Moon Bound

(13) Gone Girl|Regan's POV|

My fingers trembled against the corners of the picture frame. My father's face stared up at me from behind the glass. Haunting. Demanding more.

This picture was one of the very few reminders I had left of the man who taught me so many lessons. Lessons I wasn't going to ever forget.

Father. A man people both hated and admired. I was the spitting image of him. However, it wasn't just the striking resemblance I hated.

History was repeating itself. People said that life went in circles yet only now did I see it. The man who took his mate against her will, I was becoming that man. I was turning into my father.

Acting on its own accord, the hand holding the picture frame flung it into the air. It crashed against the closed door, pieces of glass and broken wood landing on the floor with the picture laying underneath the remains of a memory.

There were so many lessons that he taught me yet not a single one of them could guide me now. He taught me how to live with the blood staining my hands that remained after every victory I earned, but never how to keep getting it on them in the first place. He showed me how to inflict pain, but never how to accept it.

'Sacrifices must be made for the pack. It's what being an alpha means, son,' I remembered those words of his. It was his law he that followed to the letter and made me follow too. The look on his face when he said it that day, just before he sent me on my first journey outside pack land, it was the look of a father who had finally managed to raise a man from the child.

And then I came back.

Walking to the door, picking up the picture of him, peering at the face unsuspecting of my betrayal, I couldn't stop the memory of that night from surfacing.

Finding the ashes of a family that was never truly one had been what sealed my fate that night.

Always speaking of sacrifices Father became one himself. From an alpha, he turned into an offering.

The pack was hungry. The pack wished him dead. The wolves who stayed behind killed him after we fled. We never returned. They never found their way back to us. They dispersed.

A soft knock distracted me from my thoughts. I felt the intruder standing still on the other side, waiting for my invitation. It was a female, I discovered after another whiff of the person' scent. The flavor wafting through the cracks of the doorway was a familiar one. This female was a part of the mess I'd created for myself – a mess I had to clean up to even stand a chance against a mate who kept rejecting me.

Did I really want that chance? Better yet – did I deserve it?

'Sacrifices,' the echo of my father's voice whispered inside my head. Exhaling a deep sigh, I backed off from the door.

"Come in," I said.

She let herself in, her steps deliberately slow in her approach. With her hair up into a messy ponytail and her simple blue dress, she was probably trying for the negligé look but her eyes - cast down and hesitant to look at me - betrayed her nervousness.

She cleared her throat then swallowed. "Alpha," she chimed. Her head bent low in a show of submission.

"What do you need?" I grumbled, fingers crushing the picture in my palm into a ball.

"I... I just wanted to make sure that you are-"

"I'm fine. You don't need to be concerned about me," I interrupted. She knew I had a mate, yet here she was – acting brazen.

"And you shouldn't be here in the first place," I pointed out. "I think I already made myself clear about where we stand."

"Do you just expect me to stop caring about you, Regan?" She shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. Mate or not mate, love isn't something I can just turn off."

"Love?" I spat out. "A night of fun every once in a while isn't love, Sasha?" She opened her mouth to protest but before she could, I interjected, "Don't waste your breath. I know you don't love me and neither do I love you."

"She doesn't even want you!" she blurted out, her cheeks filling with color as she peered up at me.

"Oh, sweetheart." I chuckled. "You see, my Scarlet does want me. It's just that she needs a bit of help to realize it."

Instead of responding Sasha fumbled with the hem of her dress, her fingers raking over the material betraying her discomfort. She didn't like me stating my intent out loud. She wasn't supposed to like it.

A few moments later, she snapped her head up to look at me and tucked a few vagrant locks behind her ear.

"You are wrong, Alpha," she said slowly, almost as if she was tasting the words on her tongue. "She's going to keep rejecting you until you and this pack are broken beyond repair."

I shook my head. "She won't do that."

Sasha arched a brow. "But she already did it, didn't she?"

"She didn't reject me." She just didn't say it, I added silently, hoping that this female didn't see the heartbreak in me. And perhaps, she didn't. We were never that close for her to know what I felt inside. We never had this kind of connection for her to see right through me.

Whether the she-wolf did or nor, there was no doubt in her voice when she said, "Perhaps, she didn't reject you but she will. Time and again. Remember this, Alpha."

Swirling up from inside me, the beast rose to meet her challenge.

"Your services are no longer required, Alexandra," I bit out, barely holding back the anger that sweltered inside me.

Shoulders slumping in defeat, she turned back and retraced her steps with the glass crunching under her feet. Halting at the threshold, she looked down at the broken frame pieces then back at me.

"Leave. Now."

She gave me a nod and left.

Looking at these same pieces scattered on the floor, I wondered if it was going to be Scarlet to clean them up.

I hated myself for hoping she'd do that. I didn't even deserve to breathe in the same air she did and I wanted so much more.

Laying on the bed, darkness filled up the room. My own black thoughts spilled out. Even in that darkness, I could see her face – so close yet so distant as she haunted my dreams I wasn't allowed to have anymore.

I had no excuse for waiting on her to return to me, but I did wait. I did pray she'd come back and tell me she meant nothing of what she said. Like a drowning man in need of air.

It was not Scarlet who came in the early morning hours but a cry. Loud inside the mind link, one of the patrols was reporting a disturbance in the territory.

I jumped out of bed and ran outside into the early dawn. Listening to the man's voice inside my head, I tried to locate it. With the moon sinking down into the brightening sky, I discarded my clothes and shifted then ran into the forest.

Breach in pack land, others joined. Panic rose. I raced through the trees.

The beast howled. Claws struck, urging me to hurry up. Uneasiness crept over as I breathed in the scents of the forest in hope to find...

So faint, the sweet aroma of lilac was barely recognizable underneath the mix of fragrances, but to me – it was like a colorful ribbon I could follow. Her scent. Fading away as if she was fading out too.

The packbond quaked. The sky fell and crashed down on me. Thunders and storms ruptured my world.

Scarlet...

The beast cried in agony. The man stumbled. My heart ached.

Scarlet...

My voice vanished in silence.

Scarlet...

Nothing.

SCARLET! I shouted.

Free. I'm free. The distant echo of her laughter sunk into the silence of the pack link. Hope tarnished. The beast roared. The man broke.

She left.

End of PART I