Words of Betrayal
My eyes flutter open, and I feel a little disoriented. Silence meets me as I slowly pick myself off the floor. I look around to see the small room, which was completely bare of anything. It was so dark in here that I could barely make out the moonlight that was desperately trying to seep through the cracks of the flooring above me.
Memories flood back like a tidal wave. My heart hammering into my chest, I go still and listen intently to my surroundings. Not a sound could be heard. With trembling hands, I climb the little wooden stairs and as gently as I could, I open the trapdoor inside the wardrobe.
I push my mother’s hanging clothes to the side, climbing up and out of that hole that was starting to suffocate me. The sound of my pounding heart reverberated in my ears, making any other sound difficult to hear. I was terrified of what I was going to find just beyond these doors.
Pushing gently, the creaks echoing in the room, making me flinch in fear. I was so afraid of being caught that just the slightest movement had me on edge. I carefully get myself out of the wardrobe and took a look around me.
The room was a mess.
The mattress was torn and pushed slightly off the frame. The drapes around the fourposter bed were ripped and hanging in pieces. My mother’s everyday routine products were scattered across the dresser and the floor, the mirror on top shattered. The moonlight poured into the room, giving it a foreboding atmosphere.
I jump when I heard a crackle of wood bursting just outside. The glow of red and orange in the distance made me feel an uneasiness that was creeping into my body. I didn’t hear any screams, I didn’t hear anything at all, other than the fire burning away.
I step backwards when I step on something that nearly made me fall on my hands and knees. I caught myself on the dresser before that could happen, but what I saw just on the other side left my blood cold with dread.
With wide eyes, tears sprang to my lids. “M-Mom?”
She laid there, unmoving. I didn’t comprehend the blood or the fact that her eyes were staring wide open at the ceiling. All I could think was too wake her up. “Mom! Mom, please, you have to get up! We have to find dad and get out of here!”
I start shaking her, but she wasn’t budging at all. Sobs shake my entire being as the rational part of my brain was finally catching up with me. I didn’t want to admit that my mother was dead. That she was lying here lifeless and that she will never wake up again.
Leaning over her still body I let the grief overtake me. I’m not sure how long I lay on top of her just crying, but the tears finally slow down. The silence finally gets to me as I realized that I couldn’t hear a single person at all. Clumsily getting up I walk to the broken window and peer down below.
The place was a disaster. Houses were burning, bodies were scattered everywhere, not moving at all. Cars were collided with other cars or rammed through buildings, windows were broken, carts pushed on their sides that held fresh food and fabric that were just thrown all over the place. Breathing heavily, I look around to see absolutely no one that was alive. Were they hiding? Maybe they were able to escape through the forest.
I needed to find my father the Alpha of Night Stone pack.
Turning back around I head back to my mother, taking a blanket that was tossed aside, I gently cover her body. I close her eyes to make her look as if she was only sleeping. Before I cover her face, I feel my lips quiver in heart wrenching pain.
“I-I l-love you so much. I promise mama, that I will treasure what you have done for me, and I won’t forget.” Leaning down I kiss her forehead. “I won’t forget.” I whisper, then cover her face.
The thing about an empty silent house is that everything creaks louder than usual. Every time I open a door the sound was magnified ten times than normal. My emotions were so sensitive that I was completely on edge and every little sound made me jump out of my skin.
The mansion was also destroyed, but unlike most of the house outside, it wasn’t set on fire. Just ransacked and trashed beyond repair. I quickly head down the stairs and faced the front doors that were left wide open. There were bodies in the foyer and on the spacious porch that led to the grounds.
Remembering Myron, I quickly search through the bodies until I finally found him. I cover my mouth in a silent scream as more than half of his body was missing. Blood soaked his hair and face, and I could no longer look anymore. I scramble out of the house and came straight outside. The air was chilly as the dead of winter had set in. The packed snow that before was pure white, was now mixed with mud and blood.
Everybody I came across was mauled and mutilated in some way or another. No one was left alive, and I was beginning to feel more desperate and scared. Not a single one was my father, however.
