BOOK ONE - promised series
When a new family moves to Everett Valley, Catherine vows to find out what they are searching for in her secluded hometown that doesn't normally welcome new people.
Catherine must choose between the council and her pack le...
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Whenever I felt unbalanced, I had made a habit of shoving the unpleasant feeling causing the disarray into a dark place in my mind. It was a place that I avoided at all cost. It housed every single thing in my life I never wanted to feel, realise or admit.
And sometimes, the wall between what I wanted to feel and what I forced myself to ignore, came tumbling to the ground.
All it took was one deeply concerned look from my Maecena—as if she saw right through me—to shatter into a million pieces. I wanted to tell her everything, let it spill out of me like it had been itching to do ever since we met up to pre-study.
My body shook to the core, the blood in my veins suddenly running as cold as it did a few hours ago. Every single feeling I had felt came rushing back to the surface, drowning me in a sea of tantalising fear.
I could barely keep standing as the wall tumbled to the ground as if a sledgehammer was being used to bash it in.
One swift crack and with a loud bang echoing in my head, it broke. It couldn't hold the pressure any longer.
Fear electrocuted my body, a hard and painful bolt surging through me. Anguish, paranoia, hate and anger followed. Intense and hot they blazed like a storm of flames in a red fury I couldn't stop. They coloured my ocean with an angry passion, deepening the colour until it nearly turned black.
Just before it did, the next emotion welled up and stained the ocean until the water accepted it and turned from a blood-red to an earthy brown. Paranoia was the emotion that stuck—a ghostly milky white.
It was Kendra that held me when my legs finally gave up and my eyesight abandoned me.
The thought alone of knowing her, being by my side and feeling nothing but concern for me, enabled me to rebuild that wall and find the strength to stand back up. She didn't say a word. She knew I wasn't ready to talk, so she gave me time to gather my thoughts.
She wrapped one arm around my upper body, just underneath my armpit, and carried me like that towards the bed. Gathering what little strength I could, I climbed onto it and let myself fall into the soft mattress.
We both lay beside each other, staring at the ceiling. Once my sight slowly cleared again, the pictures hanging there came back into focus. They were of us throughout our childhood.
They warmed my heart, washed away the white paranoia and gave me the courage I needed to voice my haunting thoughts.
"My brothers and I went running today," I began, noticing that my hands were still shaking.
She kept quiet, waiting patiently, while the pictures above weren't of us anymore.
"And then I smelled the scent of blood in the air."
In one of the pictures I saw the mangled body. His throat. In another I saw his shattered legs. His arms.
In the centre picture, the largest one that in reality showed Kendra and I drenched in water, sitting in a small creek in Everett Forest, there was one pair of eyes.
