Scarlett: (GxG)

Chapter 54

Zoey

"It is time to pass my title on to the one woman deserving to sit upon the Veridian Throne. She will not lead you astray, she will not tire of serving, and she will not bend or break."

I watched Dad speak and couldn't help but smile just a little while also looking away. There was a certain finality to everything said that bothered me in a way that I was sure was only natural. But seeing my sister's stoic face beside the throne, black gown flowing around her feet, a pale hand reaching out to touch the arm of the throne, helped put me at ease just a little. She could do it. She could take our father's place and keep things as they were.

"Rian would love this, almost ironically of course. Shame he isn't here." It was Omari and his words forced me to look up at him.

I wanted to ask where my brother was but Lee moved beside me and it stole my attention away. With my hand holding my broken glasses, forcing them to sit correctly on my face, I watched my father's guard take a few steps forward. Her face was once again unreadable, so unlike the woman I'd eaten burgers with a few nights prior, or the one who shielded me from the cave in that could have crushed me under the weight of all those rocks. No. This couldn't be the last time I would see her... right? Not like this, with her red eyes looking nowhere else but at my father and her face a mask of stoicism.

"Lady Rosalynn Astor, the flower of Aosta Valley, my first progeny..."

My father's voice continued while I looked up at Lee, seeing nothing now but a sea of black hair against the fabric of her suit jacket. I was reaching before I knew it, fingers brushing her sleeve.

It was Omari's hand that pulled me back beside him. He looked at me with disapproving eyes surrounded by a sea of dark, unblemished skin.

"Zoey," he said disapprovingly. "She doesn't belong to us."

I'd overstepped and knew it. She was my father's guard. The true Astor Hound which was the face of our sigil. No matter what I thought now as the adult looking back on my past, Lee's place had always been relatively clear.

My father stood from the throne, his cerulean blue jacket made him stand out upon the stage, as did his smile that showed just the very tips of his fangs. He was proud. I could see it in his eyes as he looked at Rosalynn, regardless of any small fears he might have been hiding in there somewhere, in this moment he looked at her in a way he'd never looked at me in my entire life.

"To the city, I introduce to you my progeny who has now become your new Lady."

There was silence as he moved back and her black gown followed her as she slowly sat upon the chair. Much like I would, her hand found the skull along the arm and her nimble fingers delicately pressed into the open eye sockets. 

Lee's body turned to wispy smoke beside me. I wasn't even allowed just one more look of her before she was gone. In her place was a massive hound I knew well. She moved to the stage and took her palace at my father's side. In the deafening silence I watched him touch her, fingers slipping through the wispy fur at her neck. Head tilting back Lee let out a baying howl. The crowd then erupted into applause.

Anxiety hit me hard. I nearly plucked at my sleeve but instead I looked to the crowd. It was an impossible task, finding her out there, my Valkyrie. But as my eyes looked on, I found myself looking for the only indifferent body, the one who probably wasn't clapping because she was far too focused to let herself do such a thing. And there she was by the tall doors at the entrance, staring back at me. My hand rose, only allowing my fingers to wave. Just seeing her do the same made me smile.

"Hello?"

Of course it was Alice and her tablet that ruined the moment near me. The woman wasn't loud enough to be heard by anyone else but Omari and I, but she still forced me to look away from Scarlett.

"I need an update from security please. Hello?"

I heard a bird in the crowd. It was a horrible squawk that made absolutely no sense with teh amount of hands that continued to clap, but there it was, a shrill sound nagging at my ears. Instead of trying to find the source I watched the spectral hound move from Dad's side. Lee hadn't gotten far, just a small trot with those long legs before she and I both saw the near silent commotion from afar.

Like the bird, the view made no sense to me. So much so that it didn't register at first. My lips parted, a sound wanting to come, but there was only silence.

How? Was my next rapid thought. Why? Trailed right behind it. But there they were, foul smelling and large, barreling forward. I wanted to believe they were headed toward my father but they weren't. The rogue wolves sprinted along the marble floor, emerging from the back where I knew only one other door lay. Eyes, yellow, black, gold, and gray, had only one focus.

They crashed into Lee hard. I watched the hound tumble. She matched them for size but their fury was a quick blindside not even she could have been prepared for.

As a child I remembered hearing a stray dog being struck by a car. The pitiful, high pitched howl for help stuck with me, especially when I recalled all the pedestrians moving on as if oblivious to the animals pain during rush hour when they had places to be and things to do. That was what Lee sounded like as all those jaws clamped down on her and she fought to right her body as it rolled across the floor.

I was moving forward without realizing. And someone was screaming so loud that it echoed off the walls around me. Surely it was Alice and not me.

But when I heard the hunks of flesh being pulled away from her body I knew the screaming was all me. 

There was a desire in me to live in a world where I never knew what it sounded like to listen to someone being eaten alive, to hear flesh being pulled from someone living and devoured. Unfortunately, I knew good and well what that sound was, just like I knew what a dying hound sounded like as it struggled to stand with the weight of four wolves pressing down on it.

The crowd closest to the stage surged toward the front door, beginning to trample over those smaller or far too stunned to realize what was happening, all the while their shouting joined my screams. My knees momentarily went weak. Somehow I found the strength not recoil and flail like the others who witnessed what I did, something so undeniably savage. 

Omari's hands reached for me but I kept pulling away until they tangled in my hair. He pulled me back against him. There were shouts all around now as panic became infectious, touching everyone in a crushing wave.

"They're killing her..."

Hot tears stung my eyes and fell with the weight of lead down my cheeks with no time to cling to my lashes like a million times before. My words came again but this time with that wild scream accompanying them. 

"They're KILLING her!"

I could hear my brother hissing behind me as he fought to snatch my body to his chest in order to keep me from danger all the while my legs couldn't stop trying to move forward, to reach my father's guard as she lay in that growing pool of bright, red blood. It was all happening in seconds with barely any time to think at all, let alone breathe.

The kick that sent Omari back a few steps, like my scream, didn't feel as if it was coming from me. But it was. She was awake. I could feel that savage killer under my skin somehow. Unlike every time before, she wasn't awoken by hunger or rage. It was fear of the deepest kind. The kind I'd never experienced before in my life. The fear of losing something I held dear.

There was no haze, no marionette strings as those fingers reached for the blades beneath my blouse. My old self and I worked in tandem, our goal shared much like the tears that streaked down our cheeks.

Lee. 

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A/N:  just -sadface- :(

Knowing this was coming since like chapter 2 is depressing.