I was only in my pajamas, and the cold was making my limbs feel even more numb than they have before. I keep walking through the town until I finally come to the front gates that also stood wide open. There was a mound of bodies just in front, making my head spin and my heart ache seeing the emblem on the jackets, stating they were the Sentinels of our pack.
I run as fast as I could to the bodies and begin searching each of their faces for my father. After exhausting moments of lifting dead weight and searching repeatedly, I finally come across him. Like my mother, his eyes were wide open staring into the night sky with his throat ripped out.
I clutch his shirt front in a death grip, staring at him with complete disbelief. I couldn’t understand this situation. How was it my brave, loving, powerful father, the best Alpha there ever was, to be dead?
This couldn’t be right. This wasn’t right. He can’t just be dead, he can’t. He was to show me the way of the wolf when she finally presented herself to me. He promised that we were to shift and roam our lands together for my first time. He promised to give me lessons on each packs responsibilities and how to take care of those I will one day protect. To watch me fall in love, to walk me down the aisle and raise a family of my own, where he could retire and play with his grandchildren.
How was he supposed to do all that if he just leaves me here all alone? What was I supposed to do now? How could he leave me alone like this?
The grief was too much. I had just lost both of my parents in a gruesome act. Not just them, but everyone that I knew was gone. Calvin, my father’s Beta, laid just a few yards away looking no better than the others that fought and died to protect their home.
After long moments of crying uncontrollably I was finally able to calm down. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. How was I able to live all alone without any of my pack members? Depression was staring to set in. I didn’t want to move as I just sat there next to my father in the midst of all these dead corpses that were both my people and the rogue invaders.
I don’t know how long I did sit there for, but after a few more moments I heard distant voices. My heart beginning to race I wasn’t sure if they were friend or foe, so I pick myself up quietly and head in the direction the voices were coming from.
At first they were talking in calm low tones, until one of them got louder in anger. I stop where I was, just around the corner of a building where they couldn’t see me.
“We can’t just leave! The girl hasn’t been found yet!”
“We’ve been here long enough. If we stay any longer other nearby packs will see the fire and smoke and will want to investigate. I don’t want to be here when they decide to show up. We are leaving.”
A man I have never seen before barks out, looking highly annoyed. I stare in disbelief at my uncle, the man who had first spoke. Well, he was my mother’s stepbrother. I didn’t understand what they were talking about and why he was standing there seeming to be completely calm about what had just happened to our home.
“If we don’t find her and make sure she’s dead, it will come and bite us in the ass one day! I can’t have her live!”
“Your niece is no threat to us, Marcus. She’s a little girl who just lost her entire family. Do you honestly think she’ll be able to come after us? Besides, she doesn’t even know it was you who has betrayed your own family and murdered your own brother-in-law and sister.”
“Stepsister!” He growls in hate. “I don’t care; she needs to be dead!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What was he saying? Betrayed my family? He murdered my parents? But…why?! Why would he do such a thing? For what purpose? My heart was pounding erratically, my breathing becoming shallow as mounds of thoughts rushed through me, trying desperately to comprehend what was going on around me.
“If you value my sister, who is unfortunately your mate, and wish to be with her then we leave now.” The stranger growls back angrily.
I stiffen at his words. What? His sister? Mate? What was that supposed to mean? All this was just so he could be with his mate?
Placing my hand over my mouth as tears kept falling at this bizarre conversation. I step back and accidentally hit something behind me that causes a loud clash. Gasping aloud I hear the two men heading my way. Quickly retreating back the way I had come from I collide with two large men that emerges from a nearby house, their arms full of possessions.
I stumble backwards and nearly fall on my behind when one of them say,
“Well, well, well. Look what we have here.”
My body freezes in the way his tone screamed with glee. My body starts to shake as I take a couple of steps back from them.
“We got ourselves a real beauty here. Hey sweetheart, you look a little cold. How about I come over there and warm you up.” He grins at me showing rotten teeth.
The other man shoves him a little with a growl. “I get her first, you had the last one all to yourself. By the time you were done she was too destroyed for me to enjoy myself.”
My eyes widen at the implication of what these two were planning to do to me. Before either of them could stop talking to the other and just as my uncle and that strange man rounds the corner, I sprint as fast as I possibly could straight into the forest. Hoping against hope that I would be able to lose them there.