Chapter 301

Then I met Gabriel and the word family took on a whole new meaning, for the most part I had only seen Jack and Casey interacting with each other as siblings and it was a new discovery for me at the time. Then Gabriel brought in more and I realized that not all siblings actually care for their family, they don’t want happiness for them unconditionally like I had witnessed with Jack and Casey. It was boldly apparent when Gabriel’s sister Scarlet helped kidnap me, her brothers own mate. Once again though the word family took on a whole new meaning when I met my cousin Angel – witnessed her giving birth to her children, the confusion and hurt she endured – the love she had in her heart to give despite all the troubles she had faced in life was astounding. Finally I learnt of Rainy, another cousin from my fathers’ side of the family and her life – what she and those poor helpless babies had suffered at the hands of another deranged man like Leo, only worse than Leo. My blood boiled and my stomach twisted when I even so much as listened to her thoughts sometimes, or those of her children. I had wanted to go meet them sooner, offer anything I could for them when we all first got here, then I got busy and distracted, but I consistently heard their thoughts – knew the struggle they faced each and everyday. The nightmares that kept most children awake most nights, the sleeplessness, the help they have with them, the heartache when one child says something so small, their voice so innocent that even the therapists here need to take a moment away and collect themselves. Hearing a child no older than eight years old, think and believe that the abuse they suffered was done to them, because they were bad and deserved it, broke me, ate away at me. Yet each day I woke up, even after I told myself to go see them, I couldn’t, but it wasn’t because I couldn’t face them, it was more a fact of what I was facing myself. Their memories bringing out my own, the beatings, his tools – whips, paddles, chunks of wood, knives – the feeling so real that if I didn’t have a handle on where I was, and who I was with, I’d believe I was right back in that hole where he tortured me. So I stayed away, waiting until I was at a better place but I listened in, and what I heard now was one thing, what truly did away at me now was something I had never felt before. I could literally feel, experience the terror Rainy was enduring, my body locking down, going rigid as I stepped away from her thoughts in my own mind, which helped release the hold I was feeling. ‘You aren’t old enough to go out on a date, you’re only thirteen years old honey,’ an older man said, the voice sickening and kind but for the listener there was only disbelief, fear, shock even. At that moment when I heard it, nothing else mattered, concentrating I went back in, knowing that it was coming from Rainy, wondering what brought this – this thought – panic on? ‘There’ll be more dances sweetheart,’ the sweetness and caring in the voice reminded me of Jason, the absolute love I heard didn’t go with the utter disgust I felt in the pit of my stomach, the turning, my mouth filling with excess spittle. Blinking, I see it, the past colliding devastatingly with the present, the anger and terror rendering her thoughts, flashes that I don’t want to see, that I wish I could take away if she’d let me hit me image after image. So much so that I pull my thoughts from her own, I close my eyes not wanting more images lingering in my own mind, I need to know for sure and once I do, I’m there. I’m on that beach and I’m watching Brian Simeon – human – and his wife Jasmine – her scent tells me she’s not human but she isn’t a shifter either – strolling along that beach, his twenty–one year old daughter Hope and two sons Fabian and Shane, one older than the other I think absentmindedly. I read the file – dad had brought this vile man here, protecting his life not knowing that this man was not a true man at all, a predator preying. I have the whole scene in front of me; the sun down and different pit fires are blazing. I see Greta and Zeke conversing with Nonno and Nona; Violet and Lukas are near them, as well. I spot Rainy rather quickly, not in human form, in her silver wolf, the island inhabitants whispering about her. I continue to listen to the thoughts of those around me, topolino? Nonno reaches out to me, my appearance off-putting – worrisome. Ignoring him doesn’t help, “Let me go to her,” Nonno says, the three around him give responses acknowledging his words. I barely register it but when I do I realize I can’t kill this human – animal, his mind sick, his desires worse than any feral wolf – with the children here on the beach. Other families strolling, sitting, just enjoying the night air, blindly unaware that this man once wreaked havoc – once physical, mental and now emotional – on poor innocent children. Each laugh a blow to Rainy, who is frozen her whole self, shaking in one spot. I see it, Nonno tries to reach me with his eyes, when that doesn’t work however he follows my gaze, is – what is wrong? He sends out to me but I can’t answer him, because the man in my sights, he destroyed my cousin and her children. Brian doesn’t see me coming, but once Rainy shifts to her human form, Chris follows; I feel the grains below me scratch the bottom of my feet, rough, still warm after the hot ray from earlier, shouting – from behind me rings and echo’s around me, but I’ve found my target and my speed increases, until I’m head to head, my fist clenched and making contact with his ribs. The break is heard, but I’m already pulling back to hit him again. I wasn’t going to kill him, but I was surely making sure he was feeling the pain; vibrating in anger my fists collided with his shoulder, the snap the only thing I hear clearly, the uproar around me just white noise at the moment. My hand lunges forward for his and I’m just about to snap his wrist when I’m taken off guard from my side, a blow throwing me down to my right side, a foot strikes my left and the blow takes my breath away, as I pant but I’m not completed, fast than the owner of the foot can kick me again, I reach out holding tightly to their toe bones, sand gritty against my palm, goes straight to the heel bone, squeezing I hear the crunch before quickly throwing my hands in different directions snapping the bone, knowing that I had snapped the tendons belonging to that foot. Moving swiftly I take hold of the same foot, my hands reaching up aiming to fracture their fibula. Before I can attempt to break anything, the owner of the foot is no longer above me – Fabian I see after – is replaced by a red faced mate. Gabriel. Slowly the red haze tinting my vision clears, my wolves calm, he lifts me to my feet and I see the scene around me has changed. Questioning eyes, parents with their younger children are moving away from the scene, older individuals are keeping watch, and from the bushes more people are coming to see what has happened. I take a moment pulling my eyes from Gabriel’s a fleeting gaze at everyone here, all the people that I wanted to take time to get to know. People that I would have to pick to participate in the absorption are now seeing me for the first time, beating mercilessly on a human man – one that was innocent as far as they knew. “Daddy?” – “Brian?” – “Call Marlon – call Marlon,” the Simeons’ all shouting simultaneously, “I can’t move it – don’t touch it, ohhh – god – ahh – my foot,” Fabian cries, his family frantically moving between him and his father. She was never this troublesome back when I trained her, Lux thought observing me, just before calling Marlon and Leland. “Chelsea what-”