Rejection on the Alpha #1

25. Red Riding Hood Sights Me

(New and edited)
CHAPTER 25: Red Riding Hood Sights Me

I sink the teddy bear in the water, seeing that there was no harm in cleaning it. It's colour disintegrates in the water. She watches me, sitting far from the water when the blood pooled around her like a dress made of bitter liquid, stickier than water and taints everything. I saw how much that hurt her, that even behind the magic she had to live with was a girl who just wanted a life, a home, not this.

Not the inability to touch something that she clearly had as a child, "What were you before you became this?" I ask her, moving my fingers over the teddy bear and pausing when the water changes, fixing the tainted colour that was staining the aged teddy bear.

She doesn't say a thing until I've finished and she just stands there in the cave, "Did you have a family?" I ask her, "Is that where you got the teddy? The bed? Those ornaments inside?" I ask her.

She stares, no colour in her eyes that doesn't mix with the blood pouring from the midline of her head, "She looked like you, my mother. Always wore her hair down, blonde strands that would float every time we went to the beach. She'd take me to see the seagulls, to find sea shells, to swim and how not to drown. Now all I am ever doing is drowning." She speaks differently now, more casual, less like a rhyming witch that gives me the creeps.

"I remember how warm the sand was in the summer. So beautiful, it looked like stars in the light. Not like here. It wasn't manufactured, everything was as natural as skin, flesh, bone and touch. She was so pretty. So full of life, sometimes when I see you, I remember, until you scowl and shove away those who treat you like a caged, untamed animal because you are one. You don't let your wolf out. I don't know why. It's a part of you, a part that should be accepted." She changed course of words.

"The way you accepted your situation?" I scoff, looking at her as I move back into the room, the teddy bear was warming in my hands, it soon became dry, I sat on the bed, she moved to the floor and pulled her legs up, wrapping her arms around them.

"I am in its shape and form, clearly I have accepted it."

Perhaps she had a point.

I close my eyes, moving the teddy bear to the side, "How much do you know about the others? About the other high ranks in each clan." I ask her.

She for,a a circle of blood, transforming it into a sphere, "Loyalty is but one factor of unity."

"Great, you've gone back to being cryptic again."

"I don't care for the Alphas who strive for power, who fight for power. Not all of them are true to punishment like you seem to believe. Warner loves Alice, Serena leads the true pack, Martin...has accepted that you may never love him. Marcel fears death. Klein fears failure. Each of them so scared and so petrified that the Darkling blood provides security where there was none before. It's a balance that needs to be made in society and Martin made it, Celestine. He is not just one mate of yours, he is but one piece of a puzzle who's picture you still cannot make out."

I stare at her, "Are you an oracle?"

"I was, in another life that I sometimes dream about. When I made one wrong decision that put me in this curse for centuries to come and centuries that have already been. The teddy wasn't mine, it was to be my daughter's." Her confession has me stilling.

I look at her, "Daughter's?"

"I was pretty once too. I had a loving man, a loving family, acceptance and loyalty and liberty when I thought there was none. She was born with the placenta around her neck. My first child died in my arms. That loving husband became nothing more than the cold shell of a man who wanted to be a father and I don't blame for what he did next, for what he turned me into. A blood-ridden mess. Because with each miscarriage, came more heartbreak. The shattering of organs and bone. The curse I bear is a consequence of failure for the man I love."