Rogue
I woke up in a my room, with a blanket drawn up to my chin. My entire body ached, some parts more so than others, and my throat was absolutely parched. I slowly looked to my right, where Cameron sat with his head dropped down so that his chin was to his chest. I slowly peeled off the blanket and flinched at the sight of my body. I was dressed in a light shift that displayed only too well my scabbed over wounds from the previous day. They had all dried but the skin was still raw and tender. I struggled to sit up, but a breath escaped too forcefully, jerking Cameron out of his slumber.
"You're awake," he mumbled, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. I made an incomprehensible noise.
"Water," I tried to say, but only a hoarse sound escaped. Cameron passed me a bottle, and I'd downed half of it before I made another attempt to speak.
"You alright?" he asked, taking in my condition. He almost looked sympathetic, in that moment.
"Hmph," I replied, lying back down on my back. My body couldn't really do much more; it was too stiff.
"What did he say? What did he do?"
"You never thought to send backup?" I finally managed to say accusingly. "That they're rogues, and you can't count on them to do something nice or honourable?"
Anger flickered in his pale grey eyes. There it is, at last. "I should have thought? I don't know if you remember, but I'm not the Alpha here. I don't hold the power to send bodyguards along with you. You do, and if you'd done your job right this past year, this never would have even happened!"
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I finally broke eye contact. It was no use arguing with him. I wanted to scream at him, ask him why he betrayed me, but somehow I figured that I wouldn't get much pity from him. If Nathaniel was right, then Cameron would just kick me out of the pack, then and there. He was probably just waiting for the right time. The time when it wouldn't seem cowardly to cast out an injured Lupi.
Cameron stood up abruptly. "I'll get Liv to get you something to eat." His mate. The thought still made me flinch, that Leo had pushed me down into these dark waters. To draw my mind away, I took stock of the damage inflicted on my body. It was littered with cuts and bruises, some worse than others, with four wounds stretching from my right shoulder across to my left hip. My face itself felt like it had its fair share of blood and gore.
Olivia entered the room five minutes later warily with a platter holding some toast and a glass of juice.
I offered her a weak smile, and her face relaxed slightly.
"How are you?" she asked softly she placed the tray on her bedside table. I tried to reach for a slice of bread, but winced as pain jolted through my arm like an electric shock. Olivia then took the role of nurse and began cutting the bread into little squares and dropped them into my mouth.
"Not very good at all," I murmured as the bread scraped down my throat.
"Cam says that Nathaniel wants you to step down."
"I know-wait, how does he know?" I knew that I couldn't accuse Cameron outright of betrayal, but now I could see incriminating evidence everywhere.
"It isn't a secret, Meg," Olivia said with a sad smile. "I honestly sympathise with you, but frankly, I agree with him."
"Of course you do." You're his mate. You're supposed to agree with him.
"I think you should stay, though. You just need time, and your dad just passed at the wrong time. You're just really unlucky."
"Right." I knew that Olivia wanted to cheer me up, but I was too aware that nobody really wanted me to stay. I had to step down. Only thing was, stepping down wasn't that easy. I'd most likely end up dead. I struggled back into a sitting position and took a small sip of the sourish orange juice, fresh with all the pulp floating amidst the liquid.
Olivia settled down into the chair where Cameron had sat in, and wrung her hands nervously.
"Is something wrong?" I asked, raising an eyebrow curiously.
"Cameron's the one who's been trying to get you to leave the most," she suddenly blurted out in a rush of words.
I smiled a small smile. "Oh, I know. I don't have much time before he does kill me."
"He can't!" The alarm in her eyes was clear. "He can't, not after all of what's happened!"
"Olivia, I appreciate what you're doing for me, but this is how it works. If Cameron wants to become Alpha, he has to challenge me, and whoever survives is the new leader. It's pretty obvious here who's going to die, right?"
Olivia's jaw tightened as she stood up. "You'll be alright here alone?"
"Where're you going?" I asked instead, popping another square of bread into my mouth.
"I need to talk to Cameron. You shouldn't have to die."
I shrugged indifferently. I was beyond caring. If anything, Cameron was probably doing me a favour, putting me out of this perpetual misery. Olivia hurried out while I lazily sipped my orange juice. I could almost ignore the pain, as I lay unmoving in my bed. In that moment, I truly, honestly didn't give a shit that Cameron was going to kill me. Be it Leo or my impending death or Cameron, I just didn't care.
⤜◯⤛
I was right. By the next day, the soreness had vanished, leaving behind dark red scars and faint discolourations where there had been scabs and purple flowers of bruises. Cameron and the others had left me in my room in peace, or at least I liked to think that. For all I knew, they were plotting the best way to kill me.
My room was small. It was where I'd slept while my parents occupied the room designated for the Alpha. Now both of them had passed on, but I couldn't bring myself to move into that room of grandeur, full of reminders of everything in my life that had gone wrong. The bed was positioned by the window, parallel to the window sill, and I faced the door with my knees to my chest and back against the wall. I clutched the roots of my hair as a migraine started to take form, an obstinate pounding behind my eyes, making every sound multiply by a tenfold.
