The Fractured Beta

Four large misty gray paws hit the forest floor. The only sound heard in the otherwise silent surroundings is the dull thud of paws hitting the dry ground, the crunching of dried leaves and the snapping twigs and the heavy breath of a wolf doing strenuous activity in the unseasonable heat, pushing his limits beyond anything he has ever pushed before. Pain rips through him, all he can see is a haze, all he can feel is haze, if gray was a feeling, if static was an emotion, that is what this would be. The trees blurring into a mess, but he doesn't mind, he wants to see nothing. He never wants to see anything ever again. He wants something that will make him forget what he just saw. He wants something to take away what he just felt. The ripping sensation through him hasn't faded for a single moment. The tearing, the disconnecting, like two parts of a whole, are forever lost to one another. A whole that will never be the same; fragmented joins, scars, festering wounds, diseased flesh. He had felt this sensation before and didn't know what it was. Maybe he really did deep down, maybe he just didn't want to know what it was, maybe he didn't dare to think what it was. But what is seen cannot be unseen. What is seen with his very eyes can no longer be denied. Before that, there was only speculation. Now there is only truth. A truth so brutal, so raw that it is impossible to go back. No excuses can be found, all the things he looked past before all fall into line and what he refused to admit early on all comes crashing down. The denial was so real, it was his safety, it was his security, and now it is all gone. The large misty gray wolf runs faster and faster, heading through the blur of trees, the brown tree trunks becoming one with the sliver of blue sky and golden sunlight breaking through the thick foliage. It all just becoming gray. Before it was bright, there were colors, his future was bright, now his whole life has become gray, the nothingness closes in around him even with the speed he is traveling. It still catches him, wrapping him in empty, in nothing. He runs faster, taking large chunks of timber from the trunks of the trees, as large as the chunks out of himself. Blood is pouring from the wounds but still he doesn't feel a single thing. It is unknown how many hours he has been like this. It could be minutes, it could be hours, it could be days. He has no idea of the path he is taking, the distance he has covered, he just wants to run until it doesn’t hurt any more and he knows that the pain will never cease. He knows his legs are sore, but not excruciating, nowhere near as painful as his heart. He understands the pain, but it doesn't make him slow down even a single step. The more trees he hits, the more he stumbles, the more he stumbles, the more trees he hits, such damage inflicted on his already painful body. He doesn’t even know now what is more painful, the external or internal. Whatever it is, it's making him struggle to be able to go on. He can't seem to find a single ounce of energy. But that doesn't matter, he doesn't need energy to run, it's all purely on instinct now, he will just keep going until he dies. Maybe that's all he deserves. Right now he would rather be dead than alive. Death would be a welcome relief from this. Snap. A howl of pain rips through the cool still night air. He thought it hurt before, that was nothing. He welcomes death. *** It is a warm, slightly humid day when Thea walks through the forest. She looks at the stream in front of her. It is small but she smiles as she takes a running jump, clearing the trickle of water by so far that she could have jumped over a raging river. The sun beats down through the trees and late autumn foliage offering little coverage from scorching rays. The unseasonable heat makes it all the more intolerable, but she doesn't even notice. A fine layer of sweat appears on her beautiful face. She doesn't bother to wipe it, her fingertips brushing over the rough bark of the tree trunks, so lost in her own thoughts that the external factors matter little, the more she thinks about it, the angrier she becomes. Instead of a soft brush against the tree, it becomes a hard punch, the sound of broken bones is strangely satisfying and brings a smile to her rose-colored lips. She looks at the back of her hand as the wounds heal, wiping the blood against her t-shirt, feeling slightly better. No amount of damage inflicted on herself will change the fact. Nothing she can say or do will change the fact. No matter how much she cries and begs and whinges, it doesn't make them extend her timeline, it doesn't make him go back and change the rules. The rule, which, as soon as he came of age, Trey made sure that they were set in stone. Thea knows that she has no way of getting out of it. Well, there is one way, but after desperately looking for five years and eleven months, she knows that the chances are