The Haunting Past

Heaven’s eyes gradually open to the blurry view of a wooden ceiling rippling in twos and threes.

She feels a solid barrier at her back that tells her she’s lying directly on the floor instead of a woolen blanket. And when a cold, smooth touch grazes her arm, she could tell it’s her mother even before the woman’s blurry face lingers over hers.

She wants to lift her hand to reciprocate the woman’s touch. But she realizes she can’t move.

“Mom… why— why can’t I move?” she stutters.

“Shh…” her mother hushes as that ever-loving cold touch reaches Heaven’s jaw.

“Why are you crying?” Heaven asks again when the blur clears a bit to reveal the tears on her mother’s smiling face.

“They are here,” her father’s voice comes.

“Who’s here?” Heaven queries in panic, still struggling to move but can’t.

“Heaven, listen to me. An Alpha is trying to kill us all,” her mother raps while cupping Heaven’s cheeks. “I fed you with Death’s Look pills so that you’d seem dead, but you should be fine in the next twenty-four hours.” The woman sniffles before her next words come out amidst tears, her voice croaking. “Please leave this place as soon as you can move. Go somewhere far away—the human world should suffice—and never return to this world. Please, avoid as many Alphas as you can. Do not come back here, Heaven. Heed my warning.”

The woman disappears from her sight in a flash. Heaven tries to speak again, to call her back, but even her tongue has stopped moving.

Soon, her brain becomes an absolute hazy mess. And she can’t seem to think straight as she slowly blacks out.

Heaven doesn’t know for how long she stayed unconscious. When next she opens her eyes, she hears muffled clashing noises that urges her to turn to her right.

It’s still a strain to move, very painful too, but Heaven grasps all she needs to see with a short look—two sets of feet facing each other; one belonging to her father, the other unknown. Blood spilling to the floor. Her father’s wounded body slumping to the same floor as the owner of the other feet crouches down while reaching to her father’s neck with a crimson-coated dagger, thereby revealing the scar slashing diagonally from the index knuckle to the wrist of that hand.

Seeing her father that helpless and dying makes her scream. Even as the scenery suddenly changes to reveal the wooden roof of a fourposter bed, Heaven continues shouting at the top of her voice.

She only calms down some seconds later, when she realizes it was a nightmare. A damn nightmare… which actually isn’t just a nightmare.

Seven years ago, it happened. Since then, it has been haunting her.

She hasn’t had the nightmare for quite a while, though. But now it’s back. It tends to return whenever she’s scared; whenever her fear for herself triggers. That’s when she sees the bloody, horrid images.

Now it only reminds her of her plight—The tower, Ziason, him being an Alpha.

Heaven suddenly sits up to realize she has been lying in bed all this time. Last she could recall, she was in the ground hall, sitting against the door. Did she sleep off? Did someone bring her here?

The faint breeze sipping through the only window in the room draws her attention to it. It’s small. Really small. But it doesn’t mean it can’t fit a human who can pull enough bravery to climb the tower walls—particularly why Heaven, as she notices it now, does not like the fact that the window is open and without protection.

She quickly gets out of the bed and makes for Kaicha’s room. The little girl is tucked in her bed, sleeping. It makes Heaven wonder for how long she herself has been asleep.

With cautious steps, she walks across Kaicha’s room to window, which is identical to Heaven’s. Except, the view outside it is entirely different from hers.

Beyond the huge old fence, there are arrays of buildings portrayed on that side of the tower; rows of bungalows, and a crowd within the linear building arrangement. Those must be his pack.

Far, far beyond the houses are mountains covered in fog. But Heaven can’t fathom much of that due to the approaching dusk.

Aside from the main gate, there’s a small single gate crafted in the tower’s fence, which leads directly into the pack’s streets. And it’s from that gate Heaven sees Ziason now stepping through into the compound, locking it thoroughly with a chain before entering the tower.

Heaven quickly gets out of the room and hurries downstairs. However, Ziason had already entered the building by the time she reached the last floor.

She notices the gruesome sight of his lawyer was gone, as well as the contract. But then some noises coming from the hall next to the ground hall draw Heaven’s attention to it.

She finds Ziason running on a treadmill, his back turned to her.

Now it’s no surprise why he said he came by often, seeing as there are modern gym equipment inside a bloody old tower.

One major distraction of the view in front of her would be the ripples of Ziason’s wide back that matches the veins and ridges of his heavy limbs. But something else pulls Heaven’s stare—a tattoo inked over every inch of his back.

However, she later notices it looks more natural than a tattoo, or… something sort of strange to be on a person’s skin.

The only reason an art would feel that way is if it had an otherworldly meaning, as in linked to extreme dark magic.

Like… a curse?

Heaven may not know much about the wolf world, but she certainly has read some things; like how the mark of a cursed wolf is a tattoo that drives down a bizarre feeling.

The tattoo could be anything. It could be random dots. It could be the full-on image of a person. In all, it signifies a state of revulsion.

Being cursed is usually an abominable thing in the lupine world. But that certainly has nothing to do with Heaven now.

“You didn’t tell me you were an Alpha,” she utters instead, fear threading through her heart despite her show of bravery.

When Ziason cranes his neck to glance at her direction, she nearly swallows her throat, strange ropes knotting in her belly.

“Do you hear me, Ziason?” she summons the courage to ask again. When the man still doesn’t respond, Heaven proceeds to scream. “You cheated the contract!”

Ziason presses some buttons on the treadmill to reduce its pace until it finally stops. Then he gradually steps down from it while grabbing a small towel from its handle bar.

Turning around, he approaches Heaven with deliberate movements, wiping his face and neck with the towel.

Heaven fights to resist the temptation of staring hungrily at his moisture-laden

abs, each step Ziason takes striking her heart like a drum.

And the nearer he comes to her, the louder and faster her heart pounds.