My body went storming into the Damon as our car ran over something. "Uff, sorry," I murmur lowly, avoiding all eye contact possible with him as I scurried back to my side against the window. We were headed down the road in the direction I had escape from.
My breathing condition had worsens, dropping to a more heavier type of panting right after Damon left his growl free. "I-I..n-never...I-I..d-didnt-"
Damon had squeezed my arms harder, making me choke back my half uttered words. "Who did you mean by him?" He inquired in his Alpha authoritative tone. He hadnt seemed fazed by my confusion. The ring around his pupil had pulsed golden, unlocking the gates of my soul.
By that moment, June was replaced by myself and I told him everything. From the hotel lobby, me clearly instructing him to take me somewhere I could've cleared my mind, vanishing of guards, Taylor, the crash from the attack launched by me, running; everything.
I didn't dare bring up the talk convo between Taylor and I, knowing drama it could unfold. Whether I mentioned or not, I saw something shift in Damon's expression when I told him of what Taylor had said about the forest attack. As if a ding of realization struck him off guard. By the end, I was heaving heavily, hearing Damon yell for a solid ten minutes at the guards who where surrounding us.
The car slowed down before stopping entirely in the middle of no where. Seeing the oddly twisted branches, they reminded me of hands, hands ready to pull you into the midst of the trees never to be seen again. I release the thought with a shrug, hugging my arms while walking towards the front with the newly crew of guards positioned behind me. "My Alpha. There seems to be a dent in this tree's bark like it was struck by a large object, perhaps the car the Luna rode in."
Damon took a good look at the tree, his brows furrowed as if he were in reviewing the scene, playing out what had happened. He blinked, turning to the ground and nodding shortly after. "There's also shards of glass everywhere." he pointed in various areas with his bulging hands, "Indicating the blow to the tree as a car's."
He took his time surveying the tree again when he began advancing closer in its direction. Curiosity getting the best of me, I also take a step or two towards it, being sure to keep a good distance away from the glass shards and the tree itself. Damon kneels, standing up with a dirty duffel bag in one hand and a now stained version of my recently ordered book Warcross in the other. My clammy folded hands went to the book first. "Oh mon Dieu! Je viens d'acheter ce livre. Fils de pute!"
The guards gawked awkwardly, watching me swear my hearts contents out. Damon's guard slipped and I saw his lips twitch a bit upwards but pretending to unhear any of it, he turned to head back to the car. I soon join him and was about to hop in when I heard him swear, this time in Italian from the other side. Despite not knowing much Italian myself, it vaguely sounded familiar to my curse. "Figlio di puttana."
Tossing my book and bag onto my seat, I go around the back and met his stare at the flattened tire with the fragments of glass deeply buried inside. Damon released an exaggerated sigh of frustration before slapping his door shut and punching the side of the car with his fist. Luckily it left no visible dent, yet. A guard from each of the SUV, one from in front and the rear, arrived jogging. "My Alpha. All 4 tires are entirely flattened," One reports with the other nodding in agreement. "My Alpha it's the same for ours. They're all flattened beyond the point of driving from the glass."
Now Damon utters a curse Ive heard plenty of times around Kaden. "What about the spares?"
They share a frown. "There werent any given my Alpha."
"Cazzo," Damon curses, running a hand through his tousled hair. When catching the sight of me silently observing, he began a whole rant in Italian to them. Catching onto his hint, I was about to turn and leave to my seat when my ears perked when hearing something in the distance. Giggling of some sort. Who in their right mind would be giggling in the middle of nowhere?
I flip back once to see Damon's back and face buried in a deep conservation with the two guards, still in sharp Italian and still not meant for my ears. I advance forward, being sure to slip past the noses of the guards from the back car having cigarettes and idling. Walking with the softest part of my feet I slip into the heart of the forest, not bothering to turn back once when following the sound of laughter growing louder and louder to my ears with each step I took in it's direction.
