A Beautiful Sacrifice

Chapter Thirty

Had she thought crying would do any good she would have lined up buckets for her tears. Yet they were no good. They did not open the lock, nor dampen the pretty cage she was to be hidden in. They did not lighten the tone, nor take from her the terrible grief of the truth. Perttu had lied a little to her but he had deceived her was a better word. His silence and his positive attitude had been far different than the reality that was currently occurring. To him there was never an ‘after the event’ moment. He had wanted to mate with her as it were because he didn’t think he would see her again. He needed her safe with powers of her own so she could live a life with as much protection as he could leave behind with her. The news was breaking her inside.

                Her insides all felt heavy and she felt as though she was slowly suffocating from the inside. The women were crying. They too had been kept in the dark about what was happening. The males as the only fighters had had the perfect excuse for secret talks. It wasn’t a woman’s place to be in meetings where the topic was not able to concern them. For they were not going to be in battle, they had agreed readily. And how their own self anger was tearing at each of them. In the time they had spent catching up on women’s talk of pretty clothes, latest material and idle conversation to keep up with what their community was doing, their mates, their men, had been talking of how to take as many hounds with them as they died as possible.

                It all now seemed so superficial - their lives from before, and to think that at the end the plan was for them to go along their way and go back to such lives, alone. It would never work. Mates did not simply live without their other half when they had once been together. It was nigh on impossible and Lily was slowly coming to see that. Her body trembled with terrible anxiety as she heard the sounds from outside. Her fear for herself was barely recognisable, it was hidden under layers and layers of pure fear for Perttu she was frantic. To think of him hurt, or even dying or dead, was too much for her to bear. The loud growls outside had her whimpering. A kind women with blonde curly came over and hugged her tightly.

“They will be alright.”

“That is our hope. It may not come true. They did not think they would return.”

“And yet they might.”

                Lily wasn’t convinced. To think of all the time she had spent in the grand house, the mansion and she had never spotted the hidden safe house underneath it all. So bemused with the many, many room on the various levels of the house she had never thought there would be hidden ones and now she was trapped in one of them. She cursed herself for her ignorance. He had done this to her, he had forcibly brought her into this life only to abandon her.

                She wanted to be angry at him for what had happened. She wanted to yell at his arrogant face and tell him that he should have included her in his plans and told her what was happening but she knew the reality of it. If he had told her she would have begged him not to fight and he could not forsake his people. She would have tried to fight along side of him but she was no fighter so she would be dead in minutes. If he had told her everything the past weeks she had tried to get to know him and grow to love him would have been spent in a mindless fury of fear. He had saved her from all of that and she knew she should be grateful.

                In the end she wasn’t grateful. Neither was she angry with him. What had happened, had been done and was now the past. It was the present and future that needed her attention now. If he lived she would have a discussion with him about keeping secrets but as it was, at this moment, what he had or had not said, mattered very little. Especially when she heard the roar of an army of hounds running towards the house. Towards her Perttu and new found friends.