Knowing they are out there and close enough to really devastate our kind is enough in itself to make me cower for the rest of my life. They had a weapon, a sound, that much like Carmen’s had the ability to hurt us and render us unable to turn. That means we’re no longer the stronger in this newfound war and we can all be killed. I have bigger things in my head right now, than love confessions, and pining assholes trying to mess with my head, while arguing with his mate.
“I’m not going to spend my days whining about this crap, and I need you to just stop, okay. The words you said in the forest were the end of this. There’s nothing to say or drag out and talk through.” I turn on him aggressively, lifting my palms in a show of ‘what now?’, meaning where the hell am I meant to be going in this damned house because I have never been here before and I’m fucking lost. He nods back at a door behind me with very little to say. His expression ashen, temporarily without words, and not really tackling my mood in the slightest.
To be honest, he looks a little shellshocked and right now, I don’t really care. I have weeks of pent up heartbreak at this guy’s hands and I’m done being a push over. My life, in one night, went from awful, to completely rock bottom, end of the line, apocalypse, kind of bad. I have bigger headaches than him.
My emotions starts shredding and unraveling now that I let all of that out, chest hit with a heavy shunt, and suddenly I don’t’ feel so pent up and hostile anymore, instead I feel like maybe, I might actually cry. From rage and frustration to a sudden need to lie down and sob. Energy burning out from venting, and reality coming back full circle to remind me that I’ve lost everything.
I spin away from him to head on, then stop, shudder involuntarily as the overwhelming wave hits me at full speed and the tidal wave of tears come out of nowhere. I don’t even have a chance to try and combat it before it hits full throttle. Breaking and flinching as I lose control and they start to fall. Coughing on the woeful sound that escapes me and smothering my face with both hands to try and catch the waterfall as it pours from my eyes.
“Lorey, baby, don’t.” Colton catches me by the arm, tries to pull me towards him but I throw him off, putting too much force into shoving him away from me and sending him back stepping by about three feet. Startling him with my show of force as he raises his palms to show he won’t retaliate. Even breaking down like a feeble femme, there’s an internal burning rage that just isn’t ready to die.
“Don’t. I don’t need you touching me, consoling me. I just need you to leave me alone. All of you. I was fine on my own before, and I’ll be fine on my own again.” Not really accurate, but irrational, and hormonal, are not states to be argued with, and all I know is I need to get out of here and run. I need space. From him, them, this, my whole head mess of pain, at knowing from tonight onwards, nothing is going to be the same ever again.
I turn and head for the front door impulsively, not caring about anything else but getting solitude, the darkness invading the open space as I reach it, sending an internal shiver of terror down into my stomach. I peer out into the unknown, from a doorway I’ve never known and with the knowledge that creatures out there worse than us mean us harm. They could be anywhere, and I have no place to return too now either.
“No!” Colton yanks me back with force and I spin on him tearfully. “I’ll leave you alone, but you’re not leaving this house. It’s dangerous out there for all of us now, and I won’t let you go.” He pins me with a commanding look and a hostile tone, veiling a sliver of fear for my safety, but I throw it aside and cast of his emotions that are starting to flood me once more. I open my mouth to bark a refusal, but he hits me with a mental link and that dominant tone that instantly disables me.
You are not to leave this pack house without my say so, and you won’t argue! Stop it, now!
My head buzzes, both with rage and sheer frustration, as words catch in my throat and almost choke me instantaneously. I can’t get them out, his gift being misused to confine me to his home and stop my need to tell him what I think of his ‘commands’. Rendered mute because he forbade me to argue and the only words poised are one’s that tell him where to go. I instead throw my hands in the air, glaring furiously at him and then sucker punch him in the abs, out of intense frustration. He flinches, half smiling with a shocked response, total disbelief that I’m being this aggressive and a little apprehensive in how to react. I storm left, heading for the bathroom I just came from. Hating on him for being such a bossy asshole and exerting his powers over me when he has no god damn right.
