Heath's Redemption

Chapter One

Sunrise over the mountain range brought peace among the land, eager to begin a new day. The sun rays greedily reached across the sky, filling it with soft colors mixing into one another. The wind blew soft songs throughout the wide field of wildflowers, making the hairs on Emily's neck tingle with the soft caress. Her fingertips grazed over the top of the plants gently, bringing her into a hypnotic trance filled with peace and quiet. The land awakened before her. Birds beginning their usual songs, a couple of deer grazing meekly in the far end of the clearing, even a couple of insects or two chirped awake from their slumber. The scent of mist and fresh air swirled all around the girl. 

She let out a soft breath, loving how crisp the air felt and tasted. Emily gathered a few of the wildflowers in her hand, making a note to bring some back to her mother who loved to proudly place them in the middle of the dining room table in their small one bedroom cottage. It wasn't much but that cottage raised her entire family & continued to do so even after her father died tragically in a rogue attack, six years ago. 

Their entire world revolved around their true forms and their underlying abilities to shape-shift into one. Wolves. There were different social classes for each one, yet the bottom of them all were the Rogues. Ones who completely lost all of their sanity and gave their entire beings up to their inner forms. Emily's father fell victim to an entire group of them. 

Emily's heart sank just thinking about him. Her mother was a strong woman, not letting her children show how weak she truly felt on the inside. Her mate died right in her arms yet she soldiered on day after day, not letting the grief get to her. 

Emily's older brother Reed left a couple of years after that & the mystery of where he went was unspoken. He disappeared into the dead of the night, only foot prints in the snow to show which direction his feet led him. The girl attempted to follow his trail, yet the foot prints faded into the snowy night, leading a piece of her broken heart away also. 

"Emily!" The girl heard a distant call, her little sister Aspen. 

Bringing herself out of the trance, she blinked twice, turning her entire body toward where the littler girl stood on the edge of the clearing. All she could see above the grass was a bundle of strawberry blonde hair peeking over. 

"I'm coming!" She answered back, walking toward her little sister. Bidding her happy place a silent goodbye, she left the clearing. 

"Emily, I missed you!" The little girl giggled, pulling some strands of grass from her already dirtied and tattered dress. Emily scooped Aspen up into a hug, spinning her around for a moment & getting rewarded with a chorus of giggles, much louder than before. She wondered where her little brother was, probably off hiding somewhere. 

Aspen & Torrin were her little twin siblings, born just seven years ago . They barely remembered their father, but always asked Emily to recite stories of what kind of person he was while he was alive. The little children had the same strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes as one another and their personalities were extremely similar. 

Aspen talked up a storm as they made their way through the forest and toward their cottage that sat on the edge of their small village. It was made up of a couple of dozen houses, a small market, and one road that ran right through the middle. It was nothing compared to the grand cities Emily heard about that were deeper into the kingdom. In all her eighteen years of being alive she never got to see one of them, yet it was a dream of hers. Cities circled the Capital of their wolf kingdom, and came to a center at the Grand Castle of the King. Everyone knew who he was, yet it was a rare few that truly got to see his face. Emily heard about the stories of him, orderings deaths and winning wars without a second glance. He never came to run-down villages like her's, it was probably the least of his concerns. Emily's eyebrows scrunched up at that.