PROLOGUE
EMMA
I was only five when night descended on my family. It was my birthday but also the last day I would see my mother forever.
She smiled at me that evening and said, “Happy birthday, my beautiful princess." Then she went on to remove a sparkling blue moon-shaped diamond necklace from her neck and wore it on mine.
And while she and dad sat beside me and my cake with five tiny candles, singing and clapping, my mum suddenly stopped. Her face went from smiling face to serious. She furrowed her brows and stood up, going still as if she was trying to listen for something suspicious. It made my dad to get up too.
The candles on my cake were still burning.
Mum tiptoed to the door and peeped through the keyhole, then suddenly ran to where I sat and picked me into her arms, passing me over to my dad and frantically blowing out the cake's candles, not to wish long life and prosperity, of course, but to make the room dark enough to keep us safe.
We three all ran into the next room.
“Elgin, listen to me,” she spoke to my dad in a hoarse whisper, “Please stay with her, I beg you. And don’t let her make a sound please, please Elgin.”
“No, Ayleen!” my dad grabbed my mum’s hand. “Let me go, please don’t do this, let me go instead.”
“It’s me they want, Elgin, I’ll never be able to live with myself if anything happens to you. I’m sorry.” she said with watery eyes and I started to cry.
She bent to kiss my forehead, moved three steps back and waved her hand around me and my dad saying “They wouldn’t know you are here,” and flashed out of the room in a way I had never seen before.
I could feel drops of tears from my dads’ eyes fall on my face as he covered my mouth firmly with his palms and held me so hard to his body I could barely breathe.
Everything took place too quickly shortly after mum left the room, I heard the sound of our main door crashing down, accompanied by hissings, grunts and finally a piercing scream that shook the core of my house, causing the door of the room my father and I was in to be forced open, exposing the commotions going on in the sitting room before my very eyes.
And the first thing I saw was my mother on her knees with a long iron spear pierced through her heart to emerge from her back. Someone stood above her, pushing the spear deeper and deeper but I couldn’t get his face because he was masked.
A shriek erupted from my depths, but couldn’t come out because my father’s hands were placed over my mouth, gagging me and stifling the shrieks. My face was filled with his tears and mine as we both watched my mother die before us in horror and there was absolutely nothing the both of us could do—my father couldn’t even move his feet for reasons I still couldn’t grasp.
The masked man pulled out the spear forcefully from her chest as she grunted and fell on her back. Dark red blood gushed out like a fountain from her chest, mouth and her nose before she closed her eyes.
My dad rushed to close my eyes with his other hand, but it was too late, I had seen it all.
The masked man with some other masked men went into other rooms as if they were searching for something and even walked past me and my dad without noticing our presence.
After searching and searching for some time without result, the masked men left our home, disappearing into the night, leaving me and my dad to sob feverishly.
After that day, I was unable to say another word. The trauma of witnessing my mother’s death rendered me mute.
That night my father buried my mother and took me far away from where had been my home and we lived among people I knew weren’t our kind.
He locked me inside the house all the time, asked me over and over again to promise him I was never going to come out when he was not around, which I did all the while growing up. He even taught me the sign language to make communication easier for me, since I couldn’t speak but I could hear.
But I had lots of questions, asked him every time I got the opportunity but he always said he would tell me when the time was right. All I should just know is that men are bad.
However, on the night of my 18th birthday, my wolf, Ashley, spoke up in my mind for the first time, and my father finally answered the questions I had been asking for years.
He said him and my mother had a forbidden love, as the Vampire realm and Werewolf reals were sworn enemies and had nothing to do with each other. But he and my mum found out they were mates, and instead of them to reject each other and break the bond according to the law of their realms, they went against the rules.
My mum who was a vampire and my dad, a werewolf, fell in love instead and ran away from their realms to be together. This caused an uproar in their both realms especially that of the vampire’s as my mum was already betrothed to the Vampire king even before she was born.
She chose love instead and was willing to die than to go back to her realm and her family but they didn’t back down. The Vampire king in his rage and jealousy sent men to hunt down my mum and bring her back, and if she resisted, they should kill her.
My heart broke as the image of my mum’s last moments wafted through my mind.
“They wanted to kill you as well, Emma,” my dad said caressing my hair, as he sat beside me on my bed. “That is why your mother did what she did, because according to them, you aren’t supposed to be born.”
“Why?” I signed, lifting my right hand above my left.
“You’re a mixed blood, Emma.” He took my hands down and clasped them with his. “They say you’re an abomination, but the truth is, they are scared of you. And they are still looking for you, which is why you should never go out, okay?”
I simply nodded and asked him about his own realm. “Didn’t they look for you as well?” I signed fluidly, my hands dancing on the air.
“They didn’t.” he said, staring into space. “They just ostracized and announced that I was never part of the werewolf realm, including anyone who came from me.”
“So, I’m saved from the werewolf then?” I asked with a smile trying to lighten the conversation. My father’s forehead was creased in worry. He had aged so fast because of all he had to go through, raising a mute child up on his own and all.
“I really don’t know, child” his brow thickened. “Now that your wolf is out in the surface, it may be more complicated than I thought it would be. I honestly didn’t think you would have a wolf since your mother and I weren’t both werewolves.”
He kissed my forehead and gazed lovingly at me. “But not to worry, dad would keep you safe. So you should never leave my side, people are a lot scarier than you can imagine.” he concluded, left my room and shut the door.
I stared at the pile of books in the wooden shelf my dad made for me, books that had been my companion ever since we moved down here and wished my dad had said more.
I still had so much questions to ask him, so much I wanted to hear from him like what my mother was really like, (as we didn’t have a photograph of her and I could barely remember her face.) what it really meant to have a wolf, how the first shape shifting felt like and why does the colors of my eyes changed from the natural blue to red when I was mad, and stayed normal when I wasn’t.
But I didn’t want him to worry, he had enough on his plate, and was doing so much to make sure I was okay. I knew it was wrong to hide the fact that my eyes changed colors from him, but I was also aware that it would make him worry more.
According to Shakespeare, there were answers one had to find out for oneself, and that was exactly what I planned to do.
“That’s the spirit, Emma,” my wolf, Ashley spoke up in my head as I drifted into a restless sleep filled with nightmares from the past.
Every night for the past eighteen years, I saw the death of my mother play out in my dreams. It was beyond traumatizing. I could hear the shattering sound, the piercing scream; I could see the thick red blood sauntering down her mouth and nostrils, the masked man, the spear, but could never see my mother’s face or her beautiful amber eyes.
And I always woke up gasping for air, clutching my pillow wet from sweat and tears and weeping into the night till dawn came.
