THE BLOODY MASSACRE

[FOUR YEARS AGO ]

                       🪷ISORA🪷

“Take a deep breath sweetheart… breath through it, let her out”

I screamed tears through the night as my bones splintered and reformed. My Mother's voice was cool even as my body convulsed.

It's my eighteen years birthday and my first shift ever.

“It hurts mom…it hurts a lot” I couldn't bear the pains 

“I know baby girl, I know but you're doing so well, your wolf is beautiful” my mother's voice remained steady and calm “just a little more...”

She didn't get to complete her statement. The explosion cut her off 

Fire erupted across the eastern tree line, turning night into day. The blast wave hit a heartbeat later, hot and reeking of smoke and something worse. Something burning that shouldn't burn.

"What!" I screamed, the pain eating deep to my core, I'm still in transition "What's happening?"

My mother was already shifting, bones cracking with practiced ease. My father burst through the trees, massive and dark in his wolf form.

Shadow Pack, his voice roared through the pack link. They're everywhere. Get Isora out!

The link exploded with screaming.

Dozens of voices, all at once. Pain. Terror. Death.

"Mom?" My voice came out small and broken. I've been hit, I'm now in my Wolf form but I'm bleeding terribly.

My mother's silver wolf nudged me hard . “Run to the river. Asher will be there. Run, Isora. Don't stop. Don't look back”.

"I won't leave you!"

"You don't have a choice."  She pushed me as arrows were flying, one hit me on my limp and I shifted to my human form violently.

Wolves poured through the trees like living shadows. Too many. Too fast. They moved with brutal efficiency, cutting down everything in their path.

I tried to shift again, I tried to help, I tried to fight and save my people. Pain exploded in my side. I looked down, dazed, at the blood spreading across my ribs. I must have sustained another arrow hit.

My father's howl shattered what was left of the night. Raw. Anguished. Final.

My head snapped up in time to see him fall beneath a mass of black fur and snapping jaws. I saw the wolves tear into him, vicious and thorough. I saw the light leave his eyes.

"No…no...DAD!"

I lurched forward, but my mother was there, blocking my path. Blood matted her silver fur. So much blood already.

"Go. NOW."

"I won't...I can't..."

A wolf came at us from the left. My mother met it mid-leap, jaws closing around its throat. The crunch of bone. The gurgle of a final breath.

Then three more wolves replaced it.

Hands grabbed me from behind, human hands, strong and shaking. Asher.

"We have to go," he gasped, his face streaked with soot and tears. "Isora, we have to..."

"Let go of me!" I fought him, clawing at his arms. "My parents! MOM!!!" I screamed, it was raw, it was brutal.

Through the chaos, through the fire and blood and screaming, I saw him. A man stood in the center of the massacre, tall and dark and utterly calm. His bare chest was painted with blood, his black hair wild, his eyes the cold blue of a winter sky. He moved through my people like death incarnate, precise, brutal, unstoppable.

He reached my father's broken body. Stood over it for one terrible moment.Then moved toward my mother.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no..."

My mother fought. She fought like the warrior she was, taking down two wolves, then three. But there were too many. Always too many.

The dark-haired man, Alpha Adrian, she realized with numb horror closed in.

"MOM!" My scream ripped my throat raw.

My mother's silver wolf turned one last time. Even bleeding, even dying, those eyes found me across the carnage.

“I love you. Survive. Make them pay.”

Then Alpha Adrian's jaws closed around her throat.The sound my mother made…half-howl, half-gurgle...would haunt my nightmares forever.

"Don't look." Asher's hand covered my eyes, but it was too late.

I'd seen it. I'd seen my mother go limp. I'd seen Adrian drop the body like trash. I'd seen him lift his bloodstained muzzle to the moon and howl, victorious and terrible.

Something inside me shattered.

My wolf, already injured, already terrified, retreated so deep I couldn't feel it anymore. I couldn't feel anything except a vast, howling emptiness where my family used to be.

"Isora." Asher shook my body. "Isora, we have to move."

Around us, the Nightfall Pack was dripping with blood, everywhere furs, bodies, blood. The pack link went silent.

Asher dragged me toward the river, my legs barely working. I looked back once, just once.

Alpha Adrian stood in the ruins, surrounded by bodies. My people. My pack. My family.

He shifted back to human, blood dripping from his hands, his face carved from ice and cruelty. He surveyed his work with those cold blue eyes, and I knew…knew he felt nothing. No remorse. No mercy. Just brutal, efficient slaughter.

"I'll kill you," I whispered, the words barely audible over the roar of flames. "I swear to the Moon Goddess, I'll kill you for this."