Thrown to the Wolves

Before the Dawn

Today I awoke with tears in my eyes and darkness out my window. Another nightmare has found its way back into my head. I always find myself hidden in the shadows awaiting something, but it never comes. It feels like something has its hold on me and I cannot find a way to get away. I am forced to watch strange men in robes killing and removing my family. I am stuck there having to watch it happen over and over again. Each of my siblings being killed one by one until the men gets to my parents. It seems like their eyes are fixed on me as the men split open their throats open and let them fall to ground and bleed out.  Every nightmare for the past three weeks has been the same. I have no intention to tell my mother or father of this. Strange as it may sound, I am only a sixteen year old girl living in Rome.

      Before the nightmares I was just like every other young woman in Rome. I am just the daughter of a blacksmith and a housemaid. I feel like that is all I will ever be. My mother wants me to follow her footsteps and become a housemaid like her. But I want to be so much more. I don’t want to serve others like a nobody. I want to make a name for myself, make my presence known to all of Rome. But since I am a female it isn’t possible unless the Emperor makes you his wife. And that is not a life I want. Sure every other girl dreams of becoming the next Empress, but not me. I don’t want an easy life. I want to earn my own keep, not have some man do it for me. My way of thinking will get me in trouble one day I am sure of it.

      Today isn’t going to be a day like any other, I feel. It’s almost dawn and I am awake, there isn’t anything I can do to make myself fall asleep. I hear my youngest sister, Isabelle, crying. I figure since I am awake I’ll go check on her. I climb out of bed and start walking toward my younger siblings’ room. I walk in to find a strange man, much like one from my nightmares, holding my sister. I want to scream, but I know better than to anger him when he holds my beloved sister in his arms. I open my mouth to say something, but another man comes from behind me and clasps his hand over my mouth. I look up at him, tears swelling in my eyes.”Who are you?” I manage to get out in a muffled voice. The man motions for me to be silent. I listen and silently cry. Then I hear my mother and father rushing to the room. A third man comes out of one of the dark corners of the room. A hidden blade appears in his hand almost instantly. My parents rush in and see them. My mother falls to her knees, the tears fall down her face. My father yells and the man with the blade stabs him in the side. I see as his eyes start to glaze over. The man who hurt my father yelled at him. “You have to watch, you cannot die yet, my friend. Not yet.” My father’s eyes shift to the man who has me. “Kill me, not my family.” He chokes out. My mother’s sobs get louder.

The man looks down at me. “This one looks promising.” The man who has me motions to the man who held my sister to come to him. He puts my sister down, and then walks toward us. Then he starts to put his hands all over me. He feels my arms, then my chest, and finally up and down my legs. I start to quiver; I have never in my life been touched by anyone but myself. The sensation of his touch was almost breath taking. More of my tears fall as I start to realize I was actually feeling pleasure while my father is feeling nothing but pain. My mother goes to check on Isabelle, one of the men comes at her, and slaps her across the face. He knocks her back on the ground. “Get back you worthless bitch!” The man yells. My mother’s cries fall silent.

My father’s breath starts to slow. He mouths to me, “I’m sorry, my dear Lucia.”The man bends down to him, “We told you we’d come. Now you’re family must pay for your own stupidity blacksmith. We gave you protection in order for weapons. You have failed Aelius for the last time fool.” Then he forced my father’s head to look up as I the man holding my baby sister dropped her to the floor. Isabelle uttered her last cry then lay unmoving. I dropped to my knees and reached for her. The man holding me grabbed my hair and pulled me back up to my feet. I screamed out when I saw my two younger brothers, Valerius and Regulus, and my other younger sister, Cassia, standing in the doorway. “Eseguire il miocarissimi! È necessario eseguire!” My mother yells to them in italian. Cassia crys, “Perchémamma?” Then the third man wasted no time and grabbed my sister by the hair. While the other grabbed my brothers. My mother tries to stand again, but the man smacks her to the ground again.

“Marcus, i’m going to have to teach your prostituta a lesson.” He takes my mother and drags her away. Then Cassia bites the man’s hand and he takes a knife to her back. She falls to the ground. My father begins to sob now. The man with my brothers whispers to them and they both shake their heads ‘no’. They instantly fall to the ground. My mother’s screams of pain we can hear now as the man begins to raped and torture her. Then they suddenly stop after what seems like hours. There is a loud ‘thud’ and the man returns covered in my mother’s blood. His hands bright red.The first man puts my father on his feet, then says, “I’m sorry Marcus, by the order of The Pack, you’ve been terminata.” Then the man slit my father’s throat, and his blood poured out of his neck. I hung my head and sobbed.

The man whispers into my ear, “Hush, bambina. My name is Lucius. I can save you. Just don’t fight it.Comprendere?” I nod my head to him. The tears still stream down my face. Lucius says to the other men. “Come on, we must return to Alpha Aelius. And bring him the newest member of the Pack.” He looks down at me. The others nod and begin to depart out of the window, Lucius picks me up and hands me the the man already outside. He sets me down and Lucius leads me to their horses and throws me up onto his. And then they begin the journey back the Den.