Her Rejection's Revenge

CHAPTER ELEVEN: BREATHING MY LAST

If I thought that the rejection hurt, being thrown out of the pack and having someone taking my place at the same time was something else. I started gagging with foam in my mouth, my body falling to the ground as I convulsed violently. The mark at the crook of my neck started to scald as I felt my skin under fire.

“M…make it stop,” I stammered as I held on to something solid which was near me. “P…please make it stop,” I begged as my eyes rolled inside my socket as I clung to the last thread of life that I could feel slipping away from me.

Itzel. I was losing her in a more definitive manner – I could no longer feel my wolf inside of me.

“Zelda! Zelda!” somebody was calling out my name, but I had zoned out in a world where only pain existed as I continued to tremble under the force of the onslaught. I was not aware of anything other than somebody carrying my shaking body and placing me on a much higher position.

“Stay with me! Stay with me. We need to get you out of here. They will kill you. Zelda, can you hear me? Don’t die on me, please!”

Memories flashed in front of my eyes in a moment of relapse. Familiar frosty blue chips pinned me with a gaze full of hatred – an emotion that my subconscious had longed recognize but what my rose-tinted eyes refused to acknowledge. I knew then that it was the last time that Braxton was connecting with me, and so as a courtesy he was letting me inside his thoughts.

He hated me. Whatever love he’d been showering me, even in our most glorified moments had been a sham. That was what undid me. I passed out.

When I came to myself, it felt like the world was upside down and moving. I could no longer feel Braxton and I hated him for letting me in for those few seconds. It felt like he’d taken exceptional pleasure showing me how much he despised me. Something he’d been bottling up for too long.

Nausea caught up in my throat and I blinked to focus on the dimly lit room, not even able to get back my bearings. I gagged once again and felt someone pull back my hair as I threw in the old basin. My stomach hurt. Come to think of it, everything hurt.

I bent over to wait for the pain to pass, stars dancing in my eyes when I closed them. I didn’t feel well at all.

“Zelda, are you going to pass out on me again?” Isaac queried worriedly, and I only glanced at him expressionlessly. I didn’t even see him. I was in too much pain to care about anything. “Listen, we need to get out of here. If your…errmmm the Alpha gets to us, he will kill us. Are you even listening? Zelda?!”

I clutched my tummy, and retched again in the basin, only vomiting bile as my stomach was empty. I choked on my own saliva, rinsing my mouth with the brown water coming from the tap. Beggars could not be choosers, right?

“Are you okay?” Isaac asked after a long moment of silence while I was still grasping in the darkness of my mind. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s going on? Did that bastard oust you from the pack?”

The truth was that I felt dead inside – emotionless. There was no feelings left inside me. With my wolf Itzel gone, I felt like I could no longer conjure any sort of emotion whatsoever. Even the pain was abiding to be replaced by numbness.

I nodded shakily, and he seemed to take my answer at face value. “Good, we need to get out here before they find you. They will kill you for sure.”

My mouth felt stuffed with cotton when I tried to speak, so I had to clear my throat several times before I found my voice. “Won’t make any difference,” I uttered briskly.

“Don’t be silly,” he rebuked like he was talking to a child and lifting me up. I winced as the physical pain took over once again. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “I forgot about your pain. I need to lift you up so that you could get to the window.”

I clenched my chattering teeth tightly and threw a dispassionate look towards the window. I wasn’t convinced by his act of bravado – I knew that despite him trying to make it seem like he was saving my life, Isaac was in fact attempting to save his own as*. There was no such thing as a free lunch.

“I can do it,” I responded in an automatic voice. It was hardly one which I recognized, and the fact that I would fail no longer plagued me. I felt like nothing mattered anymore, so me being unsuccessful was no longer a big deal.

When I was applying to become the next Luna, I was so unsure of myself, so certain that I would take a wrong step that I stayed in a cocoon, not daring to take on any kind of dangerous or daunted activity. No longer caring was a very liberating feeling – like I was discovering someone else altogether sheathed under layers of identities.

Model daughter of Joseph Settlemire. Submissive puppet of Georgia Settlemire. Doormat of Braxton Cooper. Punching bag of the whole pack. Playmate of Beatrice Larson. All those roles had been forced on me.

“Are you sure?” he asked with a frown, looking at me with that weird expression again. “You look like you would crumble any second again.”

I huffed in a bout of fresh air in resigned determination. “I am stronger than I look. Lift me up,” I ordered somewhat unsteadily. “I’ll help you escape from here even if it’s the last thing I do.” I glanced at him with renewed resolution, the feeling of calm settling inside me like a new cloak that I couldn’t recognize yet again.

Isaac didn’t deserve to die for me – like he’d said, he was just a liability in this whole sh*tty situation. I wasn’t worth it. But instead of picking me up, he just stood there looking at me with his perplexed frown.

“You think I am using you to escape?” he asked in a calm voice, shaking his head in disbelief. “What have they done to you, Zelda?”

