C6 Vanka

I wake up groaning, spitting blood and phlegm and scramble to get off the floor in the pitch black of my room. The hot fluid running down the sides of my face tell me my ears are bleeding, my heads aching like it just got stomped repeatedly, and I’m so dizzy I can’t seem to focus on anything. The air is deathly cold, and I scrape my hands around the dusty wooden floor to get my bearings. I’ve no idea what’s happened, why there’s no light anymore, or why I’m so messed up, dazed, and confused and my body aches badly.

The air is filled with noises so terrifying I freeze in utter fear as they filter through and I pick them apart, stilled as I listen and try to make sense of what they are. My heart grippe din icy terror.

Screaming…. howling. Wails of despair, and sobbing. Something else too, a weird almost chatter like taunting noise, that I swear is exactly how I would imagine the devil would sound laughing. It sends the fear of god through me and I shudder violently, pulling myself up to huddle on my ass, aware I can move again if a little slowly with great effort. My limbs are insanely heavy and I’m hazy and not all the way here.

The air is filled with a metallic stench, so intense it makes me gag, completely vile in its density and although I have no idea what’s going on, my internal instincts are warning me to be very, very afraid. I shiver and curl up into a ball, trying to be small as childhood instincts take over, swallowing down the urge to cry and struggle to not gasp as much, because it’s making me lightheaded. I screw up my eyes to get them to adjust to the pitch blackness faster to make out all the forms and shapes of my room. My sight adjusting quickly and letting me see some of my surroundings.

There’s a sudden thud, thud, thud, that piques my attention like a sixth sense and echoes my way softly, my stomach turning with fear induced nausea as I zone into it. I hold my breath and freeze, as still as a statue, as I tune in, trying to focus all my effort on what it is. It’s less imposing than the rest of the noises, sort of dull, and heavy, and foreboding, but it’s slicing through and pulling my painful hearing it’s way, demanding attention. Getting closer, I can feel it, almost like each thud syncs with my heartbeat and my pain drops to my stomach with every bang of its intimidating noise. I tremble inside with extreme terror, knowing that it’s coming my way.

The overwhelming stench of something familiar begins wafting my way as I focus my energy and it distracts me from listening. I know the smell, it’s not metallic it’s a scent. A wolf scent, familiar … someone I know.

I don’t know what’s happening, but instinct makes me push back, despite the world tilting and swaying around me and I slide backwards under the nearest bed. Scrambling flat again and using my palms and all the strength I can muster to force myself into the shadows of my only protection. I inhale sharply and that scent forms a picture in my mind of the face it belongs to, so clear, now it’s almost upon me.

It’s Vanka’s. It’s her smell, her scent. Strong as though she’s afraid, or in wolf form. I don’t know.

I claw and pull myself under, breaking nails in the painful process as I scramble in panic. Something telling me to hide. Until I’m concealed by the sheets she leaves hanging over with her refusal to make her bed, and for once, I’m glad of their untidiness. Thankful her bed is always a mess, leaving chaos around it which now conceals me, and I curl into my own body to fit in one corner. I peer out, gut telling me that I should be quiet and stay hidden. I hold my breath and cover my mouth with my own hand as tears begin to fall quietly down my cheeks. Fear trying to consume me, making me shake so badly I’m sure it’ll give me away.

My door is still open, and as I start to become accustomed to the dark, my nocturnal eyes coming out to play for the first time since my turning, I make out something passing by the open space and inhale quickly to quiet myself into stillness. Heart bursting through my chest, pounding my ribs erratically as tears drench my hand and wrist.

Something tall and dark swaggers by in the space out there, imposing, and blurry as I adjust, but it pauses and stops, right outside. Almost like it senses me and I recoil some more, trying to make myself as small as I can. I’m so scared. It turns slowly to peer my way, everything in me turns to ice as a terrified feint drains me of all blood. I close my eyes, screw them shut tight and clench my fists in a bid to become completely cut off and invisible as best I can. Praying to the fates that they don’t see me. Whatever it is, I know it’s not a friend. It’s not one of us.

