Red Ribbons (Forgotten Series #1)

Chapter Ten

I ran through the forest, a dark figure ahead of me. A red ribbon dangled from his hand and I reached out, trying to catch him when he opened his mouth. "Mary Mary was caught unwary." The cold words echoed around me and he disappeared. I whirled around, my heart pounding so hard in my chest I thought it was trying to escape.

"No! Give her back!" I spun around before catching sight of the figure once more. I darted towards him but no matter how fast I ran he was always the same distance from me. It never grew, it never shrank.

"But where did her body go?" His voice was cold and mocking and I felt anger rise up in me. He had done this. He knew. I felt a cold breeze blow and he blew away with the wind as if he were smoke. I stopped running, my chest hurt from the icy air I was taking in as I whirled around, trying to find him, trying to catch him. "With the icy snow and the harsh winds that blow." The snow crunched under my feet and I breathed heavily. I needed to find him. I needed to find her. He was suddenly in front of me and held out the red ribbon.

"Now no one will ever know." He gave me a cold, sickening smile and I leapt at him, ready to tear him to shreds when he disappeared. The ribbon falling slowly to the white snow. I stopped, falling to my knees as I picked it up. I could smell the blood and the dirt on the damaged ribbon. The wind turned to his icy voice.

"Mary Mary was caught unwary. But where did her body go? With the icy snow and harsh winds that blow. Now no one will ever know." The words repeated again and again, echoing in the forest around me and I looked up at the moon. The bright light of it was just as cold as the words and I crumpled the ribbon in my hand. "You can search and you can look, boy, but you will never find what you seek." His icy breath brushed across my ear.

"You will never find her."

My eyes opened and I let exhaled heavily. It was just a dream. The same one I had been having for the past two years. I leaned my head against the cold wall and shook the bottle of whiskey I held in my hand. Only a bit of amber liquid sloshed in the bottom. There were no more bottles. I knew this because I had a hand in drinking them. I rolled my head against the wall to where my Alpha lay on the makeshift bed frame that once held a beautiful little shifter. He had drunk what I hadn't.

It was frigid in the room and my breath came out in a fog in front of my face. I lifted the bottle to my mouth and drank what was left in it. The harsh liquid burned but I welcomed the feeling. I barely felt anything anymore. The last day I felt anything was seven hundred and seventy-six days ago when I watched a nearly skeletal female walk across a field of snow in nothing but a nightgown and a red ribbon tied around her wrist to let the world know she had been banished. It was the day I lost faith in my pack and my Alpha, the day that I learned that my pack was hiding dark secrets underneath its innocent facade.

I wanted to escape it so badly but I knew if I went rogue the Hunters would be given a bounty to kill me. A pack warrior who abandoned their pack was a traitor who deserved death. I hadn't been strong enough to fight against the people holding me down and I knew I would not be able to survive against the Hunters that would chase my bounty. So I threw myself into training, I spent all my energy training so I could be strong enough to survive as a rogue.

The energy I didn't spend on training went to looking for the sweet banished female called Mary Mary. Her scent led me nowhere. It was as if she had disappeared into thin air. I had wanted to help her, to help her survive but she was gone long before the first time I had searched for her. I played with the neck of the bottle. I had searched many times for her during the first two weeks. I searched for her while on patrol. I searched for her when I was supposed to be sleeping. Two weeks into my search I had run into a wild. His dark figure was burned into my brain as he said the words that haunted me in my sleep. His sharp and cold grey eyes held no kindness only cruelty and hate.