Chapter 5

• Arabella
• Training exercise? What the hell is he talking about? The black wolf slowly closes his mouth and relaxes slightly but we are still angry.
• “Maya, back down.”
• Maya snaps her eyes to dad who looks stern as if we need to fall in place, Maya unwillingly closes her snarling mouth and looks back at the black wolf for a moment then huffs away. We walk past dad, and he reaches a hand out to us but Maya moves her head away and starts running back home.
• “Maya…are you okay?”
• “He broke our fucking leg…over a training exercise!”
• “Calm down Maya, we’re alright.”
• “Shut up Aurora! What if dad hadn’t shown up? He was fighting with the intent to kill.”
• I take a breath and even though I am just as mad, hearing the two of them fight isn’t going to help, “Maya, trust me I’m angry too but yelling at Aurora isn’t going to change what happened tonight.”
• I hear her scoff at me, but she doesn’t say anything, “Aurora, what made you wake up?”
• “The pain the two of you were in, I felt it and it forced me to wake up.”
• As we get to the house I feel Aurora give Maya complete control and then she shifts back as I stumble on the grass as my bones slip back into place. I grab the blanket on the front porch swing and wrap it around myself and walk inside my house and slam the door.
• “Ari, are you okay?”
• Mom doesn’t sound that concerned so dad must have told her about what was going to happen tonight, I don’t stop and keep walking up the stairs to my room, “Ask dad!”
• I don’t bother waiting for her reply as I go to my room and grab a pair of clothes then head to the bathroom so I can wash off the dried blood on my body. I get the shower turned on as hot as I can bare and get in as I try to get the image of the black wolf out of my head, but it just won’t leave so I decide to talk to Aurora instead.
• “Aurora, what do you think of the dream we had a few nights back?”
• She doesn’t speak for a few minutes, and I can feel her thinking, “I’m not sure this time, that light felt familiar somehow, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.”
• I sigh, “Same, but I am getting tired of hearing my sister scream.”
• “I know, maybe one day we’ll understand why you keep having to hear it.”
• I feel her relax while Maya is still brooding in anger, and I think that the reason I still hear my sister’s scream is because it is a curse from the moon goddess for me being the monster that I am. I don’t bother taking a decent shower because I just want to crawl into bed so after the water runs clear I turn it off and towel dry my hair then get dressed and go back to my room. I crawl into bed, and I feel sleep hitting me like a brick wall and subconsciousness takes over before I have a chance to think about anything else.
• As I wake up I groan from the stiff and achy feeling as I force my body up and slowly walk to the bathroom and turn the water onto the hottest setting I can bear. I step in the shower and let the heat relax my sore muscles, I think back to what my dad called that wolf last night, Alpha Peirce, so we were fighting an Alpha from a different pack. That explains his speed but not why he’s gigantic, I know Alpha’s are bigger by gene anyway but that doesn’t explain why he absolutely towered over us.
• I shake my head to try and get the thought of him out of my head and think that I need to make myself scarce because I bet that him and his pack will be staying, and I definitely don’t want to see him because I know I won’t bite my tongue. I get out of the shower and dry myself and my hair off and since Aurora is awake again I need to wear the contacts that help hide the color they make my eyes change to, it’s just easier to avoid the glances, even though everyone knows I still don’t like being stared at.
• I go back to my room and get dressed and grab an apple from the table and I see a note with my name on it, so I grab it and open it.
• Ari, come to the packhouse after you wake up. – Dad
• Fat chance I’m going there, I’ll take an ass chewing from dad before I even think about stepping a foot in there. I toss the note back on the table and walk out of the house and take the back way to the lake because I need some space to think. It takes me almost an extra fifteen minutes to get there but once I do I take a deep breath as I sit down on the grass. Flashbacks of last night fill my head, the pain in my leg was excruciating, the force of his bite was something I have never felt before, my thoughts are interrupted with my dad forcing the mind link.
• “Ari, where are you?”
• I sigh slightly bracing myself for the ass chewing, “I’m out.”
• “I know you saw the note, come up to the packhouse.”
• His voice is gentle, but I can hear the sternness in it as well, “No, I know why you want me to come there and I won’t, we are still pissed about what happened last night.”
• I try to close the link, but my dad pushes harder to keep it open, “Let it go Ari, it was a training exercise, and you did good, now get up to the packhouse.”
• I feel my upper lip curl up slightly, “No, I need time to cool off.”
• I push harder to close the link and once I feel the disconnect I let out a large sigh of frustration, I know that by shutting my dad out I’ll face repercussions for it, but I really don’t care. I hope that Alpha Zeke doesn’t try to get me to come up there, because he would have no problem using his Alpha aura on me and I can’t say no to him when he does that, even if I wanted to. I wonder if the preparations that mom mentioned was the practice raid, because that would take a lot of planning for another pack that you trust to come here to test the strength of the pack.