WORDS OF THE DEAD

It was the day of my death.

‎I woke up to an aching body. The chains and wolfsbane poison messed up my sleep.

‎Or that was the excuse I gave myself.

‎I was still covered in blood from the previous day, although I was in new clothes.

‎The truth was that I was haunted by the image of the mother and daughter that I had almost killed in cold blood.

‎Liam told me that I had killed up to twenty people.

‎Many of them were from my own pack.

‎I felt tears flow down my eyes.

‎Maybe what everyone said was true. I was really a crazy monster. That must have been why my father insisted I find a mate to take over the pack.

‎I had always had volatile emotions, but I had never killed anyone before. But now I had murdered so many.

‎The pack numbered less than five hundred, and I had taken the lives of twenty.

‎I slouched against the wall and tried to cover my eyes with my hands, but the chains restricted me.

‎So I cried like that anyway.

‎Maybe I deserved to die. That way, I wouldn't be a threat to anyone I loved.

‎I was a disgrace to the great white wolf bloodline.

‎I heard the jangle of metal keys.

‎I looked up to see someone open my cell door.

‎The room was large, and I was at the far end, so I couldn't make them out while their back was turned towards me.

‎They turned forward and I saw them clearly.

‎It was a man.

‎The first thing I noticed about him was that his left arm was missing from the shoulder.

‎He wore a guard uniform and there was also a bandage across his right eye covering half of his head.

‎The bandages were completely fresh. That meant that I had taken his arm during my rampage.

‎His left eye stared at me with a hard gaze.

‎"Lady Morning."

‎"Adriel." My eyes widened as I recognized his voice.

‎I had known Adriel since I was a child. He was an orphan and one of the youths sponsored by my father.

‎We often played together, and I was jealous when he had gone to become a warrior.

‎Now he stared at me with hatred. Without his arm, his dreams of being a warrior were gone for good.

‎I expected Adriel to keep his distance from me and curse me from afar, but he walked closer.

‎He stopped three feet away from me, within kissing distance.

‎"You did this to me Morning." Adriel said as he raised the stump of his left arm.

‎I whimpered and tried to sink into the wall, but it didn't budge.

‎He crouched to get to eye level with me.

‎I turned to avoid the gaze of his remaining eye.

‎"They let me come in here because I told them I wanted to spit on you before your execution this evening." Adriel said.

‎So it was true. I was to be executed in just a few hours. My life was coming to an end and with it the great white wolf bloodline.

‎"But there's something I want to show you." Adriel said.

‎Then he reached for his back pocket.

‎I cringed, expecting a knife. It would be fitting that he would come to kill me himself.

‎Instead, he pulled out a key.

‎"I stole this from the guard."

‎My eyes widened.

‎Adriel moved and began unlocking my shackles.

“What? What are you doing?” I said in a panicked voice.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Adriel finished unlocking my hands and moved to my legs.

“But why? I-I destroyed your life.”

“Your father was a great man. His bloodline shouldn’t end like this.” He said with a smile.

The cell door opened again.

“Hey! What are you doing?!”

Two guards walked inside.

Adriel turned back to them. “Shit.”

My hands and legs were free, but there was a final shackle around my neck.

“No, it’s too late! Just leave me.” I pleaded, but he ignored me.

Adriel ignored the guards and turned back to unlock it. But his hands were shaking, and the key fell down.

He tried catching it but accidentally hit it mid-air. It flew to another corner of the room.

“Adriel run!”

Adriel tried to stand up, but the guards had already reached him. The first one kicked his stomach and he tried to grab the floor, but he was missing an arm.

The second guard picked him up from the ground and propped him up.

“Let him go!” I grabbed the shackle around my neck and tried to break it. But I was too weak because of the wolfsbane. It prevented me from shifting.

Adriel was facing me, so I saw him mouth the words. “I forgive you.”

The guard ripped out his throat and his dead body fell to the floor.

“No!” I screamed.

My vision was covered in red and I ripped the shackles apart.

I had already shifted and jumped on the guards before they knew what had happened. I ripped them into pieces.

But my blood thirst was far from sated.

I ran out of the dungeons and looked in the direction of the village. There would be many people to kill there.

And Liam would be there with Olivia. They caused me pain, so I should give them death.

‘No. Escape.’

A part of my mind nudged me to run away from the pack. It was difficult to redirect my blood loss, but the wolfsbane dampened my wolf and made it possible for me to direct it to the guards by the wall.

I ran as fast as I could and killed many guards on the way out.

I finally passed the gate and ran into the surrounding forest.

I ran into the night and my strength finally failed.

I shifted back and fell down in the grass naked.

I rested against a tree.

I had run for so long that it was already nighttime and the full moon was over my head.

I felt so weak. I shouldn’t have been able to transform under the effects of Wolfsbane, but I had somehow done just that. Now I was feeling the result of strain like that.

Then I heard a twig break.

I turned back swiftly and sniffed the air.

My heart stopped as I identified the smell that was stuck in my mind forever after the night my mother died.

Humans.

Hunters.

They were approaching.