Thank the gods for giving me the sense to wear converses instead of flats or sandals, or else I would've died from the sight of all the spiders I saw in the bushes. I walked and walked, munching on some harmless berries I found growing a bush containing dozens while trying to hop from rock and rock. My feet hadn't landed from the fallen bark I had done crossing when I felt a hand twirl me around. I went fumbingly face first into a hard chest, all my remaining berries squashed on the ground. "Should, I even ask what made you think you could slip away?"
I meet his unwavering pits of blackness with mine, cold amusement written over his face. "Depends," My hand was draped over his shoulder, with his hand on my waist holding me in place firmly. It didn't seem right. Him in his expensive dark trousers, matching vest and freshly white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his veins streaking down his forearms, and then me in my everyday worn out sweater. Why must it always be me the one underdressed? "Do you think Ill tell you honestly since you, yourself don't have a reputation of speaking the truth?"
Damon flinched. He seemed taken back by the reply but it didn't lower his guard, or mouth from a biting retort. "You were inches away from being kidnapped and yet you have such an ungrateful sense of judgement, it surprises me how werent you kidnapped before."
"Sorry to ruin your parade. I wont be kidnapped anytime soon and also, if I ever do, Ill be sure to fight on my own and come back only after kicking their asses straight to the gates of hell." I push off him, nearly scrapping some skin of my ankle on a bush of thorns behind.
I was about to being my journey straight when a hand clashed over my wrist. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Away from you obviously," I grumble aloud enough for him to wear without wolf hearing. Taking slower strides forward, I meet a thickly bristled hedge. Not just any wild hedge, for this one I observed had been trimmed and oddly well taken care off to be any wild hedge. Damon had also noticed my observation, appearing at my side with his keen eyes studying every possible corner.
I tried pushing aside the loose stands, burying my hands deeper and deeper I order to create a looser and looser opening just enough for a body, or my own body to slip by. Shoving my shoulder in first, the rest of my body seemed to be sucked in by some mysterious force. Landing on my hands and knees atop earthen floor, the strike of plummeting body on my back -enough for impact to crack if I were a human, made me dive face first in to the grass. "Ouch! You-"
Damon's hair was rustled over his face covered with the fresh morning dew. I slap his arm in a very lousy effort, making his scowl ridden face land on mine. He was about to give a retort when another voice crossed his words. "Ahem."
Above us stood a beautiful young lady, in an elegant grey ceremonial type of robe with cascading black locks that appeared brown in the sunlight. She couldn't have much older than I supposed but again, the wrinkles in her face told me otherwise. "Alpha, Luna. How may I help you?"
"How-" "Rogue," Damon spat, already risen to his feet and accusing eyes sharp on the lady but the lady kept her focus on me while assisting me up with a hand unlike my charming Mate. "You're a rogue?"
She didn't hesitate. "You're not wrong Alpha. I was one and I won't deny being one either but I assure you, I am no more. I haven't been for awhile. I left that life style long ago when I saw the consequences of my choices in action. My past is behind me. Now I run an Orphanage here, caring over the neglected, rejected and/or abused."
"Abused?" I explain bewildered, drawing her attention to me.
She chewed her lower lip sadly. "I'm afraid yes Luna. We have human children from families of drug and alcohol history, werewolf pups from lower ranks mothers who were molested by the higher ranks, vampire offsprings used as food sources or objects to take their rage out on since they have the ability to heal faster than any creature alive. All with a broken childhood. They've seen true horrors unlike any other."
"No wonder it smells like a blood bank," Damon wrinkled his nose, turning away. I was speechless from shock.
"I-I apologize on behalf of him, please ignore him. This ass is just to big for mouth to handle as you can see for yourself-" "How dare you-" "-We'd be delighted to meet them and join them for the day, if you permitted. Won't we?" I glare at Damon to keep mum.
"Of course Luna! There's no need to ask," She said, not glancing once at Damon luckily, "I'm Sister Cath."