I reached out blindly and found the small bottle of aspirin and dry swallowed a tablet. I winced as it scraped its way down my throat, but sighed in relief as the headache eased slightly. I sat up slowly and changed out of that filmy dress into a pair of track pants and a black shirt, both of which hung off my frame like a skeleton's clothes.
You have one month. Cameron was, without doubt, going to be Alpha by then, but would he strong enough? Probably.
My reflection stared blearily at me in the bathroom, my black hair resembling a bird's nest atop my head. I carefully combed out the greasy strands in the hope that my hair wouldn't fall out by the handful, and braided it down my back. The wraith in the mirror looked nothing like the old Megan Vaughn. This sliver of a being was nothing but an empty shell. My hand tightened into a fist as I suppressed the urge to punch the sullenness out of the face in the mirror, and I forced myself to turn away. The stairs suddenly felt like individual cliffs descending to the fiery pits of hell, each step feeling more taxing than its predecessor. I clung to the bannister as I descended, and waiting in the kitchen was an angry crowd.
I nodded in acknowledgment as I bent down the search the fridge. It was clear to see that Cameron was the leader of this mob.
"Megan," Cameron said curtly in greeting, arms folded across his chest.
"Cameron," I replied sullenly, resigning myself to an apple.
"We need to talk, and you know exactly what this is about."
"You want me to step down? Yeah, I know. After all, didn't you make a deal with Crowe?" I replied dryly, watching him to see his reaction. "You know, to kill me off?"
Cameron remained passive, but surprise flitted over the packs' features.
"You know that we deserve someone stronger. It isn't our fault that your mate got killed!"
I stared calmly at him as I chewed the sour flesh of the apple slowly. "If you want to take my place as Alpha, I'll give it to you, here and now. I don't want this to end in a fight." Somehow I knew what he was going to say.
"No, we will fight, like always. This case will be treated no differently."
A wry smile formed on my face. "You really do hate me, don't you? Well, when'll we begin the battle to the death?"
"Now, at the front." I shrugged indifferently as I chucked the apple core in the bin. Maybe I should be grateful. Maybe finally everything would just end.
Cameron stopped just short of the end of the driveway, where it led to a trail track that headed almost directly to the forest, and waited me to take my place several metres from him. He raised a dark eyebrow. He was probably hoping that I would finally show some courage for once and make the first move, but my feet remained planted to the ground, as though vines were sprouting from the soil and anchoring me down. A hint of anger rippled across his face, as though insects were moving busily under his skin, and then he shifted seamlessly into his rage-fuelled wolf in a series of pops and snaps. He barely uttered a cry of pain. Without skipping a beat, he leapt forward and tackled me to the ground under his bone-crushing weight. I didn't bother fighting. I had none left.
I let his slash at my face with his claws, I let him shift back so that he could pummel my face ruthlessly with his fists, and I let him break my ribs and my bones. He didn't stop his torture until I was on the brink of falling into the pit of eternal darkness.
My eyes cracked open through the swollen slits, and Cameron glared down with a rage that consumed his grey eyes in a bottomless black, his knees pinning my arms down to the ground and rendering me paralysed. "Just... Just end it," I rasped through a split lip that a mouthful of blood. "I can't take it anymore, please, just...just finish me off."
Cameron still glowered down at me. He seized me by my bloodied shirt and pulled me close to his face. I was close enough to see the sweat on his tanned skin glisten and the tremor that shook his entire body like a minute vibration. I knew that his wolf was just itching to break free, to take control of his body. I could see it under his skin, rippling and undulating. I glanced down at his hands to see them painted in scarlet.
"Look at me!" he snarled, shaking me violently, enough to make me cough blood all over his face but he didn't care. "We all thought better of you, Vaughn. You won't even put up a fight when your pack's survival depends on you! You're lucky Olivia came to talk to me. If it weren't for her, you'd already be dead."
"No," I murmured, realising what he was going to do. "No, please! Don't leave me here! Just kill me, already! Kill me!" I begged hysterically, and then the tears came. Sobs racked my body as I pleaded to the point where my words were incomprehensible.
Cameron let go of me in disgust and spat at my feet. I instantly latched myself to his foot, and appealed desperately. Don't just leave me here. Just kill me!
Cameron's response was a kick to the face that sent me sprawling across the trail. "Go! Do whatever the fuck you want, just don't come back here. Ever!"
I slowly managed to get to my knees and surveyed our audience, all of who stared at me with varying degrees of pity, disgust and hostility. Olivia stood near the back, chewing frantically on her nails with her nutty brown eyes shining with tears. She had no objections.
Rogue. The words resonated in my head. That was who I was now. A rogue wolf, just like the heartless beast Nathaniel Crowe. Outcast. Now I was just like him. We shared the same title, and yet I was nothing like him.
I gulped painfully and wiped the blood off of my brow which was trickling from a wound that ran along my hairline, and let my wolf break and reshape my bones. She was just as miserable as I was. I didn't even have the energy to scream as she wrenched the reins of controls out of my hands.
I watched my pack with the vain hope of a well-placed stone to hit me before slumping in resignation and I began to clumsily lope towards the forest. Rogue. Outcast. Those were the words that echoed in my mind as I left the one place I had ever called home.