𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐒✔️

TWO|SOMNIUM

I saw a girl.
Her white blond hair flew in the wind as she ran. She ran as fast as her feet could carry her through the dark woodland and for a moment I could've sworn it was her.

Her hair contrast to the premature twilight that hung low over the forest, causing her presence to be painfully obvious.
She couldn't hide, she couldn't fight, so she ran.
She ran fast, yet almost clumsily, like she wasn't in full control of her limbs.

It was then I realised that it wasn't her, but that the girl before me couldn't see, she was blind. She fumbled her way past trees and bushes, desperately trying to evade her captors.

Everything within me screamed to go to her, but I couldn't move. I was merely a spectator in this sick game of cat and mouse.

Her eyes bore milky irises that flew over her surroundings to no avail. I could hear her heart pounding in her chest. Her eyes were blue.

She took off, but she fell.
She fell into a world of darkness, through a rabbit hole and landed in a dark stone room.
Her hands were shackled with thick metal chains and a figure in a white jacket loomed over her. There was a wooden barrel filled with water, she stared down at her reflection, broken and defeated. The scent of blood, mingling with the scent of metal and salty tears hung heavy in the air, I almost choked on the scent and bile rose in the back of my throat.

Could she see?

My beast thrashed within me when the white coated figure shoved her head under the water.

I couldn't breathe, I clawed at my chest and throat but I wouldn't stop myself from drowning with her.

I woke abruptly, sitting up with my hands still grasping at my own throat.

It was just a dream.
There was no girl.
It wasn't her.

She was gone, the dead did not return. I watched her lifeless body hang from the end of a rope. There was no coming back from that.

It was all my fault, if only I'd believed her.
If only I'd said the words that danced on the edge of my tongue but would never go so far as to cross the threshold of my lips, she would still be alive.

The female beside my shifted in her sleep, rolling over to drape a ghastly pale limb over me.

I looked down at her in disgust. What I wouldn't do to have my mate beside me instead of this harlot.

Her name was Flick, and she held my hand whilst my mate died in front of me. Everyone and anything I had ever loved was dead, my mate was the one at fault, that my mate had murdered my little sister, along with half my pack when she set fire to the pack house. I had her put to death. It was all my fault.

But now I was stuck, after my mates death I took Flick as my Luna. I couldn't reject her, my pack was safer this way, with a Luna. If I rejected her, other packs would try to challenge me, my pack members would revolt against me. Blood would be shed.

"What are you thinking about." Flick purred, stretching before sitting up beside me.

I stared out the window, there was a long pause before I answered. " I had a dream, I thought it was her..."

"She's dead, you need to move on." She wrapped her arms around me in what was supposed to be a comforting embrace but instead I felt colder than I had before. "You have me now."

Her breasts pushed against my back, and her arms hung around my neck like a rope I couldn't shift.
I was filled with regret. I was drowning in it, so much so that the only way to escape it was to bury it deep below the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Alcohol was my preferred method of self destruction, though the cigarettes helped too.

I stood up and her arms fell away, freedom from the chains that bound me. "Where are you going?" She pined.

"Out."

***

A grey mist hung low over the forest as I thundered through the undergrowth.

I ran away from my problems, every single one of them. I couldn't bear to face the truth so instead I drank away the pain. If I couldn't feel it then what did it matter.

After she died nothing mattered. The sun still rose in the east and set in the west, though my world was standing still. There was life before her and there was life after, yet I struggled to find meaning in mine without her. My days were the same, pack work work in the day and drinking away the monsters alone at night.

I didn't know where I was running, I didn't much care. I wasn't headed in any particular direction, just anywhere away from here, away from the memories of her.
If I closed my eyes and pretended like she were still here, the bed still smelled of her soft rosy scent, the food still tasted like the meals she made. Though the hands that touched my face were never quite as gentle as hers.-Flick was a hardy woman, slight and slender yet a born and raised fighter, there was nothing soft nor gentle about her.

She was gone. No memory of love nor tear from a tired eye would bring her back.