Till We Met Again

Chapter One

                                           Juniper

My head hurts. Scratch that everything hurts....

Wait... What?!? 

MY HEAD HURTS! I'm still alive. Wait, how is that possible? Everything is still dark.

Well, to be fair, I haven't really tried to open my eyes, let alone, move, cause I'm sitting here talking to myself... well, I guess thinking to myself? Okay, wait, come on, Juniper, give yourself a break. You should be dead, or well, I  guess we might still be because I still haven't tried to look around.

Okay, scratch that, I am getting sidetracked. On the count of three, I'm going to try and look around...

One...

Two...

Three...

I slowly pique my eyes open and try to take in my surroundings. It looks to be a bedroom, a nice? bedroom.  Wood paneling on the walls, and I can assume to be a soft fur rug on top of the hard wood floors. I can see three doors, to what one can only assume is a closet, bathroom, and to the rest of the house. 

I need to get out of here before whoever took me... well, I guess saved me comes back. Cause as nice as they once were, they might not be in the long run, and I don't wanna be here to find out if that is true or not. 

As I slowly gather my baring's enough to stand up, a knock rings at the door, and before I can answer it, a large man comes barreling in.

"Oh, I didn't realize you would be awake yet, but please sit back down. Your body isn't strong enough quite yet for a lot of movement." I stare wide eyes as this man starts rambling on, to frozen and scared to move, my actions finally attract his attention.

"Sorry, Miss, I forgot to introduce myself, the names Sinclair, Ash Sinclair. And you're probably wondering how and why you're here, I will explain if you let me. But first, please sit down while I get you this tonic ready." Ash stops and stares at me for a minute with a slight tilt of his head before going back to get whatever this tonic is, I guess. 

I decided for now. It's best to do what I was told so as not to anger the large man. Ash, from my guess, is about 6.2 feet tall, each is a big difference to my 5.5 feet. Despite that, he is made of mussels, which I wanna say is quite shocking seeing as he looks around his late 50s to early 60s. But it's good for him, I guess. Brown hair, which has traces of gray from his old age. The glimpse that I got of his face was brown eyes and a full bread of similar state to his graying hair. He looks nice, kind, and caring, kind of like my father used to look. But I know looks can be deceiving. 

As I slowly sit back down on the bed, I shake my head of drifting thoughts and clear my throat. "Mr. Sinclair, do you know who I am?' My hands start to shake as I speak in a quiet voice.

He takes in a slow breath as he turns to hand my the drink. "Honey, I don't know much but I'll tell you what I do and how you got here, if you promise to trust me, I will not hurt you, but I also don't want you hurting yourself in the long run. Deal?"

Do we have a deal? I mean, he's been nice and helpful so far, but I have learned so many times not to trust people. But, I think I have to take the chance, I wouldn't be here without this man, I will do as he asks for now. "Deal," I says quietly.

"Great, I am going to start this explanation a little before you come into play so you can understand where I come from." He looks at me, waiting for any sort of acknowledgment. So I give him that, I slight nod of my head and he continues.

"My full name is Ashton Sinclair, Alpha of the Half Moon pack. I am going to assume you know what that is giving the markings I found across your skin as I was fixing you up. If you don't stop me at any time, I will elaborate." I nod my head in understanding, but at the same time, with this knowledge, my hands start to shake even more.

Seeing that Ash continues, "Remember I won't hurt you, I understand that you have been through a lot but I am not your enemy" He reaches out to grab my hand and rub his thumb over the back of my palm soothing me slightly.

"My mate passed away a few years ago, which is why we are here, In a cabin in seemingly nowhere, I choose to stay on the outskirts of the land, while my son Colton takes over as Alpha. I was out hunting in my wolf form a little outside of pack lands when I overheard you and the other woman talking. What I didn't realize was the fact that she had a gun to your head, or else I would have stepped in sooner." His eyes flash with heartbreak and sadness as he talks about his late wife, but then looks at me with pity and remorse about what he saw.

"It wasn't your fault," I muttered.

"No, but it doesn't change the fact that you got hurt. Anyway, after the gun went off, the other person disappeared. And no, I don't mean she ran off, I mean, she quite literally disappeared into a cloud of smoke." He looks like he is still questions if what he saw is real. It's like he has never seen that before.

"That sounds about right." I stated. "Her name is Jessica, Smoke, and well, that type of magic was always one of her favorites. It makes perfect sense, being that is how she got away so easily." Ash looks even more confused at that comment but goes on anyway.

"We will get back to that, Anyhow, after I saw that, I realized you were either really hurt or dead, so I called in back up and went to you to help. Which leads us to now, I have been able to remove the bullet that hit you, which quite honestly should have killed you, and was able to nurse you back to health with the local doctor on site." I look at Ash with a slight tilt in the head as he has a proud look in his eyes at the thought of saving me.

"I guess you want some sort of explanation then." I knew this was coming, I was going to have to tell him things I had only told one other person, and look where that got me.

He is silent for a moment, watching my every movement. "You don't have to tell me everything if you don't want to, I can tell this is a hard subject for you to talk about. But I can only assume that bullet was meant to kill you. Why, what caused it to be this way?"

With a sigh, I look down at my lap, knowing I have to give this man something in response. I just wasn't sure how without giving everything away. "Jessica Knight, the person you saw shot me, was what I thought at least, my best friend."

He looks at me with pursed lips, "Honey, you realize friends don't normally try and kill each other, right? At least not literally."

I stare at him with a blank expression. "Yes, of course I know that." I say with a roll of my eye. "But I don't blame her." I got this far off look in my eyes.

"What I'm about to tell you doesn't leave this room. No one else needs to know this." As I look him dead in the eyes with a stern voice. He gives me an understanding nod, so I continue.

"A couple of years ago, Jessica got mixed up with the wrong crowd. She learned how to yield the dark magic, and it changed her. She disappeared for a while. No one had heard from her for months. Then, one day, she came back. Well, her body did. You could tell just by looking at her that she wasn't all there." Looking away from him, I stared out the window as tears gathered in my eyes. A hand reaches out for support, but I push it away as I continue.

I had to do this on my own. "When she came back, it was like she was broken, but she had her mission, and nothing was going to stop her. Her mission, as you saw the tail end of it, was to kill me. Why, I have my assumptions, but time will tell, I suppose."

Ash goes to say something but gets cut off by the doorbell. "That must be my son, we will continue this conversation later. As for now, the tonic should have kicked in. Please follow me. You can get settled in the living room while I get the door and grab us some lunch. I'm sure you're hungry."

Ash stands up and reaches a hand out for me to grab. And leads the two of us out of the room and to the rest of the house, towards our awaiting guest.