Colton catches me by the elbow instantly, and yanks me to the right instead, heading for the stairs at a fast pace that signals he’s in no mode to argue about it. Forced by his strength. Not even letting me choose where I get to be alone and it riles me, that simmering fire in my belly back in a flash to push all tame aside and my inner demon shows face. I start fighting him, every inch of the way, by tugging, and squirming, and pushing him off, stabbing him with scathing pointed glares, refusing to relent. I pull his hand from my arm, getting madder when he grabs me by the other instead, a tighter, biting grip, that is meant to bring me back to heel. I twist it away, but to no avail as he shunts me from behind, then slides his arms around my body and continues to forcefully guide and push me where he wants me to go. It becomes a juvenile game of slapping, grabbing, shoving, tugging, and he gets me around the waist and lifts me from my feet before I ram an elbow straight in his face, crunching on the bridge of his nose and bruising my bone in the process.
“Fuck sakes, Lorey!” He snaps at me, losing his shit completely and halts as we hit the foot of the stair. Seriously emanating all kinds of rage at my refusal to be controlled and glares, hitting me with a full-on furious frown and sneer. He turns me snappily, hauls me towards him by the waist, bends and hoists me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Not playing anymore; his anger radiating hotter than the sun, but it only heightens my own. Carrying me as I squirm and wriggle and kick out, using my nails on his back in a bid to make him drop me. He grips me tight and does the worst thing he can do in this moment. He uses his gift again, in a bid to get me to do as he wants, against my will.
Be still. Be quiet. Obey me!
I freeze, motionless, voiceless, all without choice and completely furious that he renders me immobile. My internal bubbling pot of ‘how the fuck dare you’ heightening to volcanic levels in the blink of an eye. Internally seething, that twice, in the space of a minute, he’s exerted his alpha tone over me and put me in my place like an obedient little lowlife. My body obeying him, my throat muting, and I honestly don’t think I have ever felt this much instant venom for anyone in my whole life.
It almost explodes inside of me, with the power to rip down these damned four walls. Like a kettle letting off steam after boiling to excessive popping abilities, and it fills my every pore and vein with a molten lava, straight from the depths of hell.
I loathe him, more than I ever thought I could hate anyone, and despite being bonded and imprinted to this arrogant asshole, I want to rip his god damn, fucking, stupid, dumbass, shitty, head, off his shoulders, and kick it down the stairs like a soccer ball.
That internal rage heats me like a volcano from inside out, my blood reaching boiling point, my temper shooting through the roof and despite being utterly paralyzed, slumped over him as we climb the stairs, my mind and insides churn up a tornado that would scare the fates. It feels like I emit a solar flare when I boom out via our mental link.
I FUCKING DESPISE YOU!!!!!
It’s a psychic scream, but as we pass two other Santo’s on the stair, the very second it erupts from my mind to his, even those two males cower and fall to the ground, grabbing their heads and yelping in agony. Colton, too crumbles, dropping me clumsily, my lifeless body, with an ungraceful thud on top of him as we collapse in a heap on the steps.
Like a tremor of an earthquake, erupting from my soul, every vase, glass, ceramic, and piece of pottery, in the near vicinity,
explodes instantaneously, windows blow out all around us and the chandelier of the main hall hanging right to the left of the stair way shatters into a thousand tiny specks of self-combusted dust, as though it just exploded. Scattering microscopic glitter into the air that comes to settle on everything around it.
It’s a second of utter chaos, as though a bomb just went off in the center of the pack house, and hard brittle objects in every direction break under the strain with a dramatic ‘whoosh’.
People come down like ten pins around us, caving and crumbling while covering their ears, every single Santo in the downstairs hall who just walked in. I can see them from my viewpoint. All gripping their skulls and screwing their eyes shut as it reverberates through and causes them all to collapse where they stand, in a ripple effect. I’m the only one not clawing at themself to keep, what seems to be overwhelming pain, out.
