Chapter 53 Dark
ZORA
Goddess!!
I wish Ryker wasn't stubborn!
I bit down on my bottom lip as I thought of what to do. Was there a way I could convince him of how urgent it was that we leave without spilling the details?
I felt like with every second I spent here, the closer I was to being discovered.
What if there had been someone else watching from a distance? Someone who saw everything.
I swallowed, glancing around slowly as I kneaded my sweaty hands like dough for bread.
It felt like a thousand eyes were staring at me, hidden by the darkness.
Two ladies passed in front of us, chatting and laughing about something. After they went past me, there was someone else standing several feet away from me. Doing nothing but staring at me. Like he knew something. It was a young lad with spiky hair, and all he did was stare.
Did he know something?
It was nearly impossible to pull my eyes away from him.
Perhaps I could draw out the truth from those dark-brown-nearly-black eyes. If he had witnessed what had happened earlier..
What?
What next?
Are you gonna kill him too and have Marissa take care of his body?
"No!" I blurted out loudly.
Ryker grabbed my arm and yanked me to him. His breath fanned the tip of my nose. "What is wrong with you, Meiga?" His voice had taken a deep dip in the baritone scale.
I shook my head, refusing to speak.
His fingers tightened around my arms, forcing a whimper out of me.
"What are you hiding from me?" He growled into my ear.
"N-nothing." I whispered back, moving my sight to the corner of my eyes so I could see the boy again, but he wasn't there. He was nowhere to be found.
Like he was never actually there.
"Meiga." My name left his lips in a warning as he pulled me closer, dipped his head into my neck, and took in a long sniff.
What was he doing? I wondered.
He moved to the top of my breasts. Breathing became difficult. I was literally drinking air through my nostrils. His nose touched the center line in between my breast, and once again, he took another sniff.
"R-ryker..." I breathed, confused.
He pulled back, a knowing look in his gaze. "You reek of fear. What are you hiding from me? What have you done?"
Why does he keep asking that?!
He frowned.
I blinked.
It felt like he was stripping me naked, layer after layer. What else could he perceive?
"Your heart, It's beating faster than normal. And it's not because you want me."
Another layer peeled off. My mouth turned dry, I looked away, afraid that I would crumble and yield and give away everything that I had done. To recount how I had killed a Luna.
Ryker was still a wolf. An Alpha. Plus, I didn't matter to him. There was no way he would pick me over pack politics should the time when it matters comes.
The more I thought of my possible ill fate, the more my head spinned wildly.
I looked into Ryker's eyes. Would he protect me if anyone found out? Or would he be the one to cast me out to them and throw the first stone?
No. He outrightly rejected me once, even when I was right. What of now that I have done something terrible?
A glint appeared in Ryker's eyes for a second, and then his pupils contracted. I've never seen that happen before, and it scared the shit out of me.
"Zora. What did you do?"
"Nothing. I whimpered and, with a strength I didn't know I had, broke free from his grasp, scampering out of that place to my room.
All the way, as I ran and breezed past people, I felt eyes on me. I could still see that young boy's face, vivid in my imagination.
I brushed past someone's shoulder aggressively, accidentally.
"What the hell! You freak!" I heard the offender yell at me, but I didn't stop running and didn't look back to see if it was someone I recognized.
The back entrance to the Luna suite loomed into view, and my urge spiked.
I have learned that it was better to get to my room through this route. It was less used, and I could escape any of the Lunas. Thankfully, none of the Lunas were strolling about. All appeared to be at the festival.
In the safety of my room, I collapsed at the center of the floor. I was so exhausted that all I could do was cry and sob.
When I closed my eyes, I saw her.
Jayna.
I saw her unmoving petrified form. How I had killed her, I couldn't phantom.
There was zero blood spill, yet all of the life that was in her was gone.
And I caused it.
I looked around me and my empty room, I stared through the window, wondering what my next seconds were going to be like. I needed to hear from Marissa.
I could see the outline and dark shadowy figures of the trees through the window. Suddenly, they started to glow , one after the other. I could still see their barks and their branches, but it was like they were transparent, like they held in luminous liquid. Just like the one that was in Jayna. The whole atmosphere was filled with them, dust-like floating bits of light. Instinctively, my hand reached into the atmosphere, and when I waved, it moved. Like thread. Unseen thread.
It seemed palpable. So, to satisfy my curiosity, I tried to grab it.
Massive shock waves hit me from the inside, spreading around my body and bones with so much force that I jerked away from the window and doubled over. It was like my heart had been shifted to my ears. The heartbeat spiked up and was deafening.
With each heavy heartbeat, I could suddenly hear everything. The emptiness in the hallway, the building chatter of the wolves in the Festival, the woods and then...
I crumbled to the floor, suddenly taken back to the time where I had been confronted by Jayna. This time, I wasn't being tackled to the ground. Instead, Jayna's frozen form was staring at me. Hollow dead eyes seemed to accuse me. I knelt beside her lifeless body and cried. I could hear voices in my ears.
Witch!
She doesn't belong here. She isn't one of us. She killed a Luna…
"I'm not a witch. No!"
I cried out, and somewhere in my room, a glass shattered forcefully. I opened my eyes only to see that my room had turned into a mess. The bed had lost one leg, the rod that held the curtains had fallen, my pillows had been mercilessly ripped open, the mirror had ugly crack line diagonally across its center, and the glass I had heard shattering earlier was my bedroom's window.
I walked to the mirror, saw myself in its jagged pieces, eyes glowing dark purple and slowly from nothingness, Grace appeared beside me in the mirror.
"You need to control your power, otherwise, you'll end up killing more people."
I scoffed, "That's rich coming from you."
She pressed her lips together, glaring at me.
"How are you even here? In fact, why are you here? Why are you after me? Don't you have other things to do aside from disturbing me?"
"Is the after life that boring? Or are you here to torment me because I ran away when you were alive and you couldn't?
She rolled her eyes at me and snapped her fingers.
"Sleep." She mouthed softly.
That was the last thing I heard and saw.
Everything went dark.