SERENITY
the day Himari escaped
My bare feet were tapping against the stone cold flooring as I kept taking glances over my shoulder to make sure the soulless corridor was as empty as before. I had only just managed to keep the guards distracted long enough for me to come down here unnoticed.
This ridiculous two piece clothing that I was forced to wear kept risking a slip every time I moved too fast or too carelessly. The loose clothing that was supposed to act as some kind of bra, only without the straps, barely just covered my breasts. It was almost the same with the bottom. It covered my most private area with a satin fabric that hung in my front and over my bum. It would have been fine, if it wasn't for the major slits on each sides of my hips, which ultimately revealed more skin that I would hope to cover each time I walked.
I felt utterly ridiculous, as if I was a sex object.
My breathing was rigid as I looked through each cell that I passed in search of that raven colored hair that almost melted into it's surroundings. I had to hold onto my long "skirt" that reached down to my toes to make sure I didn't stumble down onto the floor by losing my balance on the garment. The keys that I had stolen from one of the guards rattling against my thigh as I ran.
"Himari!" I hissed out as I made sure to keep my voice on a low level that would not endanger me
As I finally stopped for a moment, I caught a fleeting movement from the very corner of my eye that snapped my head to its direction. My breath hitched as I realized the movement was a dainty hand that kept trying to wave at me.
I could almost smile of relief once I saw that she was alive and, what looked to be, well. I scurried over to her door cell and grabbed a hold of her hand that still hung out from the bars that kept her captured. My knees met the stone floor as I held her hand in a tight grip.
"Oh..." a weak groan left her mouth— "No food this time?"
I looked back in the direction that I had come from, but no one was there.
"Himari-" I now took another hold onto her forearm to make sure she understood the severity of the situation— "It's time"
She furrowed her eyebrows at me in response— "What? Time for what?"
"You can't stay here any longer. If you do, you will die"
As my words began to sink in, she slowly started to shake her head. Once she came closer to the bars, I could see her frail face in the very dim lighting.
"If I go, then you come with me" she stated firmly
And while I appreciated her care for me, I knew it would be impossible for me to come with her.
"I can't... Himari you know I can't" I urged her
But she once again just shook her head at me, determination settling into her nearly black eyes.
"We will find a way! If you expect me to leave this place without you then you're just plainly delusional" she rambled on
I almost chuckled at her distress, but knew that once she had settled on something, she wouldn't willingly back down from her decision, so I did the only reasonable thing I could think of.
"Fine, we'll go together" I lied
I picked up the keys I had brought with me, and stood from the floor. As I was about to insert the keys into the rusty looking lock, a loud bang was heard from upstairs as it was followed by loud, booming voices.
"Shit" Himari muttered under her breath as she knew just as well as I did what the noises meant
With a rush of adrenaline, I pushed the door open once I had unlocked it, and helped Himari out from her tired cell.
With her arm draped over my shoulders, and my own arm around her waist, I helped her rush towards the other end of the corridor, the opposite of where I had come from.
"You once talked about another way out of here-" I rushed out as I kept taking quick glances over my shoulder, "Do you know the actual way?"
"Yes... I was brought in through the same entrance when I was taken"
I only nodded in affirmation as we soon neared the end of the corridor where we would have to walk down a couple of stairs to get down to the very last floor.
"Serenity, there might be... warriors guarding the exit"
Oh, I hadn't thought about that
"They won't become a problem" I grumbled out as the weight on my shoulders were becoming a little too much for me as we walked down the stairs step by step
Himari was bigger than me in a good scale, all because of her werewolf genes, which didn't pair well with my own.
"How? I can't defend us in this state" she almost whimpered once my hand pressed a little to hard on her ribs
That's when realization dawned on me. I hadn't told or ever mentioned to Himari that I was a siren. In her mind, she probably assumed that I was a human because of my fairly normal appearance and smell in comparison to other species who had various unique aspects about them that would eventually reveal their true selves.
"Just trust me"
As she lead the way towards the exit, my hope was growing inside my chest by each step we took. It had been a few minutes since I had heard any voices or anything in general, which was exactly what lead me to believe this was all becoming a little too good to be true.
With Himari almost limping because of her wound on her ribs, that she had told me she got the other day when the guards had kicked her down for asking for more food, I finally caught sight of the archway that Himari had been talking about when we had reached the end of the stairs and I was able to take a peek behind the wall.
For a fleeting moment, I was relieved to see no guards nearby, but quickly lost every sense of it when the door was opened by a large and bulky man who looked to be not only rough, but also experienced in the fighting field by the scars that littered his face.
I silently cursed under my breath as I quickly hid Himari behind the wall.
"Stay right here. Don't come out until I come back for you"
She looked confused by my demand, but soon nodded her head in understanding.
"And you have to cover your ears"
She looked completely bewildered by my second demand— "What?"
"Just do as I say! Don't ever take your hands off your ears. Until I come back... keep. your. ears. covered. Understood?"
Once again she only nodded, no matter how clueless she looked. I gestured for her to do as I said, and once she had her hands over her ears, I further guided her hands in the position I could only hope would save her from my next move.
Stepping out from the wall, the man quickly caught me standing in the corridor he was walking through, and growled at me in warning. He knew who I was, every person on his territory did. It was his way of keeping me off limits to everyone else.
"You're not supposed to be down here, little one" his rough voice called out as he came closer
But I wasn't afraid, no matter his size or power, so I too took a few steps closer.
