THE TRUTH

He reached out into his pocket pulling out a small glass vial filled with a glowing amber liquid. “Give him this. It's a neutralized Lunar concentrate. It won't cure the silver but it will kickstart his heart enough to keep him moving.

I took the vial, eyeing him suspiciously. 

“If I wanted him dead I would've left him in the kitchen,” Malakai said flatly.

I nodded, helping Jax drink the bitter smelling stuff. Almost instantly, some color returned to his cheeks, and he let out a long shaky breath.

“Thanks Grumpy,” Jax muttered, leaning his head against the damp wall. “But you still owe me a new harness. This one is ruined.”

Malakai actually smirked, a quick flash of white teeth that made him look human for a split second. “I'll put it on the tab.”

But the moment of levity didn’t last. A sound drifted down the tunnel rhythmic mechanical clicking.

Malakai’s face went pale. “Scout drones. They've breached the tunnels”.

“Ohh could this night get even worse?, Can we outrun them?” I asked my heart hammering against my ribs.

“No,” malakai said pulling out a second gun and handing it to me “Roxy listen to me. If we get separated, you head for the South Basin. Don't look back. Don't wait for me.”

“And what about you?”

He was about speaking when we heard a loud voice boom through the tunnels, not from a person but from a speaker mounted in a drone.

“Subject 0-9. Roxy of the Silver Willow.Your sanctuary is revoked. The Council has authorized your termination. Surrender now, and your companion will be spared.”

I looked at Jax.

He looked at me, his amber eyes wide with terrifying realization.

“Roxy, who the hell are you?” jax whispered.

Before I could answer the tunnel behind us exploded in a flash of white light and a voice filled with sickeningly familiar cruelty called from the shadows.

“Hello, little bird. Did you really think you could hide from your father forever?”

I froze. 

That voice!! It was the voice of the man who had almost torn me into shreds ten years ago. We were trapped between a monster from my past and swarm of killing machines.

My father was here and he wasn’t here to say Hello!

………………………………………………………

FLASHBACK Ten years ago 

The moon was a bloated, sickly yellow over the Willow estate private gardens. I was just fifteen  my wolf still a restless, half formed shadow.

I was running towards the stone fountain, my heart hammering against my ribs because I had heard the scream.

“Mum… mummm!” I screamed as I kept running at my best pace. 

I kept hearing the gurgling, desperate sound of someone losing their fight for air.

I burst through the Willow branches and froze.

My mother Miranda,the rightful Luna, the woman who had birthed me, was pinned  face down in the freezing water of the fountain. Her fingers clawed weakly at the stone lip, her silver hair floating like dead weeds.

“Oh no mama… please stop !!” I said with a crying  breaking voice as I reached out to Tina’s arm trying to pull her grip off my mom.

“You little brat!” She complained, as she pushed me with  force enough to send me back to the spot I was standing before but this time I was on the floor. My eyes were heaped with tears but in me was building a  burning fiery temper.

Tina was my father‘s “Second mate” a title that was a polite way of saying the woman he actually loved She was younger, crueler and thrilled by the ambition to see her own daughter take my place.

“Die quietly,you withered hag,” Tina hissed, “The alpha doesn’t want a relic. He wants a queen. She said with a jagged laugh bubbling in her throat.

A few feet stood Tricia, Tina’s daughter. She was my age but with a deceitful heart. She stood there with both arms crossed watching as if she was watching a servant scrub the floor. 

“Hurry up, mother, Father will be back from the border patrol soon”.Tricia drawled her voice devoid of any soul. “ I want her gone  before he smells the struggle”.

Immediately something snapped inside me. It’s wasn’t me shifting. It was an explosion of incubated rage.

I didn’t think. I didn’t growl. I moved!.

The wolf in me didn’t wait for the bones to break it forced the change through pure unadulterated rage.

 I hit Tina like a freight train. 

My claws, still mid transformation tore through her silk drove and deep into the meat of her shoulder. I ripped her away from the fountain throwing her back against the marble statue of a weeping angel.

She screamed, but I didn’t let her finish. I was a blur of teeth and vengeance. I lunged, my jaw unhinging, and clamped down at her throat.

 The taste of her blood was metallic and hot, the most satisfying thing I had ever felt. With a single, violent wrench of my neck, the splashing stopped. Tina slumped, her eyes wide and glassy, staring at the moon she would never see again. 

“Mother!” Tricia shrieked,she tried to shift, her bones beginning to pop, but she was too slow and weak.

I had turned on her, my vision a pulsing red. I didn’t see a sister. I saw a parasite.

 I turned swiftly towards Tricia who was stuck in shock staring at her mother  struggling to breathe on spilt blood.

I felt no pity.

 I immediately lunged at Tricia, swiping my claws across her chest, opening her from collarbone to hip, before plunging my claws into her chest. She tried to fight me off but I was too endowed with rage to allow her win this time.

I stood over their bodies, dripping with blood of my father’s “real” family gasping for air. I turned to the fountain pulling my mother our of the water. She was coughing, shivering, her eyes filled with a terror that broke what was left of me. 

“Roxy…” she whispered,touching my blood stained face. “Run. You have to run. He won’t forgive this.”

I saved you, Mom,” I sobbed my fur receding from my skin in painful waves.

“He loved her more than life, Roxy” she gasped, her voice cracking. “He will kill you for this. Go now!”.

I heard the heavy thud of boots on the gravel path. The scent of my father hit me like a physical blow. He emerged from the trees,his eyes instantly locking onto the two bodies cooling on the grass.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He simply looked at my body which was drenched with blood, and his eyes turned a dead hollow black.

“You”, he whispered, his voice vibrating with a power that made the ground tremble.

 “You are no longer my daughter.You are a monster. And I will make sure you pay for this.”

He shifted, not the slow painful shift of a teenager but the instantaneous terrifying transformation of an Alpha in his prime. A massive grey wolf stood where my father had been, his teeth bared in a snarl that promised nothing but death. 

I ran.

I didn’t  grab clothes. I didn’t grab money. I just ran deep into the dark woods, the sound of my  mothers scream and ripping flesh echoed throughout the garden, and the continuous sound of his howl behind me was a promise that the hunt would never end. 

“Get her” a voice echoed through the woods.

 Behind me was the werewolf army.