Blood Of The Luna

Chapter 8

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I woke up with a jolt, and I felt panic spread through my entire body when I realised that I was surrounded by darkness. It wasn't a darkness like the forest, but a familiar one which was quickly dispelled when I switched on the light in my room.

I realised that I was drenched in sweat just like the last time I woke up and I was shaking from the tip of my head all the way down to my toes. My lips were dry, and I felt like my head was going to explode. I had to take several gulps of air before I was able to calm down my erratic breathing.

What the hell did I just witness? How was any of that real? I couldn't believe any of it, even though I could feel everything so vividly. I could have sworn that I was actually standing in that forest, and I had actually witnessed Kendra dying. It had all been so real, and yet I knew it had all just been a dream.

Dreams could not become real, could they?

The sight of her blood came back to me, burned into my memory and forever imprinted in my mind. I could still see the light fading from her eyes vividly, and it shook me to the core. Could I have helped her? Was there something I could have done to save her? What if she had died because of me, and now her blood was on my hands? Instinctively, I glanced down at my hands and was relieved to see that they weren’t covered in blood. Still, it felt like they were. And I didn’t know if I could live with myself like that.

Perhaps I was still sick, and this was just another symptom. It had been nothing more than a nightmare, and I was a fool fool for thinking otherwise. There was nothing to it, and I had been fooling myself this entire time.

But still...

I left my room quickly so I could find some water, and when I arrived in the kitchen, it was to find mother standing over the stove, with a distant look in her eyes. She looked up as I stepped in, and she quickly realised that the food was almost burnt.

"Good Lord!" she exclaimed, turning off the heat. "What was I even thinking of? You're awake, dear."

"Was I asleep for long?" I asked, clearing my throat so I could sound normal.

"Hard to say," she replied. "When I got back from the meeting, you were already asleep. And I've only been back for an hour or two, so it's hard to say whether you've been out for long or not. Did you take the drugs?"

"I don't think I have," I confessed, opening the cupboard and pulling out a glass. I headed for the fridge and grabbed a carton of orange juice, while mother continued to watch me carefully.

“Where’s dad?” I asked.

“Lucian called him about an hour ago regarding a few rogues they sighted along the western border,” she said. “Your father went to check on it, and I think he will be back late.”

She paused, and narrowed her eyes closely so she could look at me in much the same way that dad was looking at me earlier. I swear, the resemblance between the two of them was uncanny. Maybe it was because they had lived together for so long that they began to pick up certain traits from each other.

But I was mad at him right now, and I didn’t want to think about him.

“He told me you had a slight disagreement earlier,” she said. “Would you mind telling me what it was about?”

“Didn’t he tell you what it was about?” I asked sarcastically. “I thought you told each other everything.”

“He did tell me his side of the story,” she said. “But I want to hear it from your own perspective.”

“This isn’t a court, mom,” I said. “You don’t have to preside over every discussion. We should be able to discuss things like adults without having to come to you.”

“I’m nothing if not fair,” she smirked, drawing up a stool. “Now, tell me what happened.”

After I told her what happened between Damian and Justin, and how he grabbed me forcefully and nearly broke my wrist, she pursed her lips without saying a single word. And when I told her how father reacted when I told him, she sighed and shook her head.

“Don’t you see?” I asked. “He’s gambling away my life for the good of the pack. He wants to confine me to a life of misery and hopelessness just so he can have what he wants. How can he live with himself knowing that his only daughter is out there suffering for the rest of her life?”

Without a single word, mom came over to my side and wrapped her arms around me. I didn’t know when I began to cry, and she rested her chin on my forehead while she sighed.

“I understand how you feel,” she said. “I know you feel like the whole world is against you, and that you can’t catch a break with everything that’s going on. But believe me when I tell you that the last thing we want is for you to suffer. Your father and I will never allow it. We want you to be happy, and we want to make sure that everything you face in life will not turn out to be a living nightmare.”

She pulled back to look at me, and she tried to smile in a way that would put me at ease.

“Your father is not perfect,” she said. “None of us are. When he was your age, his father called him one day after school and told him that he was going to marry the beta’s daughter, to which your father did not protest. He understood that his father must have a reason for suggesting this, because he would never have done so if he thought that it was going to become a disaster. So your father went along with it, and he agreed to marry her. Now, twenty five years later, they are happily married with the most beautiful daughter in the world. They both love her very much, and they will never put her in any situation that would prove difficult.”

I looked up at her, and her smile was the same one I had seen for the last nineteen years of my life. She understood my situation, even though it wasn’t the same for her. Dad wasn’t an asshole like Damian, and he couldn’t have been as evil as Damian. Considering the two side by side, mum should count herself lucky; she won the lottery with dad.

“Promise me you’ll keep an open mind about this,” she said. “You don’t have to like Damian immediately. But everything has a reason, and maybe if you try to understand him then you can begin to see why he is the way he is.”

“You’re probably right,” I sighed. “Maybe I’ve been prejudiced towards him even before I met him. What he did to Justin was unforgivable. But I would give him one more chance. If not for anything, then at least for mother’s sake.

She let go of me and went back to check on the food, while I hugged my knees together and tried to shake off the sense of dread that was settling over me. At the back of my mind, Kendra was still gnawing away with each passing second. And even though I desperately needed something to distract me, I just couldn’t seem to get rid of the memory. Something told me that I needed to look into it more deeply, and that there was something serious about what I had seen. And the memory of Vlad’s glowing red eyes haunted me. I felt as if he was watching me, slowly bidding his time until he was ready to strike.