“What the f….?” Colton is breathless as he tries to regain composure, sliding his arms away from me hurriedly, and skirts back to give me space, leaving me suddenly free to pull myself together. A hint of fear darting across his normally emotionless face as he flashes a glance at me and then on the carnage all around us, at all the debris. I can sense his panic and confusion and for the moment, I can feel he doesn’t want to get any closer, that he’s wary about what I just did. If that was even me.
I’m dazed, bruised, from being dropped on a hardwood staircase, and completely non-plussed about what the hell just happened. I feel like there was some sort of implosion around me, yet I’m completely unscathed. And now, my internal thoughts, body and soul are totally calm. All that fire and rage, just gone.
“Was that voice hers?” one of the males on the stairs crawls to his knees and attempts to pull himself up by the bannister, staring at me in utter wariness. He too looks afraid and keeps his distance, getting further from me as he moves out of range.
“You heard her?” Colton spins on him and I pale as both men nod. Eyes darting to me, then him, and they slide down the steps until they get on their own feet and scale it quickly to get away from me. Shaking legs, rubbing their heads and I can feel all eyes turning my way as others begin to pick themselves up from the floor. The hall looks like Armageddon just rolled through and there’s smashed glass, china, and all sorts of carnage on every surface.
I know I did it in the headspace that only Colton should hear. No one else can access our bonded link. I didn’t say it out loud, and as I move to sit up and gather my wits, I realize I’m no longer bound by his command either. I cough, and croak out a shocked reply, weirded out that I can both move and speak. Shouldn’t be able to until he undoes what he told me to do.
“I didn’t do that.” I implore him, turning with nervousness, wounded when he moves even further away, his eyes on me mistrusting. I can sense his apprehension, and it cuts deep, like he’s rejecting me all over again.
“What the hell was that?!?!” Juan Santo bursts in the open space of the front door of the pack house, surrounded by his entourage of men, all dragging on blankets to conceal their nudity and looking utterly feral. All casting an accusatory eye, first at those who have come out into the hallway to see what’s going on, dazed, and confused, to join those picking themselves out of the mess, but then his eyes scan up to where we are and locks a hateful glare right on me.
I can almost taste his despise of me and the pointed way his eyes flicker to Colton in an ‘why is she here?’ furious balk.
“I think that was Alora. I mean… it was, Alora.” Colton sounds sheepish, and even through all this chaos going off inside of me, I can feel he’s afraid to come near me. There’s genuine confusion, fear, inside of him and he’s keeping his distance by several feet now. Bonded or not, right now, he is scared of me. He doesn’t understand what I just did any more than I do.
“It couldn’t have been. She can’t have the power to inflict that kind of pain in the link state…. Or break everything as far as the eye can see. No wolf can.” A voice in the crowd echoes my way and I’m aware every set of eyes locked on me now and shrink down into a huddled heap of shame. Heat rising to my face as I attempt to turn invisible.
I immediately think of Carmen’s gift, wondering if maybe it’s coincidental, and this was her, from somewhere else in the house, going catatonic in her own misery, but I know it can’t be. She can smash glass only in the near vicinity when she sustains a scream at highest pitch for long seconds. It hurts our hearing, not our mental link, and she’s never demolished everything around her the way I just did. Nor immobilized the entire pack with one pulsating psychic yell.
“Alora can.” Colton’s voice drops in the air around us like a heavy thud, and the deathly silence, wave of shock, fear, and utter confusion, his response is met with, sends the fear of god right to the pit of my soul.
A War is Coming
I sit quietly in the bedroom I was frog marched into some hours ago. The food tray some random Santo dumped in here for me untouched, as I’ve literally no appetite and I’m laid out on the bed, staring at the endless white ceiling of a room that probably cost more to decorate than they spent on the orphanage the whole time I was in it. Bored out of my mind, but since my explosion, nothing in the house is working. Nothing electronic, no lights at all, and they are working on rectifying it. I’m still not convinced I did this, but it all seems to point this way.
