I could hear the sounds of their jaws ripping into some flesh and I gripped my mother harder, pushing against her skin.
“Mum, I'm scared. Please. Are we safe?”My boyfriend, Liam, was at my side, and he gave me a quick squeeze, shaking his head. My mother went quiet, and I stalled my breathing, hoping that if we breathed quieter, we wouldn't be found. It was wishful thinking, and I guess that somewhere deep down, I knew it, but it wasn't till we heard wood splintering before I realized.
I said a prayer to the moon goddess, hoping that I had heard wrong, but my boyfriend tore open the back door and crawled into the rainy darkness.
“Babe. Please, Let's go. Once you're out, we'll get your mum and dad, we need to get to the bunker. We'll be safe. You heard the distress signal, didn't you? We need to get up.”“Olivia. Please listen to him. The longer we are here, the faster they will find us. They will hurt you. I love you too much to let you stay here. Leave right now.”
I could hear the wolves tearing through our belongings, and I agreed, turning to Liam.
“Okay, okay. I'll come now. When I'm out, you'll get mum and dad, right?”“Right,” responded Liam, helping me out of the house.As though my bones knew I didn't want to leave my parents, they creaked, and I bit on my lower lip to stop myself from crying out. Soon, I was out, and I held out my hand to my mum.
“Mum?.”“I'm sorry, Olivia. The house has fallen against us, we can't move.”Confused, I turned my head around, tears already pooling in my eyes.
“What do you mean you can't move? No! Mum, no!” I turned to Liam, the only sane one in all this, and I asked a question I already knew the answer to. “Can we go back in? I'll go in alone if I have to. Please, Liam!”Just as I asked that, my mother turned to me and began to yell even as the wolves devoured my father's body. “Olivia, leave! Immediately! Liam please, get her out of here! Please!”
I listened as she scream even when Liam pulled me away from her body, amidst my protests. Half of the town was running to the old underground bunker, little kids, parents and all. While I could see that, I couldn't remember what had led to a rush so great. I tried to think back to last week, when we had seen a wounded wolf and stopped to help him. He had asked one of the members of the royal guard to behead him.
He was so sick, that man. I remembered it like it was yesterday. He was so close to death that killing him was a mercy, a kindness, so he didn't suffer.
We had been warned earlier today, but we had dismissed it as some of Jared's paranoia. How foolish we had been.Jared and I were among the last of the townspeople to come into the bunker, and I picked up one of the torches that were strung along the wall, so I could see ahead of me.
The first thing I saw was that all of us in the bunker were younger, able bodied. A few older people had made it, and a few entire families. Otherwise though, it seemed as though the White Water pack had just been attacked into extinction.
It rained as though the moon goddess herself was angry, enraged with us, and even from the many feet below the earth in the bunker, we could almost feel the direct hits from the rain.I felt Liam's hand slip away from my waist and I swiveled around immediately to look for him, needing the familiar pressure of his hand against my waist. For a minute, my fear seemed to have brought the wolf into the bunker, and I panicked.
He was just saying hello to the little children, reassuring them of the safety here in the bunker.I wished that someone would do that. Show up at my front, tell me it would be okay. But that was my job right now, for others. I needed to tell the little kids that they would be okay. I joined Liam to execute his task, handing out warm blankets to everyone who wanted them, so they could at least be covered in all of this mess.
Someone began to howl a mourning song, and it became a symphony, all of us who had just lost someone to the attack howling the song until it grew to a crescendo.
It was a song all of us knew - all of us had dealt with losses before - and even the little kids joined in to sing it, although some had no idea what was going on.
It didn't seem real. The rain continued to pelt the cover and the room got colder and colder, people snuggling into blankets here and there, but it didn't seem real. I waited for my mother to show up. The strong dependable one, to drop in and hold me to her chest, tell me it would be okay. But she wasn't here, and she wasn't ever going to be here again.
How did we come to this? I was at dinner, having a pre-birthday feast. I’ll be turning 18 tomorrow, but right in that instant, I already felt like I was 100 years old and I could not live anymore.
I finally let myself crouch to the ground, leaving Liam and the remaining adults to take care of the rest. I was not of any use to anyone in this state, honestly.
Liam saw me on the floor and came to me with two blankets, wrapping one around my feet and then pulling the other around my body. He sat down on the paneled wood floor beside me, and he hugged me, letting me sob into him.
The night remained long, and I sat there with Liam, unable to shut my eyes, unable to fall asleep. The realization hit me hard as I was drifting to sleep. This was all I had left now. Him, Liam, our bond. I was an only child, and I had just lost the only people who could give me a sibling that would have felt right.
I slept pitifully and woke up to a gentle tap against my shoulder. It was finally safe to leave, and Liam offered me a hand and a weak smile. “Happy birthday, Olivia.”
