Chapter 64: Unlucky

Callista.

The phantoms accompany me as Edwin carries me through the foliage. My head falls off his shoulder, limp, and my blurry sight upside down. I see other white-clad youths walk behind us. Edwin leads this lethal parade. The whole forest is bathed in moonlight, and my scattered mind travels back to my own coming of age ceremony.

The phantom of Farris walks nearest to me, dressed in the same way I last saw him. Seeing him makes me feel strangely nostalgic. Back then, things weren’t this bad.

“My, my Callista,” He muses in a reverberating voice, walking next to me leisurely. “What happened to you?”

Theon appears next to him, his face frozen in an expression of rage and pompous glory.

“Serves her right. I gave you all the luxuries you ever wanted, but you couldn’t agree to the one simple thing I asked of you. And then you made me out to be the villain for trying to follow our agreement!” He decides to add his two cents.

“You killed me to get him,” Ruelle walks next to the other phantoms. “To get my Theon. How’d that work for you now?”

She wraps her arms around my mate’s, and he kisses her on the head. He looks like he loves her so much. She smiles victoriously, “On your way to be killed like a common criminal. How sad.”

“I told you I won’t mate with you,” Elias joins them. “Why’d you have to run? There wasn’t a real threat. You just wanted freedom. Look how that turned out to be. Hope you learned by now, outside the pack, the only freedom is death.”

“Did you think the outsiders were kinder than us?” That’s Farris. “At least we had the decency not to kill you.”

“You killed my true mate. For that, you deserve the fate that awaits you,” They start to dissipate, and Theon weighs in. “At least your death would be of use to someone.”

With that, they all vanish.

We enter a clearing surrounded by evergreen trees, and the moon shines directly above us. Edwin lays me on a large stone slab. The cold hardness bites into my body. I want to run, but my body refuses.

He brushes a strand of hair off my face, face filled with twisted affection. My stomach twists. “It’s nothing personal, Sharon. Just tradition.”

I don’t know what to feel. My mind is a scramble as if someone had dumped my brain into a high-powered blender. I feel like I’m scattered into pieces, and each piece feels a different emotion. Sadness, anger, rage, melancholy, disgust…but most of it just feels numb.

I am numb. I watch the proceedings as if someone else is going through this.

The Alpha stands in white robes.

“May the moon shine on you and your loved ones!” He greets, “We’ve gathered here today to mark the coming of age of 15 members of the Lunaryse Pack. Tonight, we shall honor the Moon Goddess and commemorate our fallen ancestors with the lifeblood of the human, Sharon!”

Everyone gathered starts to cheer and clap.

“Centuries ago, before the Goddess made humanity forget about the supernatural races, humans attacked our ancestors,” He continues, “When they were at their most vulnerable. They slaughtered their children like common cattle and raped their mates in front of them. They made them powerless with arrows of Wolfsbane. They pillaged the bear clan!”

An angry cheer roars.

“But they didn’t get to kill all of our forefathers. Some of them survived, and soon they grew in numbers. They created the greatest bear pack in America. And then they avenged their fallen pack mates by slaughtering the monsters, once and for all!”

Another cheer.

“The blood that ran in our ancestors’ veins runs in us as well, so we shall never forget the atrocity, nor shall we ever forgive humanity for their crimes! Today, Sharon will pay the annual penance for those collective crimes!

“Begin the chant!” Roars the Alpha and the gatherers begin a low, growling chant. It's in a language I’d never heard before, and the words sound so very angry.

“Please,” I manage to pull myself together enough to whisper. “Please…spare me...”

Edwin hands the Alpha a dagger with a gleaming tip.

“Rest well, human. May the afterlife be kind to you.” He whispers.

The tip of the dagger touches my uncovered shoulders, and the prick on my skin made me whine in pain. I'm too exhausted to scream. As he drags the dagger down my arm, an animalistic keening escapes me.

At my wrist, the dagger cuts a horizontal line.

The Alpha continues repeating the same procedure onto my other arm and then moves to my legs. The dagger cut through my clothes, staining the gossamer white with red. He carves me like I'm made of wood rather than flesh and blood. The pain intensifies, and soon I'm immersed in a sea of agony. My breath is shallow. My tears mingle with the blood from the carvings on my face. The wounds burn.

The chanting around me grows louder and starts to intermingle with the growls and roars of transformed bears.

“Looking like a turkey there, Callista.” Ruelle’s phantom strolls around the slab. “You should really stop the habit of wearing white. It’s not a flattering color to be killed in. Too cliché.”

She laughs cruelly, “Oh how ironic the world is.”

She leans on the stone and swipes at my blood with her index finger. I don’t have enough energy to scream. Then, she licks it.

“Remember how my mother cursed you?” She grins, her teeth stained red, “You shall never burn on a pyre. I never thought her words would be so powerful to come true so soon. I know you didn’t try to kill me, Callista. All of them know that. But it’s so satisfying to blame it all on you. Look at you. Born with a curse, left by your own parents, taken in by a pack who later betrayed you. Sold to the Alpha King,” Her expression turns sympathetic, “Rejected by your mate, over and over again. What a tragic tale you are, stealer. Now you’re going to die like a human. And not even twenty years old yet.”

What a tragic tale I really was.

“The human’s blood shall bring peace for a generation!” The Alpha cries, “It will give us the courage to stand up to our enemies and embrace our legacy as the great bears of this land!”

“Now he sounds like a real cult leader,” Ruelle’s phantom says, “Oh, look, he’s going to kill you. See you in hell, Callista.”

The phantom vanishes. In her place the Alpha stands, dagger raised high.

“Praise be on the Goddess of the Moon!”

The dagger starts to come down.