2

*** 

  

          Light grey eyes stare back at me through the mirror, that’s if you can even call them grey. I add another coat of mascara and then return the wand to its tube, I pinch my cheeks a few times, hoping to give some spark of life into my appearance, I’ve always been pale, and no, not just my skin, I mean all of me, my hair is white, not platinum blond or grey, I mean snow white, on sunny days you can see some highlights of blue and hints of silver in it. My eyes are a very light grey on a good day, when I'm feeling emotional you can see flecks of silver like someone sprinkled broken chips of the full moon on my pupils. The freakiest thing I tell you. At least the hair on my eyebrows is a few shades darker than that on my hair, thank the Goddess, I would probably look like a clown with white eyebrows. 

        The old healer in the pack called me blessed child once when I fell and broke my arm and had to go to the clinic for treatment. I didn’t think much of it, probably because she gave me a popsicle right after and I got distracted, I do however think it is some sort of rare genetic mutation like how some people are born albino. Though it’s difficult for our kind to have these kinds of conditions, it’s not impossible. 

    No amount of punching or slapping at my cheeks will give me the natural rosy look I am hoping for, or automatically breathe some life into me. 

         I haven’t been feeling much these days, months really. Ever since that night a year ago. Life has not given us much to smile about. Blinking rapidly, I sigh deeply, blinking back the tears brimming in my eyes. Maybe now things will be different. I pull my hair up tilting my head at different angles. 

“I think you should wear it down,” a voice says from the bathroom entrance. 

I turned to my best friend Lily, like me she’s a refugee, another of the only twenty individuals who survived the massacre. 

“This dress suits you,” she says. 

      I look down at the dark blue dress I have on, it is the nicest dress I have, I got it last year when I went shopping with my mum and Lily for my coming of age ceremony, On the verge of turning eighteen, my only worries included waiting until I finally turned eighteen so I could have my coming of age ceremony along with all my friends, I wouldn’t be considered a juvenile anymore, I’d be my own person, my dad wouldn’t give me a curfew, I could decide if I wanted to enroll in a human people’s collage, or if I wanted to work towards having a more serious role in the pack. 

          And of course, find my true mate, in our world, it’s not often that a wolf finds their soulmate, my parents were mates, father always talked about how magical it felt when he first saw mama, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. That they were drawn to each other from the start. I once asked mama how she knew dad was her mate. 

‘The instinct told me 'She had replied. 

   I’d been so excited, even went as far as counting the days, and now, I’d kill to hear my father yell at me to come back before midnight while I slam the door to go hang out with my friends. Or the delicious aroma of my mum’s chocolate-chipped cookies. How in a rush I was in to grow up. How foolish I was. 

“It still fits,” she says, coming into the bathroom, she arranges my hair around my shoulders, pulling them behind me so the thin strap of the dress is on display. 

“Yeah,” I say. I don’t think I’ve changed much in the span of a year, physically that is. 

Mentally...? 

Emotionally? 

Now that’s a different story. The me from a year ago hadn’t known loss, bone wrecking loss, the loss of everyone I’ve ever known, more than half of my pack, slaughtered, my parents, my Alpha, my friends, my pack... 

Dead. 

         Now there’s just a handful of us left. All teens because we snuck out to attend a human’s college party on the other side of town. Disobeying directs orders from our alpha of not fraternizing with outsiders, especially humans. 

Who knew that teenage angst would be what saved our lives? 

        Only returning just before dawn to see it. Blood, and more blood. The bodies lying on the ground, everywhere, some killed in their beds as they slept. That night our pack had been slaughtered. It was gruesome and merciless. No one had been spared, not the women, not the children. 

“Alina” 

I blinked at Lily, only realizing I must have spaced out again. 

       Placing her hand on my shoulder she says “I know it's hard but this could be good for us. The enforcer who brought us here says we have to attend. I know the last thing you want to be doing is socializing but it's been a year, and we have to move on. If things go well, the pack will welcome us, we can stay here” 

I nod my head as she speaks. 

 As I always do when she tells me this. 

      I can’t tell her that I haven’t the heart to move on, I don’t know why. Lily says I should stop beating myself up about their deaths. I just feel like a thousand pounds have been propped on my little shoulders, call it survivor’s guilt. I don’t know, I don’t care. I know that I couldn’t have been able to do something had I been there, I’m not an enforcer or a fighter, my presence would have probably not changed a damn thing but why can’t I just shed the feeling of guilt on my conscience? I just feel I should have done something. That I could have done something. 

I don’t tell her this, instead, I say “I know, I’m trying. I swear” 

She gives me a look, like she’s trying to read me after a moment she must have seen what she’s looking for because she nods and says “that’s good” then exits the bathroom. 

I don’t tell her that I don’t want to go. She already knows that. 

         But she’s right. After we buried our dead, we couldn’t stay in our territory again, some couldn’t bear to stay in the same house where their loved ones had been brutally killed, and others were scared that whoever killed everyone might come back and finish us off, those that had relatives in other packs left to join their family members, the rest of us that had no one packed whatever we could and went to the caves south of our territory and lived there for months. 

         A few weeks ago, some wolves found us, apparently, word had gotten around about what happened with our pack and that there were a few survivors. The wolves told us that their Alpha was hosting this year's summer full moon ball at Dark Woods Pack and welcomes us to join their pack if we choose to. 

        We knew we couldn’t live south of our territory forever, a bunch of pain-filled grieving teenagers with nowhere else to go, some were just relieved to have someone else in charge. Some didn’t want to leave their roots to move where we might not be welcomed. 

          Leaving felt like we were abandoning our people. We were the last of what was left of our pack, of Sacred heart. But our world is a violent place, a bunch of young wolves living alone in a vast territory, with no alpha, no protection to speak of? The world would eat us alive. We’d never survive. 

       Leaving with them was the best decision for us. And that’s how we got here. It’s been an entire week since then, we’ve mostly been keeping to ourselves. Testing the waters. Any sign of aggression? We get out of here as fast as we can. But for now, we survive. Or that’s what the others have planned anyway. I heard them say this in the last ‘pack’ meeting we had that Kent, the self-appointed alpha of our group of survivors called last night. 

       My plan however is very different and very simple. To get revenge. I don’t care how long it takes me but one day, I’ll find who or whatever is responsible for the destruction of my pack and I’m going to kill them.