I shrugged at his cryptic remark. “I know how people’s mind work now. There’s never an unselfish motive without a hidden agenda. And a good deed never goes unpunished. So, let’s get this on, shall we?”

He didn’t reply to my provocation, just extended his hand in indication that he was going to grab me. I acquiesced silently and he lifted me effortlessly towards the opening and I held on to the windowsill with one hand. Using my right hand, I struggled in the unstable position to crack the glass with a sharp object that Isaac had handed me.

When the sound of glass shattering echoed in the room, both Isaac and myself exhaled a relieved breath. “I can get through,” I explained as I tried to lift my body through the hole. Every part of my body protested against the action, and at some point, the pain was so unbearable that the breath was knocked out of my lungs.

But I kept going. I wasn’t about to back down. Whoever said that survival instincts were killer was right on point. A surge of adrenalin burst through me and with one huge leap I was on the other side facing a high jump situation. Biting my lips in worry, I looked around for another option.

“What do you see?” Isaac was calling from inside the room. “Are there any pipes that you can descend?”

“They’re too far,” I cried out as my shoulders started to give me hell. My bones seemed to be nonexistent as I flexed my muscles to relieve the excruciating agony. “I can’t reach them.” My voice broke as the pain overwhelmed me in that moment of weakness.

“Take your time. Give it a rest and try again. Are you comfortable in your current position? If you are, hang in there for a moment. I’ll try to come there to help you.”

I glanced over at my hands hanging on the thin windowsill and which could give up any time, my body hanging on a precarious balance. I closed my eyes to sustain the panic and sent my foot forward to the left. Thankfully, the right one clung to the balustrade outside. It was definitely not a good position to be in.

I tried again and my left foot also clung to the support, and I slid my hands in the direction to accommodate the position of my body in a more comfortable one.

“I’m almost there!” I shouted vividly, ignoring the increased heart rate and the chest pain which was resulting in shortness of breaths.

When my body was horizonal again, I made sure that my footing was firm before letting go of my death grip. My hands were blistered, and I wiped them off quickly before grabbing the pipes. I slid down the plastic ducts effortlessly, feeling my heart settle in my chest as I touched solid ground.

“I made it!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. Now that was a moment I was sure Isaac had feared. He must have wondered whether I would have left him behind to save my own skin. The idea had flitted my mind to be honest, nobody would have blamed me for he deserved to be killed for his deception. But then again, I wasn’t willing to let his actions define my traits.

I was neither vindictive nor dishonest. However, snuggling back in the house was going to be challenging as I would have to unlock or break down the door to the basement from inside. There was no way out from the outside, where I was standing right now.

Sighing, I massaged my shoulders once again before venturing inside the house with great precaution. There wasn’t many servants about, but I took all the precautions anyway. Nobody paid much attention to me as I entered the servant’s headquarters, and I reckoned that my appearance was worse than any of them. How long had I been held there?

This was no time for distractions. I slid inside the house around which I was familiar and reached the basement opening undetected. But when I tried to open the door, nothing gave. There was no latch from outside also and I felt powerless. I could hardly bring the door down in my current state.

“Zelda? Is that you?” I heard my name through the door, but I could hardly respond to his question without drawing attention to myself. I had to look for a way to bring that damned door down to free the prisoner inside.

My hands travelled on the wooden door to look for an opening, a crack or anything, and I finally detected a weak spot. I had grabbed hold of a pickaxe from the garden which I had hidden under my clothes. Desperate situations gave way to desperate measures.

The first attack on the door was not that productive as I only managed to stick the metal through the wood. After a little bit of struggled, I freed the metal and sent another sharp thrust through the door, and it felt good to find a wedge through the wooden plank.

“Good!” Isaac grounded from the other side, and I heaved the T-shaped tool with herculean effort and tore the door enough for Isaac to be able to rip it apart with his hand and come out.

He was finally free. He grabbed my shoulders in an urgent bequest and pulled me towards him, his big body shielding me from harm.

“We need to go now,” he pressed on as we heard footsteps coming from the other direction. I nodded towards him, as proceeded to the right direction where Braxton’s spare room was found. When he was still living with his parents, I had sneaked into his bedroom at his whim whenever he would summon me.

“Come, there’s a maple tree right outside his window,” I said, gabbing Isaac’s hand to lead him towards the escape. Our freedom.

I wasn’t even sure they would try to kill me, but after everything that had happened, it wouldn’t be wise to trust mt judgements. So, I was operating purely over instincts. How would they explain two dead bodies to the local police? Living amidst civilization meant that we were extremely careful not to draw any kind of attention to us. That was the golden rule.

However, when I reached the window, about to jump over the tree, I turned back to watch a furious Braxton enter his old room. Familiar frosty blue chips stared at me with undisguised hatred and revulsion. One conspicuous thing which struck me before I took the leap was that there was not an ounce of remorse in his cold blue eyes.

It was that moment that I learnt the hardest lesson life could teach anyone. The saddest thing in life was not injustice – wrongs happened to everyone all the time, some deserving and some unjustified. No, the saddest thing about life was being faced with people who weren’t even sorry for having done wrong to you.