Chapter 2

“Leave, Saul. You are not welcome here.”

 

“You forget your place, seer!”

 

“My place is next to the chosen one, boy. As appointed by your father, the one who rejected you and appointed you over the scouts. Do I need to remind you why?”

 

I could hear his threatening snarls through the thick doors.  I was being held in the lower level of the palace until I could get a firm grasp on my transformations.  My brother had come by nearly every night since my awakening.  Even though the seer never told me of Saul’s appearances, I knew he was there. Being the alpha, I could feel the life force of every person that has ever received the bite. Saul’s wasn’t like the others. It was tainted. I now see what our father saw after Saul’s awakening.

 

A door slammed, and I knew he finally left.   The seer rushed into the room where I was being kept, mumbling under her breath.  I sat up in my bed and watched her as she began to mix her potions.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

My voice snapped her out of her daze.

 

“Nothing is wrong, child.  How are you feeling?”

 

She approached me with a glass filled with one of her concoctions, running the back of her hand gently down the side of my face. After my last transformation, my body went into shock.  The seer was training me to be able to transform at will rather than with the light of the moon as the others.

 

Before I could take the glass from her, it slipped from her fingers, crashing to the floor.
“No”

 

I looked into her face. Her body stiffened and her eyes were zoned out, staring into space with her mouth agape.  She was having a vision. Just as quickly as it came, she snapped out of it, grabbing me by my wrist and yanking me towards the door.

 

“What is it? What did you see?”

 

“He’s coming for you. You can’t fight him now. He’s going to kill you.”

 

My heart was racing in my chest.

 

“Who?” I asked even though I already knew in the back of my mind. Even through everything, I never thought that he’d come for me like this.

“He’s been turning neos.  I didn’t think it was possible…that he had that power…He’s built a small army in preparation for this day-”

 

My blood froze and we both stopped in our tracks when we heard howls echo throughout the hallways. He was close.  My chest began to tighten, and I fell to my knees.

 

“No, not now!”

 

I was transforming and couldn’t stop it. I still couldn’t control myself in form, but there was nothing I could do.  The seer rested her palm on my forehead and spat one of her chants.  My heart began to slow down, but I felt as if I was going to explode.

 

“I stopped it for now. We need to move. Now.”

 

I stumbled to my feet and we continued through the back corridors as fast as we could to the seer’s lair. I’ve only been here once when I was a child and that was only because I stumbled in by chance.  It was a secluded space filled with all of the seer’s devices, but there was nowhere for us to go once we were in there. There were no windows or doors except for the main door that we’d come in.  I heard a crack originate from somewhere in my body then felt excruciating pain in my sides.  I dropped to the floor, wailing out and spewing blood, unable to breathe. My ribs were breaking and since there was blood, I could only assume that one of the broken pieces punctured a lung.  The seer wasn’t paying any attention to my plight. She grabbed a fist of metal flakes, blowing them from her palm into the stone wall beside me. I’d never seen the extent of the seer’s magic. Not like this. The wall seemed to liquefy as soon as the flakes touched it, swirling until it was a transparent wall of water.

 

The seer pulled me to my feet, allowing me to lean against her for support. She maneuvered one of the ancient necklaces from around her neck and draped it over mine.

 

“This will guide you to safety, my child. Don’t fight the path, Winter. You are destined to do great things. Your path doesn’t end tonight.”

 

I spat the blood pooling in my mouth. My lungs felt as if they were on fire.

 

“Wha-“ I coughed. “You’re not coming?”

 

“There’s no ti-“

 

There was a loud bang on the barricaded door, and then another and another until it splintered and cracked.

 

“Go!”

The seer pushed me into the wall before I could protest and fight her on it.  She knew there was no way I’d leave her. She was the only mother I knew.  Before I knew it, I was in a dark, wooded area. I looked back in the direction where I was pushed only to see the Saul coming towards me and the seer wave her arm in front of the wall before he could come through. The scene disappeared, replacing the seer’s lair with more trees and a seemingly endless darkness behind it.

 

I tried to will my feet to move me from my spot. I wasn’t sure which direction. I didn’t know where I was, and the pain from my stalled transformation was numbing. I couldn’t move. Dizziness overtook what was left of my conscious mind and I found myself falling to the cold ground. Before I slipped completely into unconsciousness, I heard footsteps coming towards me and then felt large hands pulling me up.

 

*******

 

The warmth from sunrays filtering through the blinds on my face woke me up.  I inhaled the scent of the crisp, linen sheets only to be met by a sharp pain.  I grabbed my sides only to feel tight bandages around most of my torso.  It took me a while to remember what had happened last night and a short time after to realize that I was in someone’s bed.  I heard the faint sound of metal clinking together on the other side of the door.

 

I sat up slowly, trying to keep the pain from my broken ribs at bay.  My clothes were replaced with a long t-shirt.  I got out of the bed, my feet meeting the cool tile of the floor.  I moved in the direction of the noise, the scent of bacon and eggs growing stronger as I moved through the house.  I don’t know what or who I expected to see, but it wasn’t a shirtless man with washboard abs standing over a stove.  The tattoos on his arms and chest danced on his muscles with each movement that he made.

 

“You’re awake?”

 

He was making more of an observation than asking.

 

“Have a seat,” he said without looking in my direction once.

 

Who was this guy? I slowly made my way to the table and sat down.  He sat a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast in front of me with a glass of orange juice to wash it all down.  He took his place across from me with his own plate of food and began to eat in silence. I kept my eyes on him, not touching anything on my plate.

 

“You need to eat, Winter. You’ve been out for three days.”

“Three days?!” I gasped. “Wait, how do you know me?”

 

His fingers gravitated to one of the necklaces hanging around his neck, touching a charm matching the one I wore that the seer gave me.  My heart started to beat a little faster. My mother used to tell me stories of a man who left our people after his awakening.  Somehow, he was able to break the connection from the alpha and the rest of the pack, leaving him untraceable to our people and free to live his life in the world as he wished becoming a scourge to our people. I always thought that the story was nothing more than a fairytale.

 

“She came to me in a dream.”

 

“I know who you are”

 

He stopped eating, long enough to look at me for the first time.

 

“You’re Bane, aren’t you?”

 

“I am”

 

“I have so much that I want to ask you.”

“Oh?”

 

“How did you do it?”

 

He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, but I knew he understood what I was asking.

 

“How did you break from the pack?”

 

“You can never fully break from the pack.  Once a connection is made with an alpha, it will always be there.  Besides, you cant.”

 

“Before you, nobody has ever gotten away. Even after you it hasn’t been done. ”

 

“You’re an alpha. Alphas can’t break from their pack unless death breaks the bond.”

 

“How did you-“

 

“I can feel your power, Winter.   You have the ability to control each and every one of us.  Like now, I’m having a had time controlling my phasing.”

 

“Phasing?”

 

He rose his eyebrow at me.

 

“When we transform. It’s called phasing. When was your awakening?”

 

“I’m not sure?” I’d lost all sense of time since my father gave me the bite. “Maybe a month ago?”

“I have a lot to teach you. The first thing you need to do is become on with your werewolf side. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to get a hold on your abilities. The sooner you do that, the better. Right now you aren’t in control. You can phase at any moment, and when you phase I will, too. We need to remain incognito around these people. They don’t understand how things work.”

 

“Okay, well, teach me. Teach me how you got away.”

 

“Later. Eat and focus on your recovery.”

 

He finished his plate and got up from the table to wash his dishes.

 

“You said the seer came to you in a dream? So, do know what happened to her?”

 

He hung his head and his shoulders slumped.

 

“She’s dead”

VISUALS:

Bane making breakfast