Chapter 2: The pendant

VERA

“Hello, murderer!”

The door had just clicked shut when it slammed open again.

Noah stormed in with rage like a thunderclap.

And he held something tight in his fist enough to make the vein on his tiny wrist bulge.

My heart dropped when I saw what it was. The second and last moonstone pendant that matched mine.

“This is for your mother, Noah.” I said weakly with the little strength left in me.

“Give it to me.”

He sneered. “I can see you’re not just a killer. You’re a whore now too?

His voice was acid, but it didn’t burn like his next sentence.

“You do not deserve to own anything that belongs to her, you killed her!”

I opened my mouth, maybe to argue, or to beg, but before I could form a sound, he throwed the pendant at me.

The jagged stone caught my forehead with a sharp crack.

Pain exploded through my skull. Warm blood snaked down my temple, dripping into the collar of my soup-stained robe.

I staggered back, one hand pressed to my brow, the other gripping nothing but air. The pendant shattered at my feet.

Just like the first one that belonged to me.

The one he broke the night Anna died.

I saw it again. The memory is forever carved into my mind.

Her trembling lips, bubbling with blood. Me pressing herbs into her mouth with shaking hands. I just knew she wouldn’t make it but I tried to save her.

The healer Alpha Jade brought told us only a blood relative could find the cure. Noah was just a baby. Anna and I were both orphans.

So I went.

But the healer’s confirmation will always ring in my ears, “You boiled the poisonous one.” But I knew I did not! Someone wanted my sister dead.

I searched for days through snow and cold and found the right herb but when I brewed the swapped one. Anna drank it. And died.

And I’ve been wearing that guilt like a second skin ever since.

“Hahaha…”

Noah’s bitter laugh dragged me back.

“You think you matter?” he spat.

“Five years pretending to be her. Well, you’re nothing but a bloody betrayer!”

I knelt, shivering as I gathered the shattered moonstone pieces. The floor was cold against my knees, but not colder than the truth he had just spit.

“Good,” he said.

“Now we both have nothing.”

He turned away, leaving behind silence and the scent of blood.

I stayed on the floor, clutching the pieces of a past that refused to stay buried.

All that remained of Anna. Of our mother. Of my past and memories. All gone.

~~~~~

Later that night, Alpha Jade didn’t knock.

Well, he never did.

He stormed into my room like a man walking into a crime scene.

His eyes skimmed over the smeared blood on my pillow and the bandage at my brow, the tea on the table, and the useless apology forming on my lips.

He threw a handful of dollar bills on the table. “A special guest is coming. Cook for two.”

His gaze slid over me in a judgemental and disgusting manner. “And don’t fuck it up like earlier.”

“If you do, I’ll toss you to the rogues myself.”

But worse than his threat was the smirk that followed. He paused at the door, one hand resting on the knob.

“Well… maybe that aphrodisiac could come in handy tonight.” He chuckled and left.

I stood there, silently bleeding in places no bandage could reach.

I found the little first aid box my mother once gave me and cleaned the wound with stale ethanol, biting my lip to keep myself from crying out.

The bandages were old, yellowing, but clean. I wrapped them tightly around my head.

Then, as always, I stood up and headed out as if nothing happened.

I went to the market with a hood over my head.

Whispers followed me like dogs.

“She drugged them all.”

“She wants to sleep with all of our husbands?’

“Very shameless being!”

“Enjoying your walk of shame? Harlot!”

I ignored them. I just picked the freshest venison, the cleanest mushrooms. Double-checking every leaf to make sure I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Not even one I hadn’t made in the first place.

On the way back, I passed Jade’s quarters.

I should have kept walking. I should have closed my ears.

But then I heard it.

The moan of a woman lost in ecstasy.

“Yes…yes, don’t stop!”

“Aah..fuck, Jade!…right there, harder!”

The unmistakable wet thuds of skin slapping against skin, and the deep, guttural growls of a man lost in pleasure.

Every bone in my body turned to ice. I limped closer. Drawn by a grim curiosity toward the half-open window.

I peeked.

And wished I hadn’t.

She was underneath him.

Her legs locked around his waist, head thrown back, body arching into him like she was molded just for him.

His body moved with a hunger I remembered too well. That rhythm. That growl. That pace. It used to tear moans from my throat whether I wanted them or not. But my body has learned to crave it.

Now I stood in the dark, watching him fuck another woman like I never existed.

“Fuck!”

He kissed her neck and whispered something against her cheek. “You’re mine.”

For a moment I couldn’t breathe.

I didn’t want his cock. I didn’t want his body.

I just wanted… to matter again.

To someone.

To anyone.

A sob built in my throat, but I swallowed it down. He looked so alive. So free.

So far from the man who’d slapped me or spat cash in my face earlier and had always mocked my pain.

It had been three weeks since he last touched me but I’ve learnt to live with it because he made me believe he was busy with pack matters.

Now… I realized I was just the cook, the accused and the whore.

As I was about to turn away from the window and keep walking, wishing that someone, just once, would ask me if I was okay…

…I saw something.

At first, I thought it was the dim light playing tricks on me, but when the woman beneath Jade tilted her head, my heart stopped.

“No fucking way!”

This was definitely Anna’s face.

Not a resemblance.

Not a hallucination.

It was her.

My dead sister.

“But I buried you, Anna.”

“How then can you be here again?”

I don’t know if she saw me.

But I saw her.

And it felt like my soul had been yanked out of my body. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

I buried her five years ago. I mourned her.

And yet, there she was, alive, arching her back and tangled under the man who once cried over her grave.

Either I was losing my mind, or everything I thought I knew had just shattered.

This wasn’t a myth.

This was her face.

And I was no longer sure if I was watching a ghost…

…or becoming one.