The Rose & The Wolf

Prologue

I can't feel my legs. I try to tell him that.

I can't breathe. I also try to tell him that.

He doesn't hear me and I don't hear him. The smell of the old, rotting wood is back. Is my screams or his?

Metal grinding is a piercing sound when you can't see what is going on around you.

"Let me get this straight, Beaumont." I hear a woman. A woman in charge and well defined. Maybe this is what he's been trying to avoid.

"I..."

"You listen to me boy!" All is silent, only for a brief moment, before another sound of metal grinding with metal sends ease through my body. I can barely wedge my eyes open.

"You've been running around with an Orion chick?" She sends a fierce kick at my side, and my ribs ache even more than they already have.

"Mother please!" His voice becomes so demanding, so persistent, that her boot stops mid-kick from hitting the open, bloody, bruised flesh of my side again.

The woman nods once, and I hear the sound of a crash, that someone or something is hitting the jagged, rushing, stormy water below us. 

I feel light like air, and think for a moment that this is what death feels like. But I come close to my senses in time. I have the urge to hold my breath.

"You're next, sweetheart." The sound was light and sweet, like an angel calling me home.

The light feeling returns and by now I can open my eyes. I realize now it was not an angel calling me home, but rather the devil yanking my anchor down. I scream and the water from the salty, rocking ocean fills my lungs and drowns out any sight and any sound of mind or any feeling that was left in my body. All of my adrenaline is wasted and burned out from the nights of running, hiding, climbing. The salty water burns my sides, my throat, my ears, my mouth, my lungs.

Help me.