The Haunted Memories (Forgotten Series, #4)

Chapter 31

I felt strange.

It wasn't like before, there was nothing strange in my head or in my body. I felt healthy, better than I had in years. No I felt strange because my world had been twisted upside down and shaken violently. What I believed before was not the true reality of my life. The sleep I had, had torn my previous reality to shreds and I had woken up sitting in the middle of the aftermath of that destruction.

I had thought the memories would be gone and in a way they were. They were not in my my head anymore but as they had been removed I had been at the mercy of viewing them in full. A fifteen hour sleep that showed me the entire time that Maggie had been away from me after our pack's destruction.

I had been there with her as our pack was attacked and burned. I had felt the lick of fire against the back of her neck, felt the utter terror as our parents left her alone to give her a chance to escape. I had felt the burning in her lungs as Maggie had run to save herself. Felt everything that came with her meeting Malak. My hatred for the male had only grown as the memories had progressed.

He had brought about the months of darkness that had caused Maggie's wolf to simply vanish, caused her sanity to snap and crumble. That long in the darkness without the moon had been so detrimental to her. I had followed Maggie on her trip into insanity, experienced it with her in the stunning clarity I had lacked before. Her only moments of reprieve were when a male came to see her, carrying the scent of moon on his clothes. Each time trying hard to hold onto the world he had once known with his brother.

I had watched those go away and her slip into insanity grow faster and faster until she was taken out only to have that male once more give her the moon. Maggie had been so broken in a way. I hadn't realized just how badly she had been until the memories had been removed from my own mind. The female I was seeing after the darkness was my sister but she wasn't, she was so different, so broken. A pale copy of the female she had been before.

However as the memories continued, as it moved forward, showing me the cruelty she had suffered there were still moments of bright happiness. I experienced the mind numbing hate she felt for Malak and the pain it caused her but then I experienced the love she had for Arlo. The male who had continually gave her the moon, the male who had continually given her happiness.

That was where the strange feeling came from. I had hated him, put all my anger and revulsion onto him but now I had learned my hate had been directed at the one person Maggie had cared about, loved, during her time with Malak. I hated her one source of happiness and it made me feel strange. All the memories I had watched, all I had seen of Maggie's time there, had shown me much about the male and it made me realized that I had been horribly wrong.

The blame I had shoved onto him had been completely misplaced. More and more details came out and I realized just how fucked up everything was. I had believed Maggie was trapped, unable to escape but the reality was, if she had wanted to Maggie could have done just that.

There were moments of what seemed to be cunning, a female wolf stalking her prey as she said or did things on her push to the moon that showed that, while her mind was broken and fragile, she wasn't without a plan. Maggie had wanted to die and she planned to take Malak with her. She sowed discord and formulated words that would cause doubt and inspire another to rise up. And that realization hurt.

Aside from the beginning, Maggie hadn't thought about me at all. Only fleeting moments but nothing that spoke of her longing to be with me, that spoke of her missing me like I missed her. She had stayed there not because she had to but because the moon promised her she could enter it's embrace if she did so. There was no thoughts of me as she pushed for that goal, as she created cracks within Malak's rule.