Dark Rapture

Prologue: Disrupted

Unedited. 

Prologue: Disrupted

I stood at the table before everyone around me and smiled happily. This was my birthday. I was finally sixteen. It meant that I was finally able to go run freely with the others. My dad hadn’t wanted me running with them because I was too young and could possibly get hurt. All my other years before had been spent training. Learning how to move as fast as a bullet, how to fight and move as quickly and as stealthy as a thief in the night. Along with that was the learning the use of weaponry, just in case the need ever arose.

We were rogues, but we were rogues prepared for anything and everything. Pack members were already pretty cautious of us. If we even came within five feet of their land, then tended to get riled up and were ready to pull out the big guns. They assumed that the lot of us were vicious and only after them. It wasn’t like that at all.

A lot of pack people were of the assumption that all rogues were evil and tainted. Maybe some of us were a bit deranged in the mind, but not the majority of us. We were normal. Perhaps, we were a bit mischievous at times, but not killers. We were people who had been either rejected by pack members, mistreated by them, or we just happened to not be of the valued standards of most packs.

In other words we were the misfits and outcasts. Some of us were people who had left the pack because of the demands that came with being in the pack. My father and mother had left their pack because their Alpha had expected to be worshipped. He had been thirteen years younger than them and they’d believed in the older traditions.

My brother was still an active member of the pack. He was older than me and he had refused to leave the pack to come with us. When we had left, I was only eight. Sometimes, I went near the edges of the border on the sneak and watched him patrol in the early morning.

Some might look at being a rogue as a curse. It was a gift that many of them would never experience. We were free spirits. Maybe we didn’t have the money to support ourselves and live in luxury like the packs, but we were happier than they’d ever be.

We all lived in our separate homes, but we often met up and trained together. In some ways we were like a pack, but we actually weren’t. There wasn’t an Alpha, Beta, or anything like that. If we wanted something we voted for it. We were a diplomatic version of the humans. Even though we didn’t really have a president.

We just all looked towards my dad for answers. The reasons why we were here he could sometimes answer. Not to mention that he gave great advice and was there for me and everyone else. I lived like an only child because the day my brother turned his back on our family, he ceased to exist to my dad and my mom.

We were probably different than other rogues. I wasn’t sure how they lived but I had heard plenty stories about rogues living alone and traveling while divided. Not us. We were like a village of sorts. Unity and clarity were a part of us. Sure, we had our differences and some of us couldn’t stand each other, but we worked together. We tolerated in a way that packs never would. They fought and argued over simple squabbles and were often at war with each other. Rogues rarely ever went to war.

I cleared my head as I heard the voices around me joined in unison as they sang to me. They circled all around the table in our house and around the room. In front of me was a large store bought cake with icing on it and my name across it. Sixteen candles were on the cake and the middle one was the longest one.

“Happy Birthday to you,” my mom and the other guests sang in off key tones.

I smiled joyously and clapped my hands together in rhythm to their words. My best friend Ronnie had one arm wrapped around my shoulders, while my other best friend Milo had his arm around my waist. The three of us swayed from side to side as the song was sang.