The Prophecy: Orphaned Princess (Prophecy Series Book 2)

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Third Person

Three years later

“AHHHH!!!” Kalea jolted from her slumber and screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Kalea!?” her mother cried as she burst into Kalea’s room. “Goddess, not again!” her mother exclaimed as she held Kalea down, and her father rushed in.

“MAKE IS STOP!! MAKE IT STOP!!” Kalea cried in agony. It had been three years since the rejection, and Josh was intimate three to four times per week throughout those three years. Kalea either woke up in the middle of the night or toppled over in the middle of the day because Josh could not keep it in his pants.

After the night of his rejection, because of his Alpha command, Kalea was inept at telling anyone. No matter how much she wanted to. Unable to tell anyone that Josh was the one who rejected her and was the cause of all her pain, Kalea felt utterly helpless. No one could figure out why the mate bond between Kalea and Josh hadn’t completely severed. As such, Kalea suffered multiple times a week. It wasn’t always full-on intercourse, however. Every little intimate gesture Josh made, whether kissing or holding hands with another, Kalea felt minor stabbing pains and stinging pricks all over her body. However, Kalea required sedation on nights like tonight to make it through the night.

“Honey, hold her down,” Kalea’s father instructed his wife as he fished out the syringe filled with the drug that would render Kalea unconscious. Her parents hated sedating her; however, it was the only option. Initially, Kalea was stubborn and refused to take the injection, saying she could handle it. But one night, it got so bad it nearly killed her. Kalea had convulsed and seized, coughed blood, and had to be intubated for five days. Josh had kept busy that night. The length of his rendezvous determined how long Kalea would suffer. The longer he went, the more she had to endure.

Kalea has stayed clear of the packhouse ever since that fateful night. She was avoiding all pack members to the best of her ability. Hailey had outed her to the rest of the back as wolfless, which led to more ridicule and Kalea becoming the laughingstock of the entire pack. As time passed, more and more pack members began to shun Kalea and outcast her. Some even went as far as pretending she didn’t exist. Kalea didn’t know what was worse- being tormented and bullied or being treated as invisible.

Once the drugs took effect, Kalea’s breathing calmed. Little by little, she was able to fall into a peaceful sleep. Kalea couldn’t understand why Josh’s Alpha command that night rendered her unable to tell her Father and Mother who was the cause of her pain. Kale had no wolf, and yet Josh could still command her. Kalea allowed sleep to take over as she prayed to the Moon Goddess to make the pain disappear, even if she had to die. Her death would free her from pain, ridicule, loneliness, betrayal, and heartbreak.

When Kalea woke up the following morning, the drugs from the night before had thoroughly worn off. She was sore and had a severe cotton mouth. No one in the pack knew what was happening to Kalea. The only ones who were aware were Kalea’s parents, the pack doctor, and Mr. Scout. Kalea found it odd that her high school teacher knew of her mate’s infidelities, and it looked like every time she went through it, Mr. Scout seemed to feel her pain as if it were his own. Kalea and Mr. Scout had a silent understanding. He never said anything about knowing why Kalea was going through this, and she never asked. She often wondered what he knew, but she knew better than to poke a sleeping bear, or in this case, a lone wolf whose history was unknown.

After showering and rinsing away the residual slumber from the night before, Kalea went downstairs to find her parents silently speaking amongst themselves but abruptly stopped when they sensed Kalea had entered. This was happening more often than not, and Kalea knew they were trying to figure out who her mate was.

“Kalea, honey, how are you feeling this morning?” her mother asked, attempting to deter her from calling them out for talking about her again.

“As well as can be expected, I suppose,” Kalea answered.

“Sweetheart…”

“I’m not telling you, Dad. We’ve had this conversation a thousand times before. I can’t tell you,” Kalea cut off her father. She sighed in frustration and shook her head. Her parents weren’t going to let it go. How could they? If this were happening to her child, Kalea would move heaven and Earth to determine who was hurting her child. She could only imagine her parents' pain as they watched her writhe in agony for the last three years.

Kalea decided to skip breakfast and walked out of the house. She had also missed dinner the night before, which was unlike her. She tried to avoid going outside because she didn’t want to run into any pack members. The only good about their house was that it was located at the far east end of the territory. Rarely anyone ever went in that direction.

She went through the tall brush and tumbleweeds behind her house and went to the top of the hills that overlooked the Silver Moon pack border. She looked out into the vast terrain of nothingness and wondered what it would have been like had she left the pack and gone away for college like she had initially wanted to. Kalea’s plans for further education changed the moment Josh rejected her. What she went through on a near day-to-day basis was the only hurdle holding her prisoner in her home. If Kalea ever had an episode in front of humans, they would think she was insane or possessed.

She continued to stare off into space, wondering what her life would have been like had she not been put up for adoption. She read the letter from her father and often imagined what he looked like and what it would have been like to have been raised by them. Would she have been bullied and mocked her whole life? Or would she have grown up with friends and had a normal childhood? Would she have gained her wolf on time? Would she have met her mate who would have accepted her and loved her for her? All those what-if questions played in her head repeatedly like a broken radio. She sat on the ground, hugged her knees, and rested her chin on her forearms.

As she immersed herself in her thoughts, she noticed something running toward her. She squinted her eyes to get a better look and realized it looked to be some dog or coyote in the distance. Although there were many of those around the area, at the rate this one was moving, she knew it wasn’t a regular canine.

“Rogues.”

Kalea stumbled backward, trying to get up as fast as she could. She didn’t have the luxury of panicking. She forced herself steady and started to run as fast as her legs could carry her, but without her wolf, she could only run so fast. Her legs burned as she pushed herself to run even faster, trying not to stumble over logs, holes in the ground, and large rocks.