“Here puppy, puppy… where are you hiding? I know there’s at least one more up here….” The bloodcurdling words make me scrunch my face up to combat hysterical tears, the voice alien to me, almost satanic, low, and husky, with a heavy accent in the depths. Foreign, yet I don’t know what. I don’t know this voice.

The scent is nothing that I ‘ve ever encountered before and dampening over the one I vaguely recognize. It’s not Vanka but I can smell her close which only confuses my fear addled brain. The sadistic laugh that follows his bold verbal’s, turn my insides to mush, and I physically weaken with a cold wave as whatever or whoever it is, steps inside the room with me.

“I can hear your heart beating little one……. Bumpity, bumpity, bump, bump, bump. You’re scared…. Why don’t you come out and play, like your friends are doing? I want to play with you too….” He laughs again, a sound that curls my toes and sends shivers across my scalp and down my spine, so that I shudder uncontrollably. The sound of someone truly deranged, and evil, and I almost lose control and freak out. Tightening myself stiff and holding my breath to keep myself together.

I cover my mouth again, tighter, as the urge to break into a sobbing cry hits me harder and I shake, holding my breath and praying to god he leaves me alone. I don’t know who he is, and I’m so disoriented, the smell overpowering my senses, that I ‘m trying hard not to gag while keeping my focus on this stranger. I can taste something foul in the air, hitting my tongue, invading my lungs, awful and cloying. So metallic and potent that it makes my eyes sting and water with its toxicity.

He’s not one of us. I don’t know what he is, but his intentions aren’t good. I can almost taste his desire for blood, and it renders me completely useless. Frozen and afraid. He ventures in further from the doorway, dragging something heavy along behind him that identifies the thud, thud, I heard coming my way.

I choke on instant bile as it rises up my throat and almost suffocates me in the process. My heart near imploding as my body convulses at the sight of the lifeless and headless body, he’s dragging behind him. Gagging on my own vomit, I can’t block out her scent…. Panic, hysteria, and the crumbling of my mental state as I identify what and who he has with him. There is no mistaking who has fallen foul to whatever this is, I can’t unsee or blot it out no matter how much I try and turn away, wash it out of my eyes and mind with snottery tears.

It’s Vanka. She’s dead! She’s right there, feet in front of me, dragged by this monster and being used as a toy for his sick twisted game.

“I know where you are, Puppy. Why don’t you come out and do me a favor…. I don’t want to have to drag you out from under there. It’s not fun if I have to do that.” There’s a sneer of venomous hatred in his voice, and I imagine the way his face curls into a sadistic grin, glaring my way through the darkness. Enjoying every moment of this.

He drops her lifeless form on the floor fully, with a dull thud of weight, her body splaying her arms out in a star shape and I recoil, tears blurring my vision as I try and get as small as I can back here. Whimpering internally.

I don’t know what to do, I’m terrified, and if Vanka was no match for this thing, then I’m not either. I don’t know how to fight; I’ve never had to. I’m not a warrior or even aggressive. I’m a nothing, a reject from a farmer’s family who is worth nothing to no one.

I bite on my lip, fear paralyzing me, when suddenly, the entire bed is ripped from above me, the gust of the action throwing my hair around my face and he sends it crashing into the other wall effortlessly, displaying strength much like ours. I gasp and react with a shuddering splaying of arms, over my head defensively as it flies and lands over on top of mine, dramatically. The crashing, splintering noise of a wooden bed crumbling and shattering into chaos. I’m left exposed, fully accessible, prey huddled for the taking. In the smallest of corners. He comes at me, with a flash of speed, that I see coming as if in slow motion, and I gasp in horror, choking up and immobile for a second.

Move, Alora…move! Some strong inner voice hits me as I chant to myself, trying so hard to make my body work with me, to command it somehow, but nothing is happening. It’s like my brain is on slow motion, and my limbs are in hibernation. I shake my head, try to dislodge this overwhelming dizziness, and focus on doing something. Anything….