I shook her outstretched hand. "I'm Nora...and he's Damon."
"Alpha Damon, Luna Nora," she recited to memory. "Oh, you two are just in time. The children should be coming out from lunch."
Sister Cath lead us through the grassy area -which was actually a soccer field towards the compact metal structure -the dorms and dining hall. She explained how she been doing this for a good 1/3 of her life after cleaning up her act from the partying and alcohol. Briefly mentioning everything, she spoke with remorse when explaining how there wasn't really a facility for education and children of all ages were compelled to be in one class. "I really wish I could hire some professionals," Sister Cath sighed.
She even informed of us how her stepbrother in Europe was funding this place with some other generous sponsors, but since the fixed amount was always significant enough just for the food, paper, supplies, clothes and water/electricity, she couldn't afford anything else.
The place was worn down to it lowest and most dire conditions. Buckets were lined over the floor to collect the water droplets leaking at every possible corner, rust was eating away at the sides and visible pipes, painting peeling off the walls. It sunk my heart to see this.
Sister Cath was managing, or more struggling on how she worded it and how I previewed it, to teach and mother all 115 orphans, -calling them by their names as we pasted a few in the halls. Mostly the human ones. "Please excuse me Alpha-Luna," she excused herself when a shy vampire boy no older than 4 approached us sprinting. Following the timid boy, he led her down another series of hallway towards the dorms.
"What to want to achieve?"
"Huh?"
"What do you want to achieve by doing all this?" Damon questioned gravely, crossing his arms, "By acting all generous? By coming here and asking to meet them, spent time with them? Don't get me wrong, you definitely seem and look," gesturing to the outfit, "like the person who would spend her weekends mothering orphans, acting all friendly and caring, and someone who wouldn't think twice before donating her entire wealth to a place like this but my question here is. What do you get from doing all this charity work?"
What did I get from doing this? It takes awhile for the reply to form, piecing together the right words. "Maybe," I clear my throat and looking down below the floor to see the children playing in the playground beneath, all smiling while chattering away and full of innocence.
"Maybe, I just want to help and perhaps teach some of them. Help them in seeing a world of good and betterment beyond this rusty old structure, inspire some young mind to do some good in this world of darkness and corruption we'd created for ourself. A world we've created in which where money, wealth is weighted more than a precious life. A world where creativity and individuality is compromised in order to guarantee one's success. Help preserve that young innocence and humanity within that we all had once at kids but lost somewhere on the path growing up. Teach them faith still remains in humanity -especially after seeing all the cruelty of people in today's modernized world with their own eyes. To show it's not over, that so much is good is left to be done. That's it's not over. Not yet it isn't."
Silence fell upon us as we watched the children scurry from one end to other while playing tag with one another. No division of race, age, or gender. Sister Cath had taught them well. They were a family composed of different notes to form one harmonized melody. All their own notes, but together a script for harmony and balancing one another.
Slipping my hand over the railing, I run my heel around and down the stairway, walking slowly towards an ancient looking arching tree planted just besides the sandbox and playground.
What a family. An Asian girl with pigtails who was too short and struggling to reach the seat of the swings was being assisted by an older boy with dark olive skin. By the slide was an older girl with a torn eyepatch covering her right eye assisting the children up, many thanking her on their way up. There were many more children with missing limbs and facial defects, but it didn't seem to affect them in anyway. Only if this world had more adults as mature as these kids.
I was so engrossed in my thoughts I couldn't tell reality apart my mind, well not until a tug came from below. A girl dressed in a floral long sleeve dress, warm tan like skin with either natural or not auburn streaking her blacks roots. "Can you help me open my paint bottle pretty please?" She was missing one of her front tooth, making her voice very squeaky.
"Of course," I reply taking the bottle, kneeling before taking a seat down on both knees. "What's your name?"
"Stacy," she whispered, her auburn hair blowing from her bronze eyes.
