Damien - The Beginning

Chapter 9 - Weak

"Alpha Craig," Hayes whispered softly,  his eyes glowing dangerously. "Kill me now. Because I swear on the dead body of my mother, if I make it out of here alive, I will come back and kill you. You, and everything you have ever held close."

Craig stared at him with rage in his eyes, and his eyes began to glow as well.

"You still dare to challenge me? You dare to threaten me?!" Craig stood up, fists balled in anger.

"I'm not threatening you, Craig. I'm making a promise," Hayes replied, his jaw clenched.

"Take him away!" Craig ordered, and at once, James and Sadler marched up to Hayes and grabbed him by his arms. "Lock him in the dungeon again," he stated, and they began to drag him away, but this time, Hayes kept struggling.

"Kill me now, Alpha! I'm warning you. If you leave me alive, I swear on my mother's love, I will avenge my parents! I promise you, Craig! I will destroy everything you have ever loved. I will avenge my parents!" Hayes kept repeating, even as he was being pulled down the stairs, away from the Alpha's view. Tears kept rolling down his cheeks as he kept yelling promises to take revenge. Finally he was once again injected with small dose of wolfsbane, and left alone in his cell.

He curled up into a ball, and held his head with his hands, covering his eyes. The face of his dead mother, and her unmoving body kept replaying in his mind, making it harder and harder for him to breathe. He felt restless, broken, and frustrated. And most of all, he felt a void in the place of his heart. Everything had been stolen from him. Each and everything.

His girlfriend, the woman he loved more than he loved himself. His pack, the one he had considered his family. His friends, whom he had grown up with. All turned against him. And most importantly, his mother, who had been the only one keeping him sane.

Sobs escaped his lips, as he hit his head against the wall closest to him. He wanted to be woken up. Woken up from the nightmare he was trapped in. He kept hitting his head against the stone wall over and over again, while blood flowed down his face, and everytime he felt his wound heal within seconds. He tried to claw his own heart out one more time, to simply end the pain and go back to his mother, to the only person who had loved him truly and unconditionally. But due to the wolfsbane he was injected with, his wolf side had been suppressed, and he could not make his claws grow.

Hayes yelled loudly, screaming and crying, hitting himself to forget the emotional pain. But it was too much. The wounds ran too deep within his heart, and thus no kind of physical pain could overpower the emotional one.

Finally, he gave up, and crawled to the door of the dungeon, placing his hear against it.

"Mama?" He asked. "Mama, you there? I'm scared of the dark, Mommy. I don't... I don't wanna be here," his voice cracked. "Read me a story please. Just talk to me. Say anything to me. Just one last time. I wanna hear your voice Maa. Your voice keeps me sane, it soothes me. Please just respond once," he begged, before breaking into sobs. Loud, deafening wails of hurt and agony. He tried to beg again, but he could not find his voice, and thus he once again curled up onto the floor, tightly jammed against tbe dungeon door.

He closed his eyes, and gave himself up to the darkness one more time, to be relieved from his pain and his troubles for as long as possible. He was not ready yet. Not ready to accept the truth. And he knew it was for the better. Because as soon as he would accept his mother's death, he would turn into someone he was not, and he never wanted to be.

- - - -

"Hayes, wake up," Hayes heard his mother whisper in her ear. "Wake up, baby. You need to wake up right now."

"Maa?" Hayes whispered, twisting and turning on the cold floor. "Mom?"

"Wake up, Hayes. We haven't got much time. Please, wake up," he heard the whispers again. "Hayes!" She yelled now, making him shoot his eyes open and sit up, shocked and trembling.

"Hayes?" Someone said, and he looked around confused. "Here. I'm here," they said, and he followed the voice to realize it was coming from the outer corner of his cell. Hayes crawled up to that position, and saw a small hole in the wall, at the bottom, only as big as a keyhole.

"Who is it?" Hayes asked.

"It's me," Ansel replied, and Hayes sighed, feeling slightly disappointed.

"What are you doing here?" Hayes asked.

"Listen to me very carefully. We do not have much time, your cell guard can return any moment now. They're planning to kill you, Hayes. They have a whole trap set up so they can execute you without having any questions asked," Ansel explained.

"Let them," Hayes replied, uninterested. "I don't have a purpose to live anyway."