slim to none if he is still alive. If he is alive, then he has obviously settled with someone else outside of fates design. She would have found him by now, he would have found her by now, something would have led her there. There has been no divine intervention, there has been no epiphany moment for her, there is just nothing. All of this has led her to the conclusion that she has been forsaken by the goddess, there is no mate for her, there is no saviour. She knows that no matter how much she prays to the moon goddess, the results are going to end up the same. She has tried that before and the result is always the same. Maybe that's how it was meant to be. She was hoping for something different. But maybe that was just the goddesses plan to start with. A joke played on her and her alone. Thea throws her dark brown hair over her shoulder, pulling it slightly in exasperation, as she sighs and reverts to a fake smile, the fake happiness that she always displays as she has done many times before. Thea tells herself once again that things are not going to be as bad as she thinks they are going to be, trying to talk herself around to the fact, to accept it and she still ends up in the same position, still not wanting to go through with it. Everyone was expecting that she would have given into him by now, but she has got until her twenty-fourth birthday, which is three weeks away. She is going to make the most of those three weeks. She is not giving up at this time. She will never give up, even if there is no chance. She won’t give into him even a single day early. In three weeks, she has a choice. On her birthday, she will either be marked by the alpha or she will die. If she really decides to resist, she will just bleed out. Either way, he is biting her. While she does not want to be mated to Trey, she is not sure whether she is ready to die yet. The question that remains, the one that has been hanging over her head heavily for a year when she truly started to lose all hope. What is worse? Death or being mated to someone she hates? Thea is yet to decide the answer to that question. She has been thinking of the answer for the last twelve months, just before she hit her twenty-third birthday. That was when the reality really hit. Most of the female wolves have found their mate by that age, yet, here she is still mateless. She has considered going on a tour but there is no way Trey would approve such a thing. Silver eyes scan the area as her nostrils flare, the scent of blood is thicker in the air and it isn't just any blood, it is werewolf blood. The smell putting her on high alert. She hasn’t heard a single thing, she hasn’t sensed others in the area, yet here is this scent and it is fresh. In ordinary circumstances, she would turn and run but not a single sound can be heard, so, being the adventurous girl she is, curiosity wins out, the risk of an unknown threat going out the window or maybe at this point she just doesn't care, all sense of self-preservation is gone. She follows the heavy scent of blood, walking cautiously along the forest floor which is thick with fallen leaves. Anyone with less training than her would be making an almighty noise, yet Thea walks silently. Not a single crackle can be heard. She uses the tree trunks as cover as she sneaks forward, because it doesn't matter how silent she is or how sneaky she is, her scent can still be smelled, she wasn't prepared for such things, her aura cannot be completely supressed, so anyone with enough training would be able to sense her, so she is ready to turn tail and run at any time. She is willing to take a risk but she is not at the point of being suicidal just yet. Luckily for her, she is highly skilled and incredibly quick, so once she shifts, which she can do very quickly, quicker than anyone she has ever met before, she can outrun most other wolves. Training has been her only friend for as long as she can remember. She learned to run fast to be able to outrun Trey on numerous occasions and is the only way she gets away from his prying eyes and over-possessiveness. Since she can only smell the scent of one wolf, she is not too worried about it being an ambush or a trap. One wolf bleeding so heavily is not a threat that Thea is worried about. She moves further through the trees, the smell of blood overtakes any other scent, but no aura can be felt. If she couldn't smell him she nearly couldn't find him. Hidden in the trees is a large misty gray wolf. His eyes are closed even with the approaching threat. If he had consciousness he would be looking towards her. She can hear a faint heartbeat, so she knows he is still alive. Clamped on his leg is a large silver bear trap. Thea scowls looking at the large device, they are a risk out in these parts, hunters often just leave equipment after they leave just wanting to cause a long drawn out death for the animals unlucky enough to be caught in such vicious equipment.