behavior. No, he was the exception.
Taking one last glance at the inside of the cabin, his scent still lingering inside the building, I step outside where my family is waiting for me.
Hunter is gathering the rogue's possessions into a pile on the forest ground. Adam is holding a gasoline tube, ready to pour the combustible liquid over the stuff and set the fire as soon as Hunter finishes his job.
Jazmine is watching from the side next to David while Cole and Micah are engaged in a conversation nearby. What are they talking about? Their words are too quiet for me to hear, only their lips moving that I know they are talking about something.
Making my way around the cabin, there's another sight hidden behind the wooden skeleton of the edifice. A hole dug into the earth, it's housing the final resting place of someone who became a victim of his own stupidity.
It's more than average idiocy that brought him down there. It's me who did. Glancing down at the disrupted peace of the earth, the grave doesn't look like one. It's just a bleeding wound into the ground that nurtures us, that same ground this wolf has walked on and the same one which will now swallow what's left of him.
Looking at the horror below, it's so hard to accept that I am the one who made such a mess out of a kill that should have been clean and simple. But then again, no kill is clean or simple ever.
"No life taken goes unpunished."
Turning around, I see Jazmin standing a few feet from me, her eyes on the man who's now laying into the ground. Can she see the disfigured face as clearly as I can?
"You crossed the line, Scarlet. Pretending to be something else, something more, holding on these principles of yours, how are you going to lie to yourself now?" Soft words that hurt, not because there is accusation in them, but because they are truth.
So beautiful, she looks like an angel come to take vengeance on me now. For breaking a promise I've given to myself. The worst kind of punishment too.
Facing the reality of what I've turned into.
"I expected more from you. I hoped you'd be stronger than all of you. I hoped you'd prove that there is another way we could live." Her voice sounds like it comes from the depths of her despair, words that are choking their way out of her. Her skin is paler than usual in the fall of dusk, no longer colored by the healthy glow she carries with herself, but almost ethereal.
Casting my eyes down, I can't look at her emerald ones. Why is she disappointed in me now? Why is she saying this to me now?
"You should leave before he corrupts everything in you. You should run from here, Scarlet. Run and never come back," she whispers. "He's playing with you the way he played with all of us. It's too late for us but you still have a chance. You should go."
Raising my gaze to her, I find myself asking, "Who's playing with me, Jaz? Why are you saying this to me?"
Shaking her head, there is so much sadness in her voice when she says, "I'm sorry, Scarlet. I just can't."
(17) A Man's Gotta Do What He's Gotta Do
|Regan's POV|
It's been 191 days, 13 hours and 42 minutes since she left. Nearly six and a half months of emptiness. The void inside me is like nothing I've ever felt. I just keep going through the motions, keep thinking of her last words.
Free... she's been free all this time while I've been chained to that misery that wouldn't go away, gnawing at me until I'm almost gone too. I'm still the alpha of this pack, still the ferocious leader by name, however, I'm none of these things in reality.
I'm nothing and no one. I'm lost without her.
The night she fled I thought there couldn't be a worse thing than that but then, a week later, she broke her bond to the pack, to me. I felt it, we all did, even the little ones who did nothing wrong to her. She hurt them too and then just left. Ruins for us to collect and place back together.
I no longer have the strength to do that. I'm tired of picking up the pieces of my
Taking one last glance at the inside of the cabin, his scent still lingering inside the building, I step outside where my family is waiting for me.
Hunter is gathering the rogue's possessions into a pile on the forest ground. Adam is holding a gasoline tube, ready to pour the combustible liquid over the stuff and set the fire as soon as Hunter finishes his job.
Jazmine is watching from the side next to David while Cole and Micah are engaged in a conversation nearby. What are they talking about? Their words are too quiet for me to hear, only their lips moving that I know they are talking about something.
Making my way around the cabin, there's another sight hidden behind the wooden skeleton of the edifice. A hole dug into the earth, it's housing the final resting place of someone who became a victim of his own stupidity.
It's more than average idiocy that brought him down there. It's me who did. Glancing down at the disrupted peace of the earth, the grave doesn't look like one. It's just a bleeding wound into the ground that nurtures us, that same ground this wolf has walked on and the same one which will now swallow what's left of him.
Looking at the horror below, it's so hard to accept that I am the one who made such a mess out of a kill that should have been clean and simple. But then again, no kill is clean or simple ever.
"No life taken goes unpunished."
Turning around, I see Jazmin standing a few feet from me, her eyes on the man who's now laying into the ground. Can she see the disfigured face as clearly as I can?
"You crossed the line, Scarlet. Pretending to be something else, something more, holding on these principles of yours, how are you going to lie to yourself now?" Soft words that hurt, not because there is accusation in them, but because they are truth.
So beautiful, she looks like an angel come to take vengeance on me now. For breaking a promise I've given to myself. The worst kind of punishment too.
Facing the reality of what I've turned into.
"I expected more from you. I hoped you'd be stronger than all of you. I hoped you'd prove that there is another way we could live." Her voice sounds like it comes from the depths of her despair, words that are choking their way out of her. Her skin is paler than usual in the fall of dusk, no longer colored by the healthy glow she carries with herself, but almost ethereal.
Casting my eyes down, I can't look at her emerald ones. Why is she disappointed in me now? Why is she saying this to me now?
"You should leave before he corrupts everything in you. You should run from here, Scarlet. Run and never come back," she whispers. "He's playing with you the way he played with all of us. It's too late for us but you still have a chance. You should go."
Raising my gaze to her, I find myself asking, "Who's playing with me, Jaz? Why are you saying this to me?"
Shaking her head, there is so much sadness in her voice when she says, "I'm sorry, Scarlet. I just can't."
(17) A Man's Gotta Do What He's Gotta Do
|Regan's POV|
It's been 191 days, 13 hours and 42 minutes since she left. Nearly six and a half months of emptiness. The void inside me is like nothing I've ever felt. I just keep going through the motions, keep thinking of her last words.
Free... she's been free all this time while I've been chained to that misery that wouldn't go away, gnawing at me until I'm almost gone too. I'm still the alpha of this pack, still the ferocious leader by name, however, I'm none of these things in reality.
I'm nothing and no one. I'm lost without her.
The night she fled I thought there couldn't be a worse thing than that but then, a week later, she broke her bond to the pack, to me. I felt it, we all did, even the little ones who did nothing wrong to her. She hurt them too and then just left. Ruins for us to collect and place back together.
I no longer have the strength to do that. I'm tired of picking up the pieces of my
Similar Books
