Born of Blood

Chapter 6

Scarlet had been told the cells were for wolves that were dangerous, wolves who had gone mad with life and death entwined in one. They were for wolves that came to their territory to murder and pillage, to rape their women and piss on their soil. Ones that wanted to take over their land and ruin their people. Confusion colored the corners of her brain as she had taken another peek at the old man, he stared at the wall ahead of him, quiet and calm.

Instead it housed a slave and an old Rogue.

He never said anything to her, he just silently stared. After hours of her observing him, his head slowly turned to observe her. His eyes on her naked arms, her skinny legs, tracing over her scars and bruises with a calculated gaze. His eyes soon met her face, she could see them out of the corner of her eyes trailing through her hair, resting over the sunken flesh of her cheeks and neck. Her scars, her bruises.

She was marked as a 'hated'.

He could see it on her flesh, smell it in her skin, just like Apollo said!

They came for her then, the tall, muscular, guards of the cells all those years ago. They dragged her down the steep, sharp, concrete steps to the next level. Her flesh tore as they dragged her over the rough ground and she knew to bite back her cries. She went silently, her teeth tearing into the flesh of her lips until blood touched the tip of her tongue. She had hidden in a crawl space from Asher, the soon-to-be Gamma taking his fathers place. He told her to meet him in his room, and Asher had never given Scarlet a good feeling in her stomach. She felt if she went, she might receive a punishment she never had before.

One that made her tighten her legs together.

He told Apollo, made up some story of him asking her to turn down his room and her refusing outright. He told Apollo she had cussed, she had thrown something and pitched a fit like a child in a tantrum. They threw her down here for punishment- disobeying the hierarchy. Disobeying a direct order, they didn't question how out of character that sounded for the mute woman that had served them for so long.

She hadn't been back to the room since then, she hadn't felt it's pebbly floor or smelt the scent of blood that forever stained the air no matter how many times it had been cleaned. And she never saw that old man again, she hoped his silent nature had allowed for him to have been removed without injury, but she knew Malkún. She knew he was most likely dead, tortured for stumbling across their territory, most likely his only crime despite the tales they had told her of Rogues traveling their land.

Scarlet wished she could die.

The thought traveled so quickly through her mind, she didn't have time to regret it. Death terrified Scarlet- though, so did living. She would never be able to leave for another pack, she would be killed before she could reach the tree line; yet, she would never find happiness in her life at Malkún. Was it better to live, and be tortured, or to die, and be free?

Is there an afterlife?

Werewolves were so devoted to their Goddess, their maker, but did she exist? Was she there to welcome you with open arms and endless wilderness, when your heart no longer beat, and your eyes no longer saw? Was there peace when your lungs stopped working? Or was it a burning pain as your brain slowly suffocated, as your cells slowly lit themselves on fire and died in the inferno? Was that what the mundanes called hell, the pain of true death?