A snort from behind. "Sounds like a stripper's name."
Glaring at Damon with the can-you-ever-shut-up face, Stacy asks, "What's a-" "DO YOU LIKE TO PAINT?" I exclaim, probably louder than I should've have, already rising to my feet and trying to usher her away far, far away from Damon before it was to late. "Because I know I do, I even remember this time when-"
"What's a STRIPPER?" She half asked and half yelled abruptly. An elderly man, a gardener by the looks of it, turned his head in our direction, dismay and disgust equally written over his wrinkled face in bold.
Giving an apologetic grimace, I push Stacy away towards the playground. Damon laughs viciously, slapping his hands together in triumphant. Whether if every muscle in my body strained, I still couldnt manage to stick my middle finger at him. Too many kids to traumatize.
"Whats your name?" Stacy asked, hugging the jar of paint to her chest.
"You can call me Nora. No formalities needed if we are going to be friends, right?"
"Okay Nora. Thank you!" She gave a generous squeeze to my legs before running off to join a crowd of girls skipping rope by the slide, her hair swaying freely behind her. Watching her I saw how she ran about the grounds, hands dipped in the paint coating not only the grass but her clothes as well while trying to paint something atop the wet paper.
"Has scarring one child not been enough to satisfy your taste?" I ask without risking a glancing at Damon silently stalking up behind me.
"What gives you the impression it would've mio amore." Damon asked, meeting my annoyed glance with hands in his pant's pocket.
"Stop calling me that," I spat clutching the folds of my skirt.
"What's wrong with it?" He threaded coolly as of it were hardly anything of concern. "I figured by now you would've grown accustom-"
"Excuse me mister! Excuse me mister!" A thin boy waved below, halting Damon. His hair was a ruffle of black with his eyes shining a heavy obsidian. He wore a deep blue flannel with simple jeans -both a size too big for his age. "Can you help me get my kite from the tree?"
We turned to the heavily slouching branches of the old tree to see the edge of silver tin reflecting back from one of the very top.
"Of course!" I move closer to the front, examining each branch to see it were sturdy enough to hold a 130 pound of a 16 year old werewolf. "What in the world are you thinking?"
I pretend to unhear his rhetorical question, taking a leap from the ground onto a low dipping branch. It was no far than a meter from the ground but thick enough to start off on. Taking my hand and enfolding it around another branch, I keep my head higher as I advance closer and closer towards the kite. A mild breeze blow past my skirts hem, sending a chilling sensation against my bare thighs. Bad day for tree climbing.
No more than an arms distance away, I grabbed onto a weak twig for the sole intention of regaining my balance alone when it snaps before falling below. Hearing a sharp gasp, I also catch, "Nora! Look down where you're standing!"
Didn't need too. The sound of my weight crashing on top the arms of the tree was enough to guess what came next. I lung forward, my fingers tangling in the string of ribbons before the final snap and I go crashing down.
My blow earns me a trip face forward with Damon as my cushion; landing on earthen ground with his head thumping back and him grumbling in pain. My head lands on his with my hair creating a curtain for us. My hand was shoved against his chest preventing him from moving beneath me. "Sorry." My voice quivers more that I wish that too. He groans once more in response with an addition of another unknown curse in Italian.
"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" The boy went to the kite, snuggling it to his chest eyes gleaming with delight. "Welcome," I moan groggily before rolling over onto my back, laying side to side with Damon on the freckly grass.
He like Stacy, disappeared into his group of friends at the playground unseen and unheard off. I wince at the soreness from the impact as my back presses against the cold dew. Shutting my eyes to the blissfully silence, Damon asks. "You dont use your mind often now do you? Who told you go climbing a tree while wearing a skirt?"
"Wasn't like you were going something without me asking. Might as well done it on my own if I were too -which I did." I reopen my eyelids but remained laying. Damon was seated upright, his elbows rested on his knees and dangling inwards.