Apart from the boarded-up window and the now décor free shelves and such after they swept through, removing the carnage of smashed items, it’s pretty nice. Gold and cream with brown leather and opulent fabrics. It’s like a hotel boudoir in a five-star establishment and bigger than the entire lounge and kitchen at the rejects home.
The Santo’s always were one of the wealthiest packs in Radstone, and it shows. Their pack house is a mansion with endless corridors and rooms, and they have stuck me in their west wing, far from everyone else in the building until they figure out what I can do. I could scream and erupt in here and no one would hear me.
The house is now echoing with distant banging, drilling, and all sorts of construction sounds, as they try to secure their abode once more and I can’t say I feel any kind of remorse. I mean at first, I was in shock, kept questioning if I really did that, if I was capable, and now, I’m numb once more. Shunned to an unused part of their building, nothing changed there from being one of the black marks they left to rot on the darker side of the mountain. I’m exhausted, in need of sleep but completely blank to all other emotions.
A light tap on the door draws my attention from trying to count cracks that aren’t there, and I know before they open it who it is. I can feel him. Felt him making his way down the hall towards me moments ago and I really don’t want to see him, or anyone for that matter.
That intense excitement at his presence, that was there before, is waning with everything that’s happened since. The bond isn’t weakening, but my own emotions are overpowering everything else right now. Grieving a family I never knew was mine, and replaying the horrors, while also trying to push them deep down in the recess of my brain.
“How are you holding up in here?’ Colton’s voice sways my way as he slides in, that sultry sexiness that does still manage to illicit tingles on my skin, closing the door behind him quickly, and I catch sight of him checking the hall before he does. It’s obvious by his swift maneuver that he shouldn’t be in here with me and is defying some rule, probably from his father, or maybe Carmen. Checking no one followed him to the empty side of their palace. I sigh, look back at the ceiling and ignore him. Annoyed that he is a part of all this and just another member of a pack that’s outcast me for years.
“Still pissed, huh?” There’s a defensive quality in his tone, not his usual commanding strength, and I roll away to face the wall and turn my back on him. Said all I needed to downstairs, and I don’t know why he can’t just leave me alone. He told me that’s how it was going to be that day in the forest, and yet he’s the one who keeps breaking his word and reaching out to me. He’s pretty usel
ess at staying away, and it doesn’t help.
Every contact, every conversation, just makes us bond all the more, and feel like I really do know him. It doesn’t matter if our interactions to date have been sporadic and brief, I know him inside and out in ways that only imprinting can give you.
“I don’t blame you. What you said before…. It’s true. I did make a choice, but you know why, Lorey. Don’t hate me for that. Not that right now any of that holds significance with the new current events. The elders are in lockdown in the grand hall, I couldn’t stand being in there anymore, I had to come make things right with you and to talk.” I hate that he has a nice voice, unique, sensually melodic, and that it alone, is enough to affect me.
I close my eyes to blot him out, wondering if the topic of the day is Vampires, or the freak wolf who just busted their house up. Not that I care enough to ask. I remain still, don’t react, open my eyes again and continue to stare at the shadowy and uninteresting cream painted wall. My body betraying me in small ways at his nearness, but I clamp down on the sensations winding through my limbs and stiffen to stop his effect on me.
“Say something, please.” Colton appears closer in a flash, and I jump when the bed dips behind me, his warm body sliding up close against me as he too lays out and slides an arm around my waist to turn me. I don’t resist, but let him roll me onto my back, pulling my face to him until we are almost nose to nose, leaning over me, scooping down to bridge the gap. An intimacy he shouldn’t be encouraging.
The room isn’t brightly lit, only glowing from candles in the far corner, seeing as I smashed every bulb in the house, so he casts a shadow over the both of us, making it near impossible to really make him out. I shiver involuntarily, at our close contact, instant goosebumps from his touch and his general effect to my body and soul. Cursing the fates out for making me crave his touch, even when I’m seething inside.
Awakening: Book 1 Page 12