It’s dark, it’s eerily still, and it’s like time has slowed so his movements are almost paused, as instinct takes over, finally. Blood rushing and pumping at speed as he scrapes a step closer to me.

In a flash equal to his speed, if not more, I bolt from my flat-out position with a renewed lease of energy from god knows where and aim for the door. Adrenaline spiking, survival instinct kicking in and praying I turn without even knowing how to. Even though I’m stronger and faster like this in human form since turning, our wolves are way more so. I need to turn, to survive and to heal, to fight. We only heal fast when in form. We only have abilities of extreme strength, ferocious aggression and razor-sharp claws and teeth, when we turn.

I don’t get far, because he catches me by the back of my hair effortlessly, snares and tugs it, and throws me backwards as though I’m a limp rag. Smashing me into the vanity with force, sending me crashing through mirror and splintering wood into a heap on the floor, as heavy objects tumble on top of me. Pain slicing at my body as I convulse at the assault and am rendered mute with the wind being knocked out of me. Completely defenseless, weak and no match.

I submit to the pain, as I feel every single one of those slicing shards pierce my skin, writhing in agony and bleeding out. I scream out loud. A blood curling wail of agony as I’m inflicted with a thousand tears and cuts and the bone crunching, splintering, of my body snapping.

Adrenalin takes over, despite my body vibrating with the sheer effort and I get up, grinding my teeth, against the crunching of broken bone and dull burning ache, clawing the walls in a bid to get purchase. My hands start changing before me and relief washes over my mind at evidence of my beginning to turn. This is what I need, but it’s not fast enough, or not progressing, and he has me from behind, around my throat in an effortless maneuver before it takes effect. He throws me and sends me flying forward with a thrust, straight through the window of our third-floor bedroom with another flinching of unavoidable stabbing agony.

If I thought hitting furniture was painful, then the slicing assault of a thousand glass shards breaking on your already torn and bleeding skin, as you fly through at speed, is so much worse. There’s a moment of silent still as I hit air and my body changes direction, weightless for a second. A moment of ease before realization sinks in that I’m three floors up and my stomach lurches as gravity takes hold and yanks me downwards.

I hit the ground below with a stomach-churning thud, at crazy speed, that reverberates through my every cell and pore and knocks life out of me as it shatters any unbroken pieces I may have left. It’s so beyond painful, it almost doesn’t hurt at all for a second, stunned, until my lungs try to stir, to recover, and I start choking on my own blood and bile. Gasping for breath, body convulsing as I try to move, but I’m bleeding out profusely that the ground around me is turning dark with the evidence.

Slashed all over, from breaking through the glass, and shattered from my fall. I’m broken all over and can literally feel my life flowing away from me, as I become woozy and useless. More so than I was. I’m dying … I know it, I can feel it, and try as I might to cling on. I just can’t. I lie here like a useless piece of discarded nothing, unable to move in any way, as my body fights for dregs of energy and consciousness.

The kind of pain my turning inflicted, is the only way to describe how this feels and try as I might I don’t know how to finish transforming. If I don’t, I’ll die for sure…we can’t heal the way we can as wolves and I’m critical. Something keeping me weak enough that turning isn’t happening, no matter how desperate my instincts, and the self-preservation function of my kind, seems absent. We’re meant to turn without thought when we’re seriously messed up. To save ourselves. It’s so typical that I can’t even get that right.

I can feel my human body giving up on me. I’m losing so much blood the grass around me is soaking parts of my clothes that weren’t wet before, and the metallic stench of my own essence is dowsing out everything else. I claw the grass around my hands, which are splayed out as I’m on my stomach, and pull myself forward painfully. Refusing to just give up completely. Trying so hard to fight this and sobbing out loud with each wincing attempt.

