Back From the Ashes

Chapter 2 Remembering

I ran.

I ran and ran and ran for I don’t know how long. Hours. Days. Weeks. The days blended together, everything was a blur.

I’d only stop long enough to eat. I would run straight through the night and not rest. I couldn’t afford to for fear that I’d stumble across another pack. After what I’d gone through in my old pack I was weary of other wolves.

If my pack could do all those terrible things to me and they were my family, my flesh and blood, what would another pack, that I have absolutely no ties to, do to me? Would they be worse? Would I regret leaving? Even more so than I already do? Because I do regret leaving. Not leaving exactly but all that I left behind. Alpha Mark. The twins. My mother. My mate.

When he rejected me, my wolf was heartbroken but still hopeful because she knew her mate, Drake’s wolf, still wanted her even if his human didn’t want me. But after I left she shut down, only allowing me to shift but withdrawing otherwise. She couldn’t leave me completely. If I were any other  werewolf, she would have withdrawn so far that she’d eventually die and I would be a human that could turn into an average-sized wolf but with none of the special abilities that come  with being a  werewolf. But I’m not any other wolf. I’m not normal. I’m different, special. It’s because of that that I stayed there as long as I did. I couldn’t leave, even though I had plenty of opportunities to, because if I did people would die and I couldn’t live with the knowledge that I could have prevented it.

'Too late for that now', I thought sadly. If they’re not dead already they will be soon. And that was the sad part. I gave up so much, sacrificed everything, and put up with all the abuse and the rapes when they didn’t even care. They never did, not really or they wouldn’t have turned against me so quickly; it took only a week for them to turn their backs on me at a time when I needed them the most, when the Silence finally won and destroyed my will to live. Not without help of course.

If it had been up to them I would have died at the tender age of eight years old. If it weren’t for Casey I don’t know what would have become of me and I’m thankful every day that I have at least one person that I can always count on to be there for me should the Silence come after me again. I know it’s just a matter of time before it does. We beat it when no one else has and it’s angry, determined to destroy, if not both of us, than at least me. We both have the power to defeat it but only I have the knowledge to kill it off forever. Casey had already given in to the Silence but when I needed him he broke free of it, like it had never been there. He doesn’t know how but I do, I helped him and it knows it, even if Casey himself doesn’t.

It doesn’t help that we do all we can to get others out of its grip. Whenever we can, we try to help others the way we helped each other but for whatever reason, it can never be duplicated and the bond is never as strong as ours is. We have to work harder and pour more energy into it than the first time. Then it was easy, almost natural. The bond was already there; by helping each other we just strengthened it. Neither of us knew how it happened, at least not at first, we didn’t even know the bond was there until the Silence had just about won. I remember it like it was yesterday instead of eight years ago. It was the day I was going to kill myself.

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 I had just made the first cut and the blood was welling, dripping off my arm and onto the floor. That day had been really bad. I burned myself making breakfast for the pack and cut myself with a dull knife chopping the ingredients. As if that weren’t bad enough I was too short to reach the plates and they fell on me and broke. The crash woke up the rest of the pack and instead of being glad that I was unhurt, like normal people would it they heard a crash and saw an eight year old surrounded by broken glass, they yelled at me and insulted me for being a stupid klutz and then one of them pushed me to the floor and the glass cut my hands.

Everyone laughed. My eyes watered but I refused to let them the tears fall. I couldn’t afford to. One moment of weakness and IT would take control. The monster would win. I got up and moved to clean up the mess so no ne else would get hurt and was pushed again. 

I fell onto my back not expecting it, the glass cutting into me and embedding itself in my flesh. 'How am I supposed to get the glass out before my skin heals over it?' I thought frantically.

“Look at her. She’s gonna cry!” Brisa sneered. 

They all laughed and taunted me then went upstairs to get ready for school. I was left alone to clean up the mess and finish getting breakfast ready. When they were done it was on the table and I was hiding, hoping that I’d be safe. No such luck. It seemed the universe was out to get me that day.

Every one else had already left by the time I came out of my hiding place and I thought I was safe. 

I wasn’t.

My father found me in the bathroom trying to clean up. My skin was mostly healed around the glass but some cuts were still bleeding. I had just taken my clothes off and was standing in front of the mirror looking at the damage when he walked in and saw me.

One look and I knew today would be the day he finally lost control and did to me what he’d been trying to for years. He was going to hurt me the way no father should ever hurt his daughter. One look in his eyes and my eight-year old body trembled in fear.

I screamed for help, begged for it.

But none ever came.

Afterward he just looked at me in disgust and laughed. He said I was “tasty”; that I would be “delicious” once he broke me in. I remember lying there in so much pain, crying, screaming. Why me? I remember thinking. 

That moment of weakness, of vulnerability, was enough to let IT in. The Silence. IT spoke to me, insidious words of a world without pain. Where I wouldn’t be treated like I was worthless. I wouldn’t be beat. Whispered words of care and affection: words of freedom. Of love.

And I listened.

IT promised me everything I had ever wanted and all I had to do was give up. Hand myself over to it, let it possess me. All I had to do was kill myself or comes as close to it that the Silence could take over.And really what difference would it make? No one wanted me anyway, so what did I have to live for?

The Silence had always been the enemy, the monster hiding in the darkness ever since it attached itself to me two years ago but what if it could end my suffering? Would it really be that bad to just let it win? It was offering me the one thing I could never have here. A chance at freedom, at happiness. I took it, I was going to commit suicide and nothing was going to stop me.

The moment I picked up the knife though, something felt off and when I made the first cut the world shifted. Something inside of me snapped and reached out for… something, someone who could help; who could stop me before I caused irreparable damage. And it did, it found...

SNAP!

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SNAP!

SNAP!

I’d been running, too lost in thought to scan the area around me for other wolves. Big mistake.