it really does sink and coarse through every cell of my body that Juan did the most unthinkable thing of all, broke our own laws and killed his own….For what fucking reason!!!
A prophecy about a rising wolf? A story? A fable…that hadn’t even come to fruition. He thought HE could overpower the fates and take what he wanted, push things in his own way?
It’s almost as if the Doctor can feel my questioning or maybe it’s my silent deathly manner as I sit up stock straight and lower my chin to glare hatefully across his shoulder at the Luna beyond. It’s not a look for her, but at everything I am now finding out and I can’t control it. He betrayed her, just as he betrayed his entire people…my family.
“Sierra was meant to be his answer….a hybrid witch and wolf. He though by searching out this white queen and mating her he would be assured the power he longs for. Sierra is a black wolf though, something he overlooked as a small detail and when their tale did not push them into the path of the story he thought was rightfully his, he took matters into his own hands. The rising of your mother made him insane and upon return from the wars, the books were scraped free of any hint of a prophecy, forbidding the Shamans from teaching it to the young. He rewrote history to hide it. He pushed all trace of what he did into a coma to silence her for her own treason.” His voice is tight, tension hitching and I can taste his nervousness this time, as he does back away, shuffling out of my way to give me a clear view of the lifeless soul I am facing. My whole being poised like I am on the verge of lashing out and ripping this room to shreds, such is the crazy hate and anger coursing through me and I clutch the bed viciously to hold myself in check. Torn between mounting fury and heart breaking , crippling devastation. If I could turn, I would already be ripping this facility apart with the intensity of everything I feel inside of me. A storm raging to be set free , yet my heart aches to the point I think it may stop beating under the force of pressure.
“He knew sierra was a mixed breed. He knew he has completely destroyed something decided by the fates? He thinks he has that power? That worth?” I snarl, my voice unrecognisable as this just feeds my desire to combust in a tornado of destruction. I never knew I could harbour so much desire to find one man, hunt him down and enjoy ripping him limb from limb. I can almost taste it; such is the want to have it badly. The blood lust coursing through me in hot waves as I start to visualise that narcissistic asshole and what I’m going to do to him when he gets within an inch of me. My body bristling and goose bumping, my heart rate rising and my lungs quickening to accommodate my fast rapid breath.
“Yes. It was by design that he sought her out and travelled far to find her. Sweeping her off her feet and mating to her so he could possess her for eternity. He thought he could fulfil and control the prophecy and further his own desire to rule. She was a relatively isolated wolf, naïve, unloved, her own pack rejecting her because of her roots and she fell straight into the arms of the first real a love shown her way. She was known as a witch, and well you know they are as much a wolves enemy as the vampires, which made her a cursed and fearful species. She told me she fell madly in love and didn’t find out about his ulterior motive until she had been his for many months and already bound by the mate bond.” The doctor looks towards her, a sad distant glaze to his eyes as he remembers their conversations and the regret of not believing her when he should.
“So how did she end up here? If she had powers… Witches are strong. You said she tried to stop him, so why couldn’t she?” I am devilishly low and controlled, the growl coming through in my tone, leaning to anger to try and avoid the pain inside of me and I can feel my inner wolf tossing and turning with the frustrating need to be set free. It’s sharpening it’s claws and begging to be uncaged.
“She betrayed him. By sacrificing her own life for the protection of a child who can regain the balance of things. Sierra is a seer and a witch, yes; she has powers unlike any wolf but they are not strong like a warrior… they are useful in ways of protection on a small scale and she has abilities to control certain aspects of others. She’s a healer, not a fighter and she did what she thought could make a difference.”
“Meaning?” I turn to him fully and lock onto him, seeing him swallow hard and his mistrust of my current behaviour is written all over him. In this moment he is afraid of me and he’s nervously spewing words to try and diffuse it or just keep me focused on anything other than turning on him. I can smell the terror coming in waves from him, even without my wolf sense. It’s not intentional but these feeling are bigger than me and I have no will to reel them in right now. I’m fractured and seeping and I don’t know how to stop it pouring out and pooling around me.
“She got to you before Juan did. Ran and left the pack on their return to your lands. She bound her blood to you, so you became linked to her and completely protected from being slain too, thus meaning he could never kill you. And if he tried to isolate and imprison you, then his pack would have asked why…what did a child do? All these years, this story haunted me as nothing more than the imagining of a fractured mind, torn by horror and atrocity she witnessed, and yet here you stand…the child of Marina. Just like she said you would. Alora….I am so sorry, please…..you must understand that had I known it was truth, I would never ……..” His real honest despair comes through in torn rawness, but it’s not my concern right now.
