CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE - MARICELA

CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE - MARICELA
I start slow, deciding that Luca is the easiest to paint. I’m not a fantastic painter but I’m not bad either. I take my time, sketching out his features, drawing and redrawing until I know they’re perfect. 

Then I do Jace. Then my mother, then my father, leaving my sister to last. 

I’m sobbing when I begin working on Lia’s portrait. It feels too painful to attempt and yet I want to see her face, I want to bring her back to life the only way I can. I feel like the fake Lia has tarnished her memory, has spoiled every moment I had of my real sister.

By the time I’m done, days have past. Khloe comes and sits with me. Ryker pops in here and there. Neither of them speak. Maybe they can tell that this feels too precious, too intimate. 

I’m scared to paint them, to finish the canvases for fear that’ll mess it up but again, I take my time, after all, that’s what I have now. Time. So much time. 

Once they are finished, I stay where I am, half shocked, half broken, staring up at the family I loved, the family I lost.

I don’t leave the room. I sleep right there on the floor as if they’re real, as if they’ll come to life and they’ll start talking, laughing, that they’ll take me away and we can be a family again and all of this awful pain will be over. 

But it doesn’t happen. No matter how many times I beg for it. How many times I cry and plead with the Moon Goddess. No one replies. No one moves.

It’s always just me. Alone.



There’s paint on the door. A smearing of it. It’s bright yellow. Stark against the solid oak wood. 

My stomach clenches, I can smell it, smell that someone’s been in here. In my space. I only stepped out for a minute. Two max. Afterall, I can hardly pee in this room, can I? But apparently someone was waiting for it. Someone was ready to destroy what tiny bit of peace I could find.

I walk in the room, already somehow knowing what I’ll see. Every paint pot is smashed, their contents splattered. And every canvas, every face, is ruined.

Slashed. Right through the middle.

I let out a wail.

It feels like it’s happened again. That my family’s been taken from me again.

I sink to my knees, my tears already coming so hard and I sob. I sob till I’m heaving. Till I’m nothing but a broken mess.

I know who’s done it. It’s obvious, isn’t it?

And yet I’d rather she attacked me physically. Rather she dragged her claws down my entire body than have touched these paintings.

I hear a step. Then another.

I don’t look up, but I can already smell who it is. I can feel it too, through the bond. And a part of me hates it. That he’s here, that he’s invading this space, as if it hasn’t already been ruined. 

“What…?” He begins but he falls silent as he sees my face. 

“My family.” I whisper. I don’t even know why, it shouldn’t matter who they are, but the fact that she destroyed my one bit of peace should be enough.

He frowns, looking at the destroyed canvases. And then he steps past me, walks up to one and lifts up the torn piece as if to make it whole.

My father’s face stares back at me. His hard eyes, his strong features that I inherited instead of the delicateness of my mother’s. I wonder if that’s sometimes why he spared me. Why he didn’t have me put down the minute he realised I was a Mutt, that, because I resembled him in looks, that was the reason he couldn’t spill my blood.

Adriel tilts his head. And then he steps up to the one beside it. 

My mother.

He studies her face for a moment. And one by one he looks at each one till he reaches the painting that haunts me the most.

“Lia.” 

I whisper her name. I haven’t said it out loud in so long, yet everyone here speaks it like it’s meaningless.

He stares more at my sister’s soft features, at her heart shaped face, at how her hair flows like silk, but mostly he stares at her eyes. At her vivid, startingly blue eyes.

When he looks back at me, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Does he think I made these faces up? That this is all part of some fictional curse? 

He clenches his jaw. “I’ll speak to her. She won’t come here again.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I murmur.

“It clearly does.” He growls.

“If she didn’t do it, then someone else did for her.”

“Who?”

I shrug. “Take your pick. Most of your Pack hate me.”

He narrows his eyes. “This is your Pack too. And why would they hate you?”

I let out a bitter laugh at that. “Why would they not? You made her your Luna, remember? My very presence here is an insult to her. You said it yourself when you first found me.”

“It doesn’t matter what they think.” He states.

“Says the man who doesn’t have to endure their wrath each day.” I spit.

“What are you talking about?”

“You think they just turn a blind eye?” I snarl. “Gods, you really are blind.”

I expect him to react with anger, the way he normally does but instead he pauses. “Tell me.”

“This is your Pack, Adriel. Shouldn’t you be aware of its goings on?” I retort.

He looks taken aback at that. As if he expected me to just start telling tales, listing off names, playing the ‘poor is me’ card. 

“I’ll sort it. From now you’ll be treated with the respect you deserve.”

I can’t help the roll of my eyes because he’s the one who’s been the most disrespectful out of everyone. He’s the one fucking someone other than his mate and then lying about it.

“I’m trying, Maricela.” He growls.

I let out a deep breath, trying to control my anger. “Trying? You’re trying?” I spit back. so far I’ve seen no evidence of that whatsoever. “What do you want from me, Adriel? What is all of this? One minute you want me and the next…”

“I do want you.” He says, suddenly gripping my shoulders. “I want you so much it’s driving me mad.”

Those words should be music to my ears and yet it doesn’t feel like it. He’s not saying it in a way that sounds loving. He’s saying it in a way that sounds furious, like he hates me, he hates these feelings, he hates everything about me.

And then his lips crash into mine. His hands are tangling in my hair. I’m moaning against him as our tongues wrap around one another before he pulls away.

“Fuck,” He growls and I can see it. That doubt, right there, right across his face clear as day.

He steps back, turns and storms out of the space leaving me there, in the ruins of my sanctuary surrounded by the faces of my family that I know are all dead because of me.