Snagged by the Rogue [COMPLETED]

4.

Anaya.

My father was right, we blended in. Not so much because we looked like everyone else, because we didn’t, but because everyone else was too engrossed in the celebrations.

The Hounds party hard apparently.

I wondered what they were celebrating, my father had said it was the first one in years. It was weird being among so many people. I was born a rogue so I’d never experienced pack life and we’d always done our raids at night when the packs were asleep. This was new to me.

Maybe that’s why I suddenly had butterflies in my stomach that got wilder and wilder as we neared the Alpha’s house. 

Maybe that’s why my heart was fluttering like a bird in a cage. 

“There’s a storage unit at the back of the house,” my father had said, “Head there”.

We had split up for obvious reasons and were to meet up at the storage unit. I made my way there now, keeping my head down. 

“Hi!” somebody grabbed my arm, “C’mon let’s dance!”

It was a girl who looked around my age. She had midnight black hair and thick lips she had painted red. 

I tried to apologise and pull myself out of her grasp but she was having none of it. She pulled me into the middle of the crowd where there was a makeshift dance floor and other people were dancing and began jumping and wiggling her body. 

Even though I’d never been to a party before, I’d always loved music and found myself mirroring her movements and moving to the beats. 

That’s when I smelt it. 

I snapped out of whatever haze I was in and apologised to the girl, hurrying to the storage unit. 

“Where the hell have you been, Anaya?” my father yelled as loudly as he could seeing as we were trying to not get caught. 

I mumbled an apology, “Have we gotten everything?”

They were still stuffing things into sacks.

We had to leave. We had to leave as soon as possible.

My heart was racing. 

It couldn’t be. I had to be wrong. 

But the smell.

I would figure it out later, when I was safe in my house. 

They finished packing everything and we headed out. 

We went around the crowd, this time I closed my ears to the music. 

We were getting further away from the Alpha’s house. Had we actually done it? Had we actually raided the Darkhide Hounds and lived?

Just as we crossed the territory of the Alpha’s house, a loud growl shook the earth. 

Everybody took off running but I don’t know what made me look back.

I locked eyes with a man at a window of the second floor of the house. Even in the dark, I could tell he was extremely handsome. And extremely furious.

I started running too. My heart could very well be a bomb about to detonate at this point.

The man growled again, this time louder.

Up ahead, out of nowhere, a wolf attacked my father, knocking him to the ground. 

I froze for a moment before screaming. Luther and Bolik looked back and noticed what was happening. They shifted and came running back, snarling.

The wolf on my father, realising he was outnumbered scampered away but my father was already injured. 

His blue shirt was now almost purple with blood at his midriff.

“Father,” I knelt beside him, applying pressure to his wound. 

Luther pulled me up, “We have to keep moving. They’re coming after us.”

He and Bolik carried my father to the truck while I trailed behind them. They put him in the back seat and immediately started the car. 

We were racing away, my putting pressure on my quickly-paling father’s wound, when I realised with a start, “We left Tim!”

Luther looked back from the front seat and counted us as if I had made a mistake. He met my eyes, his eyes sorrowful, communicating what he couldn’t bring himself to say.

We couldn’t go back.

He must be mad, “We have to! That’s my brother! We can’t just abandon him!”

Even as I was saying it, I knew he was right. We couldn’t go back. Darkhide Hounds had been close on our tracks when we left their territory. Going back would be a death sentence.

More tears slid down my face. 

My father coughed, blood spilling out of his mouth. 

“Papa, please. Hang on,” I pleaded.

***********************

It was hours before we reached the cottage. My father was long unconscious, his breathing shallow. I knew what was coming but I refused to accept it. 

I rushed into the house, leaving Bolik and Luther to bring my father in. I rushed to the little medicine cabinet we had over the sink in the bathroom, grabbing everything in it. 

I had absolutely no idea what to do but I wasn’t just going to let my father die.

They laid him out on his bed. It was the first time I’d been in his room in a while but there was no time for sentiments. 

I cut open his shirt and gasped when I saw what was under. The two huge puncture wounds where the wolf had bitten him were now blue and swollen. It was hard to see the blue, though, because his entire stomach area was red with blood. Dark red where some of the blood had begun to dry up and cake and lighter red areas where the blood still oozing out of the wound was spilling over.

Sonya had brought a basin with some water in it and a dry towel. I wet the towel and started cleaning up the blood as quickly as possible. When I had gotten as much off as possible and the water in the basin was now as red as the blood, I got iodine from the stuff I had gotten from the medicine cabinet and poured it over the wound.

That was when I noticed my father wasn’t breathing. 

“Papa,” I shook him, “Papa. Please, please, don’t do this!”
Luther stepped forward and picked up my father’s wrist, checking his pulse. He looked at Bolik and ever so slightly, shook his head. 

“No!” I screamed.

I don’t know who pulled me out of the room but I was soon on my bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. 

I cried all night.

I cried for my father, whom I had lost.

I cried for my brother, whom I had abandoned.

I cried for the man in the window, my mate, whom I would reject.