Female ✔️

8: he will be there

The water is so intense it burns, drawing me into its grasp as it swallows up my screams, hands pushing me under from above, holding me below the surface. The water steals everything from me.

I thrash at first, and then I can't, because the freeze has claimed my muscles and rendered them useless.

So I lay in the water as the blackness seeps into my mouth and throat. I can see their blurred faces above and the bright moon becoming hidden by clouds. She can't bare to watch. I went to cry out for my real mother, she can't save me. Her hands are tied in this one, she can only serve fate, not present.

My eyes slip shut, this cold is compacting me together, stopping all life and function as winter usually does. A wolf doesn't hibernate, but I might. Forever.

My veins are slowing their currents, the blood chilling and the bones aching. My lungs burning up from the lack of air. A wolf, drowning.

My mind slips out of the tub and it's like I'm looking down on all. Watching them hold me under, watching Blu stand by, horror on his face. I look to the forest at the edge of the clearing and it's beckoning me closer. Yet, so is the moon, so large somewhere up above me. Does she recognize this?

I don't know when they pull me up, but my heartbeat is barely there. I can hear everything they say, but it means nothing.

He's screaming. "-and you promised you wouldn't kill her! You promised! Look at her! Her lips are blue, her fingers, her toes! She isn't good enough for skin! She's a wolf! Just let her go! I'll reject her!"

"You think she would survive any better in the woods on her own? This pack hates her, but I can assure you, Luna hates her more. Why else do you think I would have ideas like this? They're a gift of her many Muses. Think, pup! Why else??" Alpha yelling back at his only son. "She wants the forest! More than anyone else here! Why would I reward her with something so high on her lists? She is dangerous to this pack's hierarchy! She's just a female and she's sick!"

"She's going to die anyways."

"True, someday. It's in the books. But you will reject her anyways, I never want to see you with this female. She will not be the designated bitch of this pack. Not of my pack, and not ever. Now go."

The blackness has slipped over me, a numbness so heavy, I wonder if I might not feel anything ever again.

---

Head shooting up, I inhale deeply, trying to draw air into my frozen lungs. Sobbing as I clutch my chest. My nightmares have returned again. Memories and thoughts and fears all bundled into one sleepless night. Darkness hasn't favored me in so long.

I hold my head in my arms and shake, everything I have held within threatening to spill. My last few months in my old pack had been the worst yet. I feared something equally punishing might rear it's head in my path of choices to make.

I think of how Blu delivered me to the ice tub.

I think of how I can't remember a word he said after. I'm terrified. I'm hurt. I'm torn. And I can't let anyone see.

"You talk about the cold in your sleep."

My head whips up and I glare at Jack. How did he get in here?