Called by the Goddess

Chapter 8: Memories

~Maya~

I watched her run off. Wow… little Katie, could she really be the chosen one? I remembered changing her diapers when she was a baby, just after me and my dad had just been demoted to omega status.

What an awful time that had been for them. She had been 6 years old. First mum dying after the attack from the Dark moon pack. The reports that she tried to flee during the fight, and that her dad, as the leader of the defence, tried to hide that from the alpha and beta.

I hadn’t been able to understand. Cast out of our lovely house, which we had lived in as third in rank of the pack, having to move into the omega quarters, in the pack house, directly above the kitchen. The tiny room, the smells, having to share a bathroom with the whole hallway…. I was used to having a bathroom all to myself.

The only fond memories I had of my time there were of Kate’s mum and dad, who tried to comfort me as best they could. My dad had been useless, he just sat there, defeated, bitter, going to work like a zombie.

Diana, as dad’s new boss, made sure there was an omega there to look after her when her dad had to work, and she loved when she could stay at Diana’s and Martin’s place. Always lots of good food and pastry, just happening to be left over from the day before, just being treated as a pup instead of an outcast.

The other omegas had not been comfortable around her dad and her, remembering all too well how her dad had treated them, when he was still the gamma of the pack. They tended to take that out on her. But not Diana and Martin, they took me in as one of their own, taught me how to change tiny Kate’s diaper. I had been so proud to have been given such an important task…

But then, that awful day came, when Eric and her other former friends saw her on the playground. I, now an omega, wasn’t allowed to go and play there anymore. I knew this, but I missed the good times I had had, with Eric, Emma, Jonathan and George. Although she remembered Jonathon always being a sneaky bully, jealous of her connection with Eric. He thought because he was the eldest son of the beta, and the oldest one of their little group, that he should have dibs on being the alpha’s heir best friend.

So I secretly went there at times I knew it was empty and just sat there. Not breaking any pack rules as far as I was concerned, I did not play, right? And then she saw them coming. The kids she had played with for as long as she could remember, her so called best friends.

Jonathan had spotted me first. “Hey, look, they forgot to take away the trash from the playground”, he yelled, pointing his finger at me. I had gotten so mad. Everything that had happened, the pressure I was under, adjusting to my new lifestyle, and now this insult from the kid that always had tried to bully me away from ‘his’ best friend. I just snapped.

I stood up and ran to him and gave him a kick to his shin. “Maya!” I heard an angry voice shout and to this day I remember feeling my blood turn to ice in my veins. It was my dad, who was out looking for me. “Have you no decency at all? We are already put to shame by your mother’s actions, and now my own daughter cannot keep to her place?”. Yeah, good old dad… always abiding by the pack’s laws, even after they had spit him out.

She remembered the evil grin, passing Jonathan’s face. So, omega, you admit your daughter is out of control. Please hold her, so she won’t attack me again when I give her her proper punishment. It was the worst moment of her life. Her dad restraining her and Jonathan totally losing it on her, she still remembered the look on his face, he had lost all control, grinning like an evil maniac. And what was worse, she saw Eric and Emma, who she thought had been her best friends in the whole world, just standing by, with a forced smile on their faces, like nothing bad was going on. And then the final kick came, breaking her jaw and rendering her unconscious. She still sometimes felt a stabbing pain in her jaw.

I felt a tear running down my cheek. “Sweet childhood memories…” I mockingly thought to myself.

Next thing I remembered after that kick was waking up in Selena’s house. She had been beaten within an inch of her life. The pack doctor she had been taken to see had been an agent of the order. He had faked her death, and since omegas don’t get a proper wake or funeral, it had been relatively easy to smuggle her out of there. Some of those stupid pack rules actually made it easier for the order to recruit new people.

I remembered being nursed back to health by Selena, bless her, both physical and mentally. She had been a complete mess. She remembered breaking down when Selena told her “Everybody here eventually calls me Granny, but you can call me Selena”. Not out of hurt, but out of gratefulness that somebody could understand her so deeply.

“How did she do that, how did she always know just the right thing to say?”, I wondered. Because one of the things that I had told myself that I would never have any family ties with anybody again, after the way my dad had let Jonathon almost kill me. Helping him by restraining me. So calling Selena ‘granny’ would have tainted our relationship for me. I had noticed everybody, except for the older order members, calling her granny, but thinking I ‘had to’ as well made me feel very uncomfortable. I wouldn’t want our relationship being tainted by even the slightest idea of a family bond. I hated my family…

I sighed… and looked up. Selena was watching me closely, as I expected, and asked “That brought back some ugly memories, didn’t it?”.

“Yeah, it sure did. But sometimes it is good to remember where you came from. And she also made me think of the few good moments I had, after we had been demoted. Her parents were so wonderful to me back then, I can see why they of all people would be able to give birth to the chosen one. She is something, isn’t she, our little Katie”, I grinned, thinking back to the look of pure joy on her face when she ran past me.

“Did you see the look on her face when you threw her into the air?”, Selena chuckled.

“Yes, it was a wonderful mixture of indignancy and oh wow, I want to learn how to do that”, I grinned, thinking back. “She is a quick study, I can tell already, and she is fast, after a few weeks of training I will have trouble keeping up with her on the track”, I admitted.

“So, let’s focus on making a schedule that works for her. She will need all the help she can get, she has a rough task ahead of her”. Selena brought us back to business.

“Yeah, you can say that again! I would not want to be in her shoes, I remembered looking in the mirror after my first shift, I was SO relieved there wasn’t anything remotely resembling silver in my eyes”, I chuckled, before I went back to the task of devising a training schedule for Kate.