"Are you sure you're alright, Alyssa?" mom asked as I screwed the cover back onto the carton. I was still trembling slightly, so that made this slightly difficult. But I had turned my back to her, so she couldn't see just how much I was shaking.

"What makes you think I'm not?" I asked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.

"Well, for one thing, you look deathly pale, as if you've seen a ghost or something," she said. "And secondly, don't think I haven't noticed how much you have been trembling since you stepped into this kitchen. Also, you're screwing the cover onto your glass rather than the carton."

I blinked, and that was when I realised what I was doing. She was right, and instead of trying to screw the cover back onto the orange juice carton, I had been attempting to screw it onto my glass, with my hand suspended in midair. That explained why I found it difficult to cover it.

I reached for the carton to my right, and I covered it slowly with a small laugh which I hoped would throw her off my scent a little bit. I knew how she could get if she suspected that something was wrong with me.

"I just woke up, mom," I said. "It's probably the reason why I'm all out of sorts right now."

“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “Or is this something to do with how ill you’ve been lately?”

“Mom, I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”

She turned even more serious then, and she asked quietly, “Is this about school or something else with Damian?”

“Mom, it’s nothing,” I said seriously. “I’m just having one of those days.”

“I’ve seen you have one of those days, Alyssa, and it’s never like this,” she said. “You know I don’t like it when you keep things from me. You just finished giving me a speech about how you don’t want to suffer alone. Why would you then keep your problems to yourself? Haven’t you ever heard the saying that two heads are better than one?”

“We’re not counting brains, mom,” I said. “And this is not something you need to concern yourself with. I’ll be fine.”

“So there is something and you’re not going to tell me what it is?” she asked. “Is that really how you want us to be from now on?”

She had me there. Curse her motherly instincts and how she was able to know exactly when I was having a problem without her having to dig for more information. I wondered if there was a superpower which only parents could get, and it allowed them to read their children’s minds easily. If so, then I needed to have a word with the person who gave them these powers without consulting their children.

“Fine,” I conceded. “I had a nightmare similar to last time. But I’m not telling you the full details until you tell me exactly what dad told you about me.”

“Nothing of interest,” she replied, concern written all over her face. I could tell that she was trying to downplay the conversation they had just to make me feel better. But knowing my father, he would have gone crazy and probably yelled about how irresponsible and ungrateful I always was. He would never say it to my face, because he knew I would be incredibly hurt by his words. So he would say it to mom, knowing fully well that she would give me the watered-down version of the conversation.

“I want to know what he said.”

“He complained about how you are willing to risk the safety of the entire pack over a little argument you had with Damian Lockheart,” she said. “Apparently, he thinks you’re being selfish over this whole matter, and he wishes that you would try and see where he was coming from when he made this proposal in the first place.”

“I’m giving Damian another chance, mom,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I’m accepting the proposal.”

“Isn’t that exactly what we finished discussing?” she asked. “Giving him another chance means accepting that this situation is nothing but a slight wrinkle in what will be a bright future for you.”

“Hell no!” I exclaimed, shaking my head. “I am not going to accept this punishment as a sign of mercy. I know oppression when I see it.”

“You will watch your mouth in this house, young lady,” mom snapped. “Otherwise, you can go and live in the gutters since that’s where your filthy mouth belongs.”

I frowned, but mom didn’t seem to care. She glared at me until I apologised, and only then did she turned her attention to the food once again.

“The both of you are just too stubborn to try and see things from each other’s perspectives,” she said. “If you would try and see where he is coming from, then maybe it wouldn’t be this bad. And if he would try and see things from your own side, then maybe he can see how much you oppose this union.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking his side over this,” I scoffed.

“And I can’t believe you’re being a big baby over this,” she said. “He tried to speak to you about it since the hunt, but you were so hellbent on being furious with him that you didn’t give him a chance to consult you before making the decision.”

I remembered how the situation had been with dad ever since he told me that I would not be participating in the hunt. I had been so furious with him that I didn’t even talk to him for several weeks. And even though I could tell that he wanted to talk to me, I made sure that he would never have the opportunity to face me alone. Ambushing me at school was his only option apparently.

I knew he was merely trying to protect me, but sometimes I wanted to be able to make my own mistakes. I wanted to learn things for myself, and not just be told about them. I wanted to feel like a normal person with the freedom to explore life, even though I was far from that. My whole life had been surrounded by my parents looking out for me, and even though I was grateful for this, I wasn’t sure it was the right decision from them.

And so I rebelled, and I did everything I could to show them that I wasn’t a kid anymore. I needed to be free to make my own decisions, and that included who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

“Now tell me about this dream,” she said. “What is it about?”

At first, I didn’t want to tell her about it. I felt like I would be betraying Kendra’s trust if I said everything she had told me to mom. It felt like something private; something which no one else was allowed to hear but the two of us.

And yet, I was so confused over everything that I really needed answers. And with mom, she just might be able to help me out with it.

When I told her everything about the dream, she turned ghostly white. And when I finished, she looked both frightened and intrigued by it. I waited for her to say something, but then she shook her head and headed for the door. She seemed to have almost forgotten that I was even there, and she kept muttering quietly to herself.

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Well, that was certainly strange. I sat alone in the kitchen and waited for her, but then I heard what sounded like scraping over the window. I turned, and I screamed in panic when I saw someone standing on the other side, watching me with a hooded gaze.

It was Damian Lockheart. And he was holding a box of roses and chocolates.

***