Green - a werewolf story

37. Haunted

"How long were you drugged for?"

"Three years. They stopped giving it to me a week before I turned fifteen and was set to marry the alfa's son."

"Jesus."

"The thing is that it's a new drug, and no one had been on it as long as I was, so they didn't really know what they were doing and what doses they should give me. I don't remember much of those years. I have dreams now sometimes of strange worlds that remind me of where I spent those years. It wasn't so bad a place to be lost in. It beat being in the encampment, that's for sure."

"How did you escape?"

Vanessa smiled. "Like I said, they didn't know how it would work. They reduced the dose gradually before the wedding, but I went through a terrible withdrawal anyway. The only thing I remember clearly from that time is a silver knife I kept seeing in my dreams

The wedding is a bit of a blur. I remember there being lots of food. Then Shane escorted me to the tiny building that was going to be our house."

She still remembered the feeling of his hand on her arm. Hard enough to bruise as he dragged her inside the house and into the bedroom. He'd told her to get undressed. When she said no he'd used his alfa voice on her and she'd been mildly surprised to discover that it didn't work. Mildly surprised, because she'd been too groggy to feel anything more intense.

"I had grabbed one of the knives from the table at her wedding dinner and I drove it through his heart," Vanessa said.

That action had been almost automatic, she reflected. It was almost as if she hadn't been in control of her own body, like someone else had reached through her and made her walk up to Shane and drive the knife into his heart.

No, she thought. She'd killed him. It was the drugs that made it seem like it was happening to someone else, the drugs that made her strong enough to drive the blade through his chest despite him trying to hold on to her arms.

"They used silver knives?"

"What? Oh, yes," Vanessa, startled from her memories. "Only the newlyweds and the guests of honor. They thought I was too gone in the head to be a threat."

"But you weren't?"

Vanessa shook her head. "Like I said, they didn't know what they were doing with that drug." 

That was the only reasonable explanation to why she'd had the strength to overpower a larger and more powerful wolf, why she to this day remained unaffected by alfa commands.

"And then you ran?"

"Not quite."

Vanessa had only fragments of memories from that night. She remembered standing over Shane's body, seeing the blood on her hands and pulling the knife out. Her next memory was standing over the snoring high priest.

"I went to the high priest's house and killed him too."

"Didn't he have bodyguards?"

Vanessa shook her head. "He always said the Goddess would protect him and send him a vision of any danger approaching."

"Arrogant."

"Try deranged," Vanessa said. "But he was able to predict a whole lot of things when I was growing up. He didn't expect me, though."

He'd opened his eyes right before she'd brought the knife down. She'd never forget his look of complete surprise. Whenever fear of her old pack catching up with her had haunted her over the years that was the image she focused on. He'd thought he knew everything and he'd never seen her coming.