Episode 4
1486 Words
MAILA
“Moon, give me strength,” I whispered as I fled the hotel entirely.
What if losing my wolf if I rejected him was another one of Alpha Leon’s twisted lies? They’d said in the brothel that he and his brothers enjoyed playing with and manipulating women. I was not going to be that woman again.
The brothel I grew up in was on the other end of the pack, and there was no way I could sprint over there, especially when I was one of those wolves that couldn’t shift.
Within me, Keara, my wolf, whimpered, her consciousness straining against mine as she tried to tell me something.
“Shhh!” I whispered aloud to her as I sprinted back to Kaden’s house.
I rushed into his Buick and then headed to the brothel I had called home for so long.
My mother now had more dazed moments than she had consciousness, but today, I badly needed my mother.
The stench of the brothel—that smell of cheap perfume and STDs—hung in the air as I rushed in.
“Ay, Maila! Finally decided that the best way to make it is flat on your back?”
“Karen, you old scoot!” I offered a smile to her as I ran past.
The door to my mother’s little room was open, and when I stepped in, there was smoke everywhere.
A silent scream tore at my throat as I pushed further in. She was seated on a chair, staring out unconsciously and breathing directly from a burning purple sage that was angled toward her head.
“No!” The word tore from my mouth like a hoarse whisper.
“Moon, please, no! I know she wasn’t much of a mother, but please don’t take her from me!”
I rushed over to fling the purple sage out of the window. It wasn’t even one of my mother’s preferred drugs. Why the heck would she start with it now?
“Mom! Mother! I need you now more than ever before,” I whispered, trying desperately to carry her out of that chair into the open, to get some fresh air into her, but her weight had gotten so much heavier than her frail body should weigh, and the eyes that stared out vacantly didn’t even blink.
“Mom!” I cried, refusing to believe what my brain already knew.
“When the heck did you start smoking purple sage anyway?” I screamed. She’d always said it was too dangerous; she didn’t want to go from a ‘high’ to a six-feet-under ‘low’ that quickly. It didn’t even make any sense! Purple sage was a very expensive herb.
“It was the man that came that done it.”
I turned around to see Karen hanging by the doorway.
“What man?”
She shook her head. “He came here, looking so important, like he was from an Alpha or a very high Beta. Said he wanted to speak with her, but he didn’t call her Margaret. He said he was looking for ‘Maila’s mother.’ She came out after a while, said we were not to disturb her, and then shortly after that, you arrived.”
I forced back my tears as I turned again to stare at my mother’s body. Who had come to see her? Had it been someone sent by Kaden or his even more evil Alpha?
But the question that tore at me was—had this been a suicide or a murder? I was bloody well going to find out.
I turned back to my mother’s body and tried to lift her, but Karen came over to place a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t you worry about burying her. Kaden would send me over—he’s the owner of this place, after all.”
I shook my head, but before I could speak, a sharp pain tore at me from inside. I froze, afraid to move, to breathe, afraid to trigger the pain.
Karen stared at me with compassion. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”
I shook my head, even as Alpha Leon’s words came back to haunt me. First, his soft *‘Your wolf is not strong enough to reject me,’* and then his more brutal warning that I’d lose my wolf if I dared reject him.
I shook my head and forced on a smile that I realized Karen wasn’t buying. “There’s a stuffed doll that she made for me when I was six. Can you please throw it into her grave?”
Karen nodded, and I turned and hightailed it out of there. The last thing I needed was to be paralyzed by pain in a place like that when I was still unsure whether my mother had been murdered or coerced into committing suicide.
I got behind the wheel again and drove off quickly, even as I felt my hands begin to shake.
I needed to get the heck out of here, to get far away from the pack, to a place I could think.
I pressed my foot down on the gas pedal and took the highway out of Creekwood.
In my pain, I couldn’t tell anymore if I had taken the road that led westward, away from the Stone packs, or eastward into Alpha Lucas’s pack.
*Moon, please,* I began a silent prayer, but then the shaking got worse.
“You shouldn’t have rejected him,” Keara hissed from within, but I ignored her. How very like her to think death was any worse than being mated to evil.
When the shaking got way worse, I pulled off by the side of the road and killed the engine, surrendering to the pain that engulfed me.
The last thing I remembered before my consciousness faded was my own bone-wracking scream, and then flashlights in my face as a strong hand grabbed me and pulled me out of the car—okay, that wasn’t the last thing.
The last thing I remembered was that he smelled of pinewood and leather, and that resting my head on his chest felt oddly comforting through the pain.
“Beep beep beep beep!”
“Turn it off!” I whispered hoarsely, only to have two people run toward me, incredible joy on their faces.
“She asked us to turn off her heart monitor,” one of them said incredulously.
I noticed now they were nurses, and I was in some kind of hospital, but why the heck were they so excited I wanted the monitor off?
“Quick! Get Doctor Carter. She’s awake!” the one who seemed like the older of them said excitedly.
I tried to sit up, but she pressed me back on the bed. “Not too quickly, ma’am. You’ve been in a coma for five years. Sitting up that quickly would throw you off balance.”
“Five years?” I echoed, trying in futility to wet my lips. “That’s—that’s impossible.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” she offered kindly. “But don’t worry, the doctor will be here to see to you very soon.”
“Can I get a little water to drink then?” I asked, trying my best to process everything that was happening. But then the monitor began beeping aggressively again as the door opened and a very handsome doctor walked in.
“I’m Doctor Rio,” he offered, extending his hand. When I took it, he covered my hand with his other one. “Welcome back. You’ve been in a coma for five years.”
So it was true then. I dragged in a long breath as I tried to focus on what he was saying, but it seemed like rambling medical jargon.
He paused a bit. “We’ll let your daughter know you’re awake—”
“Daughter?” I stared at him in surprise. Of course. I had a family, probably a mate, and children—a daughter.
It was only then that I realized something was off. I couldn’t remember who my family was or what my name was.
“I—I don’t remember anything,” I whispered hoarsely.
The doctor only smiled. “It may all come back. Trust me, that’s very normal after waking from a five-year coma.”
“May?”
He nodded. “Unfortunately, I can’t guarantee that you’ll get your memory back. When I found you, you were—”
Just then, a beeping sound that was way louder than the monitor began blaring, with a siren accompaniment.
The nurses in the room stared in fear at their doctor, who stared back at me with a mixture of fear and the weigh
t of responsibility.
“That’s our alarm signal. Alpha Leon is attacking again, and his betas might be close by.”
- Writer