"The Alpha is looking for you" he smirked at me
With goosebumps spreading over my arms and spine, I took a deep breath to try and prepare myself for a thing I hadn't done in years. With a low, melodic hum leaving my throat, I tried to summon every bit of strength in my voice.
"Audite me"
As I watched his hard face slowly morph into a more relaxed one, I continued to sing my enchantment. With his pupils dilating with every word that flowed off my lips and my spellbound hums coming from the very back of my throat, I could tell my voice was slowly creeping into his mind and engrossing his brain with the spell hidden in my voice.
"Audite vocem meam" I sang
With my soothing hums seeping through the now serene atmosphere, his eyelids became heavy and soon closed on their own. Without having to realize it, my hands had long before cupped his bearded cheeks and touched his skin in feather-like caresses.
Once my song was over, and I had him right where I needed him, I took a step back and stared at the man that had once been smug enough to challenge me, yet now stood before me at my complete mercy.
I tried my hardest not to let the hunger for more overtake me and control my emotions. I made a promise to myself to never allow my taste for human flesh decide for me ever again after Kaden had expressed his distaste for my nature, and I wasn't about to go back on that promise now.
The very reason I had stopped using my voice for such reasons, or any reasons at all, was because of the hunger that came afterwards. I had yet to find a way to control it like more experienced sirens had, but instead of finding one, I decided to avoid the issue and instead vow to only use it when it was a matter of life or death, barely even then.
It was a cruel thing to control a person's mind and manipulate it in such ways that the person in question was stripped of their own clarity.
It was a violation of their rights as living beings, and every breathing thing deserved the right to decide for their own, and not of what others thought to be right.
I told myself that I only did this for my own and Himari's good, to give him no other choice but to allow us to walk past him unharmed and unnoticed, and it helped me to forgive myself to some extents.
"You will let us go" I strictly told him
Once he only stared back at me, void of any emotions, I continued.
"And you won't tell anyone what you saw down here, you won't remember any of it"
When he did nothing but stare at me, his mind completely blank from anything but my demands, I was certain he was under my control.
"You can go now" I dismissed him
As I watched him walk past me, not even glancing in Himari's direction once he passed the wall she was hiding behind, I sprinted towards her.
If she was confused before, she was certainly baffled after she had seen the man walk past her without a scratch or even as much as a single hair out of its place. She had lowered her hands once she had seen the man walk by, which I would have scolded her for if I wasn't in such a hurry to get her out of here.
"What happened? How did you get him to just walk away?" she asked me as I grabbed her arm and tried my best to pull her up
"I can't explain, not now" I began to almost run with her arm crooked in mine as I basically dragged her with me
I pushed open the doors with all of my might and felt the refreshing wind blow onto my face. I had barely noticed the orange leaves decorating the once green trees and the withering grass below us. In other words; I had barely noticed that autumn had arrived before I even had the chance to bid summer goodbye.
With a sudden burst of emotions, I felt my heart ache by this new knowledge. A broken whimper left my throat as I kept pushing forwards towards the woods. It wasn't even the fact that summer was already gone that had me so upset, but rather the fact that the season was paired with every memory I had of Kaden.
Each memory I had spent with Kaden, was in the summertime, and to see it decay so quickly made the empty feeling in my heart feel even more hollow.
Once we had gotten deeper into the woods, I couldn't keep running with her leaning over me. I stopped abruptly in my tracks, and couldn't help but let her fall down onto the ground with me. She hissed in pain as she more or less landed on her right side, which was where her ribs had been injured.
"I'm sorry... I just can't run any longer"
My breaths came out heavy and uneven as I leaned down onto my knees. Right at that moment, as we were both trying to regain our strengths the best we could, the voices came back.
I looked back in the direction we came from, and came down to the conclusion that they had figured it out. He he figured it out. He was shouting out orders and screaming at everyone to find us, but I couldn't see them.
I looked back at Himari, but she hadn't noticed it. She was too busy trying to catch her breath and keeping herself conscious as she laid on the ground, gripping her right side.
My time was running out.
"Himari-" I crawled closer to her, and shook her a little to gain her full attention— "You have to go on without me"
She whipped her head to me, and once again shook her head, but this time I spoke before she could protest against it.
"If I go with you, you won't ever be safe. He won't stop" I whispered to her
She knew I was right, I could see it in her eyes, which was why she expressed such anger towards me once she realized it.
"Do you remember my soulmate?" I asked her
And since my question came out of nowhere, she didn't expect it in the slightest.
"Kaden..." she answered, and I could almost smile after hearing his name
"You need to find him-" I firmly explained to her— "He's the Alpha of the Constellation pack. You need to find him, and explain everything to him"
"I can't leave you Serenity!" she cried out
But I merely shook my head— "You don't have a choice. If you want to help me, promise me you'll find him"
Once the voices grew louder, it could only mean that they were coming closer. They were coming for us, and they were coming fast.
"You have to go now!" I pushed myself up and then proceeded to do the same for her
Once she stood before me, slightly bending over because of her pain, she took one last look at my panicked self, and then another look behind me. Whatever she saw behind me, was enough for her to give me one last pitiful look, before she began to run the best she could by her own.
As the back of her limping self became smaller and smaller into the dark of the night, I felt this overwhelming loneliness looming over me as a shadow that I just couldn't shake off. All my life I had been independent, never caring for no one other than myself, but these last couple of months had been the hardest of my entire life.
And it was just about to become a lot harder.
A/N
hope everyone is well!
(except for the those 6 justices who voted against abortion in the Supreme Court yesterday)
:)