"What if something were to have happen to you up here?" He asked hesitatingly but as a possibility nevertheless.
I think about it for a moment looking the cloudless sky open above. Not about what he asked of me but rather, the thought behind of asking. Damon wouldn't have cared for me even it were the last resort, he's proved that back in the forest with those attackers the day of the picnic.
But. What if-? Could it be possible he does care but doesn't know how to show it? Or either, he does and chooses not to for some Damon-typical-reason. Id believe the latter. He definitively cares enough he doesn't want me dead or harmed or why else would he save my ass back in that alley way from being raped? Its not like he prefers saving damsels in distress or even the thought of helping. "Anything can happen at anytime but it shouldn't limit us to the possibility of tomorrow. So what if something were to happen to me up here? You wouldn't have left me."
He was about to open his mouth to reply when he shut it whole. Resting my forearm over my forehead to cover the sting of the sunlight roasting my face, my eyelids flutter close once more. Focusing more on my every breathe my lungs drew, I try dozing off but sleep never comes. So I focus more on the way my lungs drew in the icy oxygen and came out as a misty cloud through my nose. I must have so adsorbed in basking the icy sunlight, I couldn't tell when Damon had left until the silence grew oddly uncomfortable and I rose to find him missing.
Gone for a cigarette most likely, June suggested with high levels of loathe.
Or...I suck my breathe from the sight. It couldn't have been. My eyes must have become to disoriented from the sun's ray for me to be showing me what Im seeing. Sounds about right. But how-?... or he could be spending time with the orphans?
There Damon was. Forgotten of his Alpha duties, the callous and vile ways of his heartless Alpha charades behind him with him now exposing his truthful self. Seeing him as he was right now lead my heart to thrum and my jaw was left hanging enough for a wasps nest to fly in. He had a child in both his arms -a girl with pigtails, and a boy with an amputated left leg, with the rest of the younger ones' greasy palms gnawing at the finest fabric of his trousers.
He smiled. No smug grin, flirtatious smirk, an actual genuine smile. As in that cute, quirky boyish smile Ive seen in my dreams. And no, I'll have you know I don't dream of Damon. Often.
Never have I thought he'd be capable of such a thing in real life. The glint in his eyes reflecting more than they told and his laugh. Oh my god. Being so rich, leathery, husky and soulful all at once, it struck me hard and slipped a laugh from my awe-struck lips.
I never thought how life could be as an orphan. To live without assurance, without ones support or defense or to even simply love. All my existence, I had my brothers and their Mates; their hand ready to back me along with their Pack but Damon. He had his own back to him up; a Pack where he himself lead. No one else. He felt these kid's loneliness call out to his, he's been in their feet, he knows how sympathize, he knows it all. I had the blessing of having siblings but he didn't. I was his family now. I like it or not. In the end it was going to be him and I.
'You could change him. ...People have been saying he's changing.' Leila told once me when we first met. Maybe now he was and I was the one doing so. Just like meant to be.
.....
Hey!
I know I'm late and Christmas is long over, but yet I wanted to say MERRY CHRISTMAS! 🎄🎁
I still haven't been in the best condition to write but I spend two of my days trying to write and edit up this chapter just in time for News Year. Still have another 4ish hours to 2018 for me!
Funny actually, how in my book News Year is over and it's already a new start for Nora and Damon but I'm wishing it right now to you all. Wherever you might you all be, HAPPY NEW YEARS!
Been a year now of this book published now and I couldn't have wished for anymore than at least 50K Reads which was achieved long ago. This is the year this book shall be completed.
2018 here we come..!
Ps. Just finished 'Genius: The Game', and the entire trilogy to 'A Thousand Pieces Of You'. ❤️I have fallen deeply and madly in love with it and highly recommend it to any romance/fantasy reader.
All Fangirls/Fanboys of 'The Mortal Instruments' and/or 'A Court of Thrones And Roses' should read it😍.
The Author;
xbookgirl