“Why can’t I remember that? If she bound to me then why don’t I see her in my memory?” I snap, interrupting his apologies, too caught up in my own pain and misery and need to hurt something to care about him and his regrets. It doesn’t change the now or how I got here.
“She bound your memory, your gifts and that of her son to protect you all, for she feared Juan would see even challenge to his position in his own child should he have inherited her gifts too. Like I said – she has certain abilities. She said the time would come when she had to give back to you that which she took….I assume she means those. Not just yours, but Colton’s too. ” He falters, his voice trembling, wringing his hands in nervousness and I jump up and stalk passed him to push my hands against the glass. My head torn with the addition of even more to this story.
Colton has other gifts too. Bound? And me….is she the reason I can’t seem to grasp my own gifts and gain any control, because I am always fighting some kind of spell that keeps them dormant? How is that helpful? Especially now when she’s like a corpse sleeping through the years and can’t do anything to physically help.
My body is aching to turn and trying to evert to wolf stance but this damn building is strong and keeping it in check, no matter how hard it wails and howls within me. I bang the glass, the torture of it getting too much and watch the shudder travelling from palm and spreading out the full expanse of the invisible wall. It does nothing to ease the inner war.
“Bound my gifts? My memories? How could she…that’s impossible. I have gifts, I’m learning but they are there, no tied down completely. Colton…he has his gifts too and he’s more than capable of using them. His alpha strength and speed, his dominance. He can command with a tone. It can’t be true… no one has ever documented a witch binding a wolves natural gifts.” It’s a rebuff of what he is saying as I mentally try and dismiss them as lies, focused fully on her and willing her to get up and tell me this herself. Lying there like a weak powerless fool who let her mate destroy everything in our lives.
Get up Sierra….Get the fuck up!!
It’s anger at her, but it’s born of fear, churning up to douse the inferno of molten rage. That all of this is too much and bigger than me. I don’t want this burden of weight or this story to be mine. I want to go back to the mountain, to the home and just disappear back into the shadows and be a girl that no one noticed again. I was safe and ignorant and it didn’t hurt like this.
It wasn’t some precipice of danger and had me teetering on the edge and looking down into the abyss, knowing I am never going to be safe or okay ever again. It’s all too much and I am only a child. Eighteen, barely grown. I don’t want this!!
“No, my dear… Colton will carry the gifts of his mother too, our research has proven time and again that hybrids have a mixture, every time…just like you. His non wolf side is in there but bound up tight. And you, you are not capable of harnessing your full potential if she has bound you. The gifts are maybe strong enough to peek at times, but she was a capable witch. I don’t doubt her spells serve the purpose she intended. Her spells brought her a child when her body kept failing to carry Juan’s seed. If she can overcome that…then she can bind a child in protection until she is ready to release you.” He almost whispers it; such is his fear of me, of being heard telling me, of these people, of Juan, and I glance his way to find him almost pressed into the corner and watching me in wide eyed apprehension. He too knows that there is no coming back from this now that he has opened Pandora’s box.
“Then how do I get her to do that if she is over there sleeping her life away?” I fix him with a stare, sniffing back watery tears I hadn’t noticed were pouring down my cheeks, my heart numbing out and my mind moving into a state of shock once more. Calming me but making that sense of hopelessness grow.
“I don’t know. This facility has a guard count of nineteen and even though none of you can use your gifts within, I am sure you will be no match to nineteen strong men….even if you are somewhat terrifying when mad.” It’s a half nervous laugh, as he tries to lighten the tension, that dies on his lips as I continue to stare at him and lower my hands from the glass as I try to pull my breathing to something less erratic and self soothe, wiping my face with the back of my hands to pull myself together.
“You need to let me out….I need to go find that son of a bitch and show him what my mother failed to…You don’t mess with my family!! I can’t stay here…I can’t be here when he comes now.” I snarl again, a spike of returning anger, knowing my emotions are clouding my judgement and all over the place but I don’t care. I was just told that everything I was led to believe my entire childhood was a lie and that my bloodline was never diluted and weak…my mother was a prophesised warrior destined to lead her people. And Juan killed her.
He killed all of them. Every single person I loved, cared for and knew as my pack. A clan of fifty Whyte wolves. To silence us.
That snivelling slimy power mad freak slayed them all, and he’s going to rue the day he chose to leave me alive. Now it all makes sense though…why I was thrown with the other orphans and shunned as a whole. That was our punishment for him being unable to get at me in the way he wanted. That was how he figured he could keep me down and separate from the people so I would never have any chance of rising and leading them against him. And if I did, he could put it down to my being hateful and holding a grudge for ten years as an outcast and nothing more than an impures taste for revenge at her own failings.
So clever.
