Sugar

Thirty Five

Dominic rubbed my back when I passed the papers back to the PI, who's face had grown serious. There was a lot more red marks than she anticipated and even more yellow marks than we could have prepared for. Which meant there was a lot to look into and edit.

"I'm sorry," I said sheepishly when she whistled lowly, flipping through the pages.

Mary shook her head at me. "No, Cara, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that the system failed you."

~ ~ ~

Once the badass women left for the night and Dominic and I were alone, I burst into tears. Dominic didn't seem surprised at all when I lost it, instead pulling me into his arms and quickly returning us to the bedroom.

"You told me the story and I heard it from your alpha once. But I never imagined how the horror continued after their deaths," he murmured in my ear once we were curled up in bed, me with my face tucked into his neck and him cradling me in his lap.

It felt like the only thing keeping my whole being from falling apart was the way his arms had secured around my body. I too had forgotten about the trauma that was the justice system, who you are raised to think are the good guys, turning their backs on me. I remember the sheriff trying to put me into a foster home in a nearby city, muttering to his deputy that they needed to remove me from the equation. They knew that it was likely I would get lost in the system and the case would go cold. Luckily, that is where the alpha from my old pack came in. Or his wife, at least.

Flashback

I was so pleased to have convinced my parents to take me to the park, believing that I was some sort of genius, like i outsmarted them. Obviously, being as young as I was, I forgot that your parents are usually smarter than you.

This park was my favorite because you got to walk through the forest a little bit to get to it and it was made out of wood! My mom told me that they built it to try and bring nature closer to children and teach them that we should be living with the natural resources, not destroying them. I didn't understand what she meant at the time, but it sounded nice.

I liked to pretend there were fairies hiding in the nearby trees and would run through them, looking for holes in the tree trunks. That's where the fairies lived, of course.

On this particular day, I was on a fairy hunt and had gone several yards in when I heard a spooky noise. A dark growl and a yelp, from the trees on the other side of the playground. My first instinct was to run to my mom, but when I sprinting around the play area, I discovered both of my parents gone. There was another cry, but this one sounded manly. Kinda like dad's voice.

"Mom? Dad?" I called, standing on the edge of the forest nearest to the noises I was hearing. Why did they leave me? They never let me out of their sight, especially when it starts to get dark and there aren't any other adults or kids at the playground. "Mama! Daddy!"

My brain was conflicted. The sounds in the trees sounded kinda like them, so maybe they were playing hide and seek, but Dad always said that if we got separated and there wasn't anyone around, I needed to stay put. Maybe they were testing me?

So I went to the biggest slide and sat down inside it, swinging my legs impatiently. The woods got very quiet as I sat there and the noises stopped. There weren't any birds or even any wind blowing through the area. It was a bit unsettling. The sun was below the trees now, but it was kinda cloudy so it wasn't casting a pretty glow like it normally did. Instead the air had a cool tone to it and the temperature began to drop.

Mom and Dad wouldn't leave you. Parents don't leave their kids. They always come back and get me, even when they're running late. Like at school. They never leave me there. They wouldn't leave me alone here.

Right?

◯

Hours passed and the only thing I remember while waiting is being cold and confused, but I kept telling myself that they wouldn't leave me. When you love someone, you stay with them. That's what Mom always said. And Mom and Dad loved me and I loved them. So we had to stay together.

Maybe they were waiting for me by the car!

I leapt out of my seat and ran to the trailhead that would take me to where our car was parked. The trip only took me a few minutes, but the parking lot was almost unrecognizable.

As the trail hit gravel, there were dark pools sinking into the tiny rocks. In the darkness of the night, I couldn't tell what it was, but I remember the foreign smell making my nose crinkle. I put my hand over my mouth and did my best to step over the wetness, but when my feet did touch it, I could tell it was wet and thick.

In my young mind, I had no idea I was walking into a bloodbath. Nor did I know that I was walking into the attempted clean up of my parent's murder. The killer's had dragged their dead bodies through the trees and had to cross through the parking lot in order to dump them into the nearby river, which was rushing like crazy at that time of year.

Unfortunately or fortunately, I walked up right as the three men paused to discuss their crime. They stood in a semi circle around two dark-colored lumps, which I later realized were the massacred bodies of my mom and dad, completely unrecognizable with the amount of blood they were covered in and the damage that had been done to their flesh.

My foot came down on a twig and all three men turned to look at me. I could really only see their upright shapes and I knew they were tall, so to suddenly see their eyes glowing a deep red in the darkness triggered an immediate flight response.

I was sprinting through the woods blindly, my breathing seemingly deafening. Above my own footfalls, I could hear the footsteps of the men coming after me.

"Hey, little girl, come here! We only want to talk!" one of them shouted, but his voice was anything but kind.

I was under no impression that I could run from them, but I thought hiding was an option. Maybe if I climbed up the slide and got myself stuck in the middle, they would leave me alone. They were way too big to fit in there. As I looked around in hopes of finding the playground, which had a single lamp to illuminate it, I lost my footing and was thrown down a steep hill, rolling and sliding all the way to the bottom.

At the bottom, I was immobile for a few moments, crying out in pain as sticks jabbed at my body. I didn't even have time to calm myself down before a hand latched around my ankle and another two hands caught my arms and pulled them behind me.

"What did you see?" a man hissed in my face, spit sprinkling me. "You stupid little brat, what did you see?"

Somehow the moon shone perfectly down at that moment, lighting up his face just enough for me to take in the details. Some part of me knew that I had to commit them to memory and it wasn't hard when the next thing he did was backhand me.

I screamed in terror and pain as he then grabbed my face tightly. "What are we going to do with you, brat?"

"We leave her," the one holding my arms said wickedly. "She's a baby. If she survives the night, no one is going to believe her. She will live the rest of her life knowing that just like the rest of her species, she means nothing and no one cares about her or her life. Isn't that right, kid? You are nothing and it is because of us that you are allowed to live." He shook me, as if I wasn't already paying attention. "Your parents left you and you get to live the rest of your life knowing that you could have saved them or gotten revenge, had you not been born a mundane."

"And if you try to squeal, we will come back and you'll beg us to do what we did to your mommy and daddy," the third one snarled, yanking my hair so hard that some came out and I was forced to look at him. The cast of the moon caught his face too and when I glanced over, I could see the second speaker's face too.

They all let me go rather roughly, shoving me into the ground before standing. "Perhaps we've done something for the greater good, boys. Taught this inevitably stupid girl that everyone will eventually leave her, even the ones she loves. You got that, brat? Your kind are worthless, slimy beings. You should worship us for letting you exist. Your parents left you like they cowards they were. Not even the love of a paternal relationship could save them or you from this fate."