Chapter 7

Layla POV 

I sat on the bed, staring at my trembling hands as little fragments of my past began to finally  piece themselves together.The flickering light of the candles around me seemed to pulse in time with my racing heart.

The fire, the pack mob, their hateful screams—the way they had hunted me like an animal. I shuddered violently, my breath hitching these  memories leaving me raw and exposed. Tears spilled down my cheeks for the hundredth time again today, hot and fast, as the realization hit me like a blow to the chest.

I had died.  

They had killed me.  

It didn't matter that I had walked into that fire by myself, not when they had pushed me to it with their words and actions.

My hands slid  to my stomach again, cradling the life within me that I had lost a choked sob escaped me, and I buried my face in my hands, shaking.  

“You didn’t deserve to die.”  He had said to me a total stranger. Those words. That conviction.  

I wouldn't let it go to waste, I may have acted all tough and impervious but his words had been a balm to my wounded heart,it had  eased the sharp edges of my grief. 

So I was going to cling to them as if they were a lifeline and they were especially in  this strange, incomprehensible reality.  

I didn't have the time or luxury to be crying first  I had to figure out where I was and to do that I had  to get out of bed first. I sniffed, forcing myself to focusing  lowered my gaze to my arms, scanning the skin for signs of the burns I was sure wouldn't be there. 

I felt weird but nothing to suggest that I was injured or anything. There was nothing, not a single blister or scar marred my body. It was as if the fire had never touched me.  

I ran my fingers over my arms, my shoulders, my legs but smooth, unbroken skin greeted me everywhere I searched.  

Then my hand grazed my chest, and I froze.  

Beneath the fabric of my dress I was wearing and , just above my heart, my fingers found it.

A scar.  

A very familiar scar that had been on my body while I was  alive, before I had entered this body. I rose from the bed my legs shaking as I tried to maintain my balance  and walked to the mirror to look at it , desperation gnawed at me, and had me moving my hands  to the front of my dress, fumbling with the fabric until I could pull it down enough to expose the skin of my chest. My breath caught as I saw the jagged, silvery scar that marred the space just above my heart.  

My breath caught as I pulled the hair aside, exposing the familiar mark. 

My fingers hovered over it, hesitant to touch. It was a mid sized scar, a little jagged at the top edges but mostly round and smooth a reminder of a past I had tried to forget. I traced the scar with trembling fingers, a bitter laugh escaping me.

“Of course,” I muttered bitterly.

“Of all the things to stay…”  

Memories rushed forward unbidden, a time when the wound had ached badly and I had wanted to know why it did.

Raven’s voice echoed in my mind, her words a warning and yet a sad retelling as she had rubbed on a salve on the wound.

“It was from Cassandra,” she had told me, her voice tight with anger. 

“She stabbed you when you were just a wee baby, she said you were cursed.”  

Cassandra. 

The name alone had sent chills of terror down my spine. She had tried to kill me—stabbed me, called me cursed, and left me to die.

"The alpha did not wait for me, to confirm that, not when she gave you that mark" Of course he hadn't tried, my father had stopped caring for me immediately my mother died.

“This scar,” she had said once, her fingers brushing over it with a tenderness that I had rarely ever felt even from my own father. I had survived then, just as I had survived the fire. But why?

Why had this scar followed me into this new body?  

She looked at me, her eye saddened.

“It’s a reminder of what you survived. Cassandra thought she could end you, but you proved her wrong. You’re stronger than she could ever understand.”  she had mumbled and it had taken all I had not to scoff at those words.

Me. Strong!

That wasn't me , I was the cursed one. 

Cursed.  

Till today the word still lingered in my mind like a dark cloud. 

For years that was all I had been, it was all Cassandra had allowed me to be,she had always hated me and I had never stopped her from doing so.

I hadn’t fought back.  

What was the point when my own father believed her?

What was the point when I believed her. I shook my head, trying to push the memories away. I wasn’t that woman anymore.

Or at least, I didn’t think I was. This scar shouldn’t have followed me into this new body.  I should have been free of it, free of the past. 

Why it was still here?  Well that was anyone's guess but I wasn't going to let it stop me. 

If I was still cursed, then I would deal with it, until then I would live as whoever I was.

Moving my eyes from the scar I looked over my body in general, I hadn't changed much from what I was before, my body was still trim and slim just like my other body, I was a lot more pink, I wasn't sure if that was because of the fire or just the way this body had been before. 

I looked up to my waist and then my breasts that were firm and plump, just the same to, but then I found my eyes in the mirror and I flinched I still had the same face, still looked exactly like I had in my past, and maybe some would say otherwise but I begged to differ. 

Everything was very similar from the nose, to my eyes and my lips. My hair was still that familiar silver, something they had claimed was a mark from the goddess.

I clenched my fists, frustration bubbling up inside me. 

This rebirth—if that’s what it was—should have been a second chance, a clean slate. But instead, I felt like a prisoner trapped in a very similar cage.  

Or was my body not the cage. I huffed, annoyed with myself. 

A sharp knock on the door jolted me from my thoughts. My heart leaped into my throat, and I instinctively tried to reach or my dress tat ad been dropped to the floor when the door was pulled open.

" My lady I am coming in.”

“Wait” I said, my voice likely muffled my voice.

The door creaked open, and a maid walked inside the room, she was small very petite and she looked like she was about to collapse, her eyes dark under the lids, I almost smiled , she closed the door behind her and leaned against it.

Then she seemed to shake herself for no reason and then stood, her eyes roaming around the room first to the bed– I saw when she realized I was not in it, her gaze became frantic as she looked around ge room and landed on me naked in front of the mirror.

She screamed.