So slowly, painfully so, that I make little progress, only to shudder when a ground shaking thud beside each side of my head signals the landing of two feet. The impending fate, falling over me like a heavy dark cloud, and I know this is futile. He jumped from the window above, and yet landed perfectly by me, in human form. This is no wolf. This is one of them …. coming back to end what they lost so many years ago.

Standing over me, bearing down, he grabs me by the back of my neck and digs nails into my skin. Long piercing claw like talons that bite with scorching pain and he drags me partially upright to hoarsely snarl in my ear. My body flinching with the agony of being moved. I reach back, pathetically, grip his hands on my flesh, the cold icy and clammy skin that’s alien to anything I’ve ever felt before and I know what this is for certain…. we heard stories…. The ice-cold vile touch of the skin of the undead. This lifeless cold monster’s a vampire. They’ve returned.

“Too easy. Call yourselves warriors. You’re all dropping like putrid flies and one snap, it’s all over for you, puppy. I’m rather enjoying dragging it out though… why don’t you go on and beg like your little friends did. Whine and cry some, make it worth my while.” His icy cold stinking breath, fans my cheek and chokes me to quiet submission and I wretch, losing consciousness despite my fight. I have nothing. My powers fail me, my words dead on my lips as I gasp for air my lungs can’t seem to take in anymore and I choke on my own bodily fluids.

I can’t turn and I’ve no idea why. I’m as weak and powerless as Juan said I was…. because of me, Colton will perish tonight too. He’ll feel this pain, he’ll know I’m suffering and as soon as my heart stops, his will too. I failed to keep my mate safe, by failing to save myself and I don’t deserve his love, his bond.

I’m sorry, my love. You were right. I’m no warrior.

I doubt he’ll even hear me, as along with my ability to turn, my mind link is silent and has been since I lost him upstairs. I close my eyes, trying hard to connect to him, to feel him inside my head one last time, but there is only deathly silence in the recess of my brain as fingers encircle my throat and I wait for the inevitable squeeze to end it all.

My blurry vision focuses in front of me, straining across the lawn in a last-ditch attempt to see the world I’m leaving behind. As he begins to choke the air out of my body, slowly, enjoying the power, savoring it, smug about the lack of my fight because I have nothing left. Truly sick.

My eyes settle on the chaos laid before me, and my heart implodes with what I see, the devastation too much for me to really compute. Tears rolling down my face as sadness numbs out everything else. A quiet peace filling my senses as shock and reality hit, to shield me from the horror of what I’m witnessing.

There are bodies everywhere. The unwanteds, the guardians, side by side, no care as to whether one was important or not. There’s blood, debris, and the lifeless souls of my reject pack, strewn wherever the eye strays. Headless, maimed. Some torn to pieces, some just bleeding out from wounds across their throats and already dead. Dark fluid taints it all, blood in the shadows, stains everything as far as I can see. Chaos everywhere. It’s a massacre we never saw coming, and they hit the weakest in our kingdom, the ones who had no defenses. Most of us were just children, or teenagers, and we never stood a chance.

This is it for us. My story is finally over.

I close my eyes and accept fate, choking slowly, no longer panic strewn but accepting, as blood sours out my sense of taste and I gag and fumble at the grass beneath my palms. Hot and sticky with my own life essence. Struggling to breathe, heart giving in, unable to fight while my body is broken and shattered. Paused and waiting for the final snap to end this agony and suffering.

The sudden wrenching of the hands around my neck makes me spasm in response, so in tune with the final blow, but instead of a relief from this plane to the next, I’m set free. Dropped hastily so my face collides with the damp stinking grass and the taste of my own blood is rammed backward as I inhale it forcefully. My throat released, and the flash of air that wooshes by me turns my gaze to follow impulsively. Weakly following the path of whatever just flew by me.

A black flash of snarling fur, a huge beast in utter rage, taking down the form of the man that held me captive and I can tell it’s Colton as his scent follows on the wind. That instant inner completion only his presence can bring me, and a tiny ounce of my heart is restored. I slump my head down on my cheek to watch him, as I can’t do anything much else.