He made sure I was alone and didn’t care if he smeared a whole bunch of innocents in the process. None of the rejects deserved to be thrown out there with me, there were just a cover to enhance and make his lies stronger. Convincing the packs that our fallen heroes were cursed blood and to further conceal his actions against my people. No one was going to ask questions or defend us if their own alpha was telling them that we were the failed diluted lineage of weak wolves.
He’s deluded and cruel and so consumed with his own need to rule that we were all just pawns and had no real value. He’s no alpha. He doesn’t care about the people and he never did. He just wants to rule them.
It must have completely enraged him to near madness when the fates imprinted me on his son, despite all his measures and precautions of his multi-level plan and it’s all falling into place. He knew Colton wasn’t loaded with a useless Luna…he was afraid that in a position of being absorbed into the pack and as future Luna to my alpha mate I would still find a way to rise and dethrone everything he has worked for. Juan was afraid that much like my mother, I would outshine him and tear his own power from under his feet, with very little effort at all.
Colton was my way in and he did what he does to that boy to stop him from ever finding his own strength. He manipulated him emotionally, he used Colton’s devotion, loyalty to his father and his own compassion and love for his people’s needs to get in his head. The fact he tore his mother away from him has always kept him to heel and lingers in the back of Colton’s mind always. He was afraid I would leave our people alone like she did, leave him alone when he still needed me. He was afraid I wouldn’t be strong enough, that he wouldn’t be to keep me safe and he couldn’t just accept the fates decision.
Colton was protecting me, believing the lies and the manipulation same as everyone else and seeing no other way. He’s young, unsure about his own worth and power and he listened to someone that is meant to guide him for the best. His faith in his father’s intentions are not a flaw, just naivety that comes from a good soul. My heart breaks at how angry I have been at him when seeing it from this angle makes so much sense. Colton is nothing like his father and what he doesn’t know, is his father has no intention of ever relinquishing his position to his son until death takes him.
I’m going to be the last thing Juan sees, no matter what it does to me in the process. I’ll get out of here and I WILL level the balance. I’ll kill that son of a bitch…even if Colton tries to stop me, because his own heart won’t be able to let someone destroy his father no matter what he did. I’m going to rip that mountain apart and shred any single wolf who knew or had a part in the demise of my bloodline. Even if Colton never forgives me.
“Dear girl, calm down and be smart about this. Your fates wouldn’t have brought you here to just leave again and go start a one-woman war. You came for Sierra….” The doctors words die on his lips as the beep of the elevator interrupts and He flashes a look that way, panic overtaking his expression as he jumps up and shoos me away from the glass at a pretty impressive speed for a human. It’s so rapid he makes me jump bac from the glass in reaction.
“Get on the bed and lay down. NOW!!” He snaps it at me, losing that feeble weak cower he had going on and I listen, despite my turbulent mood. His haste and urgency moving me.
I turn, take a few steps and jump on the bed just as the doors begin to make that whooshing opening noise of the elevator and approaching footsteps and he comes to me quickly, yanking up my arm as I lay down and pushing the stethoscope from his neck under the edge of my medical gown neckline.
“Hearts racing my dear, you really should practice counting to ten and deep relaxing breaths, that kind of anxiety is not good for the heart. You’re in a safe place, have no fears.” He’s facing me, his voice fakely joyful but his eyes dart to the side as someone approaches the glass and I try to focus all my attention on acting normal.
“I’ve been looking for you. You’re needed upstairs right now. Leave this mutt alone….you have an actual job to do. Some of your fresh samples have been delivered in ice boxes…I’m sure you don’t want to leave them to go bad.” It’s Deacon, my most favourite person in the whole wide world and with the pulsing rage I have going on, I tense and make to sit up, instincts taking over and ready to take him on more than ever, but the doctor slams his hand on my chest and aggressively flattens me down.
“Just a moment!” He grits it through his teeth wildly eyeballing me and mouthing the word NO. That scowling frown of a paternal tell off and he manages to keep me under control.
He gets a narrow-eyed snarl in response, but I obey and lay back down, out flat and watch as he moves out of my line of sight and exposes Deacon on the outside of the glass.
“Now! We haven’t got all day!” Deacon snaps at him, obviously not happy when the doctor questions his authority and I glare directly at the jerk, catching his eye and making a point of staring right though him. He just takes it, no expression and stares right back at me, not breaking contact at all.
“Of course. Miss Alora, please eat and dress as it will make you far more comfortable and ready for my returning to continue our tests. We have so much still left to do.” The doctor throws me an odd look and I glance his way for a second, impulsively nodding before he turns and starts to head out, leaving me with a strong sense that was a hint.
I watch him walk out and as he gets to the door he turns and nods at the trolley and the bag as though reconfirming it and I frown, unsure what he intends to do but obedience seems like a good idea.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