"Actually, you do. You're forgetting that you have to live in order to prove to your father that you are not like him. You have to show him that you did not end up becoming a monster, like he was. Your mother loved you, Hayes. And she would die to protect you. She wouldn't want you to give up like this. And out there, somewhere, is a woman who was created for you. Don't abandon her like this. You have to be a better mate than your father, you have to give her the happiness your father never gave to your mother. You have to save yourself, and you have to avenge your parents, Hayes Adler. For your mother. For the vows you took upon her dead body and her love for you."

Hayes listened quietly, as tears rolled down his cheeks. Suddenly, he felt like he still had purpose, like there was a reason he was sent to the world.

"What do you want me to do?" Hayes asked.

"Tonight, they will bring you food, and then leave the door unlocked 'by mistake'. Firstly, do not eat the food. Hide it, do anything, but don't eat it. Then, you leave the cell. Now they're expecting you to use the back door to exit the dungeon. They'll have a number of wolves waiting to kill you there. So instead, you go from the front," Ansel explained in a shushed voice.

"But won't there be too many people there already, if I use the front?" Hayes frowned.

"No, just trust me and do as I say. I will handle everything else. Escape from the front door, and go straight to Monica's room," Ansel replied.

"Why Monica's? What if she sees me?"

"Hayes, just do as I'm saying. I said I'll handle the rest. I'm gonna get you out of here, I promise. It's finally my chance to return you your favour," Ansel replied.

"Alright. But Ansel, please don't waste that favour by getting yourself killed. You are all I have left in this world," Hayes said softly.

"I won't. Now remember, le-" he started, but suddenly shut up. "Son of a - someone's coming, " he muttered in a hushed tone. 

Hayes instantly moved away from the corner, and Ansel stood up, and started yelling.

"You hear me, Hayes? You deserve to rot and die in there! You traitor! You treacherous s**t!" Ansel yelled, making Hayes frown in confusion.

"What the hell are you doing?" He heard his cell guard question.

"Oh, you're back. I just needed to get this out of my system," Ansel replied. "That piece of s**t in there thought I was his friend. He thought he did a huge favour to me by saving my life as a kid. The moron does not know that I hate him with every bone in my body. He deserves everything that is happening to him! He deserves to rot and die in there!"

"What kind of an i***t are you, Ansel?" The guard said in disbelief. "The walls of his cell are sound proof you i***t. He can't hear you."

"What?" Ansel said in disbelief. "No way, man! I wasted the past ten minutes showing him his ugly reality. No wonder he did not reply."

"Just get out of here you dumbass," the guard rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, okay. But just in case you heard me, remember everything till you take your last breath, you jerk!" He yelled, before Hayes heard him walk away.

Hayes let out a breath of relief, glad that they had not been caught. The guard was either stupid, or plainly uninterested. Hayes leaned his head against the wall and sat cross-legged on the ground, closing his eyes. But as soon as he did that, his mother's face flashed in his mind, and he opened them again. He did not want to think of her at that moment. He needed to focus his thoughts on escaping, just like Ansel had asked him to.

Hayes kept recalling his words, as they gave him a sense of strength, they reminded him that he was not as weak as he was feeling. That he still had a purpose. He had a mate out there who was waiting for him to show up, who was waiting to make him smile again. That was the whole purpose of mates, right? To keep their werewolves sane and connected to their humanity. He would find his, too. And she would not be like Rose.

This was the first time he had thought of her since his mother died. He did not know how long he had been unconscious when he was locked in the cell again, after witnessing that incident. He had no sense of time in there, but he knew that it had been long. And that in that long time, he had not thought about her even once.

Why would he have, after all? She betrayed him. Left his side as soon as he fell into trouble. She proved to be like the rest of the pack. Selfish, mean, and without the true sense of right or wrong. Just like a werewolf bound to follow his Alpha, she was blindly following her father. How could she do that to him? How could she abandon him when he needed her the most? Was this her love for him?

He felt an ache in his heart when he recalled how happy he was, after she had accepted her feelings for him. How his father had warned him about her, but he had defended her confidently. How delighted he was, to know that the woman he loved, loved him back.

But Hayes told himself that it was his own fault.

'I can't keep messing with werewolves for you,' she had said to him. Not even once had she tried to see him, to check up on him. Not a single time did she show up to even comfort him. 

So he understood, that betrayal and weakness is the only thing you get out of loving a human being. He was finally starting to understand why his father despised human beings, and as much as he hated to admit it, Hayes actually agreed with his father on something for the first time in his life.

Humans were weak, and they never deserved to be loved by werewolves.

- - - - - -