He’s ruthless, a true warrior, and one of the biggest of the pack as he towers at three times the size of my assaulter on his hind legs. Within seconds, without any obvious effort, or fight, he tears the man apart from limb to limb, no hesitation, as though merely pulling apart a piece of damp paper towel. Scattering him across the back wall in a vile dark red spray of body parts, with an almost explosion like drama.

Snarling, seething so his teeth glint in the moonlight devilishly and he turns viciously, before throwing its head across the courtyard, with enough force that it clears the wall completely. It’s an act of rage and fury, and he throws his own massive head back, letting the most terrifying, stomach churning howl, erupt from deep within his body, alerting his kindreds that they should come.

The noise fills the air, echoes insanely, overtakes the silence and chaos as more of my brethren clear the walls effortlessly, like water over rocks, scaling and flowing smoothly in from all directions to land in the courtyard. Pouring from every avenue into the small space. Flooding all I can see with the forms of wolves of all sizes and shades and packs from every corner of the mountain. Uniting for a common enemy.

I try to get up, relief overwhelming me that they’ve come to our aid, our saviors are here, but I can’t move. My hands are bloody and ripped up, my body is weak, smashed internally, and I can’t feel my legs anymore. So drained of my life force that I’m ebbing away into nothingness. Try as I might… I can’t move.

Lorey? Baby…. Lorey … nooo. The black beast is over me now, turning me gently with massive clawed paws, so I face those glowing ember eyes to fall into his safety and care. He calms from snarling teeth to human form instantly. In a blink, from ferocious to handsome and familiar. Suddenly smaller, naked before me, in the dark night sky and a look of utter despair washing over that furrowed brow and tear-filled eyes.

‘I’m sorry.’ Is all I can splutter as I cough up blood and shudder with the effort, too consumed with fatigue to do anything else. Colton stifles a sob, scrunching his face up, and cradles me close. Picking me up as carefully as he can and pulling me against him gently, his own pain at me being like this filtering back to me and weighing upon me tenfold. Sharing our agony, and I can feel his heart shredding for me. The devastation tearing through him at what he sees.

‘You have to turn, please. It’s the only way you can survive these wounds. Turn for me. Don’t give up. Don’t leave me, baby.’ The desperation in his voice ravages my heart, but I’m too weak, and I’ve lost too much blood. I’m so cold, so numb that even his touch can’t warm me as it should and I cry softly, with desperation because I know, as soon as I slip away, his own heart will cease to beat. I can’t let him die at my hands; I have to save myself to save him. He doesn’t deserve this, he never did anything wrong, he came for me. He came to save me.

I have to try just one more time, to give everything I have into healing myself, but it’s futile. I don’t even know how to turn, let alone if I can. It’s like there is a disconnect and my abilities fail me. I muster any willpower I can but it’s like that veil of power is still weighing down, oppressing me and I can’t fight it.

‘I can’t. I don’t know how.’ Tears roll down my sodden face as I let out a useless breathy whisper. So ashamed of my own inability to ever be a match for his strength and power. Colton stares at me, his face suddenly straightening as he sobers instantly, he looks to his own hand, curled around my shoulder, an instant twinge of his cheek muscle and then a frown that I can’t read.

Colton doesn’t wait, something registering on his face and he furrows his brow with determination, pushing the softness aside. He picks me up, even though I cry out in renewed agony of this new torture and holds me tight. Pain slicing through my wounds as I cry out at what he’s doing, writhing, and shuddering with the sheer pain it inflicts upon me. I push my hands to his chest to beg him to let go, because it’s too much and my body can’t take more. Glass stuck in my wounds, penetrating deeper with the pressure of his embrace and I howl out in despair because he’s only hurting me more.

“I’m sorry, baby. I have to.” Pulling us to standing, he starts running for the nearest entrance to the courtyard. His focus intent as he scans the wall and moves us as fast as he can to the nearest gate. It’s a human run, not hyper speed and he hauls ass to get me outside the perimeter of the enclosed garden and building. I don’t understand and all I can do is cling on and stiffen and sob at the movements that bring me no end of agony.

