Morrigan: I Am Your Fate

Morrigan's Fire

As the flames engulfed the blood-stained dress I looked around the camp again.

Everybody was gone. They had left the tent that used to belong to Luc and Gaella, and my few personal items that no one had wanted.

The tent had been nearly empty when I awoke. I don’t know who cleared it for sure, but I don’t think that Luc would have left me like that if he had seen me himself; I had become a symbol to him that was something more than the reasons he had originally chosen me. I was selected as I was young, attractive, and did not have a mate to have to bargain with. He was so clearly obsessed with me, and our unborn child, that when Gaella told him I was dead he would have been unable to handle seeing the evidence for himself.

He did not like his mate, but he trusted her enough that he believed that she had tried to help me.

I pushed back the covering to the tent again and the fetid stench was overwhelming, but I forced myself to go in and look around the dwelling now I was a little less disorientated.

Nearly everything was gone. They had left the furs I was lying on, and a few other things that were valueless and easily replaceable.

I needed to try and gather supplies so that I could survive alone, so I did not leave any scrap of stained fabric or cracked wooden plate unturned.

It was worth it.

I picked up a bundle of material and a heavy thud at my feet told me something had been concealed within its folds.

I looked down and saw that it was a knife - the one that Gaella had used to cut the cord. It wasn’t a large blade, but it was sharp enough that it would serve me well if I needed to defend myself before I was ready to transform again, and it would help with practical things like preparing my food.

I kept the fabric bundle it had been wrapped in - it was a blanket, and I knew that my baby had been wrapped in this for a few short moments before she ended its life.

I held it close to my face and inhaled the scent.

My senses were still dulled, but maternal instincts are strong and the scent made my breasts ache in an unexpectedly painful way as the smell of my infant so close made them leak a little of the milk that would have sustained him for the first months of his life.

And I knew now that the child was a boy, because as faint as the scent was, it was unmistakable.

I do not think that Gaella would have killed the child if it was a girl. She would have told Luc that I could barely cope with carrying a girl and used my difficult pregnancy and the fact the birth was so traumatic as evidence that I was not fit for him to bother with again.

They already had four sons of their own. The oldest was 7 and the youngest was 2. Even at that young age, it was clear that their children were not natural-born Alphas, and I remember hearing them arguing about his disappointment with her ability to produce worthy offspring in the weeks before Luc cornered me to tell me I had been chosen for something important.

I was a virgin, but he treated me like any other woman rather than being considerate of that.

He left me alone with Gaella when he was finished that first time, and I rubbed my stomach because what he had just done was still painful.

She slapped my hand away and glared at me furiously.

“You aren’t on heat. You won’t be pregnant yet, so don’t sit there rubbing yourself like you’re in awe of the miracle that just happened.”

“It hurts.”

A smile twisted her lips when she realized I was in pain rather than thinking about how amazing Luc was and how wonderful it would be to have his son.

“Getting it into you is the easy part, Morrigan. Getting it out again is what you should be worrying about.”

The way she hissed the word ‘should’ made me shudder. She had known that this might be too much for me to get through since before he laid his hands on me, and I think that is why she had agreed to it at all.

I stood up to leave, because Gaella was only going to make me feel worse and I wanted to go back to my own tent and be alone.

She grabbed my wrist firmly and yanked me back to sit down.

“You’re not going anywhere. If I let you go now I can’t trust that you won’t go straight out and transform yourself. I don’t want you doing anything stupid until after you’ve served your purpose.”

“How long do I have to stay?”

I would be able to transform to my wolf form for a few weeks when I was actually pregnant as a means of ending it, and now I knew that they were going to make sure that did not happen.

Luc insisted on keeping me in his own living space long after it was too late for me to end the pregnancy. I had to sleep on the floor in the corner and I was treated like a slave by Gaella; she just saw this arrangement as a chance to make me do things like mending her clothes when I was usually happier hunting than staying around the camp.

She finally insisted I go back to my own tent when she saw that Luc was starting to become enamored with me, but it did not take long for him to start calling me in every night after that. Gaella telling him I could not stay there anymore had only given him an excuse to start examining me that way as if it was a necessary part of the process.

I felt sick again.

This time it was not because of my physical state, it was because I had allowed myself to think about what they put me through.

I gripped that knife tightly in my hand as if it was more than a useless pitifully small blade, and I felt tears stinging my eyes.

I wanted her to die, and I wanted him to suffer because as angry as I was right now I knew that killing an Alpha would be a death sentence but killing her would be understandable to everybody - even her family’s pack would understand me getting revenge after what she did to my son.

I left the tent with the knife and the blanket and closed my eyes to try and pick up any sound or scent that would help me find water.

I heard a the distinctive burble of a stream, and I remembered having to cross it to get to where we set up camp. They had camped closer to it than they normally would have because of me, and I was grateful for that as I struggled through every painful step to get there.

I collapsed to my knees beside the stream. The water was cool and refreshing and I had needed it so badly that I laughed between each sip I took from my cupped hands as I scooped it up to my mouth.

I was bleeding through the dress I had put on already, and as soon as I had slaked my thirst I pulled the dress off completely and hopped into the water to wash.

My body would probably never be the same as it had been, but I was young enough and fit enough that it would not take me too long to recover and that was important now that I was alone.

I picked up the dress when I was clean, and used it to pat myself dry.

It was a warm day and the sun was pleasant on my skin, so I slung it over my shoulder, picked up the knife that I had left beside the stream, and walked back to the camp with my skin open to the elements.

I felt a pang of hunger in my stomach - it was harder to ignore that now that I had started to work on all the other issues.

But I couldn’t hunt like this and there was nothing edible growing nearby so that was hopeless.

Food could wait. Hunger wasn’t pleasant, and I would need more food than normal for a while until my body realized there was no infant to nourish and my milk dried up, but I wasn't going to starve to death if I had to wait a few more days.

The fire was still going strong when I got back, and I went over to the pile of clothes and picked through them to see what I should keep and what I could use to burn.

I didn’t know if most of my old clothes would ever fit again, but it seemed so wasteful to burn them all. They would not have been left behind like this if I wasn’t so small compared to most of the others - no one else could fit into them.

There were a couple more of the hideous plain dresses Gaella had forced me to wear, and I hated the idea of wearing those ever again but I did not have much choice right now.

At least it wouldn’t matter if they were ruined by blood over the next few days.

I tossed the things into two piles, working slowly because I did not have anything else to occupy myself with.

I wanted to keep the knife, and the blanket. The other pile started with a top that had been a little tight on me to begin with. The way it pulled tightly over my breasts the last time I wore it was flattering, but I don’t think it would even get past them now.

I sighed, accepted that it was necessary to be practical, and started off the pile of things I would not keep.

I was glad that some of the things I would need to survive were deemed worthless by the others. I didn’t have enough status to have fancy blades and weapons or things that were upgrades for the people who picked through my belongings.

And I liked to think that Luc would have told them not to be disrespectful while they were circling like vultures to pick at the spoils.

I had a cup, and a plate, and my winter clothes were still there so I didn’t have to worry about freezing as long as I was in shape again by then.

There was another knife - not quite as high quality as the one Gaella had discarded with no care, but good enough that I put it with the things I planned to take.

My own tent was gone, and packing up the impractically large shelter that Luc and Gaella used was both too much for me physically and emotionally. It would work if I decided to stay here as a base while I recovered but I just couldn’t force myself back into that tent to sleep for another night.

At least the weather was both dry and warm enough that sleeping in the open was pleasant rather than torturous.

I lay beside the fire as the sun set and the colder air chilled me a little; I eventually gave in and put the hideous shift dress that I had worn earlier back on so that I was not shivering.

I hugged my arms around myself and a strangled cry escaped from me as I realized for the first time that I was really alone now.

I had been so uncomfortable for so long, and it had been annoying trying to sleep with my heavy belly moving as the baby kicked me.

Now there was nothing there, and I missed the frustrating kick to my ribs that would awake me right as I was falling asleep. I would have happily let Luc lie beside me whispering about our next hundred children to not be alone this way.

It wasn’t natural for my kind to be alone like I was now. It was a death sentence for most of us.

If you were a Loner it was just something you always knew and felt within yourself, and I was used to the sounds and smells of other people around when I went to sleep. All I could hear now was the cracking of the fire and the sound of the trees swaying in the gentle breeze.