Throughout my birthday, and the three weeks that followed, the pack and I worked to clean up our home. It was our tradition to cremate the bodies of our kin when they died to give them an easy passage to the afterlife, and so we spent that day gathering up their bodies and bathing them, so they could be wrapped respectfully in cloth. I had helped to pick up the bodies of every other family, but I just couldn't do it for mine. I couldn't look at my father, or what was left of him, and even worse, I couldn't deal with the idea that my mother, who had hugged me, and held me, and loved me so powerfully to her last breath was dead. Liam was my strong tower in all of it. He helped me carry out my duties, picking up broken up floorboards, picking off wood from the floors on the homes we visited, and having my back, throughout. When I fell ill from the sheer stress and exhaustion, he didn't force me to be strong, or tell me any of the motivational bullshit that everyone was used to feeding
It was the morning of his 21st birthday when my entire world fell apart. I had stayed up all night to wish Liam a happy birthday. I had baked a cake at a neighbor's house to surprise him, and I had also called a few of our friends in the pack together to wish him a happy birthday. At 7 in the morning, I had gotten everyone over for the big surprise, and they had all came out. They came in with handmade birthday cards, the little kids all gave him hugs and gifts, things that warmed my heart. Everything was going well, and everyone dispersed for the day, and I said thank you by the door, thanking everyone for their time and their love.He had some business in our newly constructed town hall, so I waved him off for the day, remembering that the second surprise would be happening there, and I would be heading the crew to crown him as our Alpha. I worked along with everyone else and after dressing the little kids up, I went ahead to take a shower and prepare myself for his party, so I lo
The next day, a meeting was called at the pack hall, made mandatory for all the pack members to attend, and even though I had just lost my partner, I knew that Alpha Liam deserved the title, and the respect. I made the deliberate effort to arrive there early, avoiding the glances of everyone by wearing a black dress and a black hoodie. A few people saw me, but they understood that I needed time to myself, and they let me be, going ahead to get seats in front. I sat at the back and kept my head down, feeling it in my heart the moment that Liam walked up the aisle with Anne trailing behind him. I bit my tongue to avoid a sob choking out of my throat, and I slid down even lower in the seat when they arrived at the front. This was his first official address as the Alpha, so I got up and applauded with everyone else when he arrived at his place on the podium. I sat down as quickly as I could, and he walked forward to address all of us. I looked at his face, the man that had become my wh
I looked at him with a cocked brow, marveling at how lovely his name was. “Nice to me-”“And my name, ” interrupted the other brother with a cocked brow, “Is Asher, and we are the Alphas of the Blue Blood pack.”“Nice to meet you,” I smiled, beaming at them. “You guys have really cool names!”“Well, thank you,” continued Dante, getting up to move closer to me. “So, about those directions you were going to give us… ”“We are heading back to the Blue Blood pack after a long trip down south. Our compass broke, and now neither of us knows the way to get back home.”“Oh.. I've never heard of the Blue Blood pack,” I explained, “but if you remember any landmarks, I should be able to direct you to them.”“Give us a minute to think,” they said, so I turned away from them and piled rocks to form a circle, picking up some lint so I could start a fire. It couldn't be safe to keep moving the dark, especially since I had no true destination and was simply heading north, in the direction of the sun.
It had been thirty minutes more on the road, and I was already tired. The trails were bushy because they had not been walked through in quite some time, and to make matters worse, it had been rainy a few weeks prior, and coupled with the current sunlight, they were growing quite well. Dante had fallen back, tending to the horse, but Asher stuck to me like glue, getting so close that I could feel his breath down my neck. I shut my eyes to it and refused to feel the sensation, but at a point, I got exasperated and turned to face him, smirking in satisfaction as my braided hair whipped around with me and slapped his face. “Look, what is it? You already said we're going the same way. We agreed that I would lead the way. We're already in so much agreement, so why the hell are you breathing down my neck?”“No, I-”“Listen to me,” I continued, holding up my hand, “there is such a thing as personal space, and you are going to have to respect mine. I want to be able to turn around with my br
Chapter 7They continued the journey on their feet, worried about the horses and how they would deal with the stress of a gallop after the wild one they had just been on. Dante immediately agreed, his affection for his horse trumping anything else. Asher on the other hand did not want to walk, and he told me as much. “Look, our pack is still at least two hours away, and it's an even longer journey when we are walking. I really don't want to do this.”He had stopped in the middle of the path, and instead of dignifying his outburst with an answer, I walked past him, noting that Dante and the two horses had done the exact same thing. Sighing, he turned around to walk with us, pausing at the trunk of a very wide tree. It had some mangoes on it, ripe and heavy, and I stopped abruptly too. As though my stomach recognized the fruit, it growled, and I blushed. “So you're hungry too? I thought we were just going to keep walking for hours on end and then hope for the best?”“In what world do
More of the guards trooped out, six of them in number, advancing towards me. Afraid, I went to stand behind the horses, moving away from the tips of the spears. Instead of moving away like I had hoped, the guards came after me, pushing Dante and Asher away from me.“Alpha Dante. Alpha Asher, please move away from the intruder. We will keep you safe.”Dante turned around to try to explain, and instead fell on his injured foot, which had now swollen up to almost twice its size. Asher looked between me and Dante who was on the floor and decided to help Dante, taking so much time that the guards have the time to grab me and push me into an uncomfortable position. It hurts, but I bite my tongue to keep myself from yelling.It is not the right time to play hero, not the right time to fight, so I do as I am told, folding my knees up under me and spreading my arms wide out. One guard walks over to me, a woman, and she begins to pat me down, pulling my knapsack off my back.A few minutes that
As he shut the door behind him, I set my bag onto the bed, a queen sized one with tall bedposts. The room also had a few chairs and furniture, with green notes. Two lamps sat on either one of my bedside tables, and excited, I ran over to the wall to turn on the lights, enthralled to see that there was a chandelier in the room. I quickly turned it off and walked over to the verandah, which was covered by a wall sized window, which was perfect for looking out. I wondered if there was a curtain I could draw up to shield me from the sub jr it eventually shone through.On further exploration, I found that there was a hidden closet, painted to look just like the green walls of the room. I opened it to find clothes hangers, and I decided that when I was truly settled in and had a job to help me to pay for them, I would be getting myself enough clothes to fill them up. I came out and noticed the little nook to the corner, perfect, even down to the selection of books. I was worried about Dan