His mind syncs with mine as soon as we are free from the confines of the courtyard, I feel it. Shocked with the sudden presence of him inside my head even though he doesn’t say anything at all. A change to the weight on my chest and the dull fog of my brain as he skids down to his knees, scraping across the tarmac, taking me down with him as soon as he feels the bond return so effortlessly.

“Try now. Trust me, you have to try. Focus on me, think of yourself as you were the night of your turning. The pain, the elation of your new form, will it, baby, will it! Turn!” He begs, commands and alpha tones me all at the same time. Desperation in his plea and I’m powerless to disobey him.

Something about taking me away from the house makes me feel differently, like a suppression is lifted from my soul and my head clears just enough. That internal foggy pain that held me weak moves aside, like lifting a foot from my chest and with a little effort, my body starts to tingle.

“That’s it…your eyes…keep going. You can do this…it’s not hard. Fight for me.” He catches my hand and holds it in his loosely, waiting, watching, silently pushing me on with a look of fear in his eye that maybe it’s too late. It causes chaos in my heart, to see him so afraid.

I focus all my effort on pushing, some deep inner need in me to unite with my wolf again, and as soon as I open my mouth to utter the words ‘I think it’s working’, I arch in his arms and convulse as my body transforms me into the one thing that can save me. Right on the stroke of my human heart giving out and sucker punches me back into the land of the living in the most painful kind of way.

I gasp as I inhale loudly, coughing out, splaying my limbs and shuddering viciously as he catches me in his arms and then immediately lets me go to twist and turn onto my belly. I wretch, gag, at the same time, before vomiting a crap ton of blood and mucus right over the top of Colton’s naked thighs as I’ve no control over aim. My wolf body ejects all that internal damage, as though somehow healing is just the process of getting rid of the messy bits I no longer need, and I’m covered in my own mess. Matting my leg fur and clinging disgustingly around me.

I scramble away from him so as not to make this worse, finding myself on all fours, suddenly rejuvenated as pain diminishes and I wheeze, inhaling my lungs fully. The transformation heals me as fast as it possibly. From head to foot. Cuts close up, bones crack and reform, my lungs expand fully, enabling me to breathe once more and within minutes, I stand up as though I didn’t just go through hell and near death in the bloody mess I left back there. Shaken, sore all over as it fades away properly, but completely healed.

I slump down on the ground and almost immediately revert to human form, as I don’t have the energy or the skill to sustain my true form yet. That took so much out of my wolf to literally save my life and I’m spent. Exhaling with a strangled cry of relief and emotion as everything hits me hard. Like being in a train wreck, only it’s all mental now the physical has been brushed away.

Colton scurries over to me and hauls me into his arms without hesitation, the relief evident on his face and yanks me close to his chest. Wrapping me up and smoothing his hands over my naked body to check for any sign of unhealed marks. There are none. Wolf healing is incomparable and almost always fully effective. There are only a few things in this world that wolves can’t heal from and none are present tonight. He tugs my face to his throat and hugs me with less panic in his touch, exhaling heavily as he allows himself a moment of relief that warms me to my core and brings me some calm.

“The pack have them in retreat. I need to get you to safety and follow them. There are survivors and we have to stop them before we lose them.” He nuzzles his face against my hair before shifting me, making it clear we can’t stay her. He helps me up, pulling me to my feet and leads me bodily, keeping me close, to one of the abandoned trucks that are scattered in every street surrounding the school. I recognize them as belonging to the Santo family. They must have flooded in from every part of the mountain at a moment’s notice.

“How did you know to come?” I ask weakly as he slides me into the nearest vehicle, pulling a blanket from the rear and draping it over my naked body as I begin to shiver insanely. I may be healed but my body and mind are going into shock from all that has just taken place and I suddenly feel as though I’m in some sort of a dream. Fully aware his taking control is necessity as I don’t have the presence of mind to do anything for myself.

