Page 2 of Outcast
I groaned in realization that I’d have to walk back to my cottage with this smeared on me. As if I needed to give everyone more of a reason to make fun of me.
My waist-long, wavy white hair was securely fastened into a bun on the back of my head, safe from the blood at least. It was pretty much the only thing I valued about myself because it was uniquely mine. Most of the wolves here possessed darker features.
Well, besides Jameson, who somehow had identical coloring to me even though it didn’t run in his family. But I liked to ignore the dick-wad as much as possible, physically and mentally. So, I’d continue to forget that we had anything in common. Life was easier that way.
Quickly gathering the rest of my cleaning supplies, I hurried to get out of the Pit and back to my cottage. As I climbed the stairs and emerged onto the grassy plain of our land, I reflected back on how different it had been when I first arrived here.
The alpha had found me covered in a thin layer of snow while on a hunt in their territory. He said that he’d originally intended to just keep me with them long enough to make sure I recovered, but his mate, Maya, pleaded with him to not send me away. She’d claimed that I was abandoned and in need of them—that I was meant to find them.
She nursed me back to health single-handedly in my first year here. Being so young, I had taken to the wolves with ease, finding the animals soothing. I slowly adapted and found a love for the pack life thanks to her kindness and affection.
My heart panged at just the thought of her. Her death, only a year after I arrived, had changed the pack.
Jameson and I had gone out with her in the hundreds of acres of forest in our territory. She would often let us ride on her back in wolf form, showing us all her favorite spots, and we would have picnics in each one. Just the three of us. We had been inseparable. A family.
On that day, we had been the closest to the edge of our territory we’d ever ventured, but she’d insisted that she had a surprise for me. I had been begging her to see the small waterfall on our land when it was cold enough to freeze over ever since she’d originally told me about it.
That was the day the Daimona appeared. The demons.
They were similar in size and shape to a full-grown wolf, but they were completely black and furless. Their skin looked like melted pieces of flesh scarred together, with black spikes protruding from their backs, and eyes of fire.
The glowing orbs still haunted the corners of my mind when I slept.
Five of them had appeared, and Maya had fought like a warrior. She’d told us to run before shifting and howling for the pack. Too scared to run, Jameson and I had hidden inside a hollow log nearby, peering through the cracks in its side.
We’d held each other while sobs racked our small bodies as they massacred her before our very eyes. The auburn of her fur had quickly matted with mud and dirt as they tore into her. I’d tried to shield him from the sight, holding him tightly.
Jameson never uttered a kind word to me after that. His soft and gentle heart died with her that day.
A cold shell remained of the boy he used to be. With every day that passed, he became more and more the mirror image of his father. Someone willing to burn the world down in the name of revenge, not caring who they stepped on to achieve it.
I wish I could tell him that revenge wouldn’t heal him. It wouldn’t bring his mother back, no matter how much we all wished it would. I’d forfeit my life in a heartbeat for her to come back. She had symbolized the heart of this pack, pumping it full of laughter and joy.
Looking down at my dirty bucket of water, I felt a shiver run through me at the thought of cleaning the blood of one of the Daimona just a few minutes ago. I dumped the bucket out onto the grass beside the pebbled path, not wanting to see any remnants of the Daimona any longer after thinking of Maya.
The alpha had begun hunting these creatures when Maya died, vowing to wipe every single one of them from this world. We’d built the Pit, fitting each cell with the means to hold and interrogate them in order to discover their origins.
Over time we’d slowly discovered that there were some Daimona that possessed a higher level of thought—while most just made guttural noises, a select few could speak telepathically. However, all we’d manage to find out is that they answered to a ruler they called Master. Not very helpful in the slightest.
We didn’t know where they came from or why they were hunting shifters, despite the torture tactics.
And I had turned into the solo clean-up crew for the aftermath of these sessions.
The alpha tried to go after them as they carried her body off as two betas brought us back to the safety of our home, but he was unsuccessful in getting her body back. Upon his return, he made sure that the pack knew that it was my fault she had been out there that day, placing the blame of her death on a child's shoulders.
The pack shunned me and forced me into doing all the menial tasks the pack needed done. They’d treated me as their human maid, the elders only watching over me with the bare minimum of energy and resources until they deemed me old enough to fend for myself within the pack.
It had been that way for the past sixteen years.
Glancing around, I furrowed my brows as I noted how peculiar it was to pass no one on my way home.
Wait. Today is the day. How could I forget?
It was the coming of age ceremony. They were probably all gathered together, discussing the shift that would come as the full moon reached its apex for all the wolves born—coincidentally enough—in the same year I was. For everyone turning twenty-one this year.
The rite of passage.
This was a huge milestone that everyone in the pack looked forward to their entire lives: the moment their wolf emerged from their soul and bonded with them as one. Their first shift.
