XALIA'S TRAGEDY

CHAPTER 2

Xalia didn’t despair. Now she was her only lineage. She was looking out for her own back.

It was when Selene’s dictation transpired that Xalia’s pre-eminence was restored, or so she thought.

There he stood, howling before the moon as winter’s backdrop faded and as he formed from human to werewolf, Xalia happened to form next to him. This was a new member. She considered his features, not handsome, but there was a glint in his eye, his solid, heaving body shaking in the cool of night.

Xalia knew this was the one Selene had spoken of, “I will give you a mate”, she stated it confidently..

Xalia circled him in the werewolf fashion. This drew the attention of the Lycan King who referenced the others to observe. It wasn’t chemistry, but it was knowing; this was who Selene had spoken of. As she circled him, he eyed her in lust. Xalia was the most sleek of the pack. There was a circling of ownership. She was staking her claim on this one. He seemed disinterested in anything but her lavish beauty. The mating call rose as both werewolves vanished together in the night embers to commit to their newfound relationship. After a night of wildness in the trees’ fallen leaves, winter ended with a note of oncoming beginnings. And these starts were not on Xalia’s radar.

From the start, Orla was violent and aggressive. He often lashed out at Xalia, ripping into her, taunting her, despising the very flesh on her body. There was no chemistry. Orla had officiated war against the very one who had chosen him. Xalia often had to fight back, baring teeth that were shaking both with rage and fear. Yet Orla took her as his sole possession, night after night making her his own, whilst Xalia howled in suffering and remorse. Bit by bit, Orla took what remained of her very dignity. Respect for her was zilch. Her beauty was his guise, his reason for sticking around.

“No cubs”, he would mutter, as night after night he would check to see if she had produced a litter. “Drat you, you’re nothing but an unproduced.”

Xalia could never get away from him. One night, as he was especially fierce, Xalia cried out loudly in pain. She scratched his eyes with her claws, dug her teeth into his neck, and fought for all she had within her. She ran off into the night as soon as Orla fell to the ground, unable to get up. She had bitten a chunk out of his knee and hurled him to the ground.

Now, momentarily, she was free. Xalia gallivanted past forestry, running blindly. The full moon presented enough shine for her leering eyes to have a pathway. She ran until a lone wolf on the horizon made her stop. She stopped as he sniffed her and circled her. Then the mating call came and she was enthralled in the whirlwind of lust. Desperate for a kind touch, she embraced this stranger and they consummated all through the night.

I could get used to this, thought Xalia, in the throes of passion. She fell asleep in the giant paws of the stranger, who had wandered off by early in the morning.

Xalia snacked on a leftover carcass that was laying around her. She needed her strength to keep moving.

A pack went past her, on the hunt for prey. Xalia hid in the bush of the forest.

A werewolf stopped, sniffed the air, and then, urged on by the pack, ran onward with them. But Xalia still wasn’t in the safe zone. She went directly to the path that lead to Orla.

“Wait until the Lycan King hears about this”, he snarled, teeth bared, and slapped Xalia across the face with open claws. “I’m going to smear your lousy reputation even more”, the wicked Orla proclaimed, wallowing in Xalia’s distress. Xalia’s howls were heard from a mile away, but no one came to her aid. Xalia was the outcast, the defective one who couldn’t even protect her own and whose mate detested her.

The day was long and arduous. Orla wouldn’t even lie with her as she “Smelt like feces”, he stated.

Xalia knew it was the other werewolf’s smell he could detect and was so grateful he couldn't depict her night of lust