“Your link was broken, and I couldn’t reach you. I knew something was wrong. I could feel your confusion, and then your fear. Your pain almost ended me, and I didn’t think I would get here in time… They did something to the house. Soon as I got near it, my wolf form struggled to stay. There’s some sort of noise or frequency around it. It stops us. I could feel it in the garden, but I couldn’t hear it.” He closes my door, jumping in the front of the truck and scrambles around for keys, finding them still in the ignition, thankfully. Wasting no time in putting it in gear, reversing us at screeching speed as though we’re in pursuit of something and high tailing us towards the south road out of this part of the mountain valley. Getting me away from here, even if the threat is being chased off in the other direction.

“Where are we going? Why aren’t you saving anyone else? There are more of us, it’s not only me in that home! You can’t leave them behind!” I sit up, panic stricken and sudden concern for the others left behind, hitting me in the chest like a freight train as my tears return with a passion and I half sob, half choke the words out. My reject pack are back there, they’re the only family I know, whether I liked them or not and there are so many innocents among them.

Colton catches my eyes in the rear-view mirror and looks away quickly, a sadness hitting me right in the heart as his emotion silences me with a swift shunt of my stomach. I immediately know what the pain and sorrow is in what he doesn’t say. He avoids my eye as I stare at the back of his head, feeling him, reading him as he overcomes my own senses. Tasting his hesitation and sorrow.

“There is no one else is there?” I state blankly, numb shock weaving through me and hitting me with the gravity of this situation. The weight of reality settling on my shoulders to drag me back down to numb calm. He’s in constant link with his pack, they would know about survivors, and I’m guessing the fact they’re chasing down the vampires who ran, and no one but Colton is shepherding one of us away, means they already checked.

He shakes his head, unable to look at me and I catch his furrowed brow and the gleam of moisture glazing his eyes in the mirror over his head. He ups a gear, pushing the truck to dangerous speeds as we head out of the valley and up onto the main road that takes us around the perimeter and out to the south.

“We weren’t fast enough…. I almost didn’t get to you in time. We just weren’t ready for something like this. I wasted time assembling the pack, when I knew you needed me.” He sounds almost ashamed, but without the pack, he wouldn’t have been able to fight all of them himself and save me at all. They would have taken him down too, as soon as he lost his wolf form in the gardens.

“All of them… the unwanteds…. the guardians. They’re all gone.” It’s not really a question but more of a dazed reaction as my mind pushes me into shock at what’s happened, verbalizing the truth, and I slump down across the back seat as silent tears begin to fall down my face, diagonally across my cheek like sobering cold smears and soak the cold leather of the truck.

“I’m sorry, Lorey. I know they were all you had. We never knew this was coming.” Colton’s voice is shaky and low. Shame and regret tainting his normally sexy huskiness. We share the agony, but it doesn’t lighten the load. Insides twisting in cruel heartache as it sinks in fully.

In the blink of an eye…… they’re all gone. Just like ten years ago.

The sad thing was, until this moment, I hadn’t thought they were what I had at all. We were never a pack, or a family in my mind before, but now, those others, they matter more than I ever gave them credit for. Even Vanka, my roommate of ten lonely years, and I would give anything right now to have her get in this truck and blow smoke in my face.

My heart crashes inside my chest as the most painful debilitating heaviness hits me hard, and I let out a mournful sob that turns to a howl as my body turns without my trying. I lie on the back seat breaking inside all over again. My body reverting to my wolf form in a bid to heal me from the agony my heart’s in. A defense mechanism, because my instincts think I’m dying all over again, how ironic.

The most heart wrenching howl I’ve ever heard, leaves my own body, fills my ears and echoes into the eeriest silence of the dark world around us.

First my blood family, then my pack, and now my unwanteds.

Is there nowhere to run where fate won’t deliver me the worst kind of blow and take everyone from me?