“ROGUES! ROGUES ARE COMING!” she screamed as loudly as she broke through the trees and onto the pack territory. “ROGUES!” she called again when she saw her house come into view. “MOM! DAD! ROGUES!” she cried even though she knew no one was home. She could hear the snarls of the rogues gaining on her, so she had to forego her house and run toward the packhouse, continuing to scream that rogues were coming.

“What are you screaming about, mutt!?” A pack member who was home hollered from their front patio.

“ROG—”

“AHHH!!!” The pack member’s dying screams cut off Kalea’s warning as a rogue attacked them.

“Oh, god!” Kalea gasped. She turned around and saw the pack of rogues enter the territory. “Where the hell are the pack guards?!” she questioned out loud as she kept running for her life. “Ugh! This would be a great time to able to mind link someone!” she grunted. She finally heard the alarm sound that signaled the pack was under attack. She could finally see pack warriors coming out from all sides of the packhouse, running in her direction. Some were in wolf form, while others were in human form. “Gah! Finally!”

She continued to run toward the packhouse, hoping to get into one of the bunkers for safety, but in her attempt to get there, she was knocked over by one of the pack warriors in wolf form. The force had her rolling on the ground. When she looked up, she saw a stampede of wolves coming in her direction, so Kalea did the only thing she could do that moment—curl up into the fetal position and pray her pack members didn’t trample her to death. She knew an all-out war had begun when she heard the collision of bodies, roars, growls, snarls, grunts, and whimpers.

Her eyes scanned her surroundings, and the once tan-colored fields of the Silver Moon pack were now drowning in red from all the blood. She was so consumed by what was going on around her she hadn’t noticed a rogue sneaking up on her 3 o’clock until she heard a threatening growl. She slowly turned and came face to face with a massive rogue that smelled like sewage. Kalea started to scoot away. Drool was dropping from the rogue’s lips. It reared back on its hind legs, ready to pounce on her, but right before it did, a grey wolf leaped over her and tackled the rogue.

“DAD!” Kalea cried out. Recognizing her father’s wolf. She stood to her feet as she watched her father battle the rogue valiantly. That was when another wolf grabbed her and started to drag her away. She turned to see another familiar wolf. “Mom!?” Her mother’s wolf dragged her away from the fight and returned to her human form.

“Kalea! You need to run!” her mother told her and started to shove her away.

“Mom! I need to go the bunker!”

“The packhouse is under attack! No one is making it to the bunker! You need to run! Now! Get as far away from here as you can!”

“What about you and Dad?”

“Your father has to stay and fight, and I need to make sure you’re not followed. Now go, Kalea! GO NOW!” she yelled as she continued to push Kalea away.

“I’m not leaving without you!”

“Dammit, Kalea! Don’t argue with me! Just g— AHHH!!!” her mother cut off midsentence and keeled over, suddenly holding her chest as pain ripped through her. “No! Patrick!” she cried as she felt her heart shatter due to the death of her mate. “PATRICK!!!” she cried even louder.

“No … Daddy…” Kalea sobbed. She wanted to run back to her father but was stopped by a rogue. Her mother was anything but a warrior, but that didn’t stop her from protecting her child. Her mother shifted into her wolf. Kalea knew that her father’s death had weakened her mother. Her wolf whimpered as she faced off with the rogue, heartbroken at losing her mate. “Mom! We have to go! You can’t take him on! We can both get out of here!” Kalea clutched the fur of mother’s wolf, attempting to pull her away from Rogue. Unfortunately, the rogue leaped toward them and collided with Kalea’s mother. The force of the impact threw Kalea back, knocking her into a tree trunk.

Kalea watched as her mother fought with the rogue. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing, so she looked around for a weapon. However, within the seconds that Kalea tore her eyes away, her mother’s wolf cried in pain. She looked back to see her mother’s wolf in the jaws of the rogue. He had her by the jugular, and in slow motion, Kalea watched as he bit down, blood spattering everywhere.

“MOM!!!” she cried as the rogue dropped her mother’s lifeless body. Her mother returned to her human form, and all Kalea could do was crawl to her. Kalea held her mother in her arms as she cried and screamed. Lost in her emotions, her mother’s body was suddenly ripped away from her by the rogue and thrown to goddess only knew where. Kalea lifted her head in horror. How she wished she had her wolf or even a weapon of some kind. Unfortunately, she had nothing and no one. Her parents were dead, and she was all alone. Out of nowhere, Kalea felt pain ripple through her body, but it differed from when Josh was unfaithful. This pain was the loss of a pack member and an important one at that. It wasn’t Josh; she knew that for sure. No, this was someone just as important— it was his father.

She had been so distracted by the former Alpha’s death that she had forgotten entirely about the rogue before her until it snarled at her again. She snapped her eyes back to the rogue. She could have sworn it was smirking at her. The rogue began to circle Kalea as she was his next prey. Little by little, the circumference got smaller. It was toying with her, probably wondering why she wasn’t shifting to save herself. Kalea was so afraid she could only close her eyes and wait for death to come. She heard the rogue roar as it lunged for the attack. She screamed and curled up, but the attack never came. She felt a splash of liquid cover her. When she opened her eyes, she saw the rogue's head in front of her, separated from its body, and herself covered head to toe in its blood.

She lifted her head and saw someone standing above her with a sword. The man was shrouded in armor, and blood dripped from the blade of his sword. He turned his head to face Kalea.

“Mr. Scout!?”