Chapter 167 CHAPTER 167

Chapter 167 CHAPTER 167

I opened the door knowing it would look nothing like what my mother described.

And it didn't.

Micheal Senior had stripped every trace of them from these walls.
Different furniture, different colours, his scent baked into the bedsheets.

But the walls were the same walls my mother leaned against when she carried me. The window was the same one my father looked through when he watched over his Pack. The floor was the same floor they danced on when they thought nobody was watching. My mother told me that story so many times I could see it. The two of them swaying in the moonlight, laughing, barefoot, completely in love.

I still had a vague memory of my little self, jumping on the bed and waking them up from sleep.

It was all too much at once, the tainted memories.

I closed the door.

Sank to the ground.

And cried.

No, I howled, pain digging so deep in my chest I felt it break.
This was supposed to be my beginning, and it was cut short.
I never got to experience everything they'd planned for us all because he loved his brother.
My Mum fought so hard to keep me alive but she was taken too.
He almost won if not for Hunter, but I was too late, I can't get them back here to see who I had grown into.

My screams of pain gradually softened into sobs.

I cried for my father in the thick woods, running for his life, then on his knees, saying please to a brother who had already decided to kill him. For my mother on the road, who all she wanted was to give me a happy birthday. For the life I should have had in this house, with these people, on this land.

For the year I was bullied, maltreated and I lost everything.

Although I was home now, it didn't feel the way it should have.
Even the sky was cloudy.

Red curled around me inside, warm and silent, and let me break until there was nothing left to break.

I don't know how long I sat there.
But it was long enough for the blood on my arm to dry, long enough for the light coming through the window to shift from afternoon to early evening and my tears had finally stopped pouring.
Hunter nudged me again through the bond for the umpteenth time and I maintained my position.

Yes I don't mind him watching me break down but I needed this moment alone.
To shatter completely and pick up the pieces and shift from the woman people hurt and trampled upon to becoming the woman that killed Zyrell.

And yes, murder is now comfortably in my vocabulary. Strange what people can push you to become.

A knock suddenly came on the door.

It was soft so I knew it wasn't Hunter.
The scent was different too.

"Luna?" A woman's voice, timid. "Beta Orion sent me to check on your wounds."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, smearing blood and tears together, stood up and opened the door.

She was small, maybe in her fifties, with grey streaking through dark hair and hands that shook as she held a tray of medical supplies. When she saw my face, her eyes filled.

"Oh child," she whispered, coming into my personal space.
I pulled back.

"I'm fine. What's your name?"

"Katie. I was your mother's handmaid."
The words hit me so hard I had to grab the doorframe.

"You knew my mother?"

"Knew her? I braided her hair the morning our Alpha died. Then loosened it so the dust in them could be washed off. Only to wake up the next day and you both were gone." Her voice cracked but she steadied it.

“Oh.”

"Come, let me clean those wounds before they get infected. Your mother would haunt me if I let her daughter bleed to death in her own house.”

I let her in and then she sat me on the edge of the bed and worked on my arm with gentle, practiced hands. The cut was deep but she cleaned it thoroughly, pouring a white liquid that had me biting my lips in pain. The. She stitched it with a calmness that told me she'd done this many times before.

"Micheal didn't believe in Pack doctors," she said quietly as she worked. "Said it was a waste of resources. So those of us who remembered the old ways just did what we could."

"How long has it been like this?"

"Since the beginning. Your father built this Pack into something beautiful. Schools for the children, training for every wolf regardless of rank, a clinic that served everyone. Micheal stripped it all within the first year. Sold what he could, destroyed what he couldn't sell, and told us it was for the good of the Pack." She tied off the stitch and looked at me. "We knew it wasn't. But what could we do? He killed anyone who questioned him. Beta Orion lost his mate because she spoke up at a Pack meeting."

My stomach turned.

"His mate?"

"Her name was Anna. She stood up in front of everyone and told Senior that the children were going hungry while his family ate like kings. He had her dragged out." Katie's hands stopped moving. "We found her body in the eastern woods the next morning.”

I couldn't speak.

"Orion wanted to challenge him. We all begged him not to because he would have died and then we'd have lost the only person quietly keeping us alive. So he swallowed it. Every day for years, he swallowed it and kept his head down and made sure the children were fed, even if it meant stealing from Michael's stores."

She finished with my arm and started cleaning the wound on my leg.

When she was done, she brought me clothes. Simple, worn, but clean.

I dressed and looked at myself in the mirror that Micheal probably used to admire himself every morning.

My wounds were almost healed now, and decisions were forming already in my he
ad

"He's a good man," I said, finally. “I might leave the Pack in his care while I sort out this fake goddess problem.”

“He's the best choice, Alpha,” she said, bowing her head.

Red puffed her chest and for the first time, I didn't cower from the respect.
I fought for it, in the mud, naked and angry, my father's last moments desecrated in the lips of that ill minded fool.

So yes, I'm Alpha Cassandra now, as well as the Luna of the biggest Pack in the world.

It was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and actually fight for my people and their freedom.