Chapter 9

Sybil’s POV

I stared, wide-eyed at the man before me at my father. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The man I believed to be dead, that I thought I would never see again was right here, before me.

Coincidence, destiny, they were things I believed to be myths, however I was experiencing it for the first time.

“Dad?” I croaked out, suddenly losing my voice, “Is it–is it you?”

My eyes ran down his face, the same face that had stayed with me upon his living, abandoning us, the same face that had haunted me, the only scene engraved into my mind.

It couldn’t be right? It couldn’t be the man that abandoned us barely to the age of fifteen, though still very young, with my senses barely developed, his smell struck a memory inside me and those eyes, like my sister’s were impossible to forget.

They have been the only things I saw, his eyes as he ran away from us, his face, for a child those little details were what replaced the fond family memory we must have had. If we had at all.

Still in doubt, I took another sniff and his scent hit me, earthy, musky, and once home.

‘It’s him.’ My wolf whispered, her voice broken over the memory of being abandoned. I reeled back, breath caught in my throat.

He came close to the bar, his fingers wrapped around the iron bars and with unreasonable doubts I knew.

It was him.

My father!

Just when he opened his mouth to speak I tumbled on my feet, whirling around and running out of the dungeon. I didn’t stop till I was in our shared room, I banged the door shut and relaxed behind it, aware of the rapid rise and fall of my chest.

No.

I didn’t know what I was expecting going down there to check, but it certainly wasn’t my father that I expected to see. I’d sought out the prisoner, looking for a possible ally for my escape, but instead I’d come across the man I believed to be dead.

Was I happy? Was I angry? What did I feel? I tried to pick out my emotions, point where they were coming from and possible reactions from me but all I felt was numbness.

The numb ache in my chest and the sheer shock of it hadn’t allowed me to feel anything other than the betrayal of that day. The one person that was supposed to protect you, that was how it was, parents protected their children, laid their lives down for the pups, but my father had deserted. Left his own children. His flesh and blood.

Marilyn had been fifteen then and the news of her not being able to shift like the rest of her mates had just been heard, but what did our father do? He’d left like a sniveling coward.

Slowly, emotions seeped into my skin, like ice piercing through flesh, snaking up and freezing me. But rather than the chills from coldness, anger brewed hot inside my chest, and soon the side of my body burned hot, then hot tears poured down my face.

I dropped to the floor, head buried between my thighs as I cried. Later into the night I crawled to my bed, climbed up on it, and folded myself in two.

Why? Why would he leave us? We needed him, did he not know that children needed the love from their parents, that no love could ever compare to being wanted by their parents.

After all this years, it was pathetic, crying over him, still heartbroken from incident of how many years back, but every time I saw him in my dream, I recalled his features leaving while I watched still as a child and somehow I’d come to understand that the child in me was stuck and may never grow out of the fact that her father left her.

WE were in the kitchen, while she washed the dishes, I was scrubbing the floor. I looked back to make sure we were alone and asked, “what do you know about the prisoners in the dungeon?”

She shrugged, setting a plate down. “I don’t know every single one of them and the crimes, but most of them are Lycans.”

I paused on my scrubbing and lifted my head surprised. “Lycans?” I asked.

“Yes, one that tried to infiltrate the war camp.”

That was surprising, but my father wasn’t a Lycan, neither was my sister or me. We weren’t Lycans and we didn’t possess any hybrid genetics so why was my father there?

I tried again, “Are there werewolves there as well or hybrids?”

“I believe so, it will be hard for there not to be.”

Looking around to make sure we were alone, I asked yet again. “Do you know why?”

She halted on her task in a pondering manner, “They are some alphas from the pack the Warlord has conquered, and possibly the reason he hasn’t killed them.” Tremor racked through her shoulder from fear. “And he tortures them too.”

She was horrified, her face pale, “It would be better for them to have died with the fall of their pack.”

I could only imagine, first you lost your pack and then you were kept alive, tortured mentally and physically.

“Are they all alpha? What about their betas, generals, anyone? Did he only spare the Alphas?” I was desperately trying to understand what my father would have done to land himself in Death’s dungeon, the king of rogues.

“It’s not something the servants talk about, we try as much as possible to avoid that part of the camp and to stay out of it,” she craned her neck as she spoke, to make sure we were alone.

“And none has escaped?”

“Sybil!” She gasped, “watch your words, your thoughts, you’ve only just survived stabbing a general.” She warned and I let my curiosity settle.

She was right and I’d asked enough for the day, besides I didn’t want to spook her and make her question my curiosity.

However, I couldn’t get the thought of what my father was doing down there out of my mind. How did he get Death’s attention? How did he land himself in a suicide cell?

When he left I believed he must have remarried, gotten a new wife, and started anew with a new family. Away from his disabled child and broken family.

It was usually the case with the men in our pack, most didn’t go far so I’d expected much from him, not to be holed up in a dark cell in one of the most dangerous and dangerous rogue alphas of all.

I was still lost in thought when a girl